#and the other one flies back twenty feet and dies

[silly-little-words-on-the-screen]

egg

I simultaneously have an impeccable ability to write well when I try to while also writing some of the most unhinged sentences ever known to humankind when my brain says it would be funny

#like #I'll just be writing #and two characters are having a perfectly normal conversation #and then #one of them just goes: #“egg” #and the other one flies back twenty feet and dies #and then I delete it because it did NOT happen #but like... I know it was on the page for a moment and it haunts my dreams #silly little words

[seph7]

J.T. Walsh (1999)

I like Oliver Stone movies, but I stayed away from his Nixon when it was in the theaters in 1995, and never rented it on video. As the child of good California Democrats, I grew up hating Nixon. When I was in my twenties and he was president, he gave me more reason to hate him than I ever wanted. When he died I didn’t want to think about him anymore.

One night, though, flipping channels after the late news had closed down, I happened onto Nixon running on HBO, and I didn’t turn it off. I was pulled in, played like a fish through all the fictions and flashbacks, dreaming the movie’s dream: waiting for Watergate.

It came into focus with a strategy session in the Oval Office. Anthony Hopkins’s Nixon is hunching his shoulders and look­ing for help. James Woods’s impossibly reptilian H. R. Halde­man is stamping his feet like Rumpelstiltskin and fulminating about “Jew York City.” Others raise their voices here and there—and off to the side is J. T. Walsh, the canniest and most invisible actor of the 1990s, doodling.

As almost always, Walsh was playing a sleaze, a masked thug, here a corrupt government official, White House adviser and Watergate conspirator John Ehrlichman—as elsewhere he has played a slick Hollywood producer, a college-basketball fixer, the head of a crew of aluminum siding salesmen, a porn king who makes home sex videos with his own daughter, a slew of cops (Internal Affairs bureaucrat on the take in Chicago, leader of a secret society of white fascists in the LAPD), and a whole gallery of con artists, confidence men who seem to live less to take your money than for the satisfaction of getting you to trust them first.

Walsh in the Oval Office is physically indistinct; he usually was. At fifty-two in 1995 he looked younger, just as he looked older than his age when, after eight years as a stage actor—most notably as the frothing sales boss in David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross—he began getting movie roles in 1986. Except near the end of his life, when his weight went badly out of control, his characters would have been hard to pick out of a lineup. Like Bill Clinton he was fleshy, vaguely overweight, with an open, florid, unlined face, a manner of surpassing reasonableness, blond in a way that on a beige couch would all but let him fade into the cushions. He had nothing in common with even the cooler, more sarcastic heavies of the forties or the fifties—Victor Buono’s police chief in To Have and Have Not, say, or the coroner in Kiss Me Deadly, their words dripping from their mouths like syrup with flies in it. He had nothing to say to the heavies appearing alongside of him in the multiplexes—Dennis Hopper’s psychokillers, Robert Dalvi’s scum-suckers, Mickey Rourke, with slime oozing through his pores, the undead Christopher Walken, his soul cannibalized long ago, nothing left but a waxy shell.

Walsh’s characters are extreme only on the inside, if he allows you to believe they are extreme at all; as he moves through a film, regardless of how much or how little formal authority his character might wield, Walsh is ordinary. You’ve seen this guy a million times. You’ll see him for the rest of your life. “What I enjoy most as an actor,” he said in December 1997, two months before his death from a heart attack, “is just disappearing. Most bad people I’ve known in my life have been transparent. Not gaunt expressions—they’re Milquetoasts. It’s Jeffrey Dahmer arguing with cops in the streets about a kid he’s about to eat—and he convinces them to let him keep him. And takes him back up and eats him. What is the nature of evil that we get so fascinated by it? It’s buried in charm, it’s not buried in horror.”

Walsh’s charm—what made you believe him, whether you were another character standing next to him in a two-shot, or watching in the audience—was a disarming, everyday realism, often contrived in small, edge-of-the-plot roles, his work with a single expression or a line staying with you long after any memory of the plot crumbled. As a lawyer happily tossing Linda Fiorentino criminal advice while an American flag waves in the breeze outside his window, Walsh taps into a profane quickness that for the few moments he’s on-screen dissolves the all-atmosphere-all-the-time film noir gloom of John Dahl’s The Last Seduction. In The Grifters, as Cole Langley, master of the long con, he radiates an all-American salesman’s glee (“Laws will be broken!” he promises a mark) that makes the hustlers holding the screen in the film—Anjelica Huston, John Cusack, Annette Bening—seem like literary conceits. Yet it all comes through a haze of blandness, as it does even when Walsh plays a sex killer, a crime boss, a rapist, a racist murderer, as if at any moment any terrible impression can be smoothed away: How could you imagine that’s what I meant?

In the Oval Office his Ehrlichman, whom America would encounter as the snarling pit bull lashing back at Senator Sam Ervin’s Watergate investigations committee, retains only the blandness, occasionally offering no more than “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea” before returning to his doodles. It was this blandness that allowed Walsh to flit through history—in Nixon playing White House fixer Ehrlichman; in Hoffa Team­ster president Frank Fitzsimmons, locked into power by a deal that Ehrlichman helped broker; in Wired reporter Bob Woodward, who helped bring Ehrlichman down—but as Walsh sits with Nixon and Haldeman and the rest you can imagine him absenting himself from the action as it happens, instead contemplating all the roles in all the movies that have brought him to the point where he can take part in a plot to con an entire nation.

What makes Walsh such an uncanny presence on-screen—to the degree that, as the trucker in the first scenes of Breakdown, or Fitzsimmons as a drunken Teamster yes-man early in Hoffa, he seems to fade off the screen and out of the movie, back into everyday life—is that while the blandness of his characters may be a disguise, it can be far more believable than whatever evil it is apparently meant to hide. Even as it is committed, the evil act of a Walsh character can seem unreal, a trick to be taken back at the last moment, even long after that moment has passed—and that is because his characters, the real people he is playing, can appear to have no true identity at all. You can’t pick them out of the lineups of their own lives.

At the very beginning of his film career, in 1987, in David Mamet’s House of Games, Walsh is the dumb businessman victim of a gang of con men running a bait-and-switch, then a cop setting them up for a bust, then a dead cop, then one of the con men himself, alive and complaining, “Why do I always have to play the straight man?” The straight man? you ask him back. In Breakdown, in a rare role in which he dominates a film from beginning to end, he first appears as a gruffly helpful trucker giving a woman a ride into town while her husband waits with their broken-down car. She disappears, and when the husband finally confronts the trucker, with a cop at his side, Walsh’s irritated denial that he’s ever seen his man before in his life seems perfectly justifiable—even if, as Walsh saw it, that scene “had a residual effect on the audience. ‘Don’t catch me acting’—when I lied, deadpan, on the road, you hear people in the audience: ‘He’s lying!'”The moment came loose from the plot, as if, Walsh said, “I’m not just acting”—and that, he said, was where all the cheers in the theaters came from when in the final scene he dies. He had fooled the audience as much as the other characters in the movie; that’s why the audience wanted him dead.

Walsh’s richest role came in John Dahl’s Red Rock West. The mistaken-identity plot—with good guy Nicolas Cage mis­taken for hit man Dennis Hopper—centers on Walsh’s Wayne Brown, a Wyoming bar owner who’s hired one Lyle from Texas to murder his wife. As Brown, Walsh is also the Red Rock sheriff—and he is also Kevin McCord, a former steelworks bookkeeper from Illinois who along with his wife stole $1.9 million and was last seen on the Ten Most Wanted list. Walsh plays every role—or every self—with a kind of terrorized assurance that breaks out as calm, certain reason or calm, reasoned rage. He’s cool, efficient, panicky, dazed, quick, confused. You realize his character no longer has any idea who he is, and that he doesn’t care—and that it’s in the fact that they don’t care that the real terror of Walsh’s characters resides. You realize, too, watching this movie, that in all of his best roles Walsh is a center of nervous gravity. His acting, its subject, is all about absolute certainty in the face of utter doubt. Yes, you’re fooled, and the characters around Walsh’s might be; you can’t tell if Walsh’s character is fooled or not.

At the final facedown in Red Rock West, all the characters are assembled and Dennis Hopper’s Lyle is holding the gun. “Hey, Wayne, let me ask you something,” he says. “How’d you ever get to be sheriff?” “I was elected,” Walsh says with pride. “Yeah, he bought every voter in the county a drink,” his wife sneers—but so what? Isn’t that the American way? Get Walsh out of ‘this fix and it wouldn’t have been the last election he won.

Watching this odd, deadly scene in 1998, I thought of Bill Clinton again, as of course one never would have in 1992, when Red Rock West was released and Clinton was someone the country had yet to really meet. In the moment, looking back, seeing a face and a demeanor coming together out of bits and pieces of films made over the last dozen years, it was as if—in the blandness, the disarming charm, the inscrutability, the menace, the blondness, moving with big, careful gestures inside a haze of sincerity—Walsh had been playing Clinton all along. He was not, but the spirit of the times finds its own vessels, and, really, the feeling was far more queer: it was as if, all along, Bill Clinton had been playing J. T. Walsh.

#j.t. walsh #jt walsh #underrated actors #greil marcus

[of-house-atreides]

Nova | Part 6

Summary: Mando gets hurt and he has to choose which oath to keep.

Pairing: Din Djarin x OC

A/N: Please, note that I am French so there might be some mistakes here and there.

Word count: 1829

I hope you like it, please let me know if you do.

Warnings: mentions of injury, death, let me know if I should add more but I think that's it

Nova Masterlist

When Mando showed her the transmission, Nova wasn’t ready to listen. Not to him, not to the Guild hunter who was asking for their help. She recognized him to be the man who had tried to stop them from escaping that town in the first place and now he was expecting their help against the Imps? She wouldn’t even consider it.

“He’s right. When the Imp is dead, you and Grogu will be safe. No one will come after you anymore.”

“You’re smarter than that, Mando. That Imp has superiors. As long as the Empire remains, they will come after us.”

“That particular Imp has soldiers and hunters after you. He needs to die.”

“I don’t care if he dies, but we both know that’s not what this is about. It’s a trap.”

“Then we should prepare to outsmart them.”

“How do you propose we do that?”

“We’ll need help.”

“We don’t have any friends.”

“We do on Sorgan.”

“Cara? Will she even agree to help us?”

“She will. She won’t say no to a chance of killing some Imps.”

***

The plan had worked. They had reached their goal. The Imps were dead. Even the reinforcement that the Empire had sent and the two dozen stormtroopers that had arrived and taken them by surprised had been crushed by Nova. She didn’t even have a weapon. She was offered a blaster but refused it, although Mando had noticed she kept reaching for something at her hip, but there was nothing there. He wondered what her weapon used to be. He would love to see her wield it, whatever it was.

After they were cornered by Moff Gideon and his little army of stormtroopers, all hope seemed to have been lost. He had powerful weapons pointed at the bar they were hiding in. One by one he called their names.

Carasynthia Dune.

Greef Karga.

Din Djarin.

Nova Ria: Master Jedi.

Although the team had many questions for each other, especially for her, there was no time to get distracted. They had over twenty stormtroopers to kill. And another Imperial to stop.

The stormtroopers required little effort. They dropped like flies. Their real problem was the E-web blaster pointed right at them. That was Nova’s responsibility. She knew she could do it. Destroy it. Or damage it enough to render it harmless.

The weapon slowly started to curl on itself, inch by inch. Not fast enough. Her task made her a target, and it was the others’ job to protect her while she worked.

It got silent all of a sudden. As they looked around, they started to believe they had done it. They were the last ones standing. Nova was almost done destroying the deadly weapon, but she was too focused on it to see the last remaining soldier in white coming her way with a charged blaster.

It all happened so fast.

She felt something around her waist; Mando’s grappling line. She cried out as she was pulled away and fell on her back. She heard the blaster fire then Mando falling back behind her. Cara quickly took down the stormtrooper before she helped Nova up. The Jedi was still confused as she got on her feet. She checked on Grogu who was stunned, but uninjured, in the satchel hanging from her shoulder.

“Mando!”

She turned around as she heard Greef call the Mandalorian’s name.

The former magistrate kneeled near his old friend and asked him if he was okay. His beskar armor took most of the damage but Mando was still unable to get up from the ground.

“I think he hit his head,” he told Nova as she crouched before him.

“Mando, talk to me.”

“Are you okay?”

“Am I okay?” she repeated with a humorless chuckle, “you just got shot.”

“You have to go. More will come.”

“What are you talking about? Get up.”

“I- I can’t.”

“Let us check, Mando,” Greef insisted. “We can fix this.”

“No.”

“I’m not leaving you here,” Nova told him.

“I’m done. It’s over for me.”

“We’re not leaving without you,” Cara said. “Let us see your head, you don’t have to…”

“No,” he growled. “It is forbidden.”

Nova sighed. “Leave us,” she told their companions.

Greef and Cara hesitated but even though they didn’t know Nova much, they knew they couldn’t say no to her.

“I told you this would happen,” she whispered to him once they were alone.

“You have to go.”

“I told you you’d choose them over us. That you’ll let their lies kill you,” she said, tears invading her eyes.

“Nova…”

“Please, don’t do this.”

“You’ll be fine.”

“No, we won’t. What are we supposed to do? Where are we supposed to go? We’re dead without you, we’re nothing without you.”

“That’s not true. You’re strong. You can fight.”

“I don’t wanna fight,” she breathed out. “I’m tired. And I’m scared. I can only sleep when I’m with you. I only feel safe when I’m with you. And you promised you’d protect us. You promised you wouldn’t leave us behind.”

She sniffed as she wiped a tear away with the palm of her hand. He hated seeing her cry. Seeing her scared. He hated the thought of leaving her, of leaving them. He hated the thought of breaking his promise to her.

Grogu cooed as he stumbled towards him. He reached out to his helmet, his tiny green hand knocking on the beskar.

“He can feel it. You’re hurt, and we can fix it,” she told him. “Please, don’t leave us. Please, don’t leave him,” she cried. “I can’t protect him. I’ll fail him like I failed the others. I’ll leave if you want. You can even kill me if you want. But let me help you so you can help him. Please.”

His silence made the hole in her heart grow bigger with each passing second. Her sobs made him want to kill everyone who had ever hurt her. And that included him at the moment. He did promise to protect her. He did promise he wouldn’t leave her behind. But that was not the Way. That wasn’t his Creed. It was forbidden for him to show his face. If he did, he’ll never be able to put the helmet back on. He wouldn’t be worthy of the armor. He wouldn’t be worthy of the beskar. But did he want to be anymore? He realized maybe all he wanted now was to be worthy of her. Worthy of her forgiveness. Of her friendship. All he wanted now was to stop the tears. All he wanted was to protect her. Both of them.

It was a familiar feeling. He felt exactly like he had when he made the choice to come back for them. To fight for their freedom. It was against the rules of the Guild, but he had done it anyway. For them.

At the time, he thought nothing of it. The Guild wasn’t his Creed.

But what did it mean to be a Mandalorian, to be one of the greatest warriors of the galaxy, if you couldn’t protect the people you loved? Your friends? Your family? Mandalorians didn’t have a family. The foundlings were orphans. The Mandalorians were all you had. Them and the oath you swore. But he had a family now. People to protect. People who’d die for him. Could he leave them behind? Was it worth it? Was it really the Way? What purpose would his death serve now that he had people counting on him? People begging for him to stay alive.

He realized now that she was right. Mandalorians were alone for a reason. Because when they had people to protect, it was their way they had to choose.

He slowly and painfully brought his hands to his helmet, and he closed his eyes as he took it off his head.

Nova released a breath she didn’t know she was holding, and more tears fell on her cheeks as Mando revealed his bloody face to her.

“Thank you,” she breathed out. “Thank you.”

She put her hands on both side of his face, trying not to stare, trying to focus on his injuries instead of his beautiful face, his beautiful brown eyes. He had several bruises and several cuts all over his face, but the open wound behind his head was the most worrisome.

“I need you to sit up, can you do that for me?” she asked him softly.

She kneeled on the hard ground, rocks piercing through the skin of her legs. She paid them no mind. She brought her forehead against his and closed her eyes as he put his hands over hers.

“This shouldn’t hurt, but it may take a couple of minutes.”

He nodded in response. And he waited. He looked at her beautiful face he was seeing with his own eyes for the first time. He enjoyed her hot breath on his skin, the feeling of her hands on his cheeks, the little laughs of Grogu who was smiling up at him. He smiled back.

He could feel the pain slipping away. And he would have remained like this, his forehead against hers, his hands over hers, Grogu clinging to him.

She drew a shaky breath when she was done, her hands falling on his lap.

“It’s done,” she whispered with a weak voice.

She didn’t dare look at him. She kept her eyes down. Out of respect, or out of guilt, perhaps.

“Thank you,” he said as he lifted her chin with his fingers.

His eyes met hers for the first time, they seemed tired and weak. But they were beautiful. And he couldn’t look away.

“I’m going to pass out now,” she whispered.

“I understand.”

“You can leave me here, if you want. I’ll understand. Just take care of him, please.”

Mando frowned. “I’m not leaving you. I told you. I won’t leave you behind.”

She nodded as she closed her eyes. She felt lighter as she released a breath. She felt relieved.

He stood up, grabbed his helmet, and put it back on. He looked down at her kneeling at his feet.

“Those other Mandalorians you told me about…”

“Yes?”

“I’d like to hear more about them, once we’re out of here.”

She smiled. “I’ll tell you everything I know.”

He held a hand out to her and helped her on her feet. She stood up with difficulty, her legs too weak to carry her. He picked up Grogu from the ground and gently put him back in the satchel still hanging from Nova’s shoulder. He then lifted her off her feet and brought him to his chest like he had done the last time they left this town.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“For what?”

“For choosing us.”

There was a brief moment of silence before he replied.

“I will always choose you.”

And that was the last thing she heard before she fell unconscious in his arms.

#the mandalorian #mando #din djarin #din djarin x oc #din djarin x reader #din djarin x you #reader #imagine #you #mando x oc #mando x reader #mando x you #pedro pascal #grogu

[archetypal-archivist]

Tommyinnit and Hermitcraft- Heartstone

So this builds off of the whole "Tommy has somehow found himself on Hermitcraft after the exile arc" thing that got really popular with @redorich and @petrichormeraki on tumblr. Basically it's an excuse to give Tommy therapy and 20+ parent figures. One thing that's a common thread in those stories is that Tommy is shocked that Hermitcraft has infinite respawns and all of the hermits are quick to reassure him that he really won't perma-die in their world. And I had the thought- well, what if he wasn't in their world anymore? And thus came forth 1500+ words of angst~

It begins like this. Evil X is stuck in the void, alone and with no one to talk to. He misses daylight, he misses touch, he misses hearing voices other than his own. One day, he sees something get shot through the void as if by slingshot, leaving a trail of code in its wake, tethering the whatever it is back the way it came. This is Tommy, and while he begins to get adjusted to Hermitcraft and company, Evil X watches as the string of code begins to imprint itself into the void, and eventually learns that he can interact with it, albeit only on the most superficial of levels. On Tommy's end, he slowly begins to heal from his time spent in the war zone that is the Dream SMP, making fast friends with Grian and several of the other hermits in the process. He goes pranking with his newest, winged older brother figure, laughs at the antics of Impulse, Tango, and Zedaph, builds a cobblestone tower with BDubs, etc. But for all that he's healing, such a process isn't linear. No one on the server can truly understand just what sort of stuff he has been through, and so he often finds himself alone, trying to deal with his wildest emotions by talking to himself.

One day, however, a little voice in his head starts talking back. It's rough and gravelly and not very nice at first, but it's faint enough that he chalks it up to his imagination and moves on with his life. He follows Stress around like a duckling for a day, plays squire for Welsknight, and has a roaring panic attack after an unfortunate spar with False leads to him getting flashbacks to the Pit with Technoblade. He retreats back to his tower for a good cry, and in the midst of his tears, he hears the voice again. This time it's a bit nicer, sounding unsure and a bit panicky as it tries to encourage him to stop crying, god this is awkward, kid, it'll be fine. Wait, are you a kid? You seem tall for a munchkin.

This time, Tommy knows that it isn't his imagination, but half of his old server seemed to have voices in their heads so he really isn't all that alarmed that he seemed to have developed one of his own too. And he does something that no one else does when Evil X reaches out- he starts talking back. It's rough going, at first, especially since both of them have abrasive personalities, but eventually they settle into a rough estimation of friendship that means more to them then they are willing to say. From Evil X's perspective, this is the first time someone has actually listened to him and hasn't been turned away by his violent streak, his bad manners, and lack of proper social skills. For Tommy, this is a chance to vent to someone who seems to understand his pain. It helps that neither of them are inclined to ask too many questions. Tommy, on his part, has no clue that Evil X is an actual person and not a voice in his head, while Evil X can't bring himself to ask why Tommy has left a trail of code in the void and why it's all so glitched. He especially fears asking about the perma-death clause that seems to naturally have occurred in his code.

He will come to regret this choice.

The day is like any other, at first. He begins his day with a slice of sweet melon and then flies off to whatever hermits are awake at the time to "share a meal with them." Really, it started as an excuse to make sure that Tommy was eating at least one meal day, even in his most dissociative of states, but has since turned into an opportunity to eat weird things in front of people to see their reactions. (Etho is his favorite. He's always up early and half the time, asks to try a bite of whatever Tommy is having. They both agree that spider eyes taste a lot like sour boba.) From there it's off to the shopping district to restock his dirt shop and claim his share of the profits from the hole-digging service he runs with Grian. After that, there's just enough time to complete an order or two and collect more cobble and dirt before he has to meet up with Grian to go on their biweekly End Busting session. The two usually have a lot of fun as they go about it, Tommy jokingly shoving Grian off the platform only for his adopted brother to catch himself and fly up to join him on the narrow platform spanning the emptiness once again. Every once in a while, Grian mock-threatens to do the same in return, but he knows better than to actually attempt it after he did it once and had had to catch Tommy when he started screaming and even after they had gotten back to solid ground, he wouldn't stop for the better part of half an hour.

On habits die hard, after all. Tommy may have been told time and time again by everyone on the server that infinite respawns are a thing, yes really, but he still has a hard time believing it. He actually has a rather insane number of levels racked up- even more than Xisuma, which is impressive- because in all the months that he has been on Hermitcraft, he hasn't died once. It's a combination of survival skills taught to him by Philza and his own paranoia which has kept him alive for so long, and most of the hermits agree that it is rather impressive, if not entirely healthy for him to be so scared of dying. (Doc once offered to kill him as evidence that yes, it really is safe here and you will respawn, but for all that death by crazy redstone machine might of been cool, Tommy took a hard pass on that. Grian low key took exception to Doc offering to kill his adopted little brother, really man? Not cool.)

Anyway, Grian and Tommy meet up in the End and start off bridging with the insane amount of cobble that Tommy has stored up. Usually Tommy is in front, placing the stones, and Grian is in back, watching out for any sign of a slip up, but this time they decide to switch it up a bit, head in a new direction, play around with who's doing what this time. It ends... poorly. They bridge out into the black, on and on and on, farther into the void than they ever have before. Slowly, the islands of floating white stone stop appearing with such frequency, but they become larger in size and stranger in shape. Every once in a while Grian will see what he swears to be a glowing white mountain of Endstone in the distance, although Tommy calls bullshit each and every time. They chalk it all up to bad luck and going nuts from boredom, but really, neither one of them knows how to quit while they're ahead. As the islands disappear altogether and all that remains to orient themselves is the tenuous lifeline of cobblestone beneath their feet, the unthinkable happens.

Grian slips. And Tommy, taught compassion by the very world that will now kill him, reaches out to save him.

For one, brief moment, the two brothers clasp hands- and then Grian's weight pulls Tommy right over the edge and down, down, down into the void below.

Grian fell out of the world.

Tommy fell out of the world... and into a new one.

----

Xisuma wakes up late that day. He's been doing that a lot, if he's honest, given how late he's staying up most nights finishing up builds and the like. Those hours of sleep have to come from somewhere, after all, and he's far from an early bird. He gives into the impulse to relax a bit, drinking some tea sweetened with just enough honey to rot his teeth, and then heads off to his computer room to start up his duties as admin for the day. It's the red lights that alert him to something being wrong, and at first, he thinks it's just one of hermits' cam accounts being buggy again. Perhaps it got shut off while the hermit was bridging through the void and the hermit in question simply hadn't retrieved it yet? But who would name their cam account Tommyinnit? The looming dread sits cold in his gut as he flicks his fingers to open up his admin panel... Best to check, just in case.

The death messages are clear enough- Keralis had just perished to a ravager yesterday, likely Tango's from Decked Out if he had to guess. Zedaph had been slain by a piglin twenty minutes ago. And Grian and Tommy had fallen into the void. But if that were the case... why had only one of them respawned?

On Grian's part, he comes to with a lingering chill deep in his bones and an awful headache. The bed underneath him is warm and the sheets are a soft rosy color, likely one of the ones in Scar's magical village if the persistent smell of spruce is anything to go by. He winces against the light filtering through the window and turns to the side, squinting at where Tommy had placed his blue bed right next to his, apology on his lips for his stupid mistake. The sheets are undisturbed. Huh. That's weird, he could have sworn that he and Tommy had set their respawn points at the same time. Maybe Tommy had just forgotten and he was back in his base or at spawn? Grian rises to his feet slowly, giving his body time to adjust to the colors and sounds of the Overworld, then flaps his wings and takes off to go looking for his Tommy.

He doesn't find him.

---

The reactions to Tommy's "death" are many and varied, although for the most part, the hermits are split into two camps- those that think Tommy is gone for good, and those that think he may still be out there somewhere. For the first few days of Tommy's disappearance, most everyone is in the latter camp. Xisuma spends hours upon hours scanning the code, becoming increasingly more frazzled and terrified as his lack of sleep gets to him. Tango and Doc join him in the endeavor, although none of them have any luck or are able to spot the piece of code that caused the problem. No additions, no changes to the text, nothing. Grian leads the other team, those who set out on foot and one wing and with pick in hand to scour the world for their youngest charge, taken from them too soon. They begin in a grid pattern, setting out in ones and twos to search the whole world, but as the distance increases, the neat, orderly flyovers turn into frenzied boosting as panic starts to get the better of them. Some of them hold onto their composure better than others, but Grian ends up flying over the same patch of forest three times because he can't see for his tears. False, Impulse, Welsknight, and Beef cross the Nether, fighting their way into Bastion after Bastion and leaving Nether portals in their wake. In their tracks comes the fliers- Grian, Ren, Iskall, and BDubs. Each one takes a portal and does a sweep through the corresponding patch of Overworld before picking a direction to continue the search. Cubfan, iJevin, and Scar take to the seas, Mumbo, Stress, xB, and Zedaph to the End, Etho down into the depths of the caves below. Strangely enough, there are a few hermits who don't join the search- Keralis, who got the unlucky task of taking care of Xisuma and the others searching through the code, Tinfoilchef, who doesn't provide a reason but everyone gives him a pass because of his age, and Joe Hills and Zombie Cleo, who refuse to explain themselves.

Eventually, the searches dry up. Eventually, some of the hermits admit defeat. Hundreds of thousands of blocks out from spawn, down to the bedrock below, beneath sea and sky and every place that lacks the sun. How far is too far? For Xisuma, enough is enough. Tommy is dead. The search is over.

He stops looking. And soon, others do the same.

And the tone of the server... shifts.

For the first time that any of them can remember, a person has perma-died. Sure, they've all heard the rumors, of servers where infinite respawns is not the norm, of servers where the world glitched and a creeper is supercharged enough to damage a player down to their code. But they'd never thought that one of their own would be on the receiving end of such a curse. And to the hermits, the possibility of dying themselves suddenly becomes all too real. The constant flying is the first to go, and for those that insist on it anyway (outside of Grian, who has wings), checking the elytras' durability becomes more than just a habit. Eating spider eyes and other junk is out of the question, now it's golden apples or nothing. The Nether is all but abandoned, as is the End, and everyone on the server either groups up so that they are never alone, or retreats into their bases, becoming true hermits befitting of their server's name.

The joy that had once been so characteristic of the server is gone, and in the hearts of all, there lingers the dread that any one of them might be next- although, there are still those that hold on to hope that Tommy may not be as gone as he seems.

---

The hermits who think Tommy is dead for good and have stopped searching: Doc, Etho, Xisuma, Welsknight, Grian, BDubs, Cubfan, TinfoilChef, Stress, False, Iskall.

The hermits who think Tommy is still out there, alive if still missing, and that the search should continue: Keralis, Mumbo, Tango, Vintage Beef, Impulse, Zedaph, Joe Hills, Zombie Cleo, Scar, Rendog, xB.

Doc and Etho are old. They don't like to admit it, but they've been around since the beginning, back when players were first learning how to jump servers and communicator technology was undergoing its first upgrade. They've seen a lot and know well by now that dead is dead. Tommy is dead. All that is left to do is mourn and move on, and they have shed their tears already. Call them cold for it, but in the face of a kind of drive that can keep a man going after his entire server has burnt down around his ears (Mindcrack will be missed), they know they need to keep moving forward. There are enough broken messes on the server these days, and it is through their efforts that shops remain stocked and the torches don't burn out. They hold onto normalcy with an iron grip and hope that some day, the rest of the hermits will join them in rationality.

Stress too has a comparatively healthy approach to all of this. She doesn't want it to be true, god no, but so far everything is pointing in the direction of Tommy being dead for good. She eats a couple dozen bowls of ice cream, has a some good cries, doesn't leave her base for a week, and even afterwards she can't bring herself to wear pink for a while. But she's mourning. She's accepted things. She lets her heart break, and as time passes, she lets herself heal. And that's enough for her.

Scar is of the opinion that Tommy is still out there, and while he clings to that hope with all his might, it's fragile and Cub just knows that his best friend is going to be cut to pieces when that hope inevitably breaks. So he takes Scar aside for a quiet conversation, to break his heart before the world can break it for him. Afterwards, Scar stops talking about Tommy as if he's coming back, but his smile is never as bright as it was before. And Cub's heart breaks too.

Team ZIT swings the exact opposite way as the rest and are firmly of the belief that permadeath is impossible and thus Tommy must be alive. The three of them aren’t known for their impulse control at the best of times, and with so many hermits having given up, the trio is rightfully vicious about the fact that the others, in their eyes, have abandoned their friend. Zedaph, Impulse, and Tango all kind of feed into one another and start doing lots of dangerous stunts, as if daring the universe to permakill them and prove them wrong. If one of them does something, the other two join in and escalate things, which gets impossibly dangerous very, very fast. Tango is furious, Impulse is bitter, and Zedaph is straight up heartbroken that his other friends would give up on another of their number. They do things like fly incredibly high, go cliff jumping in the Nether only to catch themselves at the last minute, and sprint across the End bridges. If they have doubts, they never voice them. Even when Tango feels like he’s burning up from the inside and wonders at his newfound hate. Even when Impulse is utterly terrified but goes along with things anyway because Tango is doing it and he can’t bear to leave a friend alone. Even when Zedaph looks at his friends and can’t help but feel scared of and for these strangers wearing the faces he knows so well. Even then.

Team ZIT often gets dragged into and starts lots of screaming fights with the other hermits who believe Tommy is dead, especially Doc, BDubs, xB, and False. False especially gets vicious, as while pvp is no longer permitted on the server, her tongue is as sharp as any blade. She believes firmly that the others are trampling on Tommy’s memory by insisting that he isn’t dead and she is determined to make them stop. And if they refuse to give up their foolishness? Well, all she might have left is her words but with them she will make them bleed.

xB and Vintage Beef are as close to neutral as you are going to get from those that get into regular arguments. xB thinks Tommy is dead until proven otherwise, while Beef thinks the exact reverse. As some of the more chill hermits, they often get dragged in to play negotiator so that the fights don’t turn physical. And some days, when someone says something particularly hurtful, they’ll close themselves up in one of xB’s bunkers and drink until they can no longer remember why they ought to be enemies. It’s hardly healthy, but they both agree that it’s better this way. Better to forget than to hurt, after all.

Grian is… somewhat the same. Sort of. He was traumatized by Tommy, the boy he adopted as his little brother, dying before his eyes, and he can’t help but blame himself. That is, when he can remember that Tommy is dead at all. After the fall, Grian’s mind was badly broken and he couldn’t accept that his little brother was dead for the longest time. He fell into two weeks of deep depression, barely eating or drinking, and eventually Iskall came and took care of him when he realized that he hadn’t seen his buddy in ages. Iskall nursed Grian back to health, only to feel his heart shatter in his breast when Grian turned to him, eyes feverishly bright and tone childlike, asking where Tommy was. The winged man’s mind couldn’t cope with the loss so it had shut down entirely, making him forget the tragedy that had occured. Iskall had deflected then, frantically trying to figure out what to say, but after a few days of Grian wandering about in a dreamlike state, his memory came back to him and he collapsed in on himself once more. The winged hermit is now locked in a loop of this, while poor Iskall is stuck trying to keep his friend alive and relatively sane.

Iskall, for his part, thinks Tommy is well and truly dead. In part because of his own certainty, in part because anything else would be even crueler for Grian. He doesn’t resent his friend for his break downs, just quietly bundles him up and clutches him close, coaxing him to eat and bathe, to put down the guilt and realize that it’ll be okay, the world won’t end with Tommy gone. He gently tries to nudge Grian down that path of acceptance of Tommy’s fate, and though he faces many setbacks, he tackles each one with a special kind of patience born of platonic love. They’re bros, despite everything. It’s only right.

Mumbo is, weirdly enough, on the side of Tommy being alive. Iskall doesn’t exactly approve and while he and Mumbo sometimes get into whispered arguments over it, they try to keep their little disagreements from Grian. Both of them only want to see their friend happy again, and will do just about anything to make it happen. For Mumbo, this means putting together crazy redstone contraptions to try and find Tommy again, as he’s certain that Grian’s little brother is still out there somewhere- and he has a piece that might prove it. Iskall comes over one day, face drawn and haggard from a night of soothing Grian through another set of screaming nightmares, only to find Mumbo waist high in redstone wiring, all hooked up to a strange portal design that looks too much like Doc’s infinity portal from season 6 for comfort. At the top of the arch is Tommy’s compass, needle whirling about like a hurricane, and while the portal isn’t lit, it does give off a faint blue-black glow. Iskall is frightened that Mumbo is tampering with something that could get him killed and Mumbo rushes to reassure him that no, the compass was specifically linked to Tommy so if Tommy was really dead, it would have been reset, right? He’s merely borrowing that tie to try and figure out where the two ends lead. Iskall is less than sure about this, especially since Mumbo is just as drawn and pale as he is, if a bit more covered in redstone, but they agree that fighting is pointless. They care about each other and about Grian too much to put any of them through that sort of pain- and besides, there’s more than enough fighting on the server already.

Ren too thinks that Tommy is alive and he is one of the ones who gets into regular fights. He’s a lover, not a fighter, but something about this whole situation just burns him up. When the pressure gets too much, he goes flying, tracing over those old familiar trails they searched so long ago, trying to see if there is anything they missed. There never is.

Welsknight has made his peace with Tomy’s death, though the server tends to forget that he and Tommy were closer than most. He alone knew that Tommy was once upon a time a boy called Theseus (a name given to him shyly when Tommy had asked him if there were any great heroes with that name that didn’t die). He alone knew Tommy’s love for horses, or that he would spend hours whispering horror stories to them when he thought no one would hear. Tommy was his squire, and although he had accepted the tragedy, he still wept for the hurt it brought him. He alone knew of the little grave he had dug under the willow tree in his castle courtyard and the headstone he had placed there, engraved with Tommy’s true name, death date, and supposed date of birth. He couldn’t have been more than 17, and perhaps that was what hurt the most. Every morning at dawn, Welsknight brings a bouquet of flowers to that little grave and says a prayer before disappearing into the morning fog. The flowers are always the same- forget me nots, for remembrance, violets, for devotion, and clover. (Think of me).

Tinfoilchef stays out of it- always has and always will. He’s too old to rush about searching or to feel as wildly as the others do. He feels, of course, but more so as the mountain does, steady and strong despite the winds that tear at its surface. Tommy is dead, but then, so are many of the people he has known in his life. It’s best to just keep plodding along.

BDubs is a mess. He had never spoken of it, but long before he had come to hermitcraft, he had had a daughter- a beautiful baby girl whose heart was too big for her chest, and she had died for that difference. He had grieved for years, but eventually the peace of the hermitcraft server had left him soothed, if a bit different than before. Tommy had been another chance at fatherhood, not that he could ever bear to call the teen that, even in the privacy of his own mind. Instead, he had taught the kid to build cobblestone towers that weren’t entirely offensive (if shaped a bit oddly) and had been the first to volunteer any time Grian was out and Tommy needed a place to spend the night when the nightmares were particularly fierce. They had so many fun sleepovers like that, and staring at those awful cobble towers in the distance, BDubs can’t help but bawl his eyes out at the memories. He waffles between taking the towers down or leaving them up- they really are ugly, and the feelings in his chest that they inspire are even more so, but somehow, he can’t bear to see them gone. Instead, he dries his eyes, flies off to grab a shulker of cobble, and sets about adding a few more to their number. A final remembrance for the boy he would have gladly claimed as his own, if only he hadn’t been too late. (He ends up building a lot more than a few).

Joe and Cleo are somehow the only ones who are actually neutral in the whole mess. Whenever they are asked their opinion on if Tommy is truly dead or not, the pair simply smile mysteriously and refuse to comment. Joe always seems to know more than he lets on and Cleo is his closest confidant, after all. Despite the anger and tears directed their way for refusing to commit to either side, the two keep their silence. (They know the truth of the matter, after all. Everything will be okay in time).

Xisuma has given up. Tommy is dead, and there is nothing he can do but spend days and days going over the code with a fine tooth comb, trying to find the glitch that cut the life of their youngest member short. Keralis takes it upon himself to take care of his long time friend, but it’s not an easy task, not when the other is so determined to make sure that such an incident never happens again. And Keralis can’t find it in himself to complain, especially since he is laboring under the impression that Xisuma agrees that Tommy is still out there and is trying to find him. It is only when Keralis mentions it in an aside, thanking the admin for his dedication, that Xisuma breaks the illusion and explains. Tommy isn’t just dead, he says tiredly, his very presence is well and truly wiped from the world’s code. All that is left of him is the faint impression his code had left behind, and trying to read it and understand what went wrong is a bit like trying to read small letters that have been drawn out in dry sand. Even for a voidwalker like himself such a task is near impossible, and Xisuma can only do so much. The needs of the many above the needs of the few- best to secure those he can now than worry over those that are gone beyond his reach. And Keralis can’t help but look at his friend with new eyes, a fleeting sense of betrayal in his heart. He had thought better of his Shishwammy, and he says as much. 

He cries while Xisuma watches on in solemn, mournful silence.

---

TBC  :)

#hermitcraft #minecraft #fanfiction #dream smp #hermit tommy au #angst #My writing #i'm proud of this one

[sintreaties]

midasaya - date night

I was always very open when it came to my dislike of Midari's character in almost all the media in which she's portrayed. Gotta be honest though: with the right prompt, she's pretty fucking fun to write.

Consider this a sequel to this.

The choice to meet this late was already questionable on its own.

If you take the bus from Chiyoda it’ll take you no more than twenty minutes to get downtown, take a left at Hirabayashi and see the lit-up windows of the Burger Queen on the boulevard. Time can double or triple up if you decide to stroll hand in hand along the thronged sidewalks.

But Midari had insisted on meeting long after the buses had stopped running.

“I would really, really like to know where we’re going, Midari,” bristled Sayaka as she fought to see where she was placing her feet.

“Mind yer business,” replied Ikishima, a few steps ahead, “And watch yer eyes! Nah, just kidding. You were too short for that one.”

It was the third time she made the same joke. Sayaka sighed and lowered her head anyways as she passed below a jutting branch. The black pines of Hyakkaou’s woods were silent and eerie in the dark. Sayaka wondered if this was the kind of place where House Pets came to die peacefully, like stray cats. Somebody had definitely died here at a certain point. It couldn’t be otherwise, with the creepiness in the air.

“I don’t understand why we went through the trouble of jumping the gate.” Sayaka’s breath labored through her teeth. “The janitors are waiting for us, I need to get back to the dorm!”

Midari muttered under her breath. She mustn’t have shared Sayaka’s idea of a good-bye in front of her dorm room — perhaps with the pleasant surprise of a goodnight kiss.

Sayaka huffed. “You didn’t bring me here to do something indecent, right?”

“Are you dumb? I wouldn’t get it going with you in the damn woods,” replied Ikishima. She was walking like some kind of goblin in the dark, long-legged and back-bent. Fitting enough. “Just keep it down and follow me. This is the prime hour, aight.”

“The prime hour for what? To have the night guards call our parents on us?” Sayaka lowered her head to avoid another jutting branch.

Ikishima raised a hand. She turned, slowly, a finger pressed to her lips, the other hand coming to touch her ear. Her eye and teeth glimmered in one, big grin.

In the silence, something rustled in the woods up ahead.

Reaching for Sayaka’s hand, Midari signaled once more to be quiet as she led her on through the vegetation. The shrub lashed at their leg as they quickened their steps: the moon shone in dotted shadows through the trees.

Midari gasped. “Do you see ‘em?”

Squinting, Sayaka came to a stop at her side. She held her breath: the rustling, again. In the dark, something squeaked.

Sayaka’s face scrunched in disgust. “Rats…?”

“Sayaka, you ignorant slut. Rats! What the fuck is your problem?” hissed Midari

Sayaka held back a groan. Little by little, her eyes got used to the dark. She made out little, black hands, and chubby flanks, and a few stripes. A black, wet nose shivering in the air.

“Oh,” Sayaka went. “Oh, I see them now.”

“Beautiful, right?” Midari pulled her closer, to let her see better. “This is the best time, 2:20 am sharp, baby. They go at it like flies.”

“How did you know?”

“Why do you think I sleep so much in class? I like watching ‘em at night. It relaxes me.”

The raccoons were fighting over an empty container of ramen. Long, whitish noodles dripped from their paws like monstrous hair in the feeble light. One of the animals bared its teeth, hissing. Another snarled. Sayaka dug her fingers in Midari’s arms. Could raccoons get rabies?

“This could be us,” said Midari.

“No. No, I don’t think it could.”

Sayaka glanced at Midari: her whole attention was on the animals, on the little hands clawing at the remnants of food. She had forgotten the arm around Sayaka’s waist.

Sayaka smiled. Warm pink dusted her cheeks as she lifted herself on her tip-toes and left a kiss on Midari’s jaw.

“You truly are an idiot,” she said.

Midari grinned. “Love ya too, my little rat.”

As she kissed her lips and pressed her closer still, Sayaka could still taste her smile. Ikishima’s eye softened looking at her. The breeze blew between them, carrying on the musty scent of animals and of spicy ramen.

“Now that we’re like this—“ said Ikishima.

“No, Midari. We’re not making out in the woods.”

“Aight.”

Midari shrugged. As they went on looking at the family of raccoons, Sayaka rested her head on the other’s chest and let her embrace keep away the cold of the night.

#kakegurui #ikishima midari #igarashi sayaka #midasaya #sintreatieswrites #anon #sintreatiesreplies

[sandersgrey]

in your dreams, whatever they be

(You can also read this on ao3!)

Taglist: @foxglove-airmid, @amchara, @goodoldfashionednerd, @adams-left-hand, @hardlymatters

It's been a few days of your little quest into the Faerie realm when you really put your foot down. It's not the first time you've wanted to.

"Kit", you say. It wouldn't have been enough to startle him a few days ago, but his hand flies to his dagger anyway.

"What?"

Ty doesn't turn towards both of you. It's clear he's listening, however, because he does take off his headphones. Bathed by the light of the small campfire you three managed to get going, his tapping fingers make the shadows on the wall dance. Kit has been staring at them for the last twenty minutes.

"You need to sleep."

"I'm fine", Kit says. "I'm not tired anyway."

That's bullshit, and he knows it. You scoff. He crosses his arms, leans back against the wall of the cave, raises his chin. There is something a little wild around his bloodshot eyes. A little like defensiveness, a little like fear.

"You haven't slept since we set foot on this realm, and it shows."

"No, it doesn't."

"You're getting slower," Ty interjects. You wave your hand towards him, emphasizing his point. "That thing earlier almost got you. I've seen you train, and you're usually faster than that."

"Well, thanks for the compliment buried somewhere in there, but it didn't get me, so. I's fine."

You now fully turn to look at Ty, expecting some solidarity in face of your common exasperation. He frowns. The tapping grows faster.

"It isn't fine. What if it does get you the next time?"

"It won't".

"You can't promise that," you snap. Kit's eyes finally leave Ty's fingers to stare, wide-eyed, at you. "If you get hurt-"

"That's what iratzes are for."

"Iratzes can't heal everything!"

"Look, I'm handling it, okay? I've been taking naps-"

"None of them were longer than half an hour," Ty says quietly. "I counted. You always wake up before that."

You point at Ty: "Yeah! And that means you're not actually getting good rest. You're getting clumsier, too."

"Wow, thanks."

Kit's sarcastic. You've known that for years. He has barely held his tongue during this entire mess, but it's mellower from his years away, his comments a little less biting. The change in him is obvious. For some reason, it feels like the last straw. 

"You're slower, you're clumsier, and you're getting way more distracted the more time goes by," you list. "If you get yourself hurt because you're too- I don't even know, stubborn?- to actually lie down for once, you're gonna become a burden. You're of no use to us sleep deprived."

Kit flinches. Ty's eyes snap to him.

Somehow, that's all it takes. Kit finally lies down on the floor of the cave (admittedly not the coziest mattress) and uses his backpack as a pillow, even if he grumbles the entire time. Once he's fully horizontal, he's out like a candle. 

Ty returns his attention to the fire. You start working on brushing all the leaves out of your hair, making a mental note to wake Kit up in a few hours. 

It doesn't take nearly that long for him to start screaming. 

" Livy!"

Ty becomes a living statue at the first scream. You don't blame him. Unexpected loud sound aside, it's- you just- you didn't expect to hear your dead sister's name today, is all. Some part of you wonders if her ghost is around to hear it, too. The rest wonders whether it matters.

The screamed Livys don't stop. It's-

It's hell on his throat, it must be, and that's what you should be thinking about right now. That, and the fact that you really don't want to know what else might be listening outside. 

"Not if you do this, Ty, not if you do this…"

Ty's still frozen. It might be in poor taste, but, well, it's fairly accurate to say- he's as pale as a ghost. Guess it's up to you.

Kit had fallen asleep with his back against the wall, facing towards the mouth of the cave. It's such a sensible position you hadn't thought to notice it means you can't see his face. 

The ground is too hard for you to be crawling on your knees, really, but when no other choice presents itself...

He flinches away from your touch when you try to shake his shoulder.  It works anyway: Kit's eyes blink open, dart around the little cave, see you- see Ty- 

He twists himself up and away from you.

Anyone would have thought it would help him to be awake. Instead, his breathing grows quicker. He's shaking hard enough to be noticeable; it's his hands, mostly. Ty inhales and exhales, deliberately, slowly. 

Kit curls up. He makes himself small, puts his head between his knees. There is something very methodical about the way he tries to slow down his breathing. It's clear he has done this before. He will, you think, do this again.

"Kit", you say, helpless. It startles Ty.

Kit shakes his head, doesn't look at either of you. 

"Just- just give me a moment. Okay? Just give me a moment."

He's rubbing his Voyance rune. You don't know if he's noticed- he probably has, didn't you just realize he's done this before- because he stops as soon as he feels you looking. Kit brings up his hood instead, hides in the shadow of it, holds his hands to his chest. 

None of you say anything. You don't know how long it takes for Kit's breathing to slow down to something a little more sustainable. Ty probably does. It feels like a small eternity.

When Kit finally uncurls enough to reach out for his bag, Ty passes him the water bottle without having to be asked. The water seems to help a little. 

"Are you okay?"

Kit's answer to your question is a snort. "Don't worry," he says. "I'll be functional enough come morning. Have to be, or wouldn't have been able to go to school back home."

"Kit", Ty says. Kit swallows. 

"It's fine."

"Well, it doesn't sound fine", you say. "How long has this been happening?"

Kit stays silent. Suddenly, the shadow of his hood feels a little less like shelter and a little more like a shield.

Ty is staring at him. He has been this entire time, you know- with laser focused attention. His frown keeps growing deeper the more the silence goes on. Until, finally: it eases into an expression you know well. Ty has figured it out, whatever it is.

"Two years." He says. His voice almost echoes in the small space. "It's been happening for two years, hasn't it? Ever since you left."

Kit shakes his head, but it's not a denial. "It doesn't matter."

"Of course it does."

"It's nothing you can fix in time to make me more useful," Kit snaps. Oh. Oh, you see now. "So of course it doesn't- it isn't- you don't…"

He makes a frustrated noise, and then shuts up.

Ty is still staring at him. You've never really questioned it before, but now it occurs to you: the way Ty looks at him is so different from how he looks at everyone else. Julian might say that Ty looks at Kit like he's a mystery. That's not quite right. 

Everyone is a bit of a mystery to Ty. But he looks at Kit like this is one he's willing to sit with.

As always nowadays, it seems this is up to you. You get up from the floor and dust off your pants, in a gesture that's more symbolic than anything- this outfit is going directly into the trash once you get back home. Kit glances at you. Ty doesn't.

"Okay", you say,"It looks like you two have a lot to say to each other. I'm not gonna go away, because that's how everyone dies in horror movies, but I am gonna stand at the mouth of the cave with my back to you and pretend I can't hear anything. Have fun talking."

"Dru-"

"Sorry! Can't hear you!"

The ceiling is so low you have to walk leaning down a little, but true to your words, the mouth of the cave is only a few feet away. 

Leaning on the rock, you let your eyes rest on the alien view of the landscape. (Mark is somewhere out there. The thought, you think, is comforting.)

There is only silence for a few moments. 

"I'm sorry," Kit says.

"What for?'

"For… I don't know. I didn't want- you didn't need to- there's a reason I didn't want to fall asleep."

"You need as much rest as us. Even if it's hard to get."

Kit exhales loudly enough for you to hear, shifting against the rock wall. He can't be comfortable. You know you're not. 

"What can I do?", Ty asks.

"You don't need to do anything. I don't- it's fine. I'll be fine."

"I know I don't need to do anything. I want to."

"Because I'm of no use to you exhausted?", Kit says pointedly, and you grimace. 

You're starting to understand that it might have been a particularly tactless thing to say. It seems an apology is in order- not now, while you're still pretending you're not here, but… later, maybe. When he's rested a little more. 

"Because I care about you", Ty says. "Useful or not."

The silence feels more meaningful this time. It drags on for longer, too. You're shifting your weight, starting to get impatient, when Kit finally answers

"You don't need to, but..."

"But?"

"Hold me?"

There is the sound of both of them shifting, fabric rustling as they adjust themselves. You valiantly don't look. The cave is small and echoey enough that you can make out the sound of someone- probably Ty- whispering, but still not tell exactly what they're saying without a rune. 

You don't reach for your stele. Something about this moment feels private.

When you finally turn back around, your legs complaining about keeping the same position for so long, Ty looks up at you and holds a finger over his mouth. 

Kit is asleep. He's curled up in Ty's lap, head tucked safely under his chin. A hand clings to Ty's shirt.  It can't be comfortable for either of them, but…

But, for the next few hours, his sleep is peaceful.

#alex wont shut up #my writing #kit herondale #ty blackthorn #kit x ty #twp #tsc #dru blackthorn #fanfic

[kintatsujo]

LoZ AU- The Courage of Running Away Part FOURTEEN

You’ll see why this one took a while in just a second, I did that thing where I drew a whole ass scene again

Content warning for fantasy religions based loosely on Christian schisms

#AU August

#LoZ AU: The Courage of Running Away

So while Link is getting acclimated to Castle life and getting hugs from Marla and Tonbo (and also getting unofficially adopted by the royal family) Astramorus flies back to the Sky Temple with his loftwing. 

And he has a lot of time to think while he’s doing it; I don’t know how fast a loftwing flies but even so it would have taken some hours on Hera’s back and you don’t have anything to do up there but think about why you got blasted through a wall by a god-queen.  So he gets back and he’s feeling pretty fucking subdued when he hands Hera off to the Sky Temple commune’s gardener/bird caretaker, Maurice.

[Image description:  Astramorus, looking tired and still missing his hat, his hair a mess, is standing opposite a short and round mustached man with bushy eyebrows dressed in the same priestly robes, except that this man has his sleeves shortened to his elbows and is wearing thick gloves.  This man is holding Hera the loftwing by a lead, while she makes a particularly vacant happy face.  “NAYRU’S EYES, man, WHAT HAPPENED?”  Astramorus gives a very small smile, and after a pause, answers, “TURBULENCE.”  The man harrumphs skeptically, then says, “Well, LORD SERENUMBRA from the LORULEAN ORTHODOXY showed up three days ago and he’s been giving me ADVICE ON MY TOMATOES, so turbulence or OTHERWISE I’d appreciate you DISTRACTING HIM before I commit some WEEDING.”  Astramorus smiles.  “Ah,” he says in understanding.  “Yes, thank you for your PATIENCE, Maurice.”  End ID.] 

A note on Maurice, originally I was going to make him look like Gaepora OR Rauru and then Ice suggested basing him on Maurice-Belle’s-Dad and I liked that, so I blended the ideas a bit.  

I think I’ve mentioned that Lorule and Hyrule have different takes on the Hylia religion, haven’t I?

Basically since this Lorule is just the country south of Hyrule instead of a dark-mirror-universe world, Invid suggested that part of the idea might be that Lorule insists that Hyrule is wrong about which country the Golden Goddesses left the world from, and that the Triforce belongs there instead.  I kind of played with that a little further, and so now part of the thing is that their royal line is actually also descended from Hylia directly, except that at some point a sister broke off from (one or the other of) the royal family, founding the Hilda line versus the Zelda line.

And real quick here’s the Hilda of this story, which I promise is relevant:

[Image Description: Sketches of a tall, black haired woman with pale skin and blue eyes and extremely long pointed ears, dressed in a cape and dress of purple, dark blue, red and gold.  She wears a blue and green belt trimmed with gold and black gloves, and a diadem featuring a red gemstone and golden spread wings.  There is an inverted Triforce symbol on her sash.  She is also wearing black lipstick and red blush and eyeshadow.  A sketch to the side shows her making a decidedly less dignified expression with the note “All the finery and rouge is a desperate attempt to fool you into thinking Hilda is in her twenties but she’s only actually seventeen, same as Link.”  Another sketch shows her next to an old man with round glasses and priestly robes different to the Hyrulean priests, who only comes up to her chest.  She has her hands on her hips and is ranting at him.  A note reads, “Hilda TOL.”  End ID.]

Anyway the thing is that currently, the two churches are relatively peaceable with one another, they have joint gatherings to quibble about tradition and who should be allowed to have what sacred treasures and who has to bring the roast boar next time, and that is how a very young novice Astramorus ended up as friends with the man he would eventually match in equivalent rank, Lord Serenumbra.  Who gets a nice picture equivalent piece to Astra’s introduction because of symmetry: 

[Image Description: The same short priest from the picture with Hilda.  He has white loosely curly hair, circular gold glasses, a hat similar to Astramorus’s but in red, a dark red robe over a black underdress, both trimmed in gold, and is wearing a heavy golden neck piece with an inverted Triforce and golden wings framing a blue disc.  To the side are various comic panels; in the first, he has taken an extremely young Astramorus’s hand and is saying, “Let me be the first to CONGRATULATE you, my friend!”  In the second, he’s spread his arms wide while approaching Astramorus and Catena, Link’s mother.  “Let me be the first to CONGRATULATE YOU, my friends!” he’s saying, and Catena laughs, giving Astramorus a rough side hug that lifts him off his feet despite her only coming to his chest, while Astramorus gives her a gooey smile.  “TOO LATE,” she says, “I told my mum first,” and laughs.  In the last panel, Astramorus has collapsed limp into a chair at a dining room table, his hair in his eyes, his face wet with tears, propping his head on one arm as Serenumbra pats his shoulder from behind the chair.  “Let me be the first to say,” Serenumbra says, “How DEEPLY SORRY I am, my friend.”  End ID.]

This is awful but that’s currently my favorite picture of Astramorus.  

Serenumbra’s design is based on the priest and philosopher from ALttP and Link Between Worlds; the philosopher’s robes were red so I sorta priestified them.  The blue disc in the center of his neck piece represents the Moon Pearl from ALttP, which was actually red in the game but blue in some of the promotional materiel, and the blue was a nicer contrast.  The Moon Pearl was mostly important because it let Link run around in his human form in the Dark World but I always liked it because it was sort of weird and mysterious.  In Four Swords Adventures there’s actually a LOT of moon pearls and they let you make portals between the worlds.  There isn’t going to be a lot of world hopping in this AU, I just thought it was interesting context. 

Anyway here’s two old friends having a conversation, image description and a little more commentary plus some bonus poking at Astramorus at the end:

[Image Descriptions: Astramorus is entering a room with a rounded door and a coat rack on the wall.  “Seren?” he calls.  “ASTRAMORUS, are you QUITE all right?” Serenumbra answers.  He is sitting at a round table in the center of the room; there are two dining chairs, one of which he is sitting in, and opposite of him is a comfortable looking rocking chair.  “I came because I heard about your SON, have you still not found him?”  Astramorus, looking deeply pained, straightens some of his hair with one hand.  “I found him,” he says.  He settles into the rocking chair with a long creak.  Serenumbra is clearly shocked by his demeanor.  “Astra,” he says, concern clear in his face, “What HAPPENED?”  Astramorus stares at the ceiling while looking like death warmed over.  There is a panel fading from light to dark to indicate the passage of time, then we see that Serenumbra has a hand to his mouth in thought.  “So the queen refuses to see the DANGER here,” he says.  Astramorus has folded his hands together.  “She’s right about my SON, though,” he answers.  Serenumbra is quick to defend Astramorus to himself: “Well- he’s such a SOFT BOY, you wanted him PREPARED,” he begins, but Astramorus stops him.  “I pushed him too hard, too SOON, and with too little CARE.”  Astramorus lifts his hands and grins painfully, continuing, “WHAT was I DOING, trying to teach him how to FIGHT when all I knew was an ADULT’S routine?”  He puts a hand to his chin, still smiling.  “I must be the STUPIDEST MAN ALIVE.”  “Astra,” Serenumbra begins again, and Astramorus interrupts again.  “My wife used to tell me I WORRIED too much, did I ever mention that?”  He asks.  His face turns solemn.  “It was even one of the LAST THINGS she said to me,” he says.  We get a glimpse of young Astramorus and Catena together backlit by the sun; she’s wearing a blue version of the classical Link costume with a sword strapped to her back and plate armor on her shoulders, he’s wearing his priestly robes and hat.  She’s reached up to grab his face, grinning, while he’s put his hands on hers.  “And then she died,” Astramorus says.  He sits up, animate once more.  “What else could I DO but worry?!” he demands.  “You’ve studied the legends, same as I-” he subsides again- “That mark on Link’s hand may as well be a DEATH SENTENCE.”  He puts a hand on his face.  “And I’ve so THOROUGHLY FAILED him that now I’ve put the Royal Family in danger TOO.”  Serenumbra puts a hand to his chin, thoughtfully.  “WELL, you never KNOW,” he says, “Princess HILDA is more of an age with Link, maybe the Triforce of Wisdom will arise in the LORULEAN line this time.”  Astramorus laughs.  “That doesn’t change the SITUATION, Seren,” quietly adding “But also KEEP DREAMING.”  He then puts his hand to his mouth.  “How do I even BEGIN to atone?” Astramorus asks.  “Ahh, old friend,” Serenumbra answers, soothingly.  “If only Catena were still WITH us, she’d know how to ease the boy’s burden.  Why-she’d face down GANON HIMSELF if it came to that!”  Astramorus makes an intense face, as if he’s been suddenly burdened.  Serenumbra stands and puts a hand on his shoulder.  “Get some REST, dear friend, you still look TERRIBLE,” he says with a smile.  Astramorus is wringing his hands, staring forward.  End ID.]

DUMBASS BRAINCELLS ENGAGED.

I didn’t expect “Got pegged by his wife so hard that the mere invocation of her name knocked him back to his senses after over eleven years of fucking shitty behavior towards their son” to be on the bingo card for this character when I started this project either, but this is Draft 0.5 so anything can happen XD

Astramorus is so layered now what the fuck!  

[Image Description: Serenumbra, face full of concern, asks, “Astra, what HAPPENED?”  Astramorus stares at the ceiling like death warmed over.  Behind him are the words “HELLO DARKNESS MY OLD FRIEND.”  End ID.]

[Image Description: Serenumbra, face full of concern, asks, “Astra, what HAPPENED?”  Astramorus stares at the ceiling like death warmed over.  Behind him are the words “WELL FIRST OF ALL I FUCKING DIED.”  End ID.]

[Image Description: Serenumbra, face full of concern, asks, “Astra, what HAPPENED?”  Astramorus stares at the ceiling like death warmed over.  Behind him are the words “...my wife made this chair.”  End ID.]

Catena got into carving as a hobby during long trips but she started making furniture while dealing with nesting urges while pregnant, so imagine this little tank of a woman assembling a rocking chair for her tol noodle husband while ranting about her weird cravings.  

#my art #au august #loz #loz au #Loz au: the courage of running away

[keeppushingme-bookboy]

Here it is, my first CR fic! It's such a me move to finish my first CR fic the week the campaign ends. I am so happy to have this finished and really excited to get it out into the world. I hope you all enjoy!

All I Want is to Trust You

Word Count: 4278

Summary:

Essek and The Mighty Nein set off for Aeor and what could be their final adventure, but encounter an old "friend" on the way... Or, Ashley Johnson rolled another dragon.

Read on Ao3 or below the cut!

Luxon, it’s bright. Essek thinks for the third time in twenty minutes. The parasol Jester gifted him several weeks ago offers some relief from the sun above them, but the reflection off the snow is relentless. Even the others, with no naturally ingrained light sensitivity, squint at the glittering landscape around them. He had been doing his best to hide his discomfort throughout their travel. They have only been on the road for a few hours; he couldn’t let them question for even a moment that he couldn’t handle this, that they had made the wrong decision.

“Sunny day,” Caduceus remarks, and not for the first time Essek wonders if firbolgs can somehow read minds. “How’s that treating you?” the cleric nods towards the spiraling configuration of lace and silk casting inappropriately-shaped shadows over Essek’s form.

“Ah, it is doing well enough.” Essek offers a smile that feels a bit more like a grimace. “The glare can get a bit irritating. But I’ll be fine.”

Jester snorts out a laugh somewhere to his left. “What did your soldiers and stuff say when you used that at the outpost?”

“I, uh, have not had the need for it until we disembarked. I do not spend much time on the walls outside of brief inspections, which I usually do when the sun sets. But it is certainly coming in handy now.”

“Not that he would use it around his people anyway. Gotta keep up appearances, right, Shadowhand?” Beauregard calls over her shoulder from her position at the front of the pack with Yasha, packing an extra note of sarcasm into his title.

His mouth begins forming a retort, but a soft Zemnian voice cuts through from somewhere close behind him, “He has to command respect from his people, Beauregard. Not all of us can punch our way through a bureaucracy.”

Beauregard mumbles something that sounds vaguely insulting and turns her gaze back on the fractured and frozen landscape ahead of them. Essek looks over his shoulder at Caleb, shooting a brief but genuine smile before quickly turning to focus again on the snow several inches below his floating feet. Gotta keep up appearances, right? sneers once again through his mind, laced with mistrust and a wound still far too fresh. Another voice creeps in: Time. It takes time. He had meant that for Essek’s change, for his growth and healing, but he supposes it’s true for the rest of them as well. Choosing him for this journey is a good step in a lengthy process, but perhaps he can speed it up a bit. Time is one of his specialties, after all.

Taking a deep breath and bracing himself for the chill Essek glides gently down until his feet rest on the snow’s surface. It is much softer than he thought, and he sinks several inches further down with each step. He glances at some of the Mighty Nein around him, hoping he looks as though he is scanning the surroundings rather than watching for their reactions. Jester brightens and Fjord’s mouth quirks up at the edges. Caduceus’ easy smile widens for a moment. He will not turn around to look at Veth and Caleb, that would be far too obvious, and Beauregard and Yasha are too far ahead to have noticed so he is unsure of their reactions. But for a moment he allows himself to imagine Caleb’s eyes crinkling at the edges, some of the ice crusted in his beard shifting and falling into his scarf as he smiles.

He starts to imagine brushing the crystals from his scarf, resting a hand on his shoulder, then the side of his face, leaning in slowly… when Caduceus stiffens beside him, squinting at something in the distance. He motions for the others to stop and calls a low warning to the fighters in the front. “South.”

Essek turns and looks southward and struggles for a moment to see what has Caduceus worried. When he does, though, the chill beginning to seep into his feet and legs travels directly to his heart. A white dragon, and a big one from the looks of it, is swooping low over the tundra. Beauregard’s voice momentarily breaks him out of his panic as she and Yasha rejoin the group.

“Aw, this bitch again? She doesn’t know when to let up. Are we hiding or fighting?”

Again? Light, they’ve fought an Ancient dragon before?

“She certainly wasn’t pleasant to encounter last time, and we had Lucien and his group with us then. Perhaps we hide and continue making our way towards the ruins when it’s safe.” Fjord replies.

“But we have Essek with us now! He’s super powerful and the Tomb Takers didn’t care if we died in that fight. Essek does!” Jester pipes up.

“U-um,” Essek stammers. Coward.

“I am also sure he cares if he dies in that fight, Jester.” Caleb comes to his rescue once again. “Perhaps we take cover for now and prepare for the worst?”

The Mighty Nein begin scanning their surroundings for something large enough to offer all of them enough cover. The ice spires have been increasingly sparse as they moved closer to Aeor, but Yasha manages to spot a few groupings of broken spires and large sheets of ice that may be able to offer some cover. Essek stows away his small globe of warmth and Jester’s parasol and follows the group as they attempt to silently make their way to cover.

Upon further inspection they will have to split the party between two clusters of spires and fragmented ice sheets roughly 35 feet apart. It will make for good cover but will also make it difficult to plan in case of an attack.

After a few moments of tense bickering about what to do next Beauregard grabs Caleb and Caduceus by the elbow. “There’s no use fighting over a plan we’re going to abandon anyway. Separate the clerics and wizards, stay hidden until you can’t anymore, and fuck that dragon up if we need to. Everyone good with that?”

Everyone nods their agreement and Beauregard drags Caleb and Caduceus over to the farthest ice cluster with Yasha close at their heels, leaving Fjord, Veth, Jester, and Essek to take cover at the closest.

They spend a few moments crowding closely underneath the ice, Essek readying some components in case things turn sour. Luxon, he hopes they are hidden well. He will not run from this fight, and has complete faith in the Mighty Nein’s combat abilities, but an ancient dragon? This is not exactly what he bargained for when he signed up for an adventure with this group.

Veth perks up for a moment and glances quickly at Essek and the others before whispering “Yeah Cay, we’re ready. Does Deucy see anything? I can’t see around Fjord’s skinny ass.”

“Thank you?” Fjord comments, his blade shimmering faintly in one hand and the other firmly grasping Jester’s.

Veth shoots a lingering look at Essek in the silence, presumably listening to another message. She whispers again to thin air, “Yeah, he looks scared shitless but I’m sure he’ll be fine. Right, Essek?”

Essek Thelyss, Shadowhand of the Bright Queen, Traitor of the Dynasty, is confident he has never been described as ‘scared shitless’. And it has never been more accurate. “I’ll manage,” he replies through gritted teeth.

She pulls out a wire and whispers into cupped hands, “He said he’ll be fine, but baby boy Fjord needed Jester to hold his hand,” she chuckles into her gloves before muttering “youcanreplytothismessage” and shoving the wire back into a pocket of her pastel-hued winter garb. Essek has a moment to briefly wonder if she ever gets the wire tangled in those peculiar antlers before there is a soft whooshing of wings nearby.

Jester and Fjord, who had been softly talking strategy, fall immediately silent. Everyone huddles impossibly closer in an attempt to stay hidden, and Veth manages to disappear completely in the center of their clump. They all hold their breath as the dragon, called Gelidon as someone mentioned, flies closer to the hidden party.

The beating of leathery draconic wings grows louder with each passing moment, Gelidon releasing a thundering roar that sounds far too close for Essek’s comfort. He can’t help glancing in Fjord’s direction out of fear. The half-orc has always had a calm, steadying nature in the face of the Nein’s dangerous brand of chaos. Now he looks towards the direction of Gelidon’s fury, his hand shifting to Jester’s waist while she gathers spell components.

Fjord catches Essek looking at him and gives a tusk-filled grin. “We like to take all of our friends dragon-fighting on their first adventure. Really gets the blood moving.”

“Yeah Twiggy really seemed to enjoy it,” Jester chuckled lightly, twisting the ruby at her throat with a nervous tremor in her voice.

“You are some very interesting people,” Essek returns Jester’s nervous chuckle before his focus is pulled once again to the dragon-shaped shadow racing across the tundra. The hulking beast lands with a crash about a hundred feet away from the group’s hiding spot, kicking up a wave of snow around her taloned feet.

She crouches low towards the snow and moves a few feet in their direction, nostrils flaring as she breathes deeply. Her breath escapes in a low laugh that reverberates directly into Essek’s nerves.

“I have not forgotten your scent, you little cretins.” She breathes deeply once again. “There are fewer of you, now. Split off from your little friends, did you? And hiding too. Cowardly without their protection-“ Gelidon roars the last word, whipping her tail through a pile of ice and snow nearby. It explodes in a shower of shimmering crystals and frozen rubble around her.

“I suppose that’s our cue,” Fjord mumbles before whispering a few arcane words, the runes along his blade lighting up as he flies through the air towards Gelidon. Jester holds out her hand and a bubblegum pink light gathers in her palm before streaking off, striking the dragon in the side, and surrounding her with a faint pink glow.

“Thanks, Jessie!” Veth calls as she darts out from behind Jester’s back and runs towards Gelidon, taking a shot with her crossbow that sinks deep into the joint where shoulder meets torso. The dragon roars in pain and begins flying towards the now-revealed party members, far faster than Essek had anticipated. She meets Fjord mid-air and snaps at him with her jaws. He manages to fly out of the way before they close around him, but the motion leaves him open for her claws to rake across his chest sending him spinning through the air.

Seeing the bleeding gash in Fjord’s coat Essek immediately begins searching his components for a black marble, deciding that he would like to stay as far away as he can from the ancient fucking dragon his friends had somehow angered. He brings his hand forward with the marble sitting in his palm and mutters a few arcane words before closing his fingers around the marble so tightly his knuckles turn white. A black sphere of dunamantic energy appears just behind and beneath the dragon, attempting to pull her towards the earth without catching Fjord in its crushing radius. Essek growls in frustration as Gelidon manages to wrench herself out of the gravity sinkhole’s grasp, still harming her slightly but not pulling her to the ground.

Out of the corner of his eye Essek catches Beauregard running with frightening speed across the snow, barely even leaving a footprint as she sprints towards the dragon. Yasha runs behind her, also unnaturally fast. Essek has a moment to catch the faint shimmer of transmutative energy indicating a haste spell before Yasha is running up an ice spire that has fallen at a slight angle. When she reaches the top she leaps, and Essek lets out a small gasp of surprise as pure white wings erupt from her shoulders and spread into the air. She goes into a steep dive and scoops Beauregard off of the ground. Essek hears a faint “Remember me?” and laughter as Beauregard is deposited on Gelidon’s back.

Essek glances around the edge of the ice cave he continues to hide in, looking for Caleb and Caduceus. The cleric is slowly making his way towards the fray with Caleb close behind, tucking some licorice root into a coat pocket.

The next few moments are a blur of battle, everyone trading blows with Gelidon as she roars and thrashes through the air. Fjord and Yasha strike out at her with steel and she returns with tooth and claw. Beauregard runs up and down her spine, managing to find weak points in her scales and driving both staff and fists into her body. Veth shoots bolt after bolt, some of them crackling with arcane energy. Jester and Caduceus weave divine energy to help their friends and cause further harm to their draconic foe. Essek sends a variety of ranged spells her way, still determined to keep out of range of her ice breath and teeth.

Caleb does the same, weaving combat spells and slinging fire with such ease that Essek has to force his own attention back to the battle at hand. Every time a bolt of fire or magic missile hits true on their foe Essek glances back at the other wizard as he ducks back into his own icy hiding place, his blue eyes as cold and determined as their surroundings.

His gaze returns to the battle as the dragon roars once again, thrashing violently in the air after a strike from Beauregard. She throws the monk’s body into the air, smashing her with her tail as she falls. Beauregard gets up and appears more annoyed than injured, shaking some snow out of her coat.

“Can someone take this bitch down? Or get me back up?” she calls to the others.

Essek searches his mental catalogue of the spells he prepared for the journey and brightens as he remembers the magnify gravity spell currently at his disposal. He can help, he can be useful and prove that it was worthwhile to bring him on this journey. He begins to weave the incantation for the spell before he stops short. The range on this is much shorter than gravity sinkhole. In order to be useful, he must get closer and risk being frozen, or worse, by an ancient white dragon. Essek spends another moment watching his friends throw themselves at this creature with little regard for their own safety and remembers why he came on this adventure in the first place.

I am on borrowed time, he had said at the outpost. The world is in danger, they had told him after a battle that had almost taken them from him before he had a chance to offer his aid. I will do what I can, he has told them so many times. I can do this, he thinks to himself, for them, I can do this. Essek takes a deep breath and steps into the blinding sun, towards an ancient white dragon.

He runs as far as he can and throws his arms forward, drawing his hands together then pulling them towards his body and yelling the incantation for magnify gravity at the top of his lungs. Gelidon roars once more, attempting to fly out of the pull of the spell before being yanked into the snow, unable to fight the additional arcane strength that Essek had funneled into it.

“Ha!” Essek cheers as Gelidon attempts to stand and fly once more, but is held firmly to the ground for the moment.

Beauregard gives him a thumbs-up and a “Thanks, man!” before running towards her to lay more blows into the dragon’s thick hide. The rest of the Mighty Nein take advantage of Gelidon’s momentary stationary position and attack with renewed force before she is able to right herself.

Which, much to Essek’s displeasure, she manages to do. He knew it would not keep her down for long, but he was hoping to give everyone a bit more of an edge. Now she rises on her hind legs, screaming into the sky and thrashing with her claws. As she lands back on all fours she beats her wings and takes flight once more, rearing her head back as ice gathers at the corners of her mouth. Realizing what she is about to do, everyone attempts to brace themselves for the incoming ice breath.

Essek has never had much need for a sturdy physical form. His weapon was his mind, and that was the muscle he chose to focus his energies strengthening. It has been the correct path for most of his 120-odd years of existence, only truly irking him when Verin would wrestle him to the ground while playing “ambush” or when an experiment went awry and he suffered some physical malady because of it. Now, however, when completely encased by the frozen hell of a dragon’s breath, he finds himself briefly regretting a few of his life choices as he takes the full force of the impact.

It chills him to his very core. His white cloak and mantle are immediately stiff with ice and it takes great effort to move his hands out from under the frozen material. He can feel frostbite beginning to encase the tips of his ears, turning them a deeper purple than his drow skin. As hard as he tries he cannot control the shivering while the pain nearly brings him to his knees. Beauregard appears to be having a similar reaction, while the others either did not take the full force of the blow or were outside of its range.

“Scheiße!” Essek turns his head to see Caleb coming towards them. No, turn back, he wants to yell. You cannot take a hit like this any better than I can. But all that comes out of his mouth is a strained whimper as he tries to recover from the pain.

“Essek, I need you to trust me!” Caleb calls as he pulls something from his coat. Essek almost laughs. You are not the untrustworthy one in this equation, he thinks bitterly. But he only nods and allows the warmth of Caleb’s magic to wash over him. It is only as he begins to feel his form shift that he notices the cocoon in Caleb’s hand. Shit-

He is…tall. Far taller than he has ever been while floating. He has used levitate spells to reach high shelves in places before, but this is different. He is tall, and his feet are firmly on the ground. As he looks down he is caught even further off guard by the presence of ivory tusks and a long, furred trunk. And his fur is…purple?

Before he has another moment to consider this strange new anatomy, he is caught by the sounds of a dragon roaring in front of him. Oh, that’s right. He’s fighting a dragon with his friends. The realization jars him almost as much as his new physical form did.

In the time it took Essek to ponder his new mammoth form the Mighty Nein had managed to ground the dragon once more. She is bleeding from several wounds and appears to be staggering a bit in place. In her desperate frenzy she begins striking out at anything and anyone around her, trying to escape the adventurers who now have her surrounded. Essek charges into the fray, trumpeting a sort of battle cry as he digs his tusks into the exposed side of the dragon attacking his friends.

A burst of flaming magic erupts into her from the snow beneath her. She turns toward its source, and Essek spins his gaze with her to see Caleb standing a short way away, a cat’s cradle of yarn in his hands. Wind whips stray strands of hair around his head and into his face as he stands firm. Gelidon begins to crawl towards him in a rage and he immediately blanches, realizing that he has now drawn the ire of this creature. Essek attempts to strike out with his tusks once again but they scrape uselessly against her armor-like scales. A few of the others get a hit in, but she takes the blows and charges onward toward her quarry.

Caleb looks up at the dragon, fear in his eyes as she unleashes a flurry of frenzied strikes into him. Blood blooms across his chest, arms, and face as her teeth and claws all hit home. Caleb throws an arm up with a magical shield beginning to form around his body, but it is shattered against Gelidon’s fury. With a final slash of her claws Caleb is thrown across the snow and lays motionless.

Essek is shunted back into his elven form and the pain of his previous injuries screams through his nerves before something else overtakes him. His heart pounds and cheeks heat with a terrified rage at seeing Caleb lying in the snow. One arm is bent awkwardly under his body, legs curled to the side as the snow blossoms a stomach-churning pink around his unconscious form. Essek cannot see his face at this angle and is briefly thankful to avoid seeing the wizard’s freckles shrouded in specks of blood and gore.

As his fear and fury build Essek feels gravity begin to coalesce around him, the magic sparking through his nerves like the beginning of a lightning bolt. Instead of electricity, Essek summons the rest of his strength to draw on the dunamancy around him. He brings out a shard of onyx from his components and slashes it across his palm. The drops of blood are frozen in space in front of him, and as he waves his hands they create a small circle in the air. A black void of deep nothingness appears around Gelidon’s torso as she licks her lips, turning back towards the others now that Caleb is down. She rears up on her hind legs and unleashes a roar that quickly turns into an ear-splitting scream as Essek crashes his hands together, pulling the blood into a tight sphere no bigger than a marble. The sound that emanates from Gelidon’s ribs is reminiscent of a tree being struck by lightning. The cracks echo over the tundra before Gelidon’s body turns a deep gray and falls away to dust.

They all stand in silence for a heartbeat before Jester and Caduceus are running to Caleb’s aid. Essek nearly stumbles to his knees as he follows close behind while trying to stay out of their way. Caduceus places his hands over Caleb’s chest and pink lichen spreads over his coat. A deep, verdant green light glows beneath it before the lichen shrivels and crumbles off the wounds. Caleb lets out a low groan and rubs at his forehead.

“Hey there, good to see you back with us.” Caduceus smiles and leans back on his heels.

“Is she dead or did she run?” Caleb attempts to sit up and look around before wincing and laying back down in the snow.

“Essek took care of her actually, and quite handily,” Fjord answers over Caduceus’ shoulder.

“It was so cool Caleb! He did some sort of awesome fucked-up gravity magic and she turned to dust! To dust, Caleb! Oh my gosh, I really wish you were conscious for that because you would’ve thought it was so cool.” Jester bounces on her toes and looks between the wizards with a half-cocked smile.

“Perhaps you will have to show me that one some other time,” Caleb says as he turns to Essek. “Are you alright, mein freund?”

Essek’s laugh comes out a little more breathless than he would have liked. “Which one of us is lying in the snow right now?”

“Good point,” Caleb’s eyes crinkle at the edges and Essek desperately hopes his blush is mistaken for post-battle adrenaline. “Shall we sit for a moment, catch our breath?”

“Good plan, you wizards are looking pretty fucked up,” Beauregard calls from where she leans heavily on Yasha, clutching a gash in her side. “Good shot though, Essek. Although I would’ve liked some of those dragon teeth to put with the T-Rex.”

“I will try to kill the next ancient dragon a little less thoroughly next time,” Essek retorts. Beauregard smirks and begins limping her way back to the fallen ice spires to take cover while they rest.

As the rest of the Nein follow her Essek falls into step with Caleb at the back of the group.

“You turned me into a mammoth.”

“I did. Squishy wizards need to stay in the back.” Caleb gestures to the partially-healed gash in his side.

“It was a bit, ah, strange. Is that a strategy you employ often?”

“Only when things get bad. Couldn’t have you getting knocked down in front of a dragon like that. We protect our friends, here in the Mighty Nein. Seems like you’re catching on to that.” He gives Essek a tight smile.

Friends. Essek feels the ice from the dragon’s breath melt slightly from the warmth spreading through his chest. “I am unsure that I can protect all of you all of the time, but I want to try. I cannot undo everything that I have done, but that much I can do.”

Caleb doesn’t reply, just smiles a bit wider and gives Essek’s shoulder a squeeze. And maybe it’s because he was injured, or perhaps it was Essek’s imagination, but he swears that Caleb lets his hand linger for just a moment longer than usual.

#this was so much fun to write #i love combat dunamancy yall #and the wizards #also very fitting that my first cr fic was mildly shadowgasty #critical role #the mighty nein #essek thelyss #caleb widowgast #shadowgast #gelidon #cr fanfic #cw: blood

[emiefaunwrites]

Cause we are horrible people would you be able to write a close call for Leon? It's OK if you need time to think of it!

Hey anon!

A part of me was waiting for this ask and so I've been thinking about what things happen. And as your ask came through...well, by jove I got one!

So yes, anon. I will indugle in a little meanness and give you a close call for Leon. Trigger warnings for accidents and injury underneath so please don't read if that upsets you.

Thanks for the ask! Hope you enjoyyyy!

*********************

• Leon is a major clutz.

• He's constantly knocking things over, tripping over his own feet and has absolutely terrible balance (which is a big surprise considering the one-legged contortions he twists into when pitching!)

• But that doesn't stop him enjoying life!

• He won't let his clutzy tendencies stop him from doing the things he enjoys, even if it has resulted in some majorly embarrassing scenarios.

• So he's learnt to brush things off with humour.

• He knocks something over? 'Looks better that way anyway.'

• He trips over something? 'Shouldn't have been having a nap where I was walking!'

• He loses his balance? 'Practicing my dance moves.'

• He always has a witty response for whatever happens.

• But one day, his clutziness nearly costs him dearly.

• He and Kei are practicing baseball techniques in the garden while Taka's out one day.

• He's taught her how to swing and though she doesn't have his strength, the girl hits hard.

• He's had to climb into bushes, run into the neighbours gardens, even had to run across the street to get the ball.

• And this time, it's landed on the roof.

• Now Leon's been banned from ladders ever since he wobbled one year while putting the Christmas Tree up.

• But Taka won't be back for another hour, and Kei's really seeming to be into this today.

• What other way will he get the ball down?

• 'Okay, sweet pea. Stay there alright? Daddy'll get the ball down.'

• He heads into the garage to grab the ladder that Mondo left behind when he was helping clear out the gutters a few months back.

• Looking back up to where the ball has landed, it's in the most awkward groove ever and won't be easy to reach.

• And now he's looking up, he realises how high a two-storey building is and his stomach turns.

• Maybe he should wait. Taka will be back soon and he's fine with heights and ladders and...

• 'Fank you, Daddy!'

• Ahhhh, he can't let his little girl down! And with a steely determination, he lines the ladder up and starts to climb.

• 'Just don't look down. Don't look down.'

• Slowly and steadily, he makes his way up the ladder and when he reaches the top, he needs to take a few deep, grounding breaths.

• Goddamn it, it's REALLY not going to be easy to get!

• Reaching out, he can't quite make it and so has to lean out quite procariously.

• His fingers brush against the ball, nearly there, nearly there...

• And then it pops out of the guttering and drops onto the ground.

• With a relieved sigh, Leon goes to move back to grab the ladder...

• But Leon Kuwata has terrible balance.

• Taka's at work, giving a presentation to an important group of people when his phone rings.

• Apologising profusely, he goes to look and see its the house phone.

• Odd. Leon normally calls on his mobile.

• Something compels him to answer the phone, beginning to scold his husband for interrupting him at work...

• 'P-papa?'

• Kei? Why is SHE calling? And why is she crying?

• 'What's the matter, darling? Where's Daddy?'

• 'D-daddy f-f-fell. He n-no wake u-up.'

• Oh my god oh my god oh my god WHAT'S HAPPENED?

• 'Tell me what happened, Kei.'

• 'I h-hit ball on r-r-roof and Daddy g-get. He f-f-fall down and...and h-hit his h-head. There's r-r-red paint e-e-everwhere and D-D-Daddy no w-wake u-up.'

• No no no no no what was Leon THINKING?! And now he's...he's...

• No. He can't panic. He needs to get home...

• No that'll be too late. Who knows how long Leon's been out for. He has to get to the hospital and...

• 'Kei, remember what Papa taught you? What you do if you ever get in trouble?'

• 'Y-y-yeah...'

• 'I need you to do that okay, darling? I need you to do exactly what I taught you and tell the nice man or lady what happened.'

• 'O-okay.'

• 'Good girl. Do it now, okay? Papa'll see you soon.'

• He gives no apologies as he flies out of the room, shouting at the receptionist to call Mondo and send him straight to the house.

• He isn't one for speeding but Taka definitely drives faster than normal, heading to the nearest hospital to wait for them to arrive.

• He's there twenty mintues before he sees the doctors wheeling Leon through, Mondo and Kei following behind.

• The wait during the surgery is agony - Taka having to distract himself by asking the nurses if he can borrow a shower to clean the blood out of his daughter's hair.

• Poor Kei is terrified, not saying a word as her Papa cleans her up and changes her clothes, holding onto him for dear life as they go back to the waiting room.

• And eventually, the surgeon comes out to explain there was a fracture in Leon's skull that resulted in a lot of swelling - but the surgery was a success and he'll be alright.

• Taka's allowed to go see him when he wakes up, asking Mondo to look after Kei for a little bit.

• And as he walks in to see his groggy husband blinking at him from one of the beds, head in a bandage, Taka finally loses it.

• 'YOU IDIOT! I TOLD you not to climb ladders! Why don't you ever LISTEN?! D'you know how frightened I was?! How frightened KEI was?! What the HELL were you thinking?!'

• Leon's too groggy to respond, face scrunched up as he tries to focus through the many drugs he's on for the pain.

• 'You could have DIED, Leon! You could have died RIGHT THERE! Right in front of our little girl! How could you be so STUPID?! How could you...how...how...'

• All at once Taka's rage ebbs away at the guilty look on his husband's face, replaced with sobs as he drops to his knees at the bedside.

• 'I could have lost you! You could have...oh God, Leon, I can't lose you! I can't...I can't...'

• Leon can't do too much, still very much out of it, but he can see how much his husband is hurting. And its all his fault.

• So with a grunt, he lifts a heavy arm to brush away the tears, cups Taka's face and says:

• 'Can't have hurt...as much as...when you...fell from...heaven.'

• The comment catches Taka completely on guard, the small strained smile on Leon's lips like a breath of fresh air.

• He can't help but laugh, relief making him dizzy as he clasps Leon's fingers in his own.

#kiyotaka ishimaru #leon kuwata #ishileon #kei kuwata #mondo oowada #ask request #anon ask #tw: accident #tw: injury

[kelyon]

Golden Rings 23: A Hat

The Storybrooke sequel to Golden Cuffs

Jefferson tries to get help

Read on AO3

Inside a cramped little cottage in a cramped little town in the mountains of a flat planet that flies through space on the back of four elephants on top of a turtle, he is having dinner with his family. 

Technically, they are Leo’s family, but technicalities have never troubled him. These people have welcomed him into their lives. This smoke-filled, boisterous cottage is more home to him than the solemn rock quarry where Jefferson spent the first few miserable decades of his life. 

The meal is mostly over, but everyone lingers over pudding and conversation and beer. A few of his sisters-in-law have gathered up the dishes and are headed back to the kitchen for the washing up.

His daughter sits on his lap. She is almost too big for the gesture and maybe that’s why she wants it so much. It’s certainly why he lets her do it. How much longer will he have with his little girl? Even if they have escaped from the Queen’s curse, they cannot escape time. There will only be a few more years before Grace is more a woman than a baby. She’ll be as pretty as her mother, and just as smart, winding her way through the hearts of everyone who meets her.

But for now, his girl sits on his lap and listens to her family. Beside him, Leo squeezes his arm. 

She leans into him. “No matter where we go, it’s never better than being home.”   

He smiles at her, his wife, his life. Her face is ruddy from drink and smoke. Her blonde hair curls in the heat, teasing wisps escape from her bun. Her plump curves fill out her dress like bursting sausage. She has a shine of bacon grease around her mouth and a touch of beer foam on the tip of her nose. In all the lands in all the worlds, he has never seen anyone more beautiful. 

Somewhere down the table, a baby cries. One of his many sisters-in-law is trying to soothe one of Grace’s many cousins, without much success. The infant has been fussing all night, and now the poor thing’s wails have drowned out the riotous conversation.

“‘Ere now!” Leona’s mother calls down from the head of the table. “Are you going to help that poor babby or do I ‘ave to?”

His sister-in-law--a washed out, nervous looking woman whose name no one can remember--looks gratefully up at Nanny Ogg. “Can you?”

Nanny Ogg snorts. This grande dame--which she translates as “big woman”--is the matriarch of the Ogg clan and the second-most powerful witch in the Ramptops Mountains, though she doesn’t try as hard. She’s had five husbands (and married three of them), fifteen children, and more grandchildren and great-grandchildren than anyone in Lancre can count. 

The baby is passed from hand to hand down the table, squalling all the way. When it finally gets to the head of the table, it is placed into the very solid arms of a round old woman dressed in black. She has a pipe, a pint, and a black pointy hat. (There’s nothing magic about a pointy hat, except that it says that the person underneath it is a witch.) She also has lively dark eyes--like Leo’s, like Grace’s--and the widest grin most people have ever seen.

The current occupant of the old woman’s lap is a mangy ball of fur and claws named Greebo. Though known to pick fights with bears (and not lose), he’s nothing but an old softy to Nanny Ogg. Still, the cat is smart enough to know that he is always second place to any child. As soon as the baby is in the witch’s arms, he scampers out of the way.

Jefferson’s life would have been hell if Nanny Ogg hadn’t given him her approval to marry Leo. They would have married anyway--Leo wouldn’t have let anything stop them--but coming home like this would have been… difficult. There are a dozen tiny ways an Ogg can tell you they don’t like you--and a hundred large and painful ones. But Nanny Ogg’s welcoming nature--and Jefferson’s endless potential to bring her presents from far-off lands--had ensured that they were welcome any time. 

Within a minute of entering Nanny Ogg’s embrace, the screaming baby quiets. Within another minute, it sleeps peacefully, despite the raucous conversation around the table. 

Perched on his knees, Grace looks curious. “Was that magic, Gran?”

“Coo-ee, no, my duck!” Nanny Ogg chuckles. “The day I needs magic to calm a babe is the day you lot can put me in the ground!”

“But you did it so fast!” Grace persists. 

“Coz I been doing it so long,” Nanny Ogg explains. “Ever since your Uncle Jason was a wee thing! There’s a knack to it, but it ain’t magic.”

Grace ponders this for a moment. Children are allowed to speak freely around Nanny Ogg’s table--provided they keep the conversation interesting. “Papa knows a man who does magic.”

Jefferson thinks about explaining, but clearly this is a private conversation.

Nanny Ogg nods sagely. “I imagine your dad knows all kinds of people, the work he does.”

“He was a funny little man,” Grace says. “He has a funny voice and he’s all green.”

“Takes all sorts, luv. We can’t help the way we’re made.”

“He gave me a yellow dress, to match Mama’s pink one. He pulled it out of the air! We were there for--why were we there, Papa?”

“A wedding,” Jefferson answers. “The Dark One and Belle wanted us to be there for their wedding.”

“It was a lovely day,” Leo smiles at him while stroking their daughter’s hair. “Do you remember dancing in that big ballroom, Grace? Remember how he made the instruments play themselves?”

Nanny Ogg snorts. “Sounds like a show-off, if you ask me.”

“Oh he is,” Jefferson agrees. “I don’t know if you’d like him, and Mistress Weatherwax would hate him.”

“Well, there’s not many I don’t like, and there’s not many Esme Weatherwax don’t hate, at least at first.” 

They laugh at that, as they laugh at everything. The conversation moves on to other topics. Later the lot of them move away from the table and into the parlor. Around a fire and more beer, Nanny Ogg brings out her banjo, but the evening still manages to end happily. 

He puts Grace to bed in a room with her cousins, a group of girls near her age. He kisses her and makes sure she has her stuffed rabbit. Then he goes up to the bedroom where Leo is waiting.

His wife is a dream, all satiny pink. All soft and warm and round. Like a sunset cloud with grasping arms. Like candy floss with a libido. She is everything. All the happiness he has now is because of her. This family, this life, their daughter. Everything in his past led to her, everything in the present comes from her, everything in the future will be theirs together. 

They make love, full of food and clumsy with drink. Their lips are loose and sloppy. They giggle and try to stay quiet in this crowded house. Their hands know their bodies. They know how to pleasure each other. They know. They feel. They love. They delight in each other and fall asleep in each other’s arms.

When Jefferson wakes up, everything is gone. 

****

For the ten thousand, three hundred ninetieth time, Jefferson woke up alone. In a giant, empty bed, inside a giant, empty house. He woke up, like he always did, with a gnawing ache in his chest and a burning desire for nothing more than to go back to sleep. Back to his dream. His best dreams were always about them. Leo. Grace. Home.

Sitting up in bed, Jefferson covered his face with his hands and let a dry sob rack through him. Tears would come later. First sob of the morning was always dry.

“Morning” was not the right word. It was a gray spring afternoon, more or less identical to every other gray afternoon he’d woken up in since he was brought over to this world. Over the years--over so many years--he had gotten in the habit of starting his day when most people in Storybrooke began to end theirs. The only reason he woke up at all was to get a chance to see his daughter walk home from school. 

The telescope was in the office, what he tended to think of as the hat room. This side of the massive house faced Main Street. He could see quite a lot--the diner, the Sheriff’s Station, a few important houses. And he had learned quite a lot, just by looking at all these people living their lives. 

Nothing changed in Storybrooke. Children didn’t get older. The old and sick never died. People worked the same jobs no matter how much they hated them. There was a girl he saw walking to and from the diner who had been nine months pregnant for twenty-eight years. Everyone was miserable, alone and unloved in one way or another, but they all carried on with what they thought were their lives. 

Until the day a yellow bug drove into town. 

Looking through the telescope, Jefferson trained his eyes on a lime green winter coat. The coat was bouncing over the shoulders of a young girl as she hopped, skipped and jumped her way around the sidewalk. His throat tightened, as it did every time he saw her. In the lens of the telescope, she looked close enough to reach out and touch. 

Grace was walking with another girl--Jefferson didn’t know her name. She was poor, from Old Town. Her father was gone and her mother worked long hours for low pay. Girls like that didn’t get their accomplishments written up about in the newspaper the way Grace did every time she won the Science Fair. Until a few months ago, Grace had never spoken to this girl. Both of them had walked the same path from the school to the abandoned library, twenty feet apart, every day for twenty-eight years, without ever interacting with each other.

Until the day Sheriff Swan started a youth outreach campaign, and made a point to talk about how much safer kids were if they used the buddy system when they didn’t have an adult around.

Then Grace had looked up from her routine, and she had seen the other girl looking back. Both of them needed someone to walk with. Both of them were looking for a friend. Both of them found one. It was a little thing, but it was a change.

He watched them walk from the library to the house in New Town where Tim and Mia Lewis lived. The people Grace thought were her parents. Every once in a while, they ran an ad in the Storybrooke Daily Mirror--all three of them with big smiles, the adults offering their services in insurance and real estate. 

The lights were off inside the house, so he couldn’t see into the kitchen. He couldn’t see what healthy snacks Mia had made for the girls today. He couldn’t see what game they played to unwind for a bit before Mia made sure they both started their homework. A few hours later, the other girl’s mother would stop by after her shift at Granny’s. He never knew if she thanked Mia for watching her daughter. Maybe it was just understood. Maybe Mia said she was just doing what Sheriff Swan advised, watching out for children who might otherwise get into trouble, being alone and unsupervised.

Once Grace was out of his sight, Jefferson moved the telescope to look around town. Not too many changes today. Archie Hopper was walking his dalmatian. Marco the handyman was making another trip to the hardware store. The stranger on the motorcycle idled outside Marine Automotive; he seemed to be watching Marco. Mrs. Gold was strutting away from the pawn shop with her head held high.

 He watched her, this woman who used to be Belle. It looked like she was going towards City Hall. Curious. Was she applying for a permit? Was there some licence she needed to renew? His fingers itched to pick up the phone and call the Dark One about what he had seen. He was the only other human being in town, the only person who knew the truth about anything. It was just the Dark One, Jefferson, and Queen Regina. 

But he couldn’t bother him too much. They couldn’t raise any more suspicion than they already had with their one secret meeting in the woods. The Dark One was still trying to maintain his cover as “Mr. Gold.” Besides, what difference could it make that Belle was running an errand to City Hall?

With a sigh, Jefferson moved away from the telescope. He’d been awake for more than an hour, it was time to put on pants. 

In no time at all, he had showered, dressed, and chugged down a protein shake. Most days, it was hard for him to summon up the will to cook or eat. He kept his body going with prepackaged meal replacements. They tasted like crap, but at least he didn’t have to think about them. He left cooking for people who thought they had something to live for. 

He made his way to the front doors. The house had a wide driveway that ran under a large overhang. Whenever visitors came, they could disembark from the vehicles and go into the house without the hazards of rain or snow. 

If he ever had visitors.

At the moment, and for the past twenty-eight years, all he had was the most recent copy of the Storybrooke Daily Mirror. It wasn’t a bastion of hard-hitting journalism, but for a long time it had been the only way he could know anything about the town he spent so much time looking at. The newspaper had given him names to put to the faces--Mayor Mills, Mr. Gold, Sheriff Humbert, and later Sheriff Swan. It had been a lifeline, and he still clung to it. For nearly three decades, the dates on the front page had been the only changes he had seen anywhere in this town. 

Today’s date was April 2nd, 2012. The headline was about the continued search for a missing person. Kathryn Nolan, a paralegal working at the firm of Duke & Duke, had been missing for more than a month. There had been sightings of a woman matching her description in various parts of Storybrooke, but by the time the police arrived, all traces of her had gone. Sheriff Swan encouraged anyone with any information regarding Mrs. Nolan’s whereabouts to call the station.

On the next page, there was an editorial decrying the lack of effort put forth by Kathryn’s husband, David Nolan, to aid in the search. Sydney Glass stopped just short of outright accusing Mr. Nolan of gross negligence or foul play. He only noted the amount of time Mr. Nolan spent with the schoolteacher, Miss Blanchard. The article concluded with speculation that perhaps Mrs. Nolan was not missing at all, but had run away from a terminally unhappy home.      

After finishing the paper, he put it away in the office closet and went back to the telescope. The lights were on in the house where Grace lived. The other girl had been picked up. Tim Lewis was home from work. The three of them were making dinner together. Mia was stirring a pot of chili and Tim was taking a bag of corn out of the freezer.

“She doesn’t like corn, guys,” Jefferson muttered to himself. “She won’t eat the chili if you put corn in it. You’ve been taking care of her for twenty-eight years and you’ve never figured that out.”

He shook his head and looked away. Sometimes it was maddening to watch the town like this, to see these people make the same mistakes, over and over. Emma Swan had made some changes, but there were still so many ways to be unhappy.

He watched dinner in the Lewis household. He watched Grace carefully pick out all the corn from her bowl of chili and set it into her paper napkin. He watched Mia shake her head at his daughter. He watched Tim lecture her about wasting food. He watched Grace scowl as she picked up the napkin and dumped the offending corn kernels back into the chili. She ate, but she looked like she was going to vomit.

“I’m sorry, love,” he whispered. He had to get to her, somehow. He had to let her know that he was her father. He had to get her back to Leo.

After dinner, the family watched TV. Grace sat on a couch between Tim and Mia, and flickering light bathed over all of them. They weren’t bad people, her fake-parents. They did love her, and they did the best they could to raise her to be healthy and successful in this world. Whoever Tim and Mia had been before, they were victims of the curse too. They had never meant to steal another couple’s daughter. 

He had to put this right. He had to end this curse. Jefferson didn’t have much power, but he would do anything to put his family back together. 

He moved the telescope away from Grace. After a brief search, he found the big pink house in Old Town where the Dark One lived. The lights were on, but no one was visible through the windows. If he called on the phone, the Dark One would tell him to be patient. The Savior would break the curse in due time. 

But Jefferson had already waited too long. 

Scanning through town, he set his sights on the Sheriff’s station. Storybrooke was peaceful enough that most of the cops could hang up their guns in time for dinner. They were all long gone by now. Even Sheriff Swan was packing up and getting ready to go home for the night. 

Perfect. 

Picking up the sleek, silver cordless phone, Jefferson punched in the numbers he had seen in the newspaper. Through the telescope, he could see Emma Swan hear the phone ringing. She slumped and grimaced in the way of everyone being clawed back into a job they thought was done for the day. Then she straightened up, and picked up the receiver on her desk.

“Sheriff’s station, this is Emma.”

Jefferson cleared his throat. “Yeah, is this the number to call if somebody saw Kathryn Nolan?”

Perking up, Emma fumbled on her desk for a pen and paper. “It sure is. Who am I talking to?”

That question was too complicated to get into. “Yeah, I don’t know for sure if it was Kathryn Nolan, but it looked like a woman in her mid-thirties, caucasian, looked kinda haggard. I, uh, I tried to talk to her, but she just kept walking through the woods.”

“Which woods are those? Where was this?”

“Oh, yeah, it was the north woods. You ever been up on Angus Drive?”

“Can’t say that I have. Still kind of new to the area.”

“Yeah, well that’s where she was. About ten minutes ago I saw her, she was walking towards town. Like I said, I tried to get her attention, but she didn’t listen. I didn’t wanna try to chase after her. Might scare her, you know. Make things worse.”

“Right, right,” Emma said. “So, north woods, Angus Drive, ten minutes ago. And what was your name?”

Jefferson hung up the phone. Then he got his coat and a scarf. It was time to go for a walk.  

****

There were several cars in the massive garage of the house where Jefferson had been a prisoner. For the first twenty-eight years, he hadn’t been able to open the garage door to get them on the road. Even after Emma had rolled in, the cars were still useless. None of them had gasoline.

So Jefferson walked. He had walked along the highway and through the woods and over the town line as far as he could before something terrible happened. He walked into town sometimes, trying to find a way out. When he’d noticed “Mr. Gold” acting strangely, he had walked to the pawn shop.

At this point, he knew the town better than anyone else. Who knows the shape of a cage better than the captive inside? He knew the borders and boundaries, especially the area around the house. He knew where the road made a wicked hairpin turn, where someone who was still kind of new to the area wouldn’t know what was coming and could be caught off guard. 

The yellow Volkswagen had better brakes than he thought--Emma stopped short of actually hitting him when he emerged from the woods onto the road in front of her. He’d been willing to take the hit, half-curious to see if the curse would let any injury last longer than a week or so. 

Emma’s quick driving stopped him from actually getting hurt, but the collision was close enough that he could fall to the ground in a convincing show. She stopped the car and got out when she saw him. 

“Oh my God, are you okay?”

On the gravel shoulder of the highway, Jefferson groaned and clutched his leg.

“Sir? Sir, can you talk? I’m Emma Swan, do I need to call for EMTs?”

“No,” Jefferson gritted his teeth, swallowed the imaginary pain. “No, I live around here. I’ll be fine. Can you just get me back to my house?”

For just a moment, she hesitated. “Uh, sure. Yeah, let’s get you inside, at least.”

She helped him up and into the passenger seat of the bug. Then she began to drive.

“So where do you live, Mr…?”

“Angus Drive.” He answered only the question she had said out loud. “It’s up ahead.”

 “Funny.” Now that the moment of panic had passed, Emma seemed less willing to accept half-answers. “I just got a call about that address. A man said he saw a missing person out this way. Maybe you saw her when you were out. A blonde woman in her mid-thirties?”

He shook his head. “That sounds like your description, Sheriff.”

“First, I’m not in my mid-thirties. Second, how did you know I’m the Sheriff?”

“I read the paper. And who else would be getting a call about a missing person? And, you’ve got your badge on your hip.”

She frowned. “Guess that all checks out. Yeah, I’m Sheriff Swan. What’s your name?”

Again, Jefferson didn’t answer. “This is the house on the right.”

“A house?” Emma said as she parked under the awning. “This looks more like a hotel! Do you have a big family or something?”

Jefferson opened the door, but made sure to wait for her to help him out of the car. “No,” he said. “It’s just me.”

“The sign on the mailbox says Dogdson.” 

“Sure does.”

Leaning on Emma, Jefferson pretended to hobble up the stairs to get into the front door. The curse had never given him a key to this house, so he always left it unlocked. Someday,  when the curse was broken, he would find a way to lock the door behind him and walk away a free man. He would take Grace and walk all the way to the Discworld if he had to.

“Where should I put you?” Emma asked once they were in the foyer.

“Closest living room is over there.”

She set him up on one of the white leather couches with his “bad” leg propped up on the arm. “Want me to take a look at it?”

“No, no, I’ll be fine. Listen, I’m kind of an amateur cartographer. Upstairs, I’ve got maps for all of these woods. They could be useful to you, since you don’t know the area well.”

Hands on her hips, Emma Swan looked down at him. She looked shrewd, suspicious. Kind of like Leo, only skinny. “I never told you I don’t know the area.”

Jefferson grinned. What was the old saying about honesty? Better to tell the truth because then you don’t have to keep track of your lies? “I guess you didn’t.”  

“The only person I told that to lately was a man on the phone who also didn’t tell me his name.” Emma sat down on the coffee table in front of the couch so they were on the same level. “Did you actually see Kathryn Nolan around here?”

He didn’t stop grinning. “No.”

“And your leg isn’t hurt at all.”

It wasn’t a question, but he still answered. “No.”

“Can you give me a single good reason why I shouldn’t arrest you on the very serious charge of Wasting the Sheriff’s Time?”

Jefferson sat up. “I do need your help,” he said. “But I thought if I told you what was going on, you would think I was crazy.”

Emma didn’t blink at that. “People who might be crazy need just as much help as people who might be sane. Let’s start from the beginning: Tell me your name.”

“Jefferson,” he answered immediately.

“Jefferson,” she repeated. “Is that a first name or a last name?”

“First.”

“And the last name?”

He didn’t really have one. Few people in the old world did. “Ogg,” he answered. 

It was the name he went by on worlds where last names were common. Leo’s name. He was part of a proud tradition of men becoming Mr. Ogg when they married an Ogg woman. 

Emma looked him in the eyes, long and hard. “Jefferson Ogg,” she said slowly. “That’s… such a weird name, I don’t think you made it up.”

“I didn’t,” he said. 

“Uh-huh,” she said. “And what do you need help with, Jefferson Ogg?”

“I…” Gods, how could he even start? He would just have to show her. “It’s upstairs.”

She gave him another look, not speaking. Then she pulled a cell phone out of her pocket and pressed some buttons. 

“Texting on the job?”

“I left my walkie-talkie in the car.” She put her phone away. “Just letting my roommate know where I am and to call the dispatch office if she doesn’t hear from me in 10 minutes.”

That was almost funny, that she thought he was dangerous. As if the most dangerous person in Storybrooke wasn’t signing Sheriff Swan’s paychecks. 

“Let’s go upstairs,” he said.

****

It was the first time anyone other than him had set foot in the office. He wondered what Emma made of the room. All Jefferson ever cared about was the telescope and the walk-in closet where he stored the newspapers. Neither of those things drew Emma’s focus.

“That’s a lot of top hats,” she said as she stood in front of the lit-up shelf. There were rows of them, all made of an endless supply of black felt. “You part of a show choir or something?”

“No.” He shut the door behind them, locked it. “The hats… are actually what I need your help with.” He pulled out some of the felt, some sewing needles and a pair of scissors. He tossed them all onto the table in front of her. “I need you to make one.”

Now the expression on Emma’s face was what ‘suspicious’ wanted to be when it grew up. “You think I’m a hatter?”

He stood behind her, nudging her into a chair in front of the raw materials. “I think you can do extraordinary things, Emma. I think you can do exactly what I need you to. I think you can save me.”

Her expression morphed from disbelief to exhaustion. “No, not you too. Have you been talking to Henry? What is it with this town and people thinking I can save them?”

“Because you can!” He put his hands on either side of the chair and pushed her to the table. Then he leaned over her to keep her from getting up. “You are a special person, Emma. You made the changes start, you can make everything good again.”

“Bring back the happy endings, is that what you want from me?”

She was angry. She meant the remark to be flippant. But she was so right it brought tears to his eyes. 

“Yes,” Jefferson whispered. “Yes, that’s all I want. The Dark One says it’s your destiny, that you have already brought--”

“Wait, who?”

“The Dark One,” he said. “Rumpelstiltskin, he--”

“Will you listen to yourself?” Emma pushed herself up away from the table and stood up to confront him. “Do you think you’ve had a conversation with Rumpelstiltskin? What, do you think Regina is the Evil Queen too?”

“Yes!” he shouted. He picked the felt up off the table and shook the fabric in her face. “You have all the pieces, Emma! Why can’t you put them together?”

“Because this is the real world!” she shouted back. 

“Every world is real!” 

She made for the door. The lock kept her busy for just enough time that Jefferson was able to catch up with her. Gently, he pulled her away from the door and stood in front of it. Just being taller than her was enough to make him look like a threat.

“You don’t understand,” he tried to keep his voice from breaking. “There are so many worlds out there. I’ve been to most of them. The Dark One gave me a hat that I can use to travel from world to world. I could use it to get out of here, but I don’t have it anymore!”

Emma reached for her phone. He grabbed her wrist and pulled the device out of her hand.

“It needs magic,” he explained, as calmly as he could. “I’ve made a hundred hats, but they’re just hats, no good to anyone. I need magic. You have magic. You brought magic to Storybrooke the day you came here.”

She frowned at the phone in his hand and stepped back. “There was nothing different about the day I came here.”

“You’re right.” Keeping her in his sights, he stepped away from the office door and toward the closet. “It was the day after you arrived, the day after you broke the sign. October 24th, 2011. That was the day the clock on the library started to tick.”

Emma just gaped at him. “How could you remember that?”

“It was the most important day in the history of this town. The first real day to happen in twenty-eight years.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Can I show you?” he asked. “I’ll even give you your phone back, so you can tell Mary Margaret you’re okay. But I just need you to promise that you’ll hear me out.”

She glared and held out her hand. “You are damn lucky you don’t have a gun right now.”

He watched her press the buttons, then put her phone back in her pocket. 

“You bought yourself another ten minutes because I don’t feel like filling out the paperwork necessary to arrest you.”

Jefferson went to the closet. “It’s in here,” he said. “All the evidence I have is in here.”

She put her hands on her hips, squared her shoulders. “Go get it then.” 

Right, Sheriff Swan wasn’t going to be the first one to go through an unknown door in the house of an obvious lunatic. Jefferson opened it, and showed her the newspapers. Twenty-eight stacks and counting. Each stack was made of twelve bundles, reaching to the ceiling. Three hundred and forty one bundles. The whole of the curse, contained in this room.

“I saved them all,” he said. “Twenty-eight years’ worth.”

“So you’ve been saving newspapers since you were, what, five?” 

“Since the day I came to this town,” he answered. “Since the day anyone came to this town.” Kneeling on the ground, he moved the smallest pile and pulled out the smallest bundle. “Do you want to know what day that was, Emma?”

She didn’t answer, but he took the paper out from the bottom of the bundle and held it up in front of her. 

“Go on,” he growled. “Read it.”

“Uh, it says that Mayor Mills announced a new committee to--”

“Read the date!” he snapped. 

Jaw clenched, Emma yanked the paper out of his hands and looked at the top. She didn’t read it out loud, but he saw her eyebrows furrow. 

“That’s… my birthday,” she whispered. “Like, that was the day I was born.”

“October 23rd, 1983,” he said. “That was the day the curse started. The day you were born was the day the Evil Queen cursed us all to live in a world without magic.”

“That’s--”

“There was no time.” He didn’t let her speak. “Nothing changed, nothing happened. We were frozen. Most of them didn’t notice, but I did. I remembered, I…” He couldn’t go on. “I thought I was crazy. I thought nothing I knew was real. I thought I had lost everything. But you… You’re the Savior. You can bring it back.”

Emma shook her head and looked down at the newspaper again. “Even if all this is true, why am I the one who has to--wait a minute!” She pointed at the paper, at a picture of the mayor. “This is a crock of shit! That’s Regina! Regina wasn’t mayor on the day I was born!” She flipped through the other pages. “Yeah, look at this. Sydney looks the same in this picture as he does today. Look at the school news, I’ve seen these kids!”

“I told you, time was frozen.”

“Or you put a fake date on an old paper just to mess with me!” She kept looking at the newspaper, seeing but not understanding. “Yeah, this ad here, this is Tim Lewis. He gave me a discount on my car insurance. His daughter, Paige? She looks exactly like she does in this ad. Pretty sure she’s eleven, not thirty-nine.”

Jefferson ripped the paper out of Emma’s hands. “She is not his daughter!” He snarled. “Will you listen to me? That girl’s name is Grace. She is eleven. She has been eleven for twenty-eight years!”

“I--” Emma put her hands up and let out a slow breath. “I don’t think either one of us is going to convince the other.”

“I don’t care if you believe me, I just need you to make a gods-damned hat!”

To Jefferson’s shock, Emma seemed ready to do what he asked, maybe in the name of de-escalating the situation. She went back to the table, slowly sat down, and picked up the felt. “You need this so you can go back to Fairytale Land?”

He shook his head. “No, I don’t care about that world anymore. I need to go back to the Discworld.”

Emma squinted as she tried to thread a needle. “Discworld? I’ve heard of those books. They’re supposed to be funny, right?”

Jefferson didn’t smile. “It’s a real place.”

Looking up, Emma opened her mouth, and then closed it. “Sure.” She began to half-heartedly jam the needle between two pieces of felt. 

He collapsed into a chair by the telescope. Gods, was she really doing this? Jefferson only knew enough about magic to know that he was better off not playing with it. But if the Dark One was right, then Emma Swan wouldn’t be able to stop herself from using magic. She would do it naturally, maybe accidentally. It wouldn’t matter if the hat looked awful. All it had to do was work.

“My wife is from there,” he offered as a way to make conversation. 

Emma didn’t look up from the stitches. “From Discworld? Does that make her a witch or something?”

He shook his head. “Her mother is. I guess she could be too, if she wanted. Most of the time witchcraft is just knowing something other people don’t know.”

“Like how to make a hat?” Emma looked at him through a tube of felt. “It’s been a long time since my last Home Ec class. This is not going to be pretty.”

“It just needs to work,” he muttered. “Just… get it to work.”

Sighing, Emma pulled out her phone again.

“Has she even answered you?” he asked. “Maybe she’s off somewhere screwing David Nolan.”

A glare. “I’m doing you a favor by working on this hat. So maybe you could do me a favor and not say rude things about my friends.”

“I got you here by talking about Kathryn Nolan. Do you actually care about her?”

Emma kept her eyes on her work. “She’s a person. I care about people. She could be lost in the woods, disoriented and hungry. Of course I want to find her.”

“Do you think she’s still alive?”

“I have to hope so.” She cut one of the threads. “We haven’t found a body, or even body parts. If some monster was out there cutting out hearts and putting them in jewelry boxes, at least then there’d be some evidence.” She gave him a sideways glance. “Do you care about Kathryn Nolan? Or do you think she’s just a fairytale character?”

“I care about her because she’s a fairytale character,” Jefferson said. “Her name was Princess Abigail. She was the daughter of King Midas. She gave me a lot of gold just for trying to find a way to reverse the effects of her father’s… gift.”

Emma nodded, clearly humoring him. “I’d heard that King Midas had a daughter. I didn’t know her name was Abigail. Doesn’t sound Greek, but what do I know?” She was sewing the brim on the hat, after that it would be finished. 

Jefferson stood up. His feet moved on a schedule that was bigger than Emma Swan. He looked through the telescope. It was nine-thirty. Bedtime.

“Do you want to see her?” he whispered to Emma.

“Kathryn?”

“My daughter.”

They were putting her to bed, Tim and Mia both. She was almost too big for the gesture, but maybe that was why she wanted it so much. Jefferson felt Emma’s presence beside him, and he stepped away from the telescope. 

“They never remember to give her the stuffed rabbit,” he said. “That’s the only one that keeps her from having nightmares.”

“Oh, that’s Paige,” Emma said. She looked up from the window. “You… have a telescope pointed at the bedroom of an eleven year old girl.”

“She’s my daughter,” Jefferson repeated. “I’ve lost her mother. Grace doesn’t know who I am. I need to keep an eye on her.”

Emma stayed between Jefferson and the telescope. “Is it because Paige is adopted? Are you her birth father or something?”

He didn’t know whether to scream or cry, so he laughed. Emma kept talking.

“It’s no shame if that’s the case. Believe me, I know how mixed-up it can be to have a kid that’s yours but isn’t yours.”

“Shut up,” Jefferson said through gritted teeth. “Grace is mine. Mine and my wife’s.”

“You said you lost your wife…”

“Yes! And I’ll only find her again once I have a hat that works!” He almost grabbed her by the shoulders, but she was too fast. She made it back to the table and kept it as a barrier between them.

“Enough!” Emma said. She picked up the hat and tossed it over to him. “This is the last of my goodwill, understand? I’m going to leave now. You’re gonna let me out of this room and out of this house. I’m gonna call Tim and tell him to buy his daughter some blackout curtains. If I ever catch wind of you snooping around little girls again, I will personally make sure you rot in jail.”

Jefferson looked down at the crumpled felt in his hands. It was only a hat by the most generous definition. But maybe it would be enough.

When he looked up, Emma was gone. From outside, he heard the rumble of a car engine starting up. As she drove away, the sound grew fainter. He still held the hat in his hands. 

It didn’t feel magical. His old hat had a certain… quality. There was an aura about it, not quite tangible. But there was a feeling he got when he looked at his hat. A feeling of… possibility. Like there was so much more to it than what met the eye. There was none of that in the hat Emma had made. 

Maybe magic was different here. Maybe there was a way. Some way. He had to try. He would never know if he didn’t try. 

He closed his eyes and took a breath. “Please.” With all his heart, he prayed to any power that was listening. 

With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the hat to the ground, as he had done a thousand different times in a hundred different worlds. The hat spun and he waited for it to keep spinning, waited for it to grow larger and disappear into a whirlpool of purple smoke. He waited for the hole in the whirlpool, the portal that could take him anywhere.

But the hat barely made a full rotation before it stopped spinning. It sat on the ground, unmoving, unmagical.

Jefferson stared at it, until his vision blurred with tears. Then he began to laugh. 

Of course it didn’t work! Why would anything work in this world? Of course there was no escape! Of course he was going to die in this world! Or worse--he would live forever in a world without time and he’d never see Leona again.

He sobbed. His legs gave out and sent him careening to the floor. He lay face down on the patterned carpet, stared at Emma Swan’s misshapen hat, and wept like a child. 

****

Later--an hour? A year? Did it make a difference?--when couldn’t cry anymore, Jefferson pulled himself off the floor. He made it all the way to the chair before he collapsed again and hung his head in his hands. 

It hadn’t worked. The Savior hadn’t worked. The side of goodness hadn’t worked. Well, Jefferson was never one to get too hung up about paltry matters like good and evil. 

Slowly wheeling the office chair over to the desk, Jefferson fumbled for the silver telephone. He pushed in numbers he knew by heart, numbers he had wanted to call a dozen times in the past month, but never had. Not until now.

He tried to breathe, as the phone rang. But then he stopped when he heard it pick up. A woman’s voice. Belle’s voice.

“Mr. Gold’s residence. Who is calling?”

Jefferson didn’t speak. He didn’t breathe. Mrs. Gold knew that he had slept with her husband. He couldn’t ask her to put him on the phone. He couldn’t even let her know who he was.

He hung up.

With another deep breath, he pulled a book with yellow pages out from a shelf above the desk. He flipped through the thin paper, until he found the name and number he was looking for.

He dialed slowly, taking a breath between each number. He couldn’t sound like he was upset. He couldn’t show any weakness in front of her. 

This was a bad idea. This was the worst idea he could have ever come up with. The last time he’d worked with this woman he had watched her murder a helpless servant once she was no longer useful. How could he know that she wouldn’t do the same to him?

Maybe by the time he wasn’t useful, he would already be in the Discworld.  

He needed magic. He needed to get out. He needed power. So he called the most powerful person in town.  

Regina picked up on the third ring. “Who exactly do you think you are to be calling my home at this time of night?”

“Your Majesty,” he said calmly. “This is Jefferson the realm-jumper. I’d like to offer my services.” 

#golden rings #rumbelle #rumbelle fic #jefferson #hat trick

[dreadwulf]

Burning Down the House

(Ring of Fire part 4)

** part one ** part two ** part three **

There are multiple candidates for worst day of Jaime Lannister’s life. It is a competitive field. 

There is the day his mother died. The day he lost his right hand - and several days after that, which were all equally awful. The day he barely remembers when he and Cersei had so horrified their mother that she had separated them forever and he lost both his twin and any good memories of his mother. The day his brother Tyrion murdered their Father. The day Cersei married Robert. The day he slew Aerys and became forever the Kingslayer. 

Despite the crowded field, today is a strong contender.

After destroying Mace Tyrell’s forces the Golden Company has surrounded King’s Landing rather than infiltrate. They are dug in around the city to ensure he will not be able to break them, facing precisely the direction he is arriving. Clearly Tyrion has seen how one siege turned for this city when the Lannister armies arrived, and he has prepared for it. 

Yes, he can recognize his little brother’s fingerprints on this plan. Tyrion has plotted this invasion in full knowledge that Jaime would be his opponent, and he has held nothing back. Even knowing from the first that it would be the case, it still strikes him to the core to see it. Bad enough he had slain Joffrey and his own father, now he is trying to kill all the rest of them too. With a real army, even, where Jaime is certain to meet them in battle. Tyrion has no love left for him then, and he will never get his brother back. This is bitter medicine indeed.

The city gates are held by Targaryen banners, but the Red Keep still flies the colors of Tommen Baratheon, first of his name. That is Jaime’s one hope, that they are not yet invading the Keep. The best he can hope for is to save his sister and son from the headsman, by somehow rescuing them from a captured city surrounded by enemy troops.

Never before has Jaime Lannister looked out on a battlefield and known that he is going to lose. He has lost once before, but he had not looked upon the Whispering Wood and known he would be beaten and captured on top of it. He had been confident in their victory that day right to the bitter end.

Perhaps Robb Stark has taught him what that looks like. Defeat. When they crest the last rise before King’s Landing Jaime sees it spread out before him. It’s in the enemy’s position on the field, their greater numbers, the time he cannot spend to formulate an optimal attack formation when they might at any moment turn and sack the Red Keep. He knows their forces will lose the city, and that he will lose absolutely everything.

He attacks anyway.

In the end, when victory is so well out of reach that it is pointless to continue, he arranges the remnants of the Lannister army into an arrow, a battering ram, and punctures through to a minor gate. With a small squadron he enters the city, and arranges a slow leak behind him of troops, instructing all to protect the citizens wherever they can, and if they must, to shed their armor and join the citizenry rather than return to the field, which is lost. The city bells ring out behind his instructions, faintly but with increasing urgency.

Jaime leaves behind his Lannister colors with his soldiers, ducking into one of the secret passageways the Kingsguard had discovered after Father’s death. These tunnels run beneath all the city and throughout the Red Keep, dug long ago and forgotten about until his brother disappeared into one. They searched them thoroughly back then and he has personally beheld a map of their entrances and exits. This one empties out closer to the Keep, and if he has any luck left he can emerge unnoticed. He will have to move quickly and without attracting attention, and he hopes his regiments clashing in the streets will keep attention away from the Red Keep. 

He knows at the back of his mind that this is, at best, a mummer’s farce. He is Jaime Lannister the Swordsman no longer; he left that behind with his hand. Before that, he might have battled his way through the entire city and conducted a rescue fit for songs. Instead he is slinking through darkened tunnels, a knight with no sword arm, no plan, and no chance, with nothing left but his honor. And what good will honor do him now? Honor is a horse, and he left it in the Riverlands.

When Jaime crawls out of the passageway and back onto the streets, he hears the ringing of the bells a little louder now, mixed with the shouts and screams of the terrified residents of King’s Landing.

He manages to mingle into a crowded stream of people pushing towards the Red Keep, hoping to find shelter. The gates will be shut, he knows, but there is another passage nearby that he can follow inside. Engulfed by the mob, Jaime can relax a little. The mass of people will shield him well, assuming they continue to go in the right direction. 

Somewhere in the distance, a telltale sound is twinging at his memory. A sound and a faint smell, one he has not smelled for a very long time. He is trying not to acknowledge what that might be. It makes his heart beat a little bit faster just the same. 

The human flow is diverted not long after that by a man on a white horse, wearing golden armor. Harry Strickland, by Jaime’s estimation, a mild-looking and round-faced man whose voice is not quite loud enough to command the crowd.

“Return to your homes!” he shouts uselessly, as the stream diverges around him. “The transition will be peaceful if you will just…”

His plea dies out in the tummult. Jaime is swept past him, ducking his head to keep from being recognized. He looks up and down the streets ahead to see just what Homeless Harry is trying to divert them from, and spies a small contingent of Golden soldiers wrestling two large barrels towards the Keep. Soldiers, and one small figure in his own miniaturized version of the golden armor, observing their progress. 

Tyrion.

He would have stopped short, but is quickly shoved forward by unseen hands. His heart speeds even more the closer they come to this small party. 

The barrels. What are they doing with the barrels? 

He is tempted to pull his helmet back on, to escape detection, but that will make him only more conspicuous. And he needs to be able to see this. Are they bringing the barrels to the Red Keep? Wine, he hears in speculative snatches around him, from people who surmize the soldiers as looters and the dark wooden barrels their spoils of war. But they are not filled with wine. He has not seen those barrels in nearly twenty years, but he could hardly forget them. Their shape and size he remembers well, and they have that smell out of nightmares, the same one he has been detecting on the air ever since he entered the city.

His jaw goes slack as the smell washes over him, the acrid stench of wildfire. He stops in his tracks again and is pushed aside from the flow of people, closer to the barrels of wildfire that they are dragging up from under the city, and he is frozen a moment in their contemplation.

Worse, his brother turns his head and looks directly at him. 

He quickly turns his back and pushes his way into the crowd, but too late. A Summer Islander in a colorful feathered cloak catches his arm and drags him backward, and he is quickly brought face-to-face with Tyrion.

“Not here,” his brother says, looking from side to side. “Take him into the alley.” 

Jaime is dumped unceremoniously onto his knees on a side street, out of sight of the crowd and the other Golden Company soldiers. He briefly entertains the idea of drawing his sword and slaying them both, but he still, even now, cannot bring himself to draw his blade against his brother.

“So.” Tyrion stands eye-to-eye with him, his ruined face triumphant. “You’re here to concede defeat? Or are you coming for Cersei?”

Single-mindedly, he looks past his brother out to the streets where the barrels are passing by. “What are you doing with those? Do you know what they are?”

“Never mind about that.” Tyrion moves to recapture his gaze, but Jaime is stubbornly fixated. “If you must know, we mean to knock on the gates of the Keep. If they do not answer, we will knock a little more emphatically.” 

“You fool! There are dozens, hundreds of barrels of wildfire beneath our feet, spread for miles! The entire city will go up in flames…”

Tyrion’s knowing eyes bring his revelation shuddering to a halt. His brother knows this already. He knows about the wildfire.

His stomach drops as though he is falling, and the color drains from his face.

“You’re burning the city,” he whispers, shocked. He knew Tyrion was angry, but he had not known he would do something like this. Perhaps Cersei had been right about him all along. Tyrion is a monster.

“No.” Tyrion puts up his hands, his palms beseeching him. He looks rather more like the boy Jaime remembers, the way he once looked when he knew he had done wrong and was not yet ready to admit it. “This wasn’t the plan. We’re only going to use these barrels, and after bringing them up. It’s Connington, he’s set fires in Flea Bottom and they’re spreading to the tunnels below. We’ll put them out.”

“You told all your company of the wildfire stores? For gods’ sake, why?! For what?” 

Tyrion’s mouth tightens, his lips thinning, and Jaime sees that he is not nearly so triumphant as he would like. His brother has lost control of a situation that he had carefully planned out to the last letter, and he is worried.

Reluctant to show it, Tyrion’s hands make fists at his sides, and he raises his voice another notch. “Do not lecture me as though I am a child. I told you, it was Jon Connington. The man’s lost his wits. Keeps saying he can’t let Aegon down again, something about the bells ringing.”

“Oh, I suppose it’s not your fault then? You were only going to burn the Keep, and everyone in it, and that’s, what, a hundred people? And for what?” Jaime spits back at him angrily. “Aegon Targaryen is dead.”

Tyrion puffs up, happy to explain in this case. “Aegon survived. Varys secreted the babe away during the Rebellion, replaced him with another. He wanted to raise a perfect Targaryen, one without Aerys’s madness. And he has succeeded, as you will soon see.”

“No, Elia would never have let go of the babe, she was too afraid of Aerys. She would have realized a switch immediately. I thought you were clever.” Jaime shakes his head in wonderment. How could Tyrion have accepted such a transparent ruse? “I saw the babe. I saw him just-born and I saw him sleeping in his mother’s arms and I saw him with his brains dashed out by Gregor Clegane. He’s dead. You have a mummer’s dragon and a grudge, nothing more. And for that, you’re going to let the Golden Company murder everyone in King’s Landing?”

“That isn’t --” Tyrion tries to defend himself, and then stops short. “I don’t have to explain myself to you. You’ve been Father’s lackey all your life, undermining me, ruining my only chance at happiness. You pretend to be kinder than Cersei, but you’re just as cruel. And even more thoughtless. I don’t care what you think of me. You wouldn’t understand my plans if I drew them out for you in pictures.”

Jaime laughs at that. “I suppose this is an entirely noble cause for you, a Targaryen restoration, and it has nothing to do with wanting to kill me, and kill Cersei and all the rest of our House.”

Tyrion quickly adopts the same sardonic tone - one that in all likelihood he had learned from Jaime in the first place. “Of course. Bringing down House Lannister is merely a side benefit.” 

He sucks in air, suddenly winded, and closes his eyes briefly. This is a nightmare. This is all a terrible nightmare.

“Hate me if you must,” he pleads with his brother. ”Revenge yourself on me as you did our Father. Spit on our House and our legacy and give the throne back to the Targaryens. Avenge your country girl, but only spare Tommen. He’s only a boy. He’s never harmed you.” 

Tyrion is aghast, startled. Then his cheeks grow quite red. “You really think I would murder Tommen? A child? What kind of monster do you think I am?”

Tyrion had always been very fond of Tommen, of course, and Marcella too. Been a better uncle to them than Jaime had ever been, for certain. Jaime wants to relent for that, forgive him. He never could stay angry with Tyrion; he could never stay angry with any of them. 

He hardens his heart instead. Gestures harshly to the sounds of screaming in the streets. “I suppose your Golden Company are here to buffet the present king with pillows? Carry him on their shoulders to Casterly Rock and feed him sweetmeats? Surely you are not this great a fool. You’ve read the histories, tell me, what happens when the Red Keep falls? Do they not kill the king?”

Tyrion glares up at him with his mouth an angry twist. “Maybe you do, Kingslayer, but I do not.”

Had he not already mourned the loss of his brother he would have reeled back at the blow. Instead he is numb through and through, as from a sudden shock of cold water. 

Then he finds himself rising up to his feet, spinning on his heel and walking away.

Jaime does not run or even hurry, and he does not look over his shoulder. Let Tyrion see his back, and decide whether to insert the knife himself or call on his hired men. Let the Summer Islander draw his bow and launch an arrow into his heart. If the next thing he knows will be the fatal blow, at least this way he won’t see which of them dealt it.

“Jaime!” he hears Tyrion hiss behind him.

He waits for the blow to land with such certainty he is lightheaded with it. But one step turns into a dozen and then more, and he’s still walking. Even when he turns a corner, he expects the mercenaries will easily overtake him at any moment. But he walks on and the alleyway opens up again into the city streets and there is smoke in the air now, not merely a scent but a lingering cloud that hangs low above them, slowly blotting out the sun.

Averting his eyes, Jaime runs and pushes and shoulders his way to the abandoned storehouse that houses a secret passageway into the Red Keep. It takes long minutes of struggle and his heart pounds in his ears the entire time. When he catches a glimpse of green fire, he flinches as though struck. It is a scene from long-ago nightmares, and at times he is seventeen again, and afraid. Everyone will die, and it will be his fault. The air turns to ashes in his mouth and the foul taste is a steady distraction. It pulses in his mind, a harbinger of imminent death.

In the dark passageways he carries a candle and tries to collect himself. The shadows shake against the walls, but it is only his good hand trembling, and it slowly subsides.

Some feeling is bubbling up inside him. Or perhaps many feelings; he can’t sort them out when they’re this big. It’s something that makes him want to scream and scream until he’s got no air left in his body. But he can’t do that right now, he has to find Tommen. If he can hold that down a little longer, he might get out of this situation.

Sick. He feels sick. Sick not just in his guts but in his pounding headache, the wildfire-scented air he breathes, his skin, even his skin, now crawling and clammy. The king is only a boy and he is Jaime’s son and he left him undefended. He abandoned Tommen -- left him to Robert, to Cersei, to Westeros. He let them put that gentle boy on a throne and then he abandoned him. He went galavanting around the Riverlands pretending at diplomacy and chasing after a girl. Dreaming absurd fantasies about “Goldenhand the Just”. Now he is days late to his proper place guarding the king, too late to save King’s Landing. Absolutely everything is ruined, even his fruitless attempts to rebuild his honor. Honor is a wench, and she left him in the Riverlands. He has nothing left but himself, and by now that’s nearly nothing. 

Jaime gets moving again. Sometimes that makes things better, and if it doesn’t, at least he will be somewhere else. He rushes ahead in the darkness, faster and faster until he is nearly sprinting. Outracing the shadows. His candle wavers and flickers and threatens to go out, but he does not slow until he reaches the other end of the passageway and stands panting in the dark, fumbling at the door one-handed.

He emerges in the barracks of the Goldcloaks, thoroughly emptied, stilled again on the inside. Furtively crosses the lower bailey to the White Sword tower and rushes up the stairs. He grasps his Lord Commander’s cloak and throws it about his shoulders, picking up the helm of his office and carrying it under his arm. His sworn knights are nowhere to be seen. At his sweet sister’s side, perhaps. He had hoped to rally them, but perhaps he can follow them to where the royal family shelters.

Jamie hears a cough, and stops short. 

The small sound rings in his ears like an alarm. There was no one in this room when he entered. But the Red Keep is full of secrets, and hidden places. His eyes alight on a cupboard, questioningly, and he realizes he has never once opened it. He must have assumed some sort of supplies are in it, of the sort that he need not trouble himself with. But there was another passage from Maegor’s Holdfast that they had never tracked, one too small to follow. Could it lead to the White Sword Tower?

And what inside it might make that noise? A rat? A cat? Or a child, just small enough to squeeze inside?

Jaime crouches on the ground and opens the cupboard into a darkness deeper than the dimensions should allow. There is no back to the cupboard; instead there is an opening like a yawning maw that leads into the wall, and beyond it he cannot see a thing. 

He needs a light of some kind. Jaime starts to rise to look for a lantern, but the sound of something shifting inside brings him back down to his hands and knees, staring intently into the darkness.

“Hello?” a small voice says tentatively.

A curly towhead leans towards the light, with wide and fearful green eyes. 

Jaime’s heart stops for a moment. “Tommen?” he breathes, his mouth dry.

“Uncle Ser!” The boy brightens immediately, climbing out of the crawlspace. By the time Tommen has scrambled excitedly to his feet he sounds outright cheerful. Then he flings his small arms around Jaime’s neck and squeezes, exclaiming all the while.

“I knew you would come back! Mama said you would come.” At first, Jaime is gratified to hear it. But then the boy jabbers on. “She said you would crush all of the soldiers single-handedly.” 

“Did she,” he comments darkly. Did she laugh when she said it? The only one not hearing the joke is Tommen. He carefully detaches the boy from his neck and holds him out at arm’s length. “How came you to be hiding here? I thought you would be with your mother?”

Tommen’s open face closes slightly as he protests. “I was with Mama! I went in the King’s Tower with her like everybody said, to wait in the ballroom. But I couldn’t find Ser Pounce. He wasn’t anywhere in the apartments. I thought he might of gotten scared and run out into the bailey. I was only going out for a minute but there was…” The boy trails off briefly, and he hiccups and sniffles.

Jaime wipes at the boy’s tear-and-snot-streaked face. 

The King’s face scrunches up with exaggerated fervor. “There was smoke and noise and people everywhere. The door shut and these people were hitting it and shouting to be let in and they didn’t notice me, except one of them pushed me down. I tried not to cry and be a baby -- but all the smoke from the Wildfires, it makes my eyes itch. I wanted to ask a soldier for help but they were all busy. Then one of the Goldcloaks took my hand and said we had to go inside somewhere safe.”

Jaime pats his shoulder distractedly. “Why here?”

“To hide. We ran in the Tower and looked for a good hiding place and I found this. I can go way back inside and nobody can see me. She said I would be safe in here and to be very quiet and only come out if I saw the Lord Commander, because his job is to protect the King. And here you are! Can we go back to my room now?”

“I’m afraid not, your Grace.” Jaime looks to one side and another. Still not another soul in the Tower. If they can cross the Bailey without being seen, he can get Tommen out the very same way he came in. Then a thought strikes him. “Have you followed the passage back? Do you know where it goes?”

Tommen reddens slightly. “I followed it a little bit, but it opens up and it’s really dark and I got scared.”

“Do you think I could fit inside?”

The boy tilts his head and looks at him appraisingly. “If you kind of wiggled. You’re too tall, but you’re thin enough you could crawl through it.”

Getting stuck in a crawlspace is exactly the sort of useless death he’d like to avoid. But if his guess is right, and the passage ends at Maegor’s Holdfast, he has found a way inside. 

“Uncle?” Tommen’s baby face, still round and soft, looks up at him trustingly.

“What?” He says it warily. There are quite a lot of questions he can’t answer right now.

Tommen chews his lip a moment, then looks up. “I’m not the King anymore, am I?”

Jaime stares at him. That is a simple way to summarize the situation. “No. You’re not.”

The boy nods thoughtfully. “That’s all right. Someone else can be the King. I was getting a little tired of it.”

Jaime laughs, rising to his feet. His fingers dangle into Tommen’s golden curls. “That’s fortunate. Now, be quiet a moment, I need to think.”

Is there time to look for Cersei? A pang of anxiety ripples through him. The holdfast isn’t far. His lifelong instinct is to rush to his twin’s side and protect her, and even now a part of him is eager to find his way to her. But she has the Kingsguard, and Tommen has only him. He should protect their son. Surely his sister would agree that their son takes priority, or she should. 

Jaime has a sinking feeling that she would regard it as a betrayal. Leaving without her. But that only strengthens his resolve. Unlike the two of them, Tommen is an innocent. And a knight should protect the innocent.

“Don’t worry, Uncle.” The boy grasps his good hand suddenly, and squeezes it. “The lady knight will find Mama.”

Jaime looks down at him sharply. “What did you say?” 

“The Goldcloak who brought me back to my room. She said she would find Mama next.”

It hits him like a punch in the chest. She. The lady knight. Could it be?

Seven hells. What in the world would Brienne be doing here?

Jaime drops to one knee to grasp Tommen by the shoulders, focusing all his attention on the boy.

“The knight was a woman? Tommen, what did she look like? This is very important.” He’s trying not to shake him -- the boy already looks near tears -- but does he have to talk so dratted slowly?

“She looked like you, Uncle.” Tommen crinkles his face, thinking, and then elaborates. “She was big, wore armor, and she had a gold cloak, and she had a sword with a lion on it, like a Lannister.”

“Big how? Tall, broad? Did she have a homely face? With a big nasty bite in it?”

Tommen glares at him sternly then. “Don’t say that. She was nice.”

Jaime snaps back. “Of course she was nice. I know her. I know that woman. Where did she go, when she left you?”

“She said I should wait for you to find me, and she would find mama and bring her out. She was going back to the ballroom. Don’t worry, Uncle, she’ll find her. She’s very strong.”

“I know that.” Jaime closes his eyes. “Let me think for a moment. Just a moment.”

Back in the camp. He told Brienne the entire situation. Let her overhear exactly where he was going, to defend Tommen and Cersei. Return the sword to me and I will aid you, Brienne had said. 

He had turned down her help, he was sure he did. But like a great bloody idiot, he had given her the sword, when he let her go. Seven hells. Of course Brienne had done exactly what she had said she would. 

“Do you know the way to the Goldcloaks barracks? No, of course not. Think, dammit, think.”

“Uncle?” Tommen finally sounds worried. 

Jaime opens his eyes and studies him. His face is so pale, and he looks so small and so defenseless. He is only eight years old, and there is an entire army of men coming to murder him. 

But he is a Lannister, after all. And a King.

He regards the boy very seriously. “Tommen, can you stay here and not move or make a sound? Stay right exactly here and wait for me?”

“Yes.” Tommen nods seriously. “I can wait.”

“I won’t be long. I have to --” Jaime doesn’t know how to explain. He fumbles with the words. “The lady knight is my friend. I have to make sure she knows the way out. So she can help us escape.”

Tommen actually brightens a little. “And bring Mama too?”

“I hope so. If I can find her.”

Both Cersei and Brienne are somewhere in the Red Keep, and both in terrible danger. Brienne can defend herself, but she is alone, while Cersei has all the Kingsguard to protect her. The same Kingsguard may see Brienne as another enemy, certainly not an ally. But Tyrion will be targeting Cersei directly, her more than anyone. Who is in more danger? He may not be able to protect them both. He may not be able to protect anyone. 

A small hand pats his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Uncle,” Tommen says in a steady voice. “Here, take this with you.”

Somewhat clumsily, Tommen reaches around his belt and draws out a sword.

“The Lady said I should keep this to protect myself, but I think you need it more.”

Jaime knows it when it comes into his hand. Widow’s Wail, the twin blade to Brienne’s valyrian steel. A shortsword, smaller and lighter than Oathkeeper, but with the same clouded red steel as its mate, and as sharp and strong. He is still next to useless with his left hand, but this blade fits to it as though it were shaped for the purpose. 

“Thank you, Tommen.” He pats him on the shoulder again, awkwardly. He thinks to embrace him, but holds just back from it. “I’ll have something for you too.”

He gives Tommen his candle, and sheathes Widow’s Wail in place of his battered battle sword.

“If you hear anyone in the Tower, you will have to put it out. No one can see you, understand? Only come out when I return.” He leaves unspoken the danger that he will not return. Best not to put such ideas into the boy’s head - he simply must return, regardless of whether he finds either of the women he seeks inside. 

Jaime manages to shimmy inside of the tunnel ahead of Tommen, crawling on his belly. Slithering like a snake, more like. So much for his white cloak. He leaves the boy by the cupboard entrance, his candle burning feebly in the dark. For himself he has no light at all, and he has to feel his way along the dirt floor. It’s more of a hole than the other secret passages, a dirt hole, a mole run. With any luck it will not branch out into different directions where he will have no idea which way to go. Worse, he dreads the possibility that the tunnel will be a dead end. Backing out of this would be a lot more difficult than it was going in.

As Tommen predicted, the tunnel widens as he goes. Only enough that he can crawl on hands and knees, but that’s still considerably better. He can move somewhat faster, and the dreadful sense of all the city standing on your back is lessened by a degree. 

As he crawls in the dark his thoughts, undirected, go first to Brienne. He had never meant for her to attempt something like this, and it had never occurred to him that she would try. Now she’s in the middle of a city on fire, while it’s being invaded by Targaryens, and he has told her what happens when the Red Keep is conquered. There will be a slaughter. At any moment the wildfire caches beneath the city will explode. She could die twenty different ways, all of them awful, and none of them necessary. This isn’t her city, or her House loyalty, she has no family or friends here to defend.

She came anyway. She rescued his son, and now… now she is trying to find Cersei. Because she thinks he would want her to. The thought of that makes his throat tighten so that he can hardly breathe. 

He has been fumbling forward for a quarter of an hour when a sudden loud sound shakes the tunnel all around him, so much so he is flung against the walls harshly. Briefly he is convinced the passage will collapse around him, and he will be left to smother. When the shaking stills, and his hands confirm the tunnel is still open ahead of him, he starts moving again, faster this time.

That was a wildfire explosion. Tyrion has blown open the gates. 

Then the passage widens again and he can stand, crouching, and rush forwards fast as he can. This tunnel is much too long to lead to Maegor’s. If it does not lead him out soon, he will have to turn back and return to Tommen. Just a little farther. If it brings him out behind the holdfast he may be able to avoid the Golden Company and swim the moat. 

It feels like forever until his hands find a wall, and this time there is no door. There is a moment of panic until he thinks to drop back to his knees and feel along the ground, which is suddenly wood instead of dirt. It seems be a trap door of some sort. Eventually his fingers find a latch, and the wood panel opens out into more darkness. He has no choice but to tumble down into it, crashing down into a soft and sliding landing, in a huge mass of slippery grain.

He’s inside the granary. On the other end of the Keep. Jaime scrambles to his feet and breaks into a run. 

Outside the air is even more ruined with wildfire, the smoke burning into his eyes. The Outer Yard is a tumult of fighting now, white cloaks and gold cloaks and golden armor. Cersei must be nearby, if the Kingsguard are here. Did she leave the holdfast and make for the throne room? Without Tommen?

Then he sees Brienne, and nothing else matters.

He finds her fighting, of course. She’s fought her way up to the stairs, nearly to the great hall. Fending off two golden-armored opponents at once, letting them expend their energy avoiding each other and battering against the brick wall of her guard. Once she wears them out she will strike them down with a single mighty blow, one each, and the look of surprise on each of their faces to take that blow will outlive them. 

She wears the helm he had packed onto her horse. She had lost most of her armor during her misadventures in the Riverlands, and he had thought it a great joke to pass on the Hound’s helm, taken from the slain Brotherhood wretch who had worn it last. He has compared her to Sandor often enough in his mind, and it amuses him to see her in his famous hound-faced helmet. He does not have to see her face to know her.

It is no less satisfying watching the scene play out exactly as he had predicted. On the contrary. He is struck by the notion that Brienne has gotten better since he saw her last, and considerably better since they had fought each other in the Riverlands. It may be the valyrian steel in her hands, and it may be the battles she has seen since he sent her out from King’s Landing. She is young still, and had been grass-green when he had met her. How many opponents has she fought since? Whatever the reason, she moves faster now, more confidently, and she easily overpowers her opponents despite that she is still recovering from serious injury. He does not doubt for a single second that she will prevail. Wielding Oathkeeper she looks a knight out of legend, and not a patchy hedge knight either.

When the second soldier slumps to the floor, his mouth a round open “oh” of surprise, Jaime calls out to her. “Brienne!” 

She turns her head, her eyes enormous and blue and blue. Her sword arm drops, and the stone floor holds the weight of Oathkeeper for her. Her arm is still healing. It must pain her, swinging such a heavy sword. 

It occurs to him, very suddenly, how he must look. His armor would be bloodstained from battle, and his white cloak and helm would be caked with dirt. It’s a wonder she even recognizes him.

Strangely unbalanced, Jaime says the first thing to come into his head. “I offered you a golden cloak months ago. I thought you didn’t want it?”

“Ser.” She breathes heavily as he approaches, a faint sheen of sweat shining from her pale skin. “I called it a den of brigands and disreputables. I have not changed that opinion. But I find it suits me now.”

“What are you doing here?” He does not mean his tone to be so sharp. It cuts her just the same. “What business would bring you to King’s Landing, in the middle of a siege?”

“Oathkeeping.” She sets her mouth in a firm, stubborn pout. “I may not be deserving of this blade, but I will earn it.”

His own words thrown back at him. It gets his blood up.

“You swore me no oath.” Jaime pulls off his helmet and lets it drop to the ground with a loud clang. “Nor were you bestowed that golden cloak to defend this city. You shouldn’t have come!”

“I’m defending it now. The man I pulled the cloak from had no more use for it, and the Gold Cloaks needed the help.” Brienne gestures to the other end of the Keep. “I left the King in the White Sword Tower. I thought you would find him there.”

“I did. Then I heard about the very brave lady knight who rescued him, and I had to come to see for myself it was you.” He takes a deep breath to steady himself. “If I say I have been very, very stupid, will you leave off and come away with me?”

Brienne removes her own helmet, and her hair unfurls behind her like a yellow flag. His breath catches at the sight. Her golden cloak, her yellow hair. 

“I must keep my oaths. I swore to find the King and Queen Regent and bring them out alive.”

“You did not! You swore nothing of the kind, and I never asked it of you.”

“I swore it to myself,” she says stubbornly. “I failed you, and I failed Lady Catelyn. I have failed everyone. But I will not fail now. The little King is in the White Sword Tower, and the Queen --”

“Fuck the Queen,” he says sharply. “I will bring her out if I can for Tommen’s sake, but there is little time and less hope. The city is burning and she has made no effort to escape. It may be there is no way to save her.”

“And still you came after her, as I knew you would.” Brienne pounds against the door that leads to the Throne Room. He does not know her face so well as he would like. Her expression troubles him, but he cannot read its meaning. “Go back to the king, bring him to safety. I will find your sister.”

Why are we arguing? He wonders at it, but he cannot stop. He is nearly shouting at her. That feeling crawling up his throat, it must be anger. Or something very like it.

“I put you in chains and put a knife in you! And still you ride into my city, uninvited, to save my son and my twin. You are more of a glutton for punishment than I ever dreamed. If I’d had you whipped, would you rescue Tommen’s cats as well?”

“I suppose it would be too much to expect you to be grateful,” she snaps back. Now this face he understands: Brienne looks decidedly cross. She gives the door one last blow with her mailed fist. “Why did you leave the boy alone in the Tower? Why would you leave the King undefended? I meant you to take him and go!”

“We will go -- with your aid. Help me defend the King, Brienne. Two blades will be better.”

“I’m busy,” she growls. Then Brienne issues a sharp kick to the thick door, and it rattles in its hinges.

She kicks in the door on the second try -- a heavy door, thick and reinforced -- and her boot leaves an imprint in splintered wood as it gives way. She rushes inside without hesitation, and Jaime follows.

Inside, sitting the Iron Throne, is Cersei. She sits the throne much as Jaime once had: insolent, daring their disapproval, and awaiting doom. 

At her right side is a hulking figure, familiar and yet not. The Clegane shoulders, the massive bulk of him, seems somehow to have grown larger. He wears armor cobbled together from pieces, for no forged armor would fit his swollen frame. His face is hidden behind a helmet that reveals not even his eyes, but any man alive would recognize the terrible shape of him, the monstrously huge hands that have torn men and women and children to pieces.

The Mountain.   

Cersei stares uncomprehendingly at them for a long moment, before realizing they are not the invaders she was expecting. Neither does she look relieved at this realization. Strangely, her eyes narrow at him, upon recognition.

Her hair is shorn, her clothes are Lannister scarlet. She is thin and ghostly, pale as moonlight, her face gone angular and aged. Still beautiful - but a wild, wide-eyed beauty, newly brittle. 

Jaime freezes in place, startled. Again they are mismatched. He is cloaked in Kingsguard white, his golden curls lengthening in a lion’s mane. She is a scarlet dagger. And yet the doubling sensation is still there, that she on the throne is him, and he is somehow her. The sensation is only momentary -- it’s spoiled somehow, discordant; they are too different now. He sees himself in the broken mirror of her eyes and for the first time he has to look away in discomfort.

“You are late.” The Queen rises, her voice ice-cold and accusing. “You answered my call too late. And look what you’ve done.”

Before Queen Cersei can utter any commands, a strange croaking sound emits from her protector. It is a sound like someone who has not spoken in years, whose throat has corroded from disuse and creaks like rusted armor at the joints. A word, maybe two, or perhaps just a groan. Jaime does not at first understand what he says, and it sends a chill through him just the same.

He is involuntarily backing away from the throne, his hand reaching out to Brienne to pull her along. But she holds her ground, and when he looks up at her standing between him and Gregor Clegane wearing the helm he had given her, he understands suddenly what that wretched voice had been trying to say.

Jaime grasps at her arm tightly. “Take it off. Take the helmet--”

-- but the Mountain is lurching forward, his great lumbering steps closing the gap between them in seconds, long enough only to say again in his great creaking voice: “Sandor...”

And then he is upon them.

#Ring of Fire #Tumblr fic #probably one chapter left on this one

[seasonsofeverlark]

Everdeen Scrooge

Author: @norbertsmom​

Prompt: Hunger Games Christmas Carol [submitted by @katnissandpeeta125​]

Rating: T

Summary: Several years after the war that ended President Snow’s tyranny over Panem, Twenty two year old Katniss Everdeen doesn’t want anything to do with the new Christmas holiday instituted by the New Panem Government. Can a ghostly visit make her change her mind?

Author’s Note: Special thanks to @mega-aulover​, my friend and beta, and all around expert on A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, which this fic is based on. This post includes chapters 1 and 2 out of a total of 6. The other chapters will be posted separately.

___________

Chapter 1

Katniss expels a puffy cloud of air then releases her bow string. There’s silence for a moment as the arrow flies.

  “You got it,” Gale exclaims as he stands up from their blind. 

  In the distance, gobbling can be heard as several turkey hens flee, a large gobbler lay still in the snow with an arrow sticking out of its side.

  The snow crunches under their boots as they approach it. Katniss pulls out her arrow as Gale picks up the bird by its feet. “This is going to make a great Christmas dinner, Catnip.” 

  “Nope,” Katniss says, shaking her head. “That bird is going to make several meals for the next few weeks.”

  “But,” Gale tries, as he loops the turkey strap around its feet and neck.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll give you your share. You did help me track it, and now you can carry it.”

  “What about Christmas dinner tomorrow?” Gale asks as he lifts the strap over his shoulder.

  “I’m not wasting all that meat on one meal,” Katniss says as they start walking back to town. “I need to make sure we have food for the rest of the winter. Who knows when I’ll get a chance to hunt again.” 

  “Are you coming to our party tonight? You mom and sister are planning to be there. I heard them planning it with my mom.”

  “Nope. I’ve got to get a decent night sleep so I can come back out hunting in the morning.”

  “Come on, Catnip. The new government has given us tons of opportunities, better pay, more affordable food, better houses even. You don’t need to hunt every day. You really need to spend some time with your friends and family.”

  While it’s true that the new Panem government has provided better lives for all of Panem. After the war was over and President Snow was executed, a new government was created with representatives from each of the districts. Katniss still has a problem trusting that things won’t go back to the way they were before the revolution. 

  She and her family nearly died of starvation after her father died in a mine explosion. Ever since, she’s been very frugal with food and with money. Gale used to be as frugal as she is, but ever since he fell in love with Leevy Johnstone, he’s been different. She’s tired of the same old argument. 

  Her best client, Haymitch Abernathy was dead. Gone these past few months. He was a victor and a war hero, but no one paid him no mind because he kept people at a distance. Just like she tried to do. 

  He paid Katniss extra coin for good game meat on a regular basis. She missed the old drunk codger.  When he died not many people went to his funeral, only Katniss, Peeta Mellark, and the old Capitol Escort, Effie trinket attended. 

   “Let’s just get this turkey in cold storage so we can go into town to trade the rest of our haul,” Katniss gripes, ignoring his plea.

  After the oohs and aahs from her mother and sister over the turkey, and disappointment in their eyes from the news of Katniss’ plans for the turkey, she and Gale head to town to finish their trades. 

  With trading at the now legal hob, and other merchants in town complete, Katniss and Gale head to Mellark’s Bakery for their last stop of the day. Even though Seam folks are now welcome in the front of the bakery, trades are still conducted at the back door.

  Katniss climbs the steps to knock on the door, while Gale stands at the bottom of the steps digging around in his game bag for his trade. She wishes she could have gone to the bakery on her own, but Gale said he needs to get something too. 

  The youngest Mellark, Peeta answers the door. Peeta has been in charge of the bakery for four years now, after his two older brothers married girls who inherited their own family businesses. 

  “Merry Christmas, Katniss,” Peeta greets with a warm smile. “Are you here to trade?”

  Katniss is momentarily blinded by his warm easy smile. It always takes her a second to snap back into the moment. She really enjoys when they spend time after their trades chatting, but first there’s trading to do. She needs to stay focused. 

  “Yes I am here to trade,” she says as she holds up a pair of fat squirrels. 

  “You always get them through the eye,” Peeta says, rubbing the back of his neck.

  “She sure does,” Gale says as he walks up the steps behind her.

  Katniss clenches her jaw and levels Gale a shut up look. She needs a good sale. “I know how much you like squirrels, so I got an extra one for you, because I know tomorrow you’ll be closed. I wanted to make sure you have enough game meat to last you-" 

  "One day,” Peeta says, smiling, his blue eyes sparkling.

  Gale covers a laugh from behind her.

  “A lot can happen in one day,” Katniss defends. “Besides, you could always bring a dish to one of your brothers’ homes. I’m sure they could use the extra game meat. How many nephews do you have now?”

  “Two with one more on the way,” Peeta says brightly.

  “See I’m sure they could use the extra meat.”

  “Okay, hold on; let me get the bread for you and some coin for the extra meat.”

  “Perfect,” Katniss says, nodding.

  When her trade is done Gale steps up with a rabbit from his bag. “A small bag of cookies, please.” 

“Sure thing,” Peeta says, taking the rabbit into the kitchen.

  After Peeta leaves, Katniss gives Gale an incredulous look.

  “They’re a present for Posy,” Gale defends. “She’s really into the spirit of Christmas, especially the presents,” he says with a laugh.

  After Peeta returns with the bag of cookies, Gale tucks them into his game bag.

  Katniss and Gale turn to walk back down the steps, but Peeta speaks up before they get very far, “Hey, Katniss. Could I ask you something?”

  Kaniss looks back to Peeta, but he’s looking at Gale. 

  The two men seem to come to some kind of silent agreement and Gale says, “I’m going to head over to the sweet shop for more presents for Posy. I’ll meet you out front, Catnip.”

  Katniss is a bit stunned by their exchange, but shakes her head and walks back to Peeta. “What did you want to ask me?” she asks, hesitantly.

  Peeta stammers for a minute, “Would you, ah,” he rubs the back of his neck and looks down at his shoes before blurting out, “would you go out on a date with me?” He looks back up; his blue eyes plead for her answer as his cheeks turn red.

  “Oh, I-I don’t date,” Katniss stammers out before running down the steps. She runs down the alley between the shops and almost collides with Gale, who could not have made it to the sweet shop and back already.

   "You know you were cold toward Peeta,” Gale tells her.

  “I was not.”

  “Katniss, listen to me. that Merchant is decent folk and you treat him…”

  “Like what?” Katniss asks, narrowing her eyes.

  “Like that,” Gale points to her face. “You need to stop pushing people away. One day you’re going to find yourself all alone.” He walks away toward the sweet shop, shaking his head.

  Katniss brushes what Gale has to say aside. Just because he forgot what life is like when you don’t have enough food to eat, she’ll never forget. She heads toward home without him.

  “Come on, Katniss,” Prim begs from her seat at the dinner table. Her fingers tangled in the ribbon she’s trying to tie. “I need your help wrapping these gifts for the Hawthornes.” 

  “Sorry Prim,” Katniss replies from her spot on the floor. “I need to finish the fletching for my arrows. It’s supposed to be unseasonably warm tomorrow, so I can’t miss a day of hunting when I don’t know if I’ll get another break this winter.”

  Mrs. Everdeen sets the stew she’s been working to simmer and walks over to help Prim out, deftly tying the ribbon in a well-practiced bow.

  “Thanks mom,” Prim says, before turning back to Katniss.

  “But Katniss, tomorrow’s Christmas. You can’t spend the day hunting; you were out there all day today. What about presents?”

  Katniss sets down her work and looks up at her sister. “Prim, You’re eighteen now. You know we don’t need presents, right? It’s just a made-up holiday the new Capitol thrust upon us to get people to spend money on frivolous gifts nobody needs anyway. We can celebrate the new year next week, like always.”

  “That’s not true, Katniss. It’s not a made up holiday. We used to celebrate with daddy. Right mom?”

  “That’s right, Prim,” their mother agrees with a nod.

  “Well, that was a long time ago,” Katniss huffs. “Things have changed, if you haven’t noticed.

   “So you’re not coming to the party at the Hawthornes tonight?” Mrs. Everdeen asks as she ties the ribbon on the last gift.

  “Sorry, nope. I already told Gale I wasn’t coming. I’m going to get to bed as soon as I’m done here so I can head out at the break of dawn and spend all day in the woods,” Katniss explains.

  Prim turns back to her mother. “Mom, make her come with us, please.”

  “I can’t make her go, Prim,” Mrs. Everdeen says as she caresses Prim’s cheek. She heads back to her stew pot and begins to ladle several servings into a crock, leaving just enough in the pot for Katniss’ dinner. “Put the gifts in a sack, please. Katniss has a mind of her own, always has. If she doesn’t want to go, we can’t make her, but I think she’ll be missing out on some good fun.” Mrs. Everdeen looks over at Katniss with a pointed look.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Katniss says. “Someone needs to make sure we have food to eat around here.” And with that, the conversation is over. 

  Prim and Mrs. Everdeen head over to the Hawthorne’s home and Katniss cleans up her work, eats her stew, and heads off to bed.

  Chapter 2

  Katniss is startled awake by the sound of someone stumbling around in the kitchen. She looks across the room and sees Buttercup standing guard on the empty bed. Her mother and Prim are still at the party.

  It’s not unusual for a patient to show up for her mother in the middle of the night, but they don’t usually just walk right in. Katniss slips out of bed without making a sound, signaling to Buttercup to keep quiet, but he jumps off the bed and runs down the hall. Katniss grabs the large stick she keeps under her bed in case a critter gets in. It should take care of any unwanted human as well.

  She creeps out of the bedroom and avoids stepping on the creaky floorboard just past her mother’s bedroom. As she peeks around the doorframe into the kitchen she sees someone rifling through the kitchen cabinets.

  As she tip-toes up to the trespasser, silent as a mouse, she raises her weapon above her head with both hands. If she’s going to strike, she’s going to make sure she does some damage. She takes in a deep breath and the intruder must hear because he straightens up and begins to turn around.

  She hears the stranger say, “You don’t want to do that,” before she brings the club down with all her might. But it doesn’t make contact until it slams into the floor. She must have squeezed her eyes closed before swinging because she has to open them to see how she could have possibly missed at this short distance.

  She looks up and sees the transparent, smiling face of Haymitch Abernathy, District 12’s recently deceased victor. “Nice to see you too, Sweetheart. Got anything to drink around here?”

  Katniss stumbles back, dragging her club with her until the backs of her legs hit the armchair in the living room and she plops down. “H-h-how can you be here? You’re d-d-dead,” she sputters as she pulls her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around the useless weapon.

  “Yeah, I know,” he laments. “Thanks for coming to my funeral, by the way.”

  “Of course, you were one of my best customers,” Katniss answers. “What am I saying? Is this some kind of Capitol trick? How are you here? Why are you here?”

  “It’s no trick, Sweetheart,” Haymitch explains. “The dead who isolated themselves during their lifetime are forced to roam the earth alone. My penance is to warn others before it’s too late. You don’t want to end up like me.”

  “I’m not alone,” Katniss squeaks. “I have my sister, and my mother… I have friends.”

  “Sure Katniss. You have them now, but you keep pushing them away. In time, your sister will marry and move away, and your mother will die. Then what will you have?”

  Katniss opens her mouth to answer, but Haymitch raises his transparent hand to stop her. 

  “Don’t bother with the excuses, Sweetheart. I know them all. This is my warning to you. You will be visited by three more spirits tonight. Heed my warning, Katniss. Change your life before it’s too late.”

#everlark #everlark fanfiction #winter #winter 2020 #norbertsmom #submission #prompt

[scribbling-stiks]

Retrievers - XLIII - Unstable Flights

A loud cheer erupts from below, and Russia's heart skips a beat. America swoops into the air, blood falling from him into the abyss from his foot, which is glowing a light blue.

On his back is a huge set of glowing, bright blue wings. They look like that of a falcon and are around twenty-five or twenty-seven meters wingspan if Russia had to guess. Russia stares up with wide eyes, and his mouth goes dry.

'Beautiful.'

America hoots and folds the wings in. He dives down and snatches Kansas up into the air. Kansas shrieks and clings to America's arms. America soars across and drops Kansas just above the ground. Kansas rolls to a stop and America snatches up New Mexico and Alabama, one under each arm.

America's foot bleeds furiously. Russia's heart sinks further.

'He's losing a lot of blood.'

America starts to get wobbly after getting Mississippi and the Carolinas across. Russia bites his tongue. The thing begins shredding the door, and Russia can hear it as it rips the metal.

'He's hurting himself.'

The door bends, and Russia slams against it.

'But we don't have another choice.'

America grabs North Dakota and Florida and flies them across. He sinks lower and lower. He just barely avoids crashing into a tree.

"I don't think I trust that!" Ukraine screams.

"It's our only chance!" Finland argues.

South Dakota and Alberta have been treacherously flown across. America circles around and tosses Texas and Ohio into the treeline. Russia makes eye contact with Ukraine. Mexico hoots as she's dropped into the trees.

"Go," Russia demands.

The door bows toward them and Finland pushes back. Ukraine runs over to the edge and America swoops down and grabs him. Ukraine yelps and sings wildly. America's flight becomes jerky. The door begins to push apart. Russia cringes.

'It's about to break.'

Finland looks at him and then glances at her gun that lays discarded right in front of the doors. Russia nods. Finland jumps back and Russia rolls out of the way when the creature comes crashing through. Russia looks up to Finland screaming. He freezes.

The creature has her by the upper arm, thrashing around and blood goes everywhere. Then she flies toward the wall and lands with a yelp. Russia runs over and his blood runs cold.

Finland is bleeding profusely from where her right elbow used to be. Russia freezes for a moment when he hears the creature start gnashing its teeth again. He spins to see it jumping up at America, who is slow to react and ascend. Russia charges.

"GET FIN!" Russia shouts, shoulder checking the beast.

America nods sluggishly and grabs her with some difficulty. They looked like a bloody raincloud. The thing rushed at Russia, and he side-steps. It rams into the wall at full force, leaving a dent behind. But it's quick to hop back to its feet. Russia backs up as it stalks toward him.

Rocks slide out from under his feet, and Russia looks back to see cracks of earth that lead to darkness.

'And probably death.'

The thing lunges. Russia backs up out of instinct. His feet leave the ground. Wind rushes through his ears. He flails in panic.

Hands grab him under his shoulders. He's yanked up, and the arms are shaking and unstable.

He opens his eyes to see an approaching sheer cliff of dirt and stone. He readies himself for impact. Then, he's yanked upwards and dropped into the grass. He rolls to a stop. He looks up to find America, only to see him limply falling toward the ground.

"BEAM!"

A deafening crash interrupts him. America falls out of view and Russia chases after him. He follows the bloody trench to America. He's curled on the ground in a growing pool of blood.

"America?!" Russia asks desperately.

Russia pulls America up, and the wings disappear. America looks up with a weak smile.

"Hi, Ruby."

"Oh thank God," Russia mumbles.

Russia pulls America's feet out from under him and gasps. New Mexico shrieks.

Almost a third of his foot is missing, and the shoe itself had been shredded. All the smaller toes, save the one next to the big toe, are gone. The tendons and muscles twitch. The whole thing glows a flickering blue.

Then his heart stops and he jumps up. North Dakota and Florida take his place and begin to cover America's foot in gauze they retrieve from a first aid kid North Dakota had packed. Mexico turns America on his side into a recovery position. Alberta collects pine needles and Ohio drops his jacket over it to create a cushion for the foot.

At least, what's still left of it. Russia swallows back nausea.

"Where's Fin?" Russia demands.

South Carolina looks up from bandaging North Carolina and mutely points. Russia runs out of the tree cover to see Finland writhing, holding the stump that remained of her arm. Texas is standing nearby, holding his belt.

"I need to stop the bleeding!" Texas screams, trying to wrestle Finland.

Russia runs forward and grabs Finland into a bear hug against his chest. At least, he tries. He wraps his arms around her chest and pulls her back to him. Blood soaks his shirt.

"You have to calm down or you're going to bleed to death!" Russia screams into Finland's ear.

Finland stills and Texas jumps over her legs. He grabs her arm.

"I'm puttin' on a tourniquet. I know it's gonna hurt, but I can't have you bleeding out on me."

Texas secures the belt as close to the shoulder joint as he can manage. Finland screams as he tightens it. Russia's heart sinks. He holds tighter.

"We have to get out of plain sight," Russia says.

Texas nods. Texas takes Finland's ankles, and Russia carefully hoists Finland up with her good arm. Finland bits her good hand to muffle her cries of pain. Russia flinches with every single one.

They manage to drag Finland back to America, where Kansas, Ohio, and South Dakota start making a camp of sorts. Mexico is crouching behind America, rubbing his back. America is crying. The tears make Russia's heart shatter.

Alabama and Mississippi run into the area with sticks and twigs and New Mexico arranges rocks to form a firepit.

"Do you have any painkillers in there?" Finland asks.

"No. Sorry," North Dakota replies, her voice sounds strained.

"Oh... okay," Finland mumbles, her head lulling back.

"Hey, don't go to sleep," Ohio says, prodding at her face.

"Okay," Finland replies with a groan, "God, now I need a new arm."

The trees form a canopy above them, but there is enough room on the ground to have a fire. Russia finds himself incredibly grateful for it. Brazil clears the area inside and around the rocks. Ukraine is standing nearby, looking frozen.

America pulls himself against a tree behind him. His eyes light up again. Livid.

"All of you. Here. Now."

Texas walks forward. New Mexico, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and North Carolina shuffle forward. Brazil and Mexico try to collect more wood. Russia sits next to America.

"Why are you here?" America demands.

"We wanted to help."

"That isn't true," Kansas says, crossing his arms, "and if it is, it's not everything."

Texas looks away.

"I will ask you again. Why are you here?"

"I..."

"Did Dixie let you leave?" America snaps, his magic flashing.

"No! No, he didn't even know."

"You didn't tell him?!"

Texas stares at the ground. America moves his gaze to the others. Alabama shrinks away. Mississippi looks at his feet. North Carolina sits down, and South Carolina helps her down. New Mexico stares next to America's head.

"Whose idea was it?"

"..."

"I asked a question!"

Texas mumbles something, and America tries to stand. Russia jumps up and pulls him back down.

"Beam, you have to sit down."

America growls and falls back. He lays his bandaged foot out in front of him.

"Texas!" America shouts, "come here!"

Texas shuffles forward, his shoulders hunched.

"What the fuck were you thinking? Why did you come here?! Why did you think this was a good idea? YOU WERE TOLD TO STAY HOME FOR A REASON!"

Texas' shoulders shake a little. America doesn't seem to notice.

"And not only did you decide to come here, which was a stupid decision, by the way, but you also dragged your siblings along! Did they even want to come?!"

Texas pauses before shaking his head. Texas takes his hat off and begins twisting it between his hands.

"We were fine! We were okay! And now-"

Russia puts a hand on America's shoulder.

"Meri, please. Calm down."

"Why?!"

"You're going to say something you're going to regret."

America growls.

"Now we-"

"America!" Russia shouts.

"Why won't you let me finish?!"

Russia flinches and his ears fold down.

"It's not his fault."

"It would've gone much better if they just stayed home! We almost died, Russia!"

Russia leans away for a second, his ears pinning back. He looks up to see Texas swiping at his face.

"I'm sorry."

"You should be! You should not have left! You're not okay!"

"Well, I don't want to be useless!" Texas screams.

America flinches back, gasping a little.

"Baby..." America mumbles, regret filling his voice.

"I'm sorry I keep fucking everything up, okay?! I'm just trying to help! I don't- I didn't want anyone to get hurt..."

Sobs escape Texas' mouth. The anger that had filled Russia's chest dissipates.

"I didn't think I'd fuck this up too. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have left. I know Dixie is angry. I know you're angry. I'm so sorry."

"Tazzy," America says softly, "I'm not just angry. I'm always worried about you, all of you, and now I find out that you left without letting anyone know. What if you got captured? What if you went missing? What if you died?!"

Texas starts crying. Russia stands up and opens his arms. Texas slowly walks into him and hugs him. Russia could feel Texas hugging him tightly. Russia begins purring, trying to comfort his own swirling emotions and Texas' as well. Texas quiets and shakes.

Alabama and Mississippi hug Russia as well, both teary-eyed. Russia opens his arms and continues purring as loud as he can. America starts crying himself, and Russia's tail puffs up a little.

Mexico pulls America into a side-hug. Finland whines and groans, looking at her nub with confusion. Alberta sits quietly at Ukraine's feet. South Carolina shivers violently against North Carolina. The rest of the states try to start a fire with the driest sticks they could. A cold wind whips through the trees.

'What a mess.'

~

Next

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Table of Contents

[writing-the-end]

LoL 48- Cut By Guillotine

Masterpost

A Wizard Hermits tale (AU, designs, ideas belongs to @theguardiansofredland)

Doc’s been captured by the Arcane Guard, and sentenced to death by the Council. The hermits aren’t about to let Dolios take their family.

Warning: burning, execution scene

_____________________________________

The low toll of the bell cuts through the heavy mist that blankets Milliara. Louder than any steeple, it’s dark, grim song tells everyone in the city that death comes. And by the size of the crowd, death comes for all to watch. So many eyes, staring at the gallows in the main square of the city. 

And so few watching the bell toll. Rocking back and forth, vertex to vertex, and with each clap of the tongue, another figure appears in the tower. Twenty something pairs of eyes, staring at the pyre of wood and the guards surrounding it. 

The bell goes quiet, and Ren speaks up. Red illuminates, reflecting off the brass, as he casts his imagination magic. “I don’t see him, dudes. Are we sure this is the right time and place?” 

“Who else would the Council set up an entire heap of wood for, in the center of Milliara?” Scar growls, his fingers digging into the stone. He roves his eyes across each and every guard, those who stand between the hermits and their friend. He let the Council take Doc away from them once. He’s not going to let it happen again. 

“I see him!” Xisuma points to the massive iron portcullis, teeth opening like the maws of a beast. Glistening metal fangs threatening to bite down on the soldiers. And at the center of the dozen strong squad, Doc’s green skin and tattered clothes stand out like a sore thumb. So many guards, just for one prisoner. All of this, just for one prisoner. 

But not just any prisoner. Doc Monster. Criminal mastermind, failed rebel, and now? Enemy hermit. Chains around his arms, holding his hands behind his back, drag him from the walls of the prison. Where he’s spent the last week, while the hermits scrambled for a plan. He had only left the prison once in that whole time, and it was to stand trial. 

Not like it was much of a trial in the first place. If there’s one thing the hermits have learned, it’s that Dolios can put on a hell of a show. Doc was brought before the council, each guildmaster a judge, and a panel of citizens for the jury. They ensnared Doc with questions he had no fair answer to, gave him little time to explain his own side of the story. And whenever he attempted to bring up the Magistrate and dark magic, was met with objection and silenced. It was a false trial, the jury unanimously finding him guilty and advocating for his demise. The Council agreed- well, most of them. Surprisingly, Apatia was present for the trial, and dissented from the six others and the jury. He saw Doc’s innocence. 

The guards drag Doc to the pyre of wood, and the hermits split apart. A few stay in the belltower, a bird’s eye view. Including Grian and Mumbo, the former hovering in the misty air. The others spread out, peppering themselves into the crowd and at the fringes. Etho, Scar, BDubs, and Beef disappear completely from the watching view. 

The metal chains are slowly, carefully removed from Doc, a quiet hush mixing with the heavy air. He doesn’t try to run, his shoulders square and his head raised. He doesn’t fight or flee. But he definitely isn’t going to help his captors kill him either. A guard pushes him forward, and he stumbles over the logs and branches that rise like a mound. At the center of the hill, a stake pierces the mist, splintered into a sharp spear at the top. 

For as noble and magical the kingdom of Lairyon is, burnt at the stake was barbaric. But it was exactly what Dolios wanted. For all to see what happens to those who break his rules. Challenge his rule. The guard yanks Doc’s arms behind the wood pole, each jerk of the writhing rope tightening and whipping across Doc’s skin. At some point during his capture, he lost both of his gloves. Despite the rough treatment, the manhandling, the imminent death, and the thousands watching, Doc remains stoic. He doesn’t speak a word, doesn’t lower his head in penitence, and doesn’t break his gaze, across the sea of fools before him. 

In the windows and on the balconies of the surrounding buildings, the hermits are prepared. Stress stands closest to the pyre, anxiously bouncing from foot to foot. She knows, somewhere behind the stake, the rescue team is waiting to swoop in and grab Doc. She just has to do her job. She will do her job. 

The glow of the fire is soft in the fog, but the flaming torch is anything but gentle. Passed from guard to guard, the soldier at the edge of the pyre raises the flame. Doc glares at the corner of his eye. “Don’t I get any last words?” 

“You just used them.” The executioner snickers, and tosses the torch in. It’s a careless throw, as if he was simply discarding an unsatisfactory stick. 

The torch nestles into the nest of wood surrounding, propping up Doc. When the first ember hit the pyre, Stress released all her pent up fears into pure ice magic. It froze the fog into shards of suspended ice, the damp cobblestone at her feet becoming slippery, as she throws all her magic and might into freezing out the flame. 

But by the time the first ember meets the timber, it was already too late. The wood ignited with such heat and aggression, it might as well have been summoned from hell itself. It vaporized the ice immediately, and engulfs the stake with orange tongues of fire. 

“Cinderwood!” Mumbo cries from the top of the bell tower, the burning pile of wood and his friend reflecting off of his eyes. The trees this wood came from grow near volcanoes. They burn faster than anything else in all of Lairyon, even a hot day can cause the trees to spontaneously combust. And now? The flames are engulfing Doc, eating away at him as tongues of orange lick up the wooden pole, dancing against his skin and singing his tattered cloak. 

Doc’s face remains emotionless. His jaw still set, eyes staring down the crowd. Not a tear, not a writhing attempt to escape. He’s accepted his fate- and he will not be used as a pawn in Dolios’s game. 

While Doc remains calm, the other hermits do not. The flames rise higher and higher, setting his clothes ablaze and charring his skin. Green burns black, metal begins to glow red. The hermits scramble, panicked. Hypno does his best to knock out as many of the auxiliary guards as possible with his magic, but his panic leaves his magic circle weak and stuttering. All of the hermits, even Grian, struggle with their magic. 

Except, for once, Mumbo. In the panic of watching his friend burn, his power ignites into a lightning storm. It rolls and rocks through the ice fog, bolts dancing through the suspended crystals, reflecting through the shards like glass. A red bolt sears through the mist, nearly striking Grian as he flutters and flies above the scene. Mumbo swears, trying to regain composure and control of his magic. 

The hermits have delved the entire square into chaos. The bolt of lightning. Citizens unsure where to go, who to turn to, what’s the right and wrong way. And in that chaos, Doc’s calm shatters. His anger burns stronger than the fire engulfing him, the pain filling every fiber of his being as he slowly dies. “You have all been lied to! I am not your enemy!” 

His eyes lock onto the one person in the crowd not alarmed, not cheering. Dolios, standing calm and cool, amongst the crowd as the everyman’s leader. He waves his hand, and all of the magic around him negates, and the crowd’s attention is forced back to Doc. Wisps of black mist curl around Dolios, disappearing into the grey mist. He smiles, and the crowd cheers. 

Doc strains against the rope that pins him to the stake, stranding him in the fire. The burns on his legs grow more painful. HIs head begins to swim. And hiding just below the surface of his anger, fear shakes through his core. “You’re all fools!” 

And the smile grows. So genuine, so excited. Doc realizes that the magistrate is enjoying this show. He’s enjoying watching him die. The anger shatters, allowing fear wash over Doc. This entire time, he’s refused to feel this way. To let Dolios see him afraid, scared to die. He’s never been scared of death before. Why now? 

He turns his eyes up, and notices blue feathers in the mist. He tries to wipe away the ashen tears to get a better look, but his hands are bound. No matter, the fire evaporates it halfway down his cheeks. He’s afraid to die because he has a family. Scar, Xisuma, BDubs, even Grian, as annoying as he is. Every hermit means more to him than anyone else. He doesn’t want to leave them. 

He doesn’t want to go. 

But he has no choice. The fire burns his jaw, steaming away the tears as they fall from horror stricken eyes. Each breath from Doc’s parted lips is shaking, wondering which will be the last. His lungs fill with smoke, and his body grows heavy with fear and pain. 

Dolios smiles through it all. The pyre illuminating the genuine grin, matching the hungry fire in his eyes. Darkness creeps into Doc’s vision as the pain becomes unbearable. He refuses to let Dolios be the last thing he sees. He turns his eyes to the sky, watching wings dance in the red lightning. 

The flames douse, water and sand turning fire and flame to ash and charcoal. The panicked hermits freeze, and look to one another. Look to xB, but he’s not cast his magic. If it wasn’t his waterbending...who else is here? 

Doc’s gone still, head tucked to his chest and slumped helplessly against the smoldering ruins of the stake. Smoke makes it hard to see the stage, only the sound of the arcane guard’s armor. They scramble to reignite the fire and find the culprits. As soon as the army sets foot upon the platform, however, they become afflicted. Their faces contort, legs wobble as their feet are frozen to the ground. Fear and panic is written across their eyes. Some abandon their halberds, running as far from the swelling sensation of terror. 

“Don’t just stand there !” Dolios shouts, pointing his finger at the smoldering ruins. “Execute him!” 

Few guards are able to slough through the heavy weight of the emotions. Those that do are met with only more resistance. Springing forward, cacti grows from the ashen ruin, their spines like weapons defending the unconscious- or is he even alive?- hermit. From the sky, from the grey mist and red lightning, a black figure swoops into the smoke. The hermits look around, but both Tango and Grian are still in the sky. Ebony wings stir up the smoke. In the shadowed smog, ropes are cut free. 

Scar is the first to realize something is happening. “We have to get him back! Now’s our chance!” 

Smoke clears, revealing an empty stake and two figures in the soot filled air. The crowd gasps and the hermits struggle to get closer to their missing friend. Eyes glued to the wings and purple, joined by a fin and scarf in the blustering air. 

Until the world goes white, blinded by light so bright, it burns away the fog and opens the sky to the afternoon sun. Even Dolios and the hermits are forced to avert their eyes from the starlight before them. Shouts of confusion arise from the pandemonium of the botched execution. 

Xisuma knows that magic all too well. The light so bright, it even burns away the darkness of his void magic. Where his magic is the end, this is the beginning. Light and energy as powerful as a supernova. Because his magic is a supernova. 

He knows Ex’s magic anywhere. As soon as he’s able to see again, as soon as Xisuma spots the red cloak falling to the canals beneath the cobblestone, he grabs the other hermits and gives chase. 

Leaving behind the failed execution, the only proof that a man was nearly burned alive was a red bolt of fabric, still burning at the tips. And one furious magistrate.

#hermitcraft #hermitcraft au #hermitcraft fanfic #light of lairyon #wizard hermits #wizard au #lol #wizard doc #wizard scar #wizard ex #wizard stress #wizard mumbo #docm77 #gtwscar #evil xisuma #stressmonster101 #mumbo jumbo #burning cw #execution cw

[thegeminisage]

writing that’s not supposed to be writing but that’s just supposed to play the mental movie for you:

"I'm not trying to smother you, man," Dean says. "But I can't—if anything happened to you—" He stops again. "Sammy, let us handle the demons. God knows you've done enough." He closes his eyes briefly against the memory of Sam's face right before he fell. It's okay, Dean. I got him.

"Dean," Sam starts, like he's gearing up to dig in his heels on this one, but he's cut off by a distant boom. It sounds almost like thunder, but summer is long over and there’s no flash of lightning to explain the noise.

Dean squints out into the dark. "Did you hear that?"

Something massive and unidentifiable rises up behind the woods, blotting out the stars behind it, then swoops back down.

Sam grips the porch railing so hard his knuckles whiten. "Is that demon smoke?"

Boom. This one rattles every window in Bobby's house, close enough that Dean feels it in his feet. "Sam, get inside," he says, keeping his eyes on the treeline.

"Dean, what if that’s Balthazar? We have to—"

Something in the distance glows bright white and then fades behind the trees. The wind's starting to pick up. "I said get inside! Now!"

Bobby opens the front door. "What in the hell—"

"Both of you, get down!"

Too late. The light explodes—

-

When Meg’s perception settles, she's standing in tall dry grass that ripples in the sulfur-scented wind, dark wandering silhouettes barely visible against the deep blood-red of the sky. Something huge and jagged juts up out of the ground. For a moment everything is very still.

This is even worse than she thought. It's dark inside Sam Winchester's soul.

Then there's a sound like a thunderclap and the ground heaves beneath her feet. Around her, the shadows all stumble off their mysterious paths. She hears a child sobbing somewhere in the dark. That jagged thing the distance—it might once have been a wall—comes further apart, piece after piece crashing to the ground. The sky’s faint red light flickers dangerously.

Meg picks her way across the unsteady ground to the nearest shadow and turns it to face her. It's Sam-shaped, younger than the version outside, but its teeth are bared and its eyes demon-black. "It's a prison,” Sam’s voice snarls, "made of bone and flesh and blood and fear. And you sent me back there!"

"What the hell," Meg hisses, and lets go. She doesn’t understand why the words sound so familiar until she sees the brand, the binding link that she put on that arm to keep herself in Sam’s body. She’s looking at the memory of herself. And if the echo of Meg is here, then Lucifer's must be too.

One of the shadows glances over at her: little-boy Sam, clutching a parcel in his hand. "Dad lied to me. I want you to have it." Another shadow, twenty-two with floppy hair, passes by on her other side. "I have these nightmares. And sometimes—they come true." She wheels around. Another Sam on his knees, black veins spreading over his face, screaming: "Dean! Let me out of here! Let me out! Dean!"

-

Once Meg crosses the last of the wall, the sky gives way to absolute blackness save for a single spark in the distance. Were Meg able to feel, she knows she would be frozen to the bone. She recognizes this place; she spent decades of Hell-time studying it from the outside. This is the Lightbringer's Cage.

Like a camera lens zooming in, the spark rushes towards her until an endless wall of flames fills her vision. Behind the fire: bars, chains upon chains, and six hundred and sixty-six locks to hold the Cage closed. Many are broken, most by her own hand.

"Lucifer," she breathes, and pushes forward heedless of the flames. Fire, her old friend—it will not hurt her here.

Being inside the Cage is like standing in the eye of a hurricane. Two enormous shapes, incomprehensible even to her own mind, circle in the void above her, bleeding malice. The first has wings made of a hundred thousand quivering hands reaching out from a body with too many eyes. The second form is an undulating mass of razorblades and barbed wire and silvery scales, each engraved with tiny ticking clockwork, each razor-sharp. There's another Sam, bleeding and broken, curled around himself on the parched bedrock below. His screams are silent; she couldn't hear them anyway above the clash as the two shapes come together. Lucifer and Michael, still fighting after all this time.

Meg trembles. Even as a memory, the power of Lucifer's true form overwhelms her.

"Lucifer!" she calls. "Morningstar!"

He turns toward her, the attention terrifying and blinding, like being caught in a floodlight. Immediately his brother swoops in for the kill. With a shriek of grating metal and crunching bone, the angels slice into each other with a viciousness Meg has rarely seen even in all her time in Hell.

-

Finally they see it, a hole in the world opening up wider and wider by the second, dividing the stone that stretches up endlessly into the gray sky.

"Come on, Sammy," Dean says. The air is getting colder. "Come on, I know you know this song—"

"Please," Sam laughs, but he does; he's heard it so many times it could be his own lullaby, and when the chorus comes in— "Eeeeexit light!" he shouts, head thrown back. He can't hit a note either. The gate fills their vision; there is nothing else. "Eeeenter ni-ight!"

"Taaake my hand," Dean crows, looking at Sam instead of the looming oblivion before them, and he's smiling too, grinning from ear to ear. He almost looks young again. "We're off to Never-Never La—"

-

Castiel jerks his hand up, wreathing Meg's host body in flame, but she does not burn. "You think fire can hurt me?" she snarls, eyes gone yellow and glowing. The fire flies off of her, embers stinging his skin, and she slides back into smoke and hurtles towards him.

Castiel wraps his tattered wings tight around his vessel and then flings them open, sending Meg slamming into the wall of the barn. Chunks of wood and rot fall all around him as he squints to see where she's gone.

There—a sound to his right. She cracks a solid punch to his jaw that leaves him reeling; she must be very angry to fight like a human.

-

The lights flicker and go out. Dread crawls into Jesse's chest as he stumbles out of bed, limbs feeling clumsy and heavy, breath fogging in the air. A tall, hulking figure materializes out of the shadows on the wall behind Ben and raises something in its hand—a weapon.

A machete.

A frisson of terror, dark and inexorable, rushes up Jesse's spine. He lunges, desperate to stop that wicked blade before it meets Ben's neck, and feels the pain slice into his shoulder instead. That's nothing, his skin is already stitching itself back together, but the impact sends them both sprawling and it takes Jesse a few disorienting seconds to stagger back to his feet. When he finally jerks upright, he comes face-to-face with the ghost.

At first Jesse doesn't recognize him. It's hard to make out any features past the charred exterior: there's an empty space where the ghost's mouth should be, blackened and burned completely away. He sees blond hair, an upturned nose, strong shoulders. But when Jesse meets its eyes—

He knows those eyes. How they looked in the firelight; how they looked as their own light went out. Even after three years, there are some faces you never forget.

-

Argent forces himself up to his elbows, coughing. "Derek?" He tries not to jostle his wound too much when he rolls over. It's difficult to see through the dust the spray of bullets kicked up, but he's able to make out the black shape of Derek's shifted form lying motionless ground a few yards away.

Don't be dead, Argent thinks blankly, ice flooding his veins. Don't be dead.

Derek's not dead. He makes it to his feet before Argent does, then immediately staggers and falls over again.

-

Snow blankets the roof of the watchtower and slicks under Arthur's boots, and in such conditions it's nigh impossible to keep his footing. Visibility is wretched, for up here the wind blows the snow between them, buffeting them back and forth over the icy floor. His father is getting older, yes, but he's still a skilled swordsman, and Arthur, fighting left-handed, is at a distinct disadvantage. He has no shield and wears no armor, not even chainmail; the only thing standing between him and his father's blade is his very flammable cloak.

Arthur's not sure he could kill his father now even if he did want to. He's no match for him like this.

His father's crown has fallen off his head, rolled away to some distant corner. His cloak is damp with snow and singed by fire. His eyes flash gold, sometimes; when they do fire races up the edge of his blade, making him doubly dangerous. Arthur's magic has finally been brought to heel, but his father's is going mad, there one second and gone the next, the flames dying and rising again unpredictably. Presently his sword, still alight with flames, comes down in a hard overhead blow. Arthur blocks in time, but his father's strength is greater—Arthur stumbles all the way back to the battlement, his back leaning out over the open air while their blades are still locked.

"Did you not say once that I deserved to die?" his father hisses, golden-eyed. He looks like some kind of monster. "Think of the things I've done, Arthur. The innocents that have died in my fight against evil! Did you not want to put a stop to it?"

-

Merlin takes the stairs two at a time, gasping for breath. "Arthur?" he calls, heedless of the danger, but there is no reply. The tower is utterly silent, save for the wind whistling through the cracks in the walls. Just a little further, he's almost at the top—

Merlin stops short. A thin line of scarlet cuts through the frozen gray stairs, creeping towards him and pooling around his boots. He thinks he can hear something dripping. He follows the line with his eyes, up, up, and slowly it widens—

It's blood. The stairs are covered with it—the ladder, the trap door...

"Arthur!" Merlin shouts again, and scrambles forward, slipping through the blood, not caring that it stains his hands and clothes, only that it is still warm, it can't be too late, it can't be—

-

Cas has his feet propped on the table, his coat draped over the chair. He's got a beer in his hand. He looks like shit, because he always looks like shit; he's just got one of those vessels. From this angle, Dean can only see the back of him, and his face, angled to look at Sam, in profile. He's smiling.

-

"Nothing," Dean mumbles, and lays his cheek down on the cool surface of the table. His heart's going over-time again. He thinks about being in this kitchen a year ago and trashing the hell out of it. If this were the real Cas, Dean would beat his face in.

Dean hears the clink of Cas setting the bottle down in the sink. He feels rather than sees Cas come over to stand beside him. And then Cas kneels, so that Dean, head still down, sees his face there sideways. And he can't not look at him unless he moves.

-

Dean's vision swims. The pounding in his head gets worse. One of the vampires grabs Dean's hair and, yeah, no, that's more than far enough. Dean knees it in the balls.

Pain as the fangs tear out of his flesh. The vampire howls, hunched over—and then it stops dead, trembling, and begins to scream. Light and fire start pouring from all the orifices in its head, and every cell in Dean's body goes slack with relief. Dean knows it's Cas before the vampire's corpse falls to reveal him standing there.

The vamp behind Dean takes off. Dean shouts as the fangs leave his neck, but there's no way he's letting it get away that easy. He takes aim and hurls his machete after it like he's skipping a stone—it spins through the air and takes the vamp's head clean off. "Go get it," Dean pants to Cas. He doesn't have time to go back for it now. He slips his hand inside Cas's trench coat and pulls the machete out of its sheath on Cas's belt instead. "Thanks, Cas."

-

Mom squints at the projector as they crowd into the library. "Is that Hatchet Man? They must have made more of them while I was dead."

"Yeah, this is the last one. Came out in '89."

"Dean," Sam says, somehow putting decades of disappointment with Dean's taste in movies into a single word. "You're inflicting these on Jack?"

"Trick or treat," Hatchet Man says. "Time to slice and dice."

"We let him drink beer," Dean argues. "What's a few R-rated movies?"

In the movie, someone screams. They all watch Hatchet Man show some unsuspecting skateboarder his own insides.

-

The bunker's red emergency lights come on. There's a shadow standing in front of him. Dean blinks. Dad, he thinks, and his father's boots swim into focus. But—

Dean scrambles back, looking up, up, up—

-

Dean holds up his hands. Fine, whatever, let them have their fun. The pit itself is on the far side of the bunker, in a little dip that's mostly out of sight of the road, so it's not like anybody's gonna see. But the sun's been up for a few hours now, and the four inches of snow that fell overnight makes everything look so much brighter, and Dean's just not used to a daytime fire in a hole.

A realization strikes Dean then, and he smiles. "Hey, Sammy," he calls, and Sam looks up. "You forgot the salt."

Sam throws his head back and laughs.

-

LIIIKE idk if this makes any sense. but there it is. that’s what insane people do we write in a way that involves no words interrupting the mental movie. i am so bad at proper prose this is the only way i know how to do it

#personal #liz loves writing #got distracted reading my [redacted] fic and nearly regressed into accursed [redacted] fandom #not today satan

[love-fireflysong]

Hey hey hey! Trope #3 is in the bag baby! Nothing exciting to note about this one, except that poor @jesus-hotsauce-christmas-cake guessed the number while hoping for some more chrashley. And instead she landed on one of the Tale of Phantasia prompts (I’m so sorry, oops!)

For anyone that would like to read it on ao3, here ya go: What are Rivals if not Friends in Disguise and for the rest, the fic is under the cut.

What are Rivals if not Friends in Disguise

Trope: Rivals Fandom: Tales of Phantasia Characters: Chester Burklight, Cress Albane Words:  2036 Rating: General Author’s Notes: Let’s do a ToP story to mix things up a little! Just a little of Chester and Cress growing up together and trying to one up each other like all the time. Ah friendship rivals, what would we do without them.

For as long as Chester could remember, Cress had been his best friend. The two of them would run together, play together, train together, and fight together. Most of their friendship was based on trying to one up each other honestly, trying to prove who ran the fastest or was strongest. And for a long time Chester had thought that that would be his life, trying to prove that he was better than Cress.

And then Chester’s parents died and his life as he once knew it had spiralled out of his control.

One day he was a simple ten year old boy whose only mission in life was to play with his best friend and tease his sister, and the next he was an orphan with a five year old sister to take care of, a house that now seemed unbearably empty, and the bow in his right hand that was the only reminder he had of his mother. Gone were the days of carefree play, now when he woke up it was make breakfast, wake Ami, clean the house, go shopping, make lunch, fumble his way through trying to patch up a hole in his shirt, wash the blood from the shirt when he inevitably stabbed himself, make supper, clean up the house, and tuck Ami into bed, before falling asleep himself.

Not that the other villagers hadn't tried to help out of course. Cress's mother Maria came over as often as she could to teach him how to sew and bandaged his fingers every time he screwed up. Gloria from across town would usually drop off some leftover stew or the extra bread she had made by accident. Whenever he stopped in to buy groceries from Goalie, Findley always seemed to have a sale going on that let Chester buy far more than he should have with the ten gold he had been able to scrape up from doing odd jobs around Toltus. And anytime he had to go and wash the clothes in the stream that cuts through town, Ruth almost always materialized next to him with her own family's laundry to do and help him out. They tried to make it seem like it was always chance that they needed his help with some trivalty, but Chester knew better: they pitied him and thought he couldn't do it, that he wasn't strong enough to take care of the only family he had left.

But it was fine. The only thing that mattered was trying to give Ami some semblance of a normal life, even if he almost always managed to burn supper just a little bit and tended to miss sweeping the corners of the room. He tried, and he knew that the others thought they were helping so he swallowed his pride and accepted the help anyways. If it made Ami smile then it was worth it in the end in his point of view.

The worst thing about all this though was he couldn't hang out with Cress anymore. Not that Cress had a whole lot of free time either now. Since his tenth birthday, training with the sword had only ramped up and now all his time seemed to be spent running through drill after drill, and strengthening his body so he could do more and more physically demanding artes. And everytime he came by to show Chester the newest move he could now accomplish, Chester burned with jealousy and hated that though the two of them had once been on even playing fields with almost everything, he was quickly falling behind.

And so, one night months later, Chester found himself grabbing his mother's bow from where it had been gathering dust against the wall by his parents bed and sneaking out into the area behind the house. Earlier on in the evening he had set up some targets facing the stream, and with the heavy and familiar—yet almost forgotten—weight of the quiver on his back, Chester took his stance that his mother had drilled into him over and over again all those years ago. He tried to pull back the string on the bow and was horrified to find that it was almost impossible. Had he really lost so much strength in so little time? Taking a deep breath and centering his weight, Chester tried again and while this time he was able to pull it back a bit further, it was still not nearly enough to successfully shoot an arrow five feet, much less the twenty he needed to hit the target.

Terrified that he had really fallen behind that much, Chester stole into his house, and careful not to wake Ami, uncovered the bow that he had been using months ago, the one that his father had helped him build for his eighth birthday. And a couple of quick test pulls from the safety of his room revealed to his utter relief that while he wasn't able to draw it back with quite as much ease as he used to, it was still about to pull it back fully. His mother's bow had just been too big for him, he had to get stronger first before he could use that one. And he would, he promised that he would get strong enough to not only draw that bow to its full potential, but protect Ami as well.

The first night of his training was terrible though. While the first shot he takes does fly from the bow, it lands much too short from the target. The second he overcompensates with power and it flies wide and lands into the river with a soft plop. The third and fourth and all the ones after that are all the same. While some started to land closer and closer to the targets he had placed, none of them actually hit the targets in question. It isn't until he moves the target much, much closer that he's able to finally land one; the accomplishment fills him with as much relief as it does horror. He can't believe he fell so far in such little time. Nonetheless, he continues his practice and when he finally does go to bed that night with the moon high in the night sky, it's with his arms and shoulders burning from the overexertion and he revels in it.

He can't control the fact that he has no family other than his sister anymore, and he can't control that he has been forced to grow up in so little time. But this, this he can control. He can control the flight the arrow takes through the sky and so he will.

From then on, his days are spent much the same as they were since he lost his mother and father, but now he takes time to oil and polish his mother's bow so it will be ready for him to use one day. And on the days he has the time, he will spend it with Cress in the dojo, training his body to its full potential. He races with Cress every chance he can get now, whether it is to the well or to Goalie to the forest's edge. They have challenges over who can carry the most logs or the most water. Over who can do the most push-ups. Find out who the strongest and fastest of them is. And sure, he tends to lose more often than not now, but whether Cress realizes it or not, Chester refuses to fall behind again.

The first time he tried to go out hunting again with the others was a challenge. Not because the hunt itself was hard or dangerous, but because he's worried about leaving Ami all alone for the entire day. She's only seven now after all, still far too young to be left home alone. And yet, she shoves him out the village walls, cheeks adorably puffed out in anger and hands on her hips when tells him not to come home without food. He worries the entire time, but his aim is true and manages to fell a small boar that the others let him keep as a trophy for his first kill in far, far too long. It's a feeling he missed, the thrill of the hunt and hunting with his best friend alike, and when he arrives back home it's to the house even more spotless than when he’d left that morning and stew bubbling happily away on the stove. He later finds out that a couple of other women, Maria and Gloria included, had come over when Ami had begged and pleaded that they show her how to cook and clean properly so that Chester doesn't have to all the time. And while he certainly does continue to take a majority role in keeping the house, knowing that Ami will be safe and can easily take care of herself while he's gone is a load off his back.

The promise of a hot meal when he gets back certainly helps as well.

Over the next few years, Chester learns many things through his rivalry/friendship with Cress. He's definitely the faster of them for one—even when Cress isn't wearing his sword or armour—but Cress has the stamina. Chester will tire out the quicker of them when traveling long distances, while Cress will just happily continue ahead for another few hours without realizing that he had tired out a long time ago. Chester also finds a humorous rivalry with Cress for Ami's affections, but he's pretty sure that that one is a little more one-sided considering that Cress isn't even aware of the huge crush that his best friend's little sister has on him.

It is the day after his fifteenth birthday though that Chester stands in front of the bow that was once his mother's. Gingerly he picks up the smoothly polished wood, gleaming in the sun coming through the window, and restrings it with the care and reverence that he feels this bow deserves. And taking a deep breath, he gives a couple of test pulls and finds that the wood bends easily in his hands, much easier then when he had first tried pulling it nearly five years ago. Pleased with that much at least, Chester ruffles the top of Ami's head as he leaves the house, letting her know that he's going to be spending the day hunting in the nearby forest with Cress and to try not to burn down the house while he's gone. She sticks her tongue out at him, but reminds him to be safe and try to be home for supper that evening.

When he meets Cress at the edge of the village, Cress notices the new and much larger bow on his back with upturned eyebrows but says nothing about it, instead starting to stretch his limbs for the race that they both know is coming. Chester stops by him and with a shared grin, the two of them get ready with a runner's stance before racing each other to the forest as fast as they can. Unsurprisingly to both of them, Chester pulls ahead quickly but starts to flag after a few minutes giving Cress a chance to catch up with his slower but more steady pace.

It only takes them another ten or so minutes to reach the forest, which Cress reaches first by pulling out a burst of speed he had saved away at the very tail end of the race. Chester joins him only a few seconds later, and the two of them are gasping for air as Chester throws his arm over Cress's shoulder congratulating him on his win, but letting him know that he'll get the next one. Cress only laughs, and accepts the water pouch that Chester holds out, taking the victor's swig before handing it back so Chester can do the same. Once they manage to catch their breaths, the two of them ready their weapons and stalk into the forest for prey.

The first shot that Chester makes with his mother's bow flies straight and true, and further then he could have ever possibly imagined.

#my writing #pride month prompt challenge #tales of phantasia #Chester Burklight #Cress Albane #this one feels a little awkward to me but i tried #hopefully the next one comes out better!