#and you stand as a relic to a dying dying dead age

[ehlnofay]

Summerfest Day 7 - PROFANE

There are two funeral pyres alight on the dark sand of the beach, and two silent mourners watching them burn.

It’s late in the day, the last sunset light seeping like oil on water from the sky in the west. In the east, all is dark. In between, the sky and the ocean mirror each other, a glowing clouded purple; it would be beautiful if it weren’t for the pits gouged into the ground, the towers of wood, the dimly shaped bodies in their silken cerements. The fires burn too bright to see them properly, but the loose end of the red shroud flickers, blown by the flames devouring it as though they are an evening breeze, and it’s a little sickening.

Caelestis supposes that the painstakingly built pyres, the fierce, leaping blaze, even the strongly scented smoke could be beautiful too.

It isn’t. Not to zem. Ze’s too close to see it.

The smoke spirals into the sky, grasping at the stars winking into being above. Caelestis wonders what it will find there. If they’ll find anything at all. Where do dead gods go?

No-one knows, yet. Not really.

Caelestis Vitellius (Nerevarine, Godkiller) stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the Last Living God, huddled in a dark cloak, bare feet sunk into the black sand. The two dead ones are turning to ash in front of them. Beginning to, at least; it’s a long process, Caelestis understands, especially in the open air, with the sea nearby. The pyres have only been lit for a little over an hour.

It’s been an uncomfortable hour. There is a chill in the wind blowing in from the sea and the fire is blisteringly hot. Vivec is silent, and despite his cool-voiced assurances Caelestis doesn’t feel quite welcome.

(After what ze did to them both – ze has no right to be here.)

There is another damp breeze rolling off the ocean. Ze feels it spreading over zir exposed skin like decay scrambling for purchase.

“I’m sorry,” ze says.

Vivec does not look away from the pyres. Ze does not blink. Standing straight-backed at hir side, Caelestis can see only the Chimer side of hir face, gilded livid-bright in the light of the flames. “Stop apologising.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Though it was, a little. Caelestis has apologised a lot in the last few days. When ze first arrived back, hir brother’s withered flesh sloughing from zir bones. When he asked what happened. Even earlier today, lifting what was left of Seht’s mingled, mangled remains onto the pyre. Ze is sorry – ze’s choking on it all – but, “I’m sorry for your loss, I mean.”

Vivec’s face doesn’t change. Caelestis doesn’t think he’s moved since they stood here. Ze’s not certain he’ll ever move again.

“And I yours,” they finally say, jewellery flashing in the firelight, and for a moment Caelestis feels their fingers pressing on the back of zir hand.

(It’s gone almost before ze can register it.)

The smoke keeps rising, reaching up into the fathomless sky.

“What do you want to do with the ashes?” Caelestis asks, watching it.

“I,” Vivec starts. He stops. It’s the first time ze’s heard him hesitate in speech, and now ze wants to apologise all over again. “I don’t know.”

Another gust of damp wind, and embers scatter over the sand at their feet.

Vivec says, “They can’t be interred as they deserve. Not without the Temple’s knowledge.” And the Temple can’t know. Not that only one of Three remains. Not what their hero, Vehk’s champion, Protector of Morrowind, had to do with it all. Not what their hero – Nerevarine, Incarnate, Godkiller – is now. “They must be laid to rest. But it cannot be public. It must be worthy of them. It must be tended after I have gone. I don’t know where would fit that description.”

The twin fires crackle.

The burning hasn’t gone on for long, but long enough; Caelestis’ impression of the bodies buried in flame grows ever weaker. Ze can’t do anything with ash – ze knows, ze’s visited the tombs dotting Morrowind. It’s a relief to feel them fading. Ze doesn’t want to desecrate their bodies again.

“Almalexia would want to be in Mournhold,” Vehk says.

“You could scatter the ashes in the Temple,” Caelestis offers. “They’d always be tended there, even if there was no name put to them.”

It’s not a good idea, but what is a good idea, under these circumstances? It’s the best ze has.

Vivec remains still, expressionless eyes fixed forward. “And when the people beg for aid, the gods they pray to will reply from the dust on the soles of their shoes.”

Caelestis looks at hir sharply. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.”

One of the logs shifts with a creak, sending a flurry of sparks into the air. When Caelestis blinks, the jagged pattern of cinders is burned into the backs of zir eyelids. Vivec repeats the only motion ze’s seen them make since the pyres started burning – a simple, smooth gesture, raising their hand with the fingers splayed as though they’re drawing up a puppet tied by string to their pointy knuckles – and the flames leap high, rejuvenated.

They say, “Ayem would have been better at this.”

The smoke stretches, eddying, above their heads, carrying on it the stench of something not unlike burning meat.

(Not quite like it. But definitely not unlike.)

“She would have known the best thing to do,” Vehk says. He amends, “Perhaps not by the time you met her, Caelestis. But once. It was always her way.”

Caelestis nods sombrely. “Mercy,” ze murmurs, eyes on the pyre.

“Mystery,” Vivec replies, an odd half-echo, and for the first time today ze turns to look Caelestis in the face. “And now Mastery is all that’s left.”

Ze can hardly say I’m sorry again, but what else is there to say? Ze looks back at hir, front strand of plaited hair falling in front of zir weak eye.

He smiles. (Almost, a wry twist of the lips, but it’s more than he’s given in a while.) “I knew it would end like this,” he confesses, casting another long look at the pyre. “I’ve known for a long time that it must end sadly. I just hoped I would not be the last.”

Caelestis wraps zir fingers around his wrist. “I’m sorry,” ze says, because what else is there to say?

Vivec looks back at the pyres, glowing gold silhouettes against the black of the ocean, and their face goes blank again.

“It is all very, very sad,” they say quietly, turning their arm so their fingertips can brush the back of Caelestis’ hand; and they both stand, enveloped by sea and sand and smoke, until the sun has risen again and the pyres are burned to bone and ash.

#just normal things when you're a reincarnation (maybe) hanging out with your apotheosised friend/murderer (maybe) #who you don't even like (you think? maybe?) but is the only person left on earth who could understand you (they don't. and you don't.) #but you've just done some horrendous things to your other friends/murderers #(killed them) #(desecrated their corpses) #(desecrated your own) #and if anyone else knew about it you would be killed for it (if you could be) but they don't (they can't) #(they wouldn't believe you) #and you stand as a relic to a dying dying dead age #(you're dead too) #(and yet you're still here) #(what do you do with that?) #tesfest23 #oc tag #caelestis #vivec #vehk #nerevarine #tesblr #the elder scrolls #morrowind #tes #my writing #fay writes #almalexia #sotha sil

[cornerful]

March 9th

A sweet fountain played there in the morning sun, and a sward of bright green lay about it; but in the midst, drooping over the pool, stood a dead tree, and the falling drops dripped sadly from its barren and broken branches back into the clear water.

For the imagery tag... amazing that we can go from the banner a thousand feet above the plain and towers of pearl and silver to this. The view from outside vs the view from inside or something. And I'm reminded of the Púkel men. Stone lasts a long time, even in the likeness of its shapers, but that doesn't mean there is life left within.

Of course there is life and some hope in Minas Tirith but still, as has been said, it dwindles. :(

How many times have we seen stone be the only relic of ages past. In some ways I feel places like the barrow downs haunting Minas Tirith right now, for all her banners still fly

'But I will say this: the rule of no realm is mine, neither of Gondor nor any other, great or small. But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail of my task, though Gondor should perish, if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in days to come. For I also am a steward. Did you not know?'

Me every time I read this:

Yet in the wizard's face he saw at first only lines of care and sorrow; though as he looked more intently he perceived that under all there was a great joy: a fountain of mirth enough to set a kingdom laughing, were it to gush forth.

🥺💚

Presently he noticed a man, clad in black and white, coming along the narrow street from the centre of the citadel towards him.

Beregond time!!!

'But do not despair!' He laughed again, seeing the dismay in Pippin's face. 'Those who have had heavy duty take somewhat to refresh their strength in the mid-morning.

...

They put all into a wicker basket and climbed back into the sun

Beregond teasing Pippin about food and then taking him on a picnic is so cute I love Beregond so much good for him

'The Black Riders?' said Pippin, opening his eyes, and they were wide and dark with an old fear re-awakened.

'I know of them,' said Pippin softly, 'but I will not speak of them now, so near, so near.'

Not all terrors fade easily from even hobbits' minds :(

'Our reach is shortened, and we cannot strike till some foe comes within it. Then our hand must be heavy!' He smote the hilt of his sword.

Pippin looked at him: tall and proud and noble, as all the men that he had yet seen in that land; and with a glitter in his eye as he thought of the battle. 'Alas! my own hand feels as light as a feather,' he thought, but he said nothing.

I'm strongly reminded of his attitude towards his own ability to be valiant (basically: only when I have to be) when Gandalf describes him as such, and of him telling Bergil he is not a fighter, and of Bergil saying he almost wishes there were no war. Took or not Pip is a hobbit for sure <3

Pippin looked up, and it seemed to him that the sky had grown ashen-grey, as if a vast dust and smoke hung above them, and light came dully through it. But in the West the dying sun had set all the fume on fire, and now Mindolluin stood black against a burning smoulder flecked with embers. 'So ends a fair day in wrath!' he said, forgetful of the lad at his side.

More imagery...woof

Lights sprang in many windows, and from the houses and wards of the men at arms along the walls there came the sound of song.

The deep breath before the plunge. This little bit about the people singing inside as the last dusk falls might be my favourite. If ever there were a liminal space it would be this: hope, or something less like hope and more like endurance, suspended in time like dust in a sunbeam.

#lotrn309 #lotr newsletter #imagery

[faerunsbest]

these are naturally still eldora and havarti(nikur)

i drew some here on the ipad which is wildly different from my ugee and csp.

i have created in my own mind some nice self indulgent lore for them

a good while back a brother worked upset a disguised hag of notable strength and power who left her with a curse of hunger similar to vampirism but not quire. it skipped her and went to the baby she was carrying, immediately she ran off to find some cleric dr or wizard to lift the curse. the curse was mostly pulled out of the daughter they where expecting but instead fully embedded itself in the twin they didnt know was there.

the woman attempted to keep them but was consistently reminded that they where 'foul things' and eventually took long ride out to a dead monastery and left them there.

perhaps 4 closing on five in years. they didnt know what to do, especially not nikur (later called havarti) he cried and cried and eldora tried hard to make it better.

they shouted into the night for their mother to come back, instead something deep inside the buildings halls answered. an old relic of a diety long forgotten and near formless with age.

she cannot stand the sound of them sobbing so whispers songs until they sleep, and when they wake they hear her telling them where to find what they need and as time goes on she becomes more whole and complete, as the faith they have in her is true and strong. and with little to compare her to they adore her as their mother.

nikur despite how anyone may treat him always operates under the thought of 'if i don't like it why would they?' he doesn't talk to hide his voice, which perpetually sound like a mob speaking.

his teeth are short silver needles clustered tightly in his mouth, he has a black forked tongue and no heart in his chest.

Eldora is in body mostly normal, but she bleeds black and cant be touched by 'unblessed' things. that is direct contact to her skin. people with evil hearts don't count for some reason.

being in a monastery there where many old scrolls and thing left behind, things eldora took up on her own, she trained herself to move like the pictures in the scrolls and books and learned to read by hiding in the walls of the local school and watching the teacher.

when young her hair was black, but nikur kept losing sight of her and would cry every time, so she dyed her hair pink so he could find her anywhere she was.

eldora has two hearts in her chest, one hers and the other nikurs and he doesn't protect it enough. hes soft and helps people freely when his sister isn't around, and has been attacked for it several times.

eldora is kind and sweet but only to her brother, otherwise she is defensive and mistrusting, bitchy even.

if you can get past that shes ride or die.

#artbyale #sketch #art by ale #art #bg3 #oc #baldurs gate 3 #tav #needless lore #loredump #ill clean it up later

[heleneplays]

RELICS MC PROFILE

Helene Spillane || Linguist

Ethnicity: (in-game) American, with Chinese descent || (hc) American, with Chinese & Filipino descent :)

Personality Stats: (end of Book 1) Suspicious - 63% • Professional - 51% • Spiritual - 57% • Altruistic - 84% • Adventurous - 68%

Skill Stats: [I forgot to screenshot my first from book 1 so i'm gonna use the sequel demo stats ( •̩̥̀ω•̩̥̀ )7 ] Subterfuge - 12 • Gunplay - 11 • Charm - 7 • Reactions 5 • Fisticuffs - 3 • Athleticism - 3

Priorities: Money • Academic Reputation • Politics • Glory

Relationships: All in wonderful standing || Everyone alive & healthy

Orientation: Lesbian 👭🏽💖

Romance Option: Still not over María García Pérez & is hoping and yearning to get back with her

Other Info

Birthday: January 10th

Height: 5'1 1/2

Blood Type: O+

Parent/s Status: Disowned Hasn't talked with one another for serveral years now || because of their fighting over her career, lifestyle choices & sexual orientation

Fun Facts:

She considers herself to be raised by her Grandpa Jack + Molly & Grandma Elíza, since her parents... she didn't have a typical childhood, that's all I can say.

Learned how to pickpocket, dance & shoot a gun from Jack; learned how to cook, dress fashionably, and take care of people from Molly; learned how to be unapologetic yet unfailingly charming, fine-tune her presence, and sharpen her instincts from Elíza.

Combined, they all taught her how to play & gamble like a pro, including cheating in the games :) [spoilers ;)]

A natural polyglot, learned & fluent in 16 languages by age 9;;; one of the reasons she got into archeology was bc of her fascination with the way humans developed languages (and also her morbid curiousity abt the dead)

But also it's about the adventure <3

Talented in the arts, which helped her as a visual learner; keeps it secret because it's something private she likes to keep. Much like her past with María 😔

Favorite season is Winter because it means cold air, ice skating trips, going in the woods, and cuddles 😳

Outgoing & Friendly, allegedly. Actually v Private & Sarcastic at the privacy of her own home or with trusted friends

Hates smoking but loves drinking

Her aesthetic is primarily rooted on elegance & a dash of hominess, and a lot of functionality

Generally obeys rules, but bends or breaks it if needs must

Radiates BDE x2 (Big Dick Energies & Big Dumbass Energies)

Can and Will kill if it's nazi lives 😌🔪

hmmm what else

OH YEAH

FOSTERS CATS WHEN SHE'S NOT ON AN EXPEDITION BC SHE'S V SOFT FOR THEM AND ALSO IT'S ABOUT LOVING MAJESTIC CREATURES

---

So far that's the extent of my ideas for my MC bc to be honest the bullet points just said: Disaster lesbian for María, Big Dumbass Genius, & in possession of only one (1) functioning braincell

ANYWAYS I just want to thank Mr. James Shaw again for developing this game universe :') I'm just so inspired for it and I scream everytime he just comes out popping into my notifs :'D

but seriously, my clownery? in this blog?? being noticed by OG source of all these??? I am dying from a mix of glee, shock, and shame. I am small and baby & I don't know how to cope other than memes and more memes like the absolute clown I am 😳👉🏻👈🏻 ANYWAYS if you're still reading up to this point,,,, so sorry for making u read all my ramblings & THANK YOU 💖💖💖

#hosted games #choice of games #relics series #relics of the lost age #relics 2 #relics series my beloved #helene spillane #relics mc #my art #fan art #lee draws stuff #lee draws #lee writes #lee makes stuff #fashionista! helene #GUESS WHO'S HERE WITH HER PROFILE #okay im not gonna lie i gave up on the full body pic on where her name currently stands and it's all because of the layout i placed so big #anyways yeehaw i'm in love #simp.txt #personal.txt #character profile #maría x helene #maría x mc

[foulserpent]

The Palace of Kings was near unrecognizable from the last time Delphine had stepped foot within.

For a start, it no longer had doors. Its occupant was far too large for that.

The throne had been converted into one gigantic dais, lined with furs and pillows and white feathers. It was ringed by guards sporting a unique scaled armor, and a scattering of servants and attendants. They moved amongst a pile of offerings to the king that lined the platform. Furs, worn war axes, armor and gold collected into piles. Lain in reverence, or perhaps fear fear. Atop it lounged the reigning high king of skyrim. Ysmir, Dragon of the North. 

She was gigantic. She was barely recognizable as having ever been anything but a dragon, instead long necked and longer-tailed, and far too top-heavy to stand on two legs. Her feathers had lost their tan mottling, and now shone bone white in the firelight. She wore no crown but her horns, and a pillar of flame over her head that burned a royal blue. 

Delphine had known her by a different name, and different title. There was a time in her life where she was sworn to her, fought alongside her. There was a time that she even loved her.  This all had long since passed with the years, as the world around her transformed out of recognition, with this dragonborn emperor-pretender being the weight at the very center of it.

The Blades were dead. Esbern had been taken by age three years before. Sky Haven had been taken by some dragon as a roost, and may as well have been destroyed. He had smashed the outside relics of Akaviri architecture with his voice and his tail, and now his sheep grazed among the mountain scrub that grew in its place. 

Whether she lived or died, she was already merely a relic of a world that was long dead. And so she approached the throne. 

Ysmir turned to look at the visitor. 

Delphine froze under the weight of those fiery eyes. The gaze was hollow, mere pinpricks under the towering blue flame. No, not hollow. Far too full. 

She felt the same sensation she had experienced all those years ago, as the shadow of the World-Eater blocked out the sun over Kynesgrove. He had, ever so briefly, looked upon her- and in that moment she was tiny and naked and frail under the talons of his mere glance. He had seen her and acknowledged her, and in the same moment had written her off as something far too tiny and trifling to be bothered with.

This was much the same.

"Greetings, Ysmir." she said, and she cursed her wavering voice.

The dragon did not blink. Her tail- and by Talos, it was the size of an oak tree - twitched its tip in a feline languor. 

"I take it you did not just come to stare?" She said. This voice was familiar. Strangely soft, deep, and sporting the thick-tongued accent sported by only the northernmost Nords. This familiar voice now shook the stone with each flick of the tongue, more like the distant rumble of thunder than anything that would come out of a living creature. 

Delphine's grip on the sword tightened, and Ysmir seemed not to care. She steadied herself, and met her steady gaze.

"We have unfinished business, don't we? Solvej?"

Ysmir lifted her barbed chin in irritation. 

"I doubt it." She rumbled. "And it is quite presumptuous on your part to think I would be interested in resolving anything with your little group of spies.”

“It’s not about that.” Delphine said. “I just wanted to ask you something, before I lose my chance.”

Ysmir raised her head even higher than before, looming pillarlike above the woman. 

“Speak.”

"Could you just tell me why you've done this? All of it. Everything since we last spoke."

Ysmir gazed down unblinking for a moment, then leaned in until the tip of her snout was inches from Delphine’s face. Her hot breath singed the air between them.

"The gods are dead, or being killed as we speak, or turned to stone." She said softly. "Do you understand?" 

Delphine raised an eyebrow.

Ysmir lifted a massive hand. Its terminal digits had stretched and warped outwards into the bud of a wing, complete with the delicate barbs that were yet to be flight feathers. Delphine allowed herself a moment of amusement; it was naked and gray, not unlike a baby bird's wing. 

"Everything lies on a knife's-edge of destruction." She brought two hooked talons together, showing the tiny void between to the woman before her. "The Thalmor of course. You know the Empire has been too thoroughly declawed to stand a chance. But this is more than just the trifling wars of mortals. That will only be a means to an end.”

Ysmir now looked into the distance, ignoring Delphine entirely. “I can save us all. I have done it before, and now I will do it again. Is it so wrong that I try to hold balance in place?"

Delphine shook her head in disbelief. 

"What in the goddamn hell are you talking about?" She threw her arms out. "No- Do you realize how insane this all is? What you've done to yourself? How the fuck is this god-king nonsense helping anyone?!" 

There was passing moment where something resembling indignation breezed across Ysmir's face. It quickly passed, returning to a distant placidity. 

"Unfortunate." Ysmir said, pulling away from the woman to lay back on her throne. "I am not unaccustomed to mortals being ungrateful. And I suppose I should expect that much from you. But it's still quite unfortunate."

Delphine deflated. Her hand returned to her sword. She had lost her touch for subtlety with age, it seemed. 

"May I at least pay homage?" She asked through gritted teeth.

"Do as you will. I have nothing more to say to you." Ysmir huffed, and lay back down, baring her massive breast to the woman before her. 

Delphine approached the dais, white down feathers kicking up around her feet with each step. She had heard of those loyal to Ysmir doing as such. They would be allowed to approach, lay hands on their king, prove to themselves that she is as physical as she is divine. 

Delphine now did as such, lifting a lithe hand and placing it amid the feathers. She was as warm as she had ever been, skin a wrinkled velvet under the soft down. Delphine felt the heart beating between the ribs. It must have been the size of her torso, the way it thundered slowly against her palm. It made what was to come far easier.

Delphine swore a quiet oath on the grave of her order.

The dragon did not react as Delphine drew the sword. She thought she saw the slightest ruffling of brow-feathers, a raised eyebrow over eyes that had already long-since lost interest in what the little human had to say or do, but there was nothing more. 

The dragon did not react as Delphine took aim in one fluid motion, praying her age not betray her, that the strength in her now wiry arms would not fail her.  A guard shouted something.

The dragon did not even stir as the blade slid through her thick hide and slicked its way between her ribs. Several people around her cried out in shock. Delphine gritted her teeth, and pushed until the hilt met flesh and blood welled up to kiss her trembling hands. 

The chest heaved in a massive gasp. 

Ysmir let out a strangled roar. Delphine stumbled backwards, leaving her blade behind as the dragon began to thrash against the pain. Two braziers were snuffed with a swing of her tail. One attendant was crushed as the great dragon crashed off of the dais, and the rest scattered away from the dying king. 

Garbled words tore from her massive throat, and they begged fire and death into the uncaring air, then pleaded everlasting life and healing against a rapidly collapsing body. Delphine had stood transfixed for too long, and one of the Words caught the edge of her and sent her reeling against a stone brazier. Something in her body made an awful crunching noise, and she crumpled to the ground. 

Ysmir's flailing had now quieted, and now she lay sprawled across the hall. Her legs twitched pitifully. Heavy slabs of muscle were caught in spasm underneath feathers that seemed to bristle and flatten outside of her control. Her head flopped to the stone with a thud, bare of its flame. 

Her eyes fell towards Delphine, but they were distant, wide and so very Mortal with terror. Delphine held them where she lay, body broken against the hard stone and fighting with consciousness herself. The guards and attendants and stewards were now crowding in on their king, some fruitlessly casting healing magic, some just staring in awe. Delphine stared as well, face taut with pain and a grim satisfaction. Whether she was taken dead or alive, whether this was the right thing to do or not, this was the end. 

There was an irony to it all. The last of the Blades and the Last Dragonborn. Delphine was too tired to worry about what it all meant. Whatever would be, would be. 

Ysmir took in a shuddering gasp through a foaming mouth. She looked somewhere far away yet, eternally transfixed and small under something only she could see. It looked back at her across all that distance, and she was gone. 

Delphine took a breath, and let her own eyes slide shut.

#this was written in one go so its noyt fantastic but w/e #also AUTHORS NOTE: ysmir is solvej its just the name shes taken at that point and names are important in the elder scrolssb #authors note 2: yes solvej pretty much just goes 'heres my vital organs please stab me'. she doesnt think she can die at that point #my writing #solvej

[dragonrajafanfiction]

The Serpent’s Tomb

Many miles off the coast of the Netherlands

The restless sea tossed its waves against the sheer cliffs rising out it, fanning out and foaming, like hands reaching up towards the top of rock walls that were shrouded in mist. The fortress stood strong against its thundering force, as it had for nearly a millennium, shielding its dark secrets from both the waves and the world. Within the walls of this natural crater, an atmospheric inversion capped the caldera with a thick blanket of clouds. Even flying over it in a jet would only let you see this strange cloud mass floating right over the sea. Walls form a dark ring and in each of the cardinal directions, an ancient stone carving of a woman was a sentry looking out into a vast ocean. The women were dressed in long robes, each one about 12 feet tall, their hair sweeping back, as though facing into the gale. They were covered in lichen, their sightless eyes peering endlessly towards the horizon. The cloud cover hid a crystalline lake of water, forever hidden from the sun by the constant cloud cover. It stretched 40 miles across and in the center was an island where a granite stone monastery was the only sign of human habitation. The lights were on in this monastery, the single point of light, in a world that hadn't seen the sun, moon and stars for a thousand years.

In the central worship chamber a man in a hooded cloak knelt in front of an image of a serpent climbing up a long pole. In the Bible, there is such an image. A copper serpent that cured the snake poisoning of those who could gaze upon it, only to be destroyed when people began worshiping it like a god as this man was doing. However, this image was not of that curative snake. Nor was it the medical serpent, the staff of Hermes or the rod of Asclepias.

This was something far more ancient, yet far more grounded in reality than any of those. 

The man raised his eyes to the great serpent. The staff was painted blood red and the snake was painted black. It’s eyes were solid gold and peered down with a cold, judgemental gaze from a height of five meters. The carved scales glittered in the light of the candles, the flickering of the fire granting a sense of motion to those mighty coils. Yet it must have paled in comparison to the true serpent, the Midgaardslang, a snake so big, it could circle the whole world and grasp its own tail. The worship of the Midgaardslang was born out of fear of forces too great to understand. But because of the reality of this snake, the culture that revered it held out to the end against the forces of Christianization.  Once you had seen the god with your own eyes, there was no longer room for doubt, no longer any need for faith, and no true conversion to anything else. There was only one true religion. The dragon.

The man finished his prayer and stood to his feet. “Your great gift has finally returned to us. We are eternally grateful. Eternally.” He drew back his hood, revealing salt and pepper hair and steel grey eyes. His skin was transparent from not seeing the sun all these years. He looked aged but the cords of his neck and the set of his jaw bore no wrinkles or sagging. He turned away, walking with the firm and confident step of a warrior. His cape fanned out and swept up whirls of dust in his wake. He was alone in this room, this man always worshipped alone.  But as he walked, the candles all extinguished behind him. The golden-eyed serpent was swallowed by darkness. 

Outside the entrance to this central room is a hall full of doors and staircases. The Monastery was built like the ancient pyramids, to guard against looters and thieves, there were many false entrances, trap doors, and misdirecting signage, a labyrinth of stairways and halls. The man descended the spiral staircase without hesitation. Monastery’s true form was hidden underground, under the lake. It served as both a tomb, and a vast city hidden below the obsidian water. The water was kept at bay by pumps that worked with the tides, an example of how the ancient knowledge of the dragon was passed down to these people. Who could imagine in the age of fossil fuel and solar electricity that people in the middle ages could harness the power of gravity to create a self perpetuating pump system and use the heavy waters of the lake and the mist above to hide from the world?  As he descended further down, the sound of water could be heard, a deep sucking sound, like a giant’s heartbeat. That water ran through pipes like veins and arteries. The intake and the outflow of the water reached an equilibrium and the water level in the lake never rose or fell.

Pinpoints of light came into view and revealed a hall as wide as a highway. All the inhabitants of the Monastery City had come out for this occasion. They stood on either side of the way, dressed in dark cloaks, with black sheer veils covering their faces. They murmured in hushed voices as he walked through, a single man, dwarfed by the size of his own domain. As he passed, they all bowed their heads. The highway led to a dead end, a circular room with a ceiling too high to see. At the center of the circle, Dominic lay on an altar. His eyes stared up into the ceiling, burning golden. He was still dressed in the clothes from the soccer game, save his shirt that was removed. His skin was pale save the purple bruises on his chest and face where he’d been struck hours earlier.

This area was cool and damp. Even with the cloak, the man couldn’t help but shiver slightly.

 Five other people stood around him, their voices murmuring low and steady without pausing, deep and guttural noises like snarling. This Yanling was unique to this area. It was not something that affected Dominic but it called to the dragon technology embedded in the room and that was acting on Dominic’s body. So long as they chanted, Dominic could not move, staring up, transfixed by something no one else could see. Every few seconds he would blink slowly. His pupils were thin and needle-like slits in the golden irises.

“How long do you think it will take?” The woman’s voice was a soft whisper, so as not to interrupt the concentration of the five hybrids standing around the stone altar. They were the high priests of this place, aged with little energy to come here and chant. If they were interrupted now they might just faint and perish.

“It shouldn’t be much longer. This is not only his home, but his birthplace. The tomb… and the womb. Where he was buried, and where he was born. He will naturally return here. Mind, body and spirit.” He looked on Dominic with a quiet reverence of someone regarding a holy relic.

“Though… the body… What is it?” Her eyes gazed upon him in both curiosity and fear. After leaving the Netherlands by boat, they flew the rest of the way here by helicopter. The only real way to reach this place any more. Dominic had kept fighting the whole way, unaware of his heritage or his fate. He was in terrible pain and kept asking for medicine. She couldn’t tell him anything of course, but just reassured him that he would heal just fine once they reached their destination. Once his dragonblood awakened, he would recover in days from wounds it took weeks for a normal human to recover from.

“What he is is something beyond our comprehension now. The building… The whole city was built under the direction of the writings of those now dead. And the Midgaardslang left this place hundreds of years ago. It’s just a husk. And all we have left are the myths that say that the Midgarslaang called forth an army of giants that cast down hail, while it climbed up the oak tree to spew poison from the air. The great hero Donar struck the serpent in the head so hard that he crushed it and the ground beneath it. The land sank seven miles deep under his hammer. But Donar was poisoned by the serpent and died. The crater filled with water, becoming his grave and the grave of the Midgardslaang.”

Such feats were impossible for a man to do, but for a hybrid, it wasn’t that hard to believe. This great god of a serpent and the man that slew it, dying together deep beneath the earth was one of many events in the history of Dragonslaying around the world. Donar’s pyrrhic victory ran true in the hearts of those who battled dragons. Killing one at the sacrifice of one’s own life was normal. What wasn’t normal, was the end of the tale. Unlike most myths, the end of this myth has a specific date, 1222 AD. A great fire came from the grave of the Midgaardslang and the ghost of the serpent ascended into the sky, fleeing north. Such specific references at the end of what should have been the annals of fantasy was a jarring reminder that this did happen.

“Once the door opens, we will finally have access to the last of the documents and our work will begin.” He turned to her with eyes that showed a burning excitement. “Sylke, our journey is beginning now. Like the dragon we have slept and now…”

Sylke was the woman who held the phone to Dominic’s ear. She was his guard and was therefore permitted into this space, watching over him. She saw that his breathing was coming a little faster as though being tired out by a great effort or, perhaps, being frightened by something. But those eyes didn’t stop staring into the depths of that ceiling. He suddenly cried out arching his back in pain. A great rumble came from above, followed by a sudden downdraft of frigid cold air that carried with it a heavy rain. Tons of water cascaded from an opening that came from that vast ceiling. It crashed down with the force of Donar’s great hammer. Like most great dragon knowledge, what was hidden in this shrine came designed to be obtained with a price, a sacrifice of human life. However, just before the torrent could rush in and obliterate everyone in the room, it congealed above their heads and rose back up again, forming a conveyor belt.

Yanling - Vortex.

Sylke’s eyes were bright gold. She held her hands above her head. The wind from the moving water blew her hood from her hair. She held back a water pressure great enough to stop a tank. This Yanling could be used as a barrier, but also as a way to move through water. man wrapped his arm around her waist. A thick blue coil of water separated from the flow and lifted them from the floor, sweeping them up into the tower. The water carried them up towards the ceiling into the thick darkness. Much to the man’s surprise, Sylke leaped from the water into an open air space. They were once again standing on solid ground, wet and shivering in the pitch dark. 

Sylke had to continue her water control. “You have 3 minutes a most. That’s the best I can handle!” She was straining against the force of the water now. Even if the old monks got out with Dominic, the whole chamber could be permanently flooded. But he came prepared, lifting up a bright waterproof flashlight. When he flicked it on he gasped in shock.

It wasn’t just a few paintings or obscure ruins or relics. Bookcases lined an entire wall around the central cascade of water. 

#Dragon Raja

[translations-by-aiimee]

Dig a Grave to Dig Out a Ghost - Chapter 18

Original Title: 挖坟挖出鬼

Genres: Drama, Horror, Mystery, Supernatural, Yaoi

This translation is based on multiple MTLs and my own limited knowledge of Chinese characters. If I have made any egregious mistakes, please let me know.

Chapter Index

Chapter 18 - Memories

Lin Yan was afraid that the professor was going to run away. When the event was over, he didn't even take the time to change his clothes. He called over to little Daoist priest to tell him he could leave first, then rushed to the backstage lounge. The crowd trying to leave completely blocked the exit. Lin Yan wasn't able to get out for a while. Behind him was a swarm of school reporters, sweating profusely as they followed.

"Excuse me! Coming through!" He wasn't sure whose foot he stepped on in his rush, but the girl in front of him turned around and gave him a sharp look.

"Lin Yan!" a clear voice rang out. Lin Yan looked up and saw Weiwei standing at the door with a red staff badge hanging around her neck.

Lin Yan didn't care anymore about feeling embarrassed while he hurried through the crowd without any organized manner. He shouted at Weiwei: "Can you do me a favour? This is urgent!"

"It's my birthday next week, come over for dinner!" Weiwei shouted on her tiptoes.

"Okay, whatever, help stop the crowd behind me!"

Lin Yan ran as fast as he could straight down the corridor, stumbling from time to time over the hem of his clothes. When he burst into the backstage VIP room completely dishevelled, he realized that he had been worried for nothing. The professor hadn't planned on sneaking away at all. He was seated on the sofa and had waited for him, sipping his tea.

"You came? Sit down."

Lin Yan clutched his chest and nodded, breathing too heavily to speak.

The lounge was decorated in a very stylish way, with arc-shaped floor-to-ceiling French windows, beige wallpaper, and light brown soft leather sofas that looked like they were worth a lot of money. The school had always been willing to spend money on entertaining guests. The professor poured a glass of water for Lin Yan and pointed to the single-seater sofa opposite of him.

"You're Lin Yan, who came to us for an internship before, right? You performed well today. You've got guts and have a good mind." The professor pondered for a moment: "I thought you'd come find me sooner or later. I didn't expect that you would get back here so soon. "

"Do you know me?" A series of questions popped up in his mind. Lin Yan suppressed the urge to outright address his issue. He apologized for the outburst just then, and then said seriously: "I did here for that internship. This is very important to me, please tell me everything you know."

The professor nodded slightly: "I can probably guess what happened. So, I'll speak slowly. Listen carefully. If there's any useful information, I'll tell you." He sighed and looked out the window. He spoke softly: "The fact that you are still standing here in good shape is already much better than the person who came before you."

Lin Yan looked back at Xiao Yu, who was holding his hand tightly, standing ignorantly.

The floor-to-ceiling windows were facing the path outside the auditorium. The students must use this path to get to the dormitories. In the night, boys and girls walked down it together in large groups. I don’t know who yelled: "The river flows eastward, the stars in the sky look to the Big Dipper!*" The professor smiled, turned his face to Lin Yan, and recalled: "I was about the same age as you when I first entered the tomb. It was a good time to be young."

*(Song lyrics from "Hao Han Ge" by Liu Huan)

"Young people don't know what's important. . ."

The professor spoke very coherently, as if he had been wanted to say all this for many years. Lin Yan even felt that he was using this as an opportunity to reminisce about his nostalgic youth. But when the professor painted the scene back to Lin Yan, it sent a chill down Lin Yan's spine.

Twenty-five years ago, a group of coal miners in Jinxiang County accidentally collapsed a mineshaft while they were hacking away. They removed some jade plates and funerary wooden figurines from inside the hole, which turned out to be the entrance tunnel of an underground tomb. Once the county head official learned about this tomb, he blocked off the mausoleum and reported the news to the central government. At that time, China was still a novice in both archaeological technology and cultural relic preservation, and it was still difficult to excavate many imperial tombs. Therefore, this cultural Ming Dynasty tomb was handed over to the university, and a team of several master's students hired some local volunteers and rushed to Jinxiang.

This group of people included the professor and Lin Yan’s current supervisor. When preparing the materials for the tomb, the professor and Lin Yan both found some strange information. He strangely discovered that whether it were the county chronicles, the local chronicles, or genealogical records, there was no record of the tomb's owner. One of the workers on the team claimed to be a master of fengshui. After seeing the mausoleum, he said that it would be impossible to excavate. The earth's meridians formed a breeding ground for negative energy. The evil spirits attracted to the space were too dense to bury people. The owner of the tomb wouldn't be able to find peace after death. Not to mention the misfortune it would bring future generations. However, most of the students were young and energetic. They were eager to try after seeing the exquisitely carved jade artifacts. Without much consideration, they went directly to the tomb with tools and equipment.

"Strange events started after that." The professor adjusted his glasses and grimaced: "We should have listened to the warnings, but we didn't believe in evil at the time."

First, the four chickens brought to ward off evil spirits died overnight. When the underground tomb gate was opened, the scaffold collapsed, and an 18-year-old fell and broke his right hand. Everyone thought it was an accident, but from the time they entered the tomb, all those involved in the excavation had nightmares whenever they closed their eyes. Every night they dreamed that they were dying to the point that no one dared try to sleep anymore. Fatigue and constant fear made everyone’s fighting spirit die off after only a week.

"What happened after that?" Lin Yan looked back at Xiao Yu in surprise. He thought he had been tormented thoroughly by him, but he hadn't even seen half of this ghost's ferociousness yet.

"After entering the main chamber, we found many valuable cultural relics beside the coffin, but they were poorly preserved. We could only brush off the embroideries. Watching the treasures that we brought out so easily blacken and carbonize the moment the sunlight hit them was the fatal blow to our spirits. I cried miserably, but everyone was equally depressed and even fearful. No one had the energy to comfort me."

The professor's hand shifted on the windowpane, leaving behind a damp handprint. "There seemed to be some kind of energy in that tomb that could make people fall into despair. We worked hard and sang to make ourselves feel more brave, but it was still useless. A rural volunteer girl went crazy on the ninth morning and smashed her husband's head in with a machete while everyone could only stand in shock."

"Blood sprayed all over the bricks on the top of the tomb, and it was dripping everywhere. The woman put her husband's head in front of the blank memorial plaque, kowtowed three times, and sat on the ground convulsing, laughing eerily, while laughing and shouting a name." The professor looked at Lin Yan and asked, "Do you know what name it was?"

Lin Yan took a dazed step back. He wanted to break away from the hand holding his, but Xiao Yu held it tighter, not giving him a chance to escape.

"It was Xiao Yu. Who exactly is Xiao Yu? I searched through both the official and unofficial records, but I couldn't find any record that mentioned this name." The professor's expression became painful: "We gave the woman a consolation fee to settle the matter. After she took the money, she laughed for a while before she raised her machete and slashed it down across her neck. The blood was sprayed onto the memorial plaque. When she fell, only a thin piece of skin kept her head attached to her body. At that time, people didn't know much about archaeology. At first glance, some of the students were okay, but the hired volunteers were all scared away, saying that we dug up the grave of the dead, and this was retribution for it."

"The last person who left was the fengshui guy. He told me that the tomb had no fengshui. The owner of the tomb had died violently. Nothing could approach the tomb through the evil energy breeding ground. This resentment built up over a long time. The woman's body had been filled with too much Yin energy and she was the first to fall prey to the ghost."

"The man left. The students didn't want to go, but they were still having nightmares every time they. They tried to stick it out for a week before packing their bags and returning to school. No one else died. The first time the lead took over, he wouldn't even touch the coffin. It was a disappointment for everyone."

Lin Yan imagined the beheading. His face grew pale, and his stomach felt sick.

"Are you alright? You don't look well." The professor seemed to catch on to the younger's expression, and pointed to Lin Yan's cup: "Drink some water. Take a break then you can listen some more."

Lin Yan shook his head and asked, "Was it really like the fengshui master said?"

The professor hesitated for a while, and his fingers scribbled across a section of thin vapor he exhaled onto the glass. Two words appeared on the glass: "Xiao Yu." As if he didn't want to see it, the professor wiped it away and shook his head: "I have seen a lot of weird things throughout my career. The demon and ghost theory is not unfounded, but I think that the tomb might be some kind of spiritual formation. In ancient times, emperors and generals did everything they could to prevent their bodies from being destroyed. Many strange arts and techniques also emerged. It is possible that the woman was already delirious and so was the first to lose her mind in the consuming and the gloomy atmosphere in the tomb."

Lin Yan imagined the shadowy chamber with two headless bodies lying on the ground. He could barely squeeze out a wry smile: "What does this whole thing have to do with me?"

"I'm getting to that part." The professor sadly lowered his head: "Young people have never been willing to admit defeat. Since then, I've been very interested in the history of the Ming Dynasty Chenghua period. At first, I wanted to find out the identity of the tomb owner but I really fell in love with the history, and, 20 years later, I became an expert in the field. But long-term research in any field will encounter roadblocks. I was troubled by problem for nearly two months, and finally decided to go to the Ming Tomb again."

Lin Yan asked puzzledly: "Are you not afraid something will happen again?"

The professor shrugged: "No way, the large amount of untouched cultural relics inside was too tempting. The team left before anyone had even touched the coffin the last time I was there. I've never gotten over it."

"Be considerate of the obsessions of an old man who has been involved in academia for most of his life." The professor said: "When the newspaper published the news about the excavation of the Ming Tomb again, a message came from my secretary saying that someone was willing to help me. He understood fengshui. If something went wrong, I could turn to him."

"I'm not the same young man who spent a whole year studying about the tomb. I ran all over the country all day and night. I was too busy to take care of it, so I asked the secretary to keep in touch with him."

"Later on, something did happened. It was exactly the same as before. After entering the tomb door, everyone was inexplicably depressed and paranoid, and soon began to have nightmares. I was so afraid that the tragedy would happen again, so I had to ask the person who knew fengshui for help. He told me that I need to find a person who shares the same horoscope as the evil creature in order to make it stop. Then he gave me a birth date and said that he could find someone with the same birth date horoscope."

Lin Yan had already guessed the answer. He pointed at himself and hesitated to confirm: "Me?"

The professor nodded: "That birth year made me think of a student. I asked your supervisor. He said that he had a friend’s son who was looking for an internship, and his own student, Lin Yan. It was just an extreme coincident that your birthday fell onto the right date."

"You know what happened after that." The professor looked at the path outside the window. The students were almost all gone now. The moonlight didn't reach the path, instead only reflecting the black shadows of the trees that were swaying back and forth in the night breeze. "If you want to ask me who the owner of the tomb is, I can only tell you that I don't know. It's shameful; after more than 20 years, I have revisited this topic year after year, but I still haven't made any progress."

"If you have anything else to ask, please go ahead. As soon as you say the name 'Xiao Yu', I knew it was you. You've got a lot of guts to throw my things like that." The professor laughed, "I was just like that when I was young. I had trouble with authority back then. It took a lot to keep up with me."

Lin Yan hurriedly lowered his head and apologized. He kept thinking that it was this File Folder dragged him into this mess, but it didn't seem like he did it intentionally. . . How much did he know about what happened after? Thinking of this, Lin Yan raised his head and asked, "Don't you want to hear how I know Xiao Yu's name?"

The professor waved his hand and relaxed his expression: "People my age don't want to listen to these ghost and monster stories. It's bad luck. I know you're fine when I see you standing here. I didn't discuss it with you. I blame myself for not discussing this with you sooner. I'll try my best to explain anything you need, but the rest. . ." The professor said, spreading his hands, expressing that there was nothing he could do.

During their talk, the professor's personal secretary came in and urged him to leave, saying that the car was ready and the school officials were all waiting downstairs. The professor nodded to the secretary, turned around and asked Lin Yan, "Is there anything else you want to know?"

Lin Yan felt stuck. The most renowned Ming historians in China had no answers. Did he really have no choice but to wait out the three months, waiting for this ghost to remember his life experience and tell him his wish. But what he couldn't remember? Would Lin Yan be forced to accompany him for eternity as a ghost?

As he pondered, a thought popped up, like a small copper hammer hitting the glass with a crisp sound. Lin Yan stopped the professor who was packing up and asked: "You. . . you mentioned that the fengshui guy had mentioned a horoscope date. I happened to be looking for an internship at that time, so it all worked out, right?" Lin Yan's voice was trembling with excitement: "This is too much of a coincidence. It's almost like he was waiting for me. . . Where is he now? How did he know something would happen in the Ming Tomb?"

The professor suddenly stopped, frowning and thought it over: "You're right to be suspicious. At that time, I was busy planning the excavation and didn't care much about it. . ." The secretary who was waiting at the door shouted: " Xiao Liu, do you remember that fortune teller? Give me his contact information."

The young girl flipped through the folder in her arms, and replied: "That person never contacted me directly. He had been passing messages through a young guy who was new to the team. I'll look into it for you. I'll get back to you about in in the next few days."

The professor's face sank, and just like Lin Yan, he had no answer. He whispered to him: "It'll should be easy to track him down." He patted Lin Yan on the shoulder: "I'll help you out with this, don't worry. "He took out a pen and left Lin Yan's his phone number, and the corner of his mouth ticked up: "I still owe you your prize. I'll give it to you the next time we meet."

When he left, the crowd was gone. The corridor was empty. The old custodian didn’t even turn on the ceiling light to save electricity. Only the wall lamp glowed a dull yellow. Lin Yan’s face drained of all colour. He suddenly felt like he was in a horror movie. He was the lead actor stumbling along the wall in a terrifying corridor.

The professor's story made him feel incredibly afraid. Behind him was a ghost, a murderer who put people to death in a cruel and bloody way. He didn't even dare to look behind him. He was afraid that when he turned around, a ghost covered in bloodstains would be there, grinning sinisterly at him through a veil of long hair, saying: It's your turn.

Lin Yan's breathing became heavier and heavier. When he couldn't resist the urge to run away, he was suddenly pushed harshly against the wall. His body was wrenched around. Lin Yan raised his head and squeezed his eyes shut.

#dig a grave to dig out a ghost #dig a grave to dig out a ghost translation #chinese bl #chinese novel #english translation #danmei #danmei novel #yaoi #yaoi novel

[artificialqueens]

Just Like a Folk Song (Our Love Will Be Passed On), 1/3 (Trixya) - Pinkgrapefruit

A/N -

hi! I’m really excited for this!!! I started it back in the summer of 2020 and it’s been a labour of love for sure. I was initially dead set on waiting for it to reach its end before I posted but I want someone who isn’t me and ortega to enjoy it. I’m so, so proud of it and I really hope you enjoy it so please let me know and maybe I’ll actually finish this one.

Thank you to Jaz, Ortega and Frey who have endlessly supported me, egged me on and corrected the minutia of my grammar. This one is for you xoxo

[chapter 1. pirate wives]

*

part one. joy

please picture me in the trees i hit my peak at seven feet in the swing over the creek i was too scared to jump in

There is a girl in the trees. She is blonde and messy, and her knees have scratches that Trixie’s mama would never allow. She clambers through the branches in her wellies, light as a feather until she’s straddling the edge of a thick branch, white teeth glistening in the mid-afternoon sun. Trixie is immediately jealous. She’s missing her two front teeth and although her mama straightens her dresses and tells her she’s very pretty - she’s not entirely convinced. The girl jumps down from the tree and hits the debris-littered floor with a soft thud. Her shoes are caked in mud and she runs a dirty hand through her hair in a way that makes Trixie’s skin crawl.

The day is warm, and Trixie’s mama had told her to spend it by the river near their flat. It’s overlooked by a wood, and the last man who pretended to be her daddy built a tire swing, so her and her brother could play down here when the sun makes it unbearable to be indoors.

The girl tilts her head and Trixie mirrors her, unsure. Her eyes are a crystalline green, the same colour as the lazy river, and she blushes as Trixie stares. The girl waves exuberantly.

“I’m Katya!” She introduces, pushing her hand forward for Trixie to shake. She sees her mama greet people like this, but it seems very strange. She cautiously moves her hand to meet it and they shake rather forcefully.

“Katya?” She repeats, almost a question, half-formed on her tongue.

“Yup! K-A-T-” she pauses, eyebrows scrunched as she tries to remember the next letter. The sun filters through the leaves, speckling her face with dots of light. “Y-A! Katya!”

Trixie giggles, cheeks flushing. She grips her pink corduroy dungaree dress, letting the soft fabric soothe her nerves. “My name is Beatrice,” she says, voice tight like a rope pulled taut. She is being polite. She is a good girl. Katya purses her lips, shuffling from one foot to another. “You can call me Trixie, though?”

Katya smiles, nods slightly. “I would like that, Trixie.”

She reaches out for Trixie to take her hand, and Trixie is slightly less hesitant this time. Katya’s smock blows in the slight breeze as she tugs Trixie forward, and the girl in the pink follows willingly.

but i, i was high in the sky with pennsylvania under me are there still beautiful things?

She ends up pulling her towards the tyre-swing and she holds Trixie’s cardigan as she wrestles up onto the tyre. Katya can only manage to push her for a few minutes before she wants her own turn, and Trixie makes her pull the swing as far back as she can, so there’s no chance she’ll end up in the river.

“How old are you?” Trixie asks as she holds the tyre patiently for Katya, who struggles in her wellies, despite being adept at climbing trees in them.

“I’m seven,” she announces proudly as she sits atop the tyre. She grips the rope tightly, so her fingers turn white and her brown smock is tucked under her thighs for grip. “My mama told me I look very old for my age.”

Trixie wouldn’t necessarily disagree. Katya looks bigger and certainly stronger than her. She is louder - more physical - and her hair is pretty. Trixie considers it all for a second.

“Okay,” she replies, pushing the swing gently, so its reflection ripples across the river. “I’m seven too.”

She pushes Katya gently for a few more minutes before Katya pipes up again. She’s more relaxed, fingers only barely hanging onto the rope.

“Do you have a boyfriend, Trixie?” The question makes Trixie squirm almost as much as the fact that Katya is now trying to hang upside-down above the river.

She gulps her anxiety down. “No,” she tells her, “I don’t really want one.”

Katya looks at her from upside down and smiles brightly. “boys are gross, Trixie,” she tells her sternly as if she’s had experience. She is steady in her convictions, and Trixie finds this admirable - she’s not sure if she has convictions.

Katya’s smock comes loose from under her thighs and Trixie looks away in shock as it exposes her almost naked body. Katya just giggles, her stomach expanding with laughter as she tries to grip with her legs and pull herself back up, so she is no longer exposed.

She twists her body slightly and manages to jump off the swing and onto the ground, watching as Trixie winces.

Katya puts her arms in the air. “I’m fine, look,” she tells her reassuringly. Curving her fingertips slightly she smiles. “RAWR!”

She chases Trixie through the horse fields until they end up on a street full of little stone cottages with flower boxes under the windows. Trixie stops when her mary janes hit the concrete and looks quizzically at Katya who’s stopped at a green door. She beckons for her to follow, and Trixie does.

sweet tea in the summer cross your heart, won’t tell no other and though i can’t recall your face i still got love for you

Katya’s sister Anna is sitting in the living room with a jug full of sweet tea and ice that makes Trixie drool just thinking about it. She smiles, offering them plastic cups full of the sugary liquid that Trixie happily gulps down after hours in the woods. She goes to slip her shoes off by the door, but Katya waves her hand. “Keep ‘em on.”

Trixie shrugs and follows the messy blonde up a flight of wooden stairs into a little red room. It has a bed pushed up to the wall and a set of gymnastic rings that come down from the ceiling. Katya places her cup down on the nearest flat surface as Trixie cradles hers in her hands, and launches herself at the rings.

Trixie is astounded that Katya can push herself off the ground, arms locked straight. She jumps down and grabs the shorts off the bed, pulling them on (somewhat awkwardly) over her wellies. Trixie watches in wonderment, fixed in place on the carpet, so she doesn’t spread dirt as Katya swings around, flipping and tumbling, aided by the rings.

When she finally stops, they sit crossed-legged on the floor, sipping sweet tea.

“Will you be my best friend?” Trixie asks Katya sweetly - her tongue coated in tea and her body energised from the most fun she’s ever had. She picks at the lace on the top of her socks while Katya considers her offer.

“I can do that,” she tells her, voice earnest and honest.

“Deal. I think best friends braid each other’s hair.”

“That sounds good.”

your braids like a pattern love you to the moon and to saturn passed down like folk songs the love lasts so long

“You can move now!” Katya announces after a painfully long time. Trixie gently pats the neat rows of hair on her head - it’s tender, and she scrunches her face up in response. She finds herself jealous - Katya is much better at braiding than she is, but she promised to teach her on the hand-me-down styling mannequin she got from her sister Anna.

“You’re better than me,” she effuses, hand splayed on the soft fabric of Katya’s smock.

“Yeah, well you have freckles,” Katya retorts, and Trixie nods because she makes a good point. “You can’t have everything, Beatrice.”

Trixie chews on her lips. She feels freer in Katya’s bedroom, there are no ghosts in the cupboards or angry ladies drying the washing in the sun. “Can you call me Trixie?” She asks. “I liked that better.”

Katya jumps up, pulling Trixie up with her. The sun makes her red walls glow, and they reflect onto her blonde hair.

“Okay, Trixie, do you wanna go on an adventure?”

Trixie nods and they barrel out of the bedroom and down the stairs, which creak pleasantly with every thundering step. Katya tugs her round the bend at the bottom of the stairs so fast that Trixie almost slams into the wall, but eventually they find Katya’s mama, Seraphine, in the kitchen making a salad.

“We’re going on an adventure!” Trixie exclaims, and Seraphine chuckles at them, ruffling Katya’s hair until the blonde scowls.

“Okay girls, stay safe,” she tells them, and they nod earnestly. “Are you staying for dinner?” She asks Trixie, and Trixie shakes her head sadly.

“My mama told me to be home for six.”

Seraphine smiles warmly and moves, so they can exit through the back door. Katya’s house backs onto a horse field and it makes Trixie feel like a butterfly - all warm and free in the sun and she never really wants to go home.

Katya sticks her arms out like she could fly if only she had the lift, and they run around playing aeroplanes for a little while. Trixie’s scuffed mary janes let her socks get wet from the dew in the grass and it makes her feel like she is a part of nature.

Katya takes off her wellies and the ground squishes under her toes.

and i’ve been meaning to tell you i think your house is haunted your dad is always mad and that must be why

Katya walks Trixie home to the grey flats on the edge of the town. They tower high above the little cottages - a relic of a revolution long gone - and cast hazy shadows in the late afternoon sun. In the shadows, Katya’s hair looks dull and Trixie’s dress looks clean, and it makes the hairs on Trixie’s legs stand up as a breeze whistles under her skirt.

“You live here?” Katya asks and she doesn’t mean it to sound mean, but the words still crackle in Trixie’s ears like dying embers. She bristles, standing up tall and proud like she’s always been taught to.

“Yes, I do,” she tells Katya almost haughtily - trying to channel her mama. Her hands firm around the squish of her hips and she purses her lips.

Katya frowns. “I’m sorry,” she voices, chewing the inside of her cheek, fingers clinging together behind her. “It looks like ghosts live here.”

This makes Trixie laugh, it’s soft and ladylike because she’s a lady, which in turn makes Katya laugh - loud and raucous.

“Good-bye, Kat-y-a,” says Trixie, her mouth rounding over the syllables. “Katya.”

“Good-bye, my best friend Trixie,” replies Katya with a wave and a nod before she skips back up the path towards the streetlamps. She steps inside the building and heads up the stairs, knocking three times on the door.

“Why are your shoes scuffed, Beatrice?” Is her first greeting and she turns her toes in an attempt to hide them from her mama.

“The forest, Mama,” Trixie responds, calm and quiet. Her brother is watching from the couch and he sticks his tongue out at her with a kind smile. “I met a girl named Katya.”

Her mama scowls, face tight and eyes sharp. “You let a girl named Katya touch your hair?” She asks, almost mocking as she picks up a braid and lets it fall back onto Trixie’s back. She sighs. “Go get ready for dinner and wash your hands.”

“Yes, Mama,” Trixie tells her dutifully before running off to her bedroom. She places the bobbles Katya used in her hair in her jewellery box.

and i think you should come live with me and we can be pirates then you won’t have to cry or hide in the closet

They play pirates, skipping rocks on the river like cannonballs. Katya is Blackbeard with her macaroni necklace and her stolen clip-on earrings. She smiles sweetly and tells Trixie that she is Grace O'Malley, because she is pretty and male pirates were not pretty. Also because then they could have the best pirate wedding anyone has ever seen and this makes Trixie laugh so hard she accidentally throws her best skipping stone. Katya decides that she’s won, but she will share her treasure and they lay on the grass on the bank of the river.

Seraphine has been reading Katya a book on pirates, so the young girl parrots the information back to Trixie, who revels in the knowledge. She begs her brother Josh to read her that pirates books she’s borrowed from the library and the next day she comes back to the river and tells Katya that they are both women pirates.

“I am Grace O'Malley and you are Mary Reed,” she announces authoritatively. Katya frowns, head tilted so her blonde hair glows white in the sun.

“Can we still have the best pirate wedding though?” She asks, and Trixie squeezes her hand before jumping up.

“Of course!” She tells her like it is obvious. “We will just be pirate wives.”

Katya nods, because this makes perfect sense. “We will be pirate wives,” she consolidates. She pulls a stick out of the belt of her smock and holds it aloft. “TO BATTLE, PIRATE WIFE!” She screams so the horses in the next field are adequately prepared before running down the grassy bank, so her wellies get wet on the rocky shore of the river.

“To battle!” Trixie squeals, running after her with enthusiasm. She stops when the stones start because she doesn’t want to get her socks wet this time, but she watches as Katya jumps in the water.

'Best friend pirate wife,’ she turns over in her head. It sounds good.

and just like a folk song our love will be passed on

part two. discomfort

i want you to know i’m a mirrorball i’ll show you every version of yourself tonight

There’s only one middle school in the village. Its bricks are a rust-brown and rough like they’ve just been dug out of the ground. It used to be a factory town, so everything is covered in a thin layer of dirt and dust anyway, but this building manages to look particularly rugged. Trixie assumes the planters were at one point neat and trimmed, although they don’t seem to be anymore - wiry stems making their way up the walls. It’s not unwelcoming, Trixie just doesn’t really want to be there.

She pushes that down though, pulling her white long-socks back up past her knees and adjusting the way her backpack falls on her shoulders. She spots Katya loitering under the carefully positioned 'no loitering’ sign and smiles - picking up her pace so her mary-janes slip a little on the gravel-covered yard. Katya’s wrists are covered in the friendship bracelets they spent the summer weaving with Seraphine’s embroidery threads. She wears Trixie’s too - her mama threw the first one out with her brother’s holey socks.

They share a homeroom, and Katya makes sure they get two seats next to each other, the plastic chairs sweating in the late August heat. Trixie’s thighs stick to them against her will and she finds herself gently prying her thighs away from the seat every so often as Katya laughs in her loose jeans.

Katya has always been the one who preferred practical fashion. Her brown smocks have turned into tank tops and jeans, and she’s only eleven, but Trixie thinks she dresses a bit like the boys from Grease. They’re older. Maybe, by then, Trixie will look like a Pink Lady. That’s what she wants, anyway.

They write notes on each other’s pencil cases while Mr Thompson gives them a rather hasty personal health lesson. Trixie worries at one point that she’s missing important information about periods or nail varnish, but Katya tells her that Anna can just explain it all to them, so they go back to doodling hearts in the margins of their brand new notepads.

At one point, Trixie chances a look around the room, the walls are sparse and the paint peels, but there’s one poster that makes her tummy feel weird and she almost points it out to Katya, but the other girl is too busy making a paper plane.

The poster tells her homosexuality is a sin.

She wonders if pirate wives are exempt.

i’ll get you out on the floor shimmering beautiful and when i break it’s in a million pieces hush

In Biology, Katya is seated next to a boy named Maxwell. He’s Jewish and sweet enough, and they talk about his babushka’s chak-chak. Katya remembers the sweet, doughy treat from her times visiting her baba back in Russia, and she almost asks why his name doesn’t sound like hers, because he sounds awfully American even though he can pronounce her last name.

Most of the teachers can’t. It’s the third day and they’ve already resorted to Zamo. She’s too used to it to be hurt.

Mrs Dodds comes in through the teacher’s door and drops a textbook on the desk to get everyone’s attention. She’s a mousy sort of woman - light hair cut to a bob that stops at the nape of her neck. Her blazer is tweed and also oversized, and it reminds Katya of the jacket her dad wears to job interviews.

Dodds starts scratching her name onto the board in white chalk and the sound sends shivers down the class’s spines.

“Can anyone explain to me where humans came from?” She asks the room, and the eleven-year-olds cower from the cadence of her voice.

A brave girl called Monique waves her hand, but Dodd’s picks on a boy called Jaremi instead and he quivers under her gaze. “Sex?” He suggests, tone light like he’s walking on eggshells and all of the preteens burst into giggles. The poor boy turns the same shade as summer poppies, and Katya feels terrible. Unfortunately, her face must betray this because a crooked finger is pointed in her direction. She shifts awkwardly.

“Evolution,” she musters with enough confidence that it doesn’t sound like a question, and while the class looks vaguely impressed with her, Mrs Dodds does not. She scoffs.

“A fallacy,” she claims, stalking back to the chalkboard with her sleeves crumpled by her elbows.

The chalk scraped on the board, spelling out a word: God. Katya gulps. She’s pretty sure god didn’t make humans. They came from fish - at least that’s what her encyclopedia told her.

“God created humans,” she announces to them all, smiling faintly, “and it’s people like you, sinner,” she points at Katya again, “who make him regret it.”

when no one is around, my dear you’ll find me on my tallest tiptoes spinning in my highest heels, love shining just for you Hush

They square dance in gym class and even though there aren’t enough boys, the girls aren’t allowed to dance with each other, so Trixie ends up sat on the bench while Katya and Max twirl in circles - blatantly flaunting the teacher’s instruction. Her long black skirt is patterned with white skulls and flares prettily around her ankles, exposing her red Doc Martens.

Katya leads, stepping backwards while Max steps on her toes - his shorter stature making for quite the picture (one that makes Trixie snort into her elbow).

She is not jealous. Jealousy is too strong, what she feels is subtle - like pulling on her ribs, shifting them under her skin until her heart hurts. Her heart does hurt. Maybe she’s not used to Katya having other people, so what - they said they would stick together and they will. She is confident.

When the dance ends, Katya bows - waving her arm so it circles under her and allowing her messy hair to fall over her face before flicking it back dramatically. She smiles at Trixie, and Trixie smiles back for the split second before she is assigned to the tall, lanky boy at the back of the gym. His hands are clammy and damp and strangely cold, and Trixie tries to hold them as lightly as she can, confident that Katya’s would be softer, warmer.

The boy smells strange, his hair falls over his eyes, and he stutters when he talks to her, making a poor effort of leading her and standing on her feet more than she stands on his. The teacher doesn’t seem to care, too busy screaming at the blonde girl who refuses to dance with the boy who has eczema.

They dance in circles rather than squares and Trixie’s mind is running in triangles rather than circles.

i know they said the end is near but i’m still on my tallest tiptoes spinning in my highest heels, love shining just for you

Trixie finds herself giggling with the girls Katya called plastic in her English lesson. She doesn’t share it with Katya and she didn’t want to sit alone, so she positioned herself at the back with Gigi, Pearl, and Courtney, who don’t seem to have an appreciation for Keats, but then again neither does Trixie, unless Katya is reading it to her in the hammock behind the cottage.

Gigi is dating a hippie boy from the next town over. She refers to him as Crystal, and the other girls go along with it, so Trixie doesn’t ask. Pearl wants to smoke weed with the high school boys that hang around the skate park, but she’s promised her brother that she won’t until she’s fourteen. Courtney is from Australia. They seem interesting.

Trixie doesn’t understand why they’re plastic.

But Katya drags her by the arm out of school one day ranting about how they’d called her names like 'dyke’ for not having a boyfriend.

“Boys are dumb,” she’d told them proudly, “I don’t want one.”

“Boys are dumb,” Trixie agrees solemnly, sat on a wall near her flat as Katya paces. She kicks a stone into the road and watches it skitter to a halt before sitting next to Trixie with a huff. “Sometimes girls are dumb too,” Trixie reminds gently, and Katya puts her head on her shoulder.

“You’re not dumb,” Katya tells her, “I don’t understand why they have to be.” She sounds so dejected that Trixie wants to bundle her up in blankets and make hot cocoa until she’s smiling again.

“Welcome to the real world. It sucks. You’re going to love it,” Trixie quips, and it does make Katya chuckle at her best friend’s antics.

“You did not just quote friends at me,” she jokes, pressing a finger into the softness of Trixie’s side. Trixie jumps off the wall in shock as Katya cackles to herself and sticks her tongue out.

“I hate you,” she tells her, smiling widely.

“I hate you too.”

i want you to know i’m a mirrorball i can change everything about me to fit in

They walk the final stretch to Trixie’s flat, hands swinging between them. Katya’s hand is clammy, but it is warm, and it grounds Trixie’s thoughts from where they are spinning. She knows people can be horrid, her brother once told her that 50% of the town is assholes and 50% is assholes you can deal with, but knowing and realising are two different things, and maybe she just hadn’t realised.

She doesn’t mean to be, but she’s more careful from then on. She giggles with boys and she doesn’t really hold Katya’s hand outside of the woods and the fields, where they are free to be whatever they want. And maybe she wants to hold Katya’s hand. Maybe.

There is a boy called Ben who hangs around the library. He seems sweet and small and kind, and she sits at his table while she tries to work out algebra. He plays baseball, but he mostly paints and makes jokes, so everyone seems to like him and Trixie admires that.

She appreciates the non-judgemental silence as she struggles over Pythagoras one evening. Katya is at art club, and Trixie doesn’t feel like having to do the work in the flat where the heating is broken, so she bundles herself up in the library and watches Ben eat a chocolate muffin over the top of his book. He smiles warmly at her and offers a chunk, which she takes gladly - savouring the way it seems to melt in her mouth.

"That’s good,” she mutters appreciatively, mouth full and all too aware of the watchful eye of the librarian.

“I made them!” Ben responds, his cheeks flushing with excitement.

“And they’re not going to poison me?” Trixie asks as he offers her a full one from a Tupperware in his bag. He sticks his tongue out, shaking his head, before ducking down as the librarian looks their way.

you are not like the regulars the masquerade revellers drunk as they watch my shattered edges glisten

“I think Ben has a crush on me,” Trixie postures, approaching it slowly like one approaches a kitten stuck on a road. Katya, in many ways, is comparable to a scared kitten - whether it be her anxious quiver or the mess of her hair - soft, but tangled in a knot on her head.

Katya’s eyebrow quirks, though her mouth stays set. “I thought we said boys are dumb?” She tells Trixie firmly, feet planted in the damp October soil.

Trixie shifts her toes on the crunching leaves and the noise ripples through the forest.

“They are,” she agrees, quietly, “I don’t want one.” She feels like she’s having to defend herself and she doesn’t really know why. Her cheeks prickle red with heat.

Katya scowls, and Trixie’s quivers on instinct before pulling her shoulder back and standing up straight. The clouds rolling overhead seem greyer, but maybe that’s just a trick of the light.

“You can’t control who I’m friends with, Kat,” she advocates, the telltale signs of anger slipping into her tone as the pitch heightens with every word. She pulls the sleeves of her jumper over her palms so she can feel a little sense of security, and Katya’s face softens.

“I know,” Katya sighs. She falls down onto a log, brushing some of the bark off the edges. She shifts as it scrapes her legs through her trousers, but eventually settles, looking mournful. “I just don’t want to lose you.”

Trixie holds her hands in her own, feeling the clammy warmth.

“I promise you won’t.”

hush

part three. comfort

when you are young, they assume you know nothing

Trixie is fourteen, holding hands with Ben as they eat ice creams from the parlour down the street. Ben dots some of his onto her nose, and she flushes pink and flustered as he wipes it off with the pad of his thumb. He’s grown taller, face chiselling ever so slightly, although his cheeks remain doughy and soft. She has to refrain from imprinting her fingertips into the pale flesh just to watch it bounce back. She’s grown into herself, breasts growing until her mama had to take her to the department store, an hour away, to buy training bras in sizes larger than the local shops have in stock.

She blushes and goes back to her ice cream, the strawberry sauce dripping into her knuckles so she has to run her tongue along them, leaving only the faint hint of pink food-colouring trailing across her hand.

He presses his lips to her cheek, tongue skimming the tip of her soft serve on the way, and grins like a Cheshire cat. She relents, placing her lips on his for a peck, and his lips taste like chocolate sauce. It’s sweet.

It took her a few years to finally accept his constant asking her out, but they spent ninth grade canoodling in the library, hand swinging between them and lips pressed to each other’s cheeks. It’s nice.

The girls she changes with for gym class tell her she must be in love, but she’s always thought that love would feel more like fireworks rather than popping candy. It’s pleasant. She doesn’t know if she should want more.

but i knew you dancin’ in your levi’s drunk under a streetlight, i

Ben wanted more. He dumps her for Kelly Mantle, a drama student famed for giving Brian McCook a blowjob behind the smoker shelter.

She cries into Katya’s paint-splattered denim jacket, the blonde’s fingers worming their way around the fullness of her hips until Katya’s holding her.

Trixie sobs in hiccups, and Katya’s sorrow rolls in waves. She’s held the girl so many times in their friendship, but they swore it would never be over a boy. And now Trixie is clinging to her like a liferaft in the ocean and Katya cannot help but pull her ashore.

Katya guides her over to the blanket she’d thrown on the warm grass, and they collapse onto its cushioning. Katya holds her until all her sobs muffle into croaks, and then there is silence.

They eventually roll onto their backs, Katya’s arm resting under the nape of Trixie’s neck, and although she’s losing feeling in her fingers - she wouldn’t move it for the world. The sun is warm, bright and even across their exposed stomachs in crop tops that Anna gave them when her chest grew too large. Katya’s hangs limply, but Trixie’s is stretching to her body and moves gently with each breath. Katya could watch the hypnotic movements until the sunset.

The river at the bottom of the verge babbles softly. There’s a heron in it, tall and proud and searching eagerly for fish. Its beak hooks into the water and it pulls out a flapping anchovy - or so Katya tells her, fingertips painting the words into the skyline.

Sometimes Trixie feels like the heron, but most days, she supposes, she is the anchovy. She is only fourteen, but life is harder than she thought it would be. Heartbreak hurts more. Making daisy chains with a lifelong friend soothes the pain a little.

i knew you hand under my sweatshirt baby, kiss it better, i

The rips in Katya’s Levi’s let the grass brush her calves. She longs to pull Trixie up, drag her around on the grass till they’re dancing, but the sun is starting to burn orange on the horizon line and Trixie’s mam has never been one for letting her off curfew.

She tugs the blonde up, sleepy and satiated - brushes a thumb along the redness of her under-eyes. Trixie adorns her with a flower crown and in the headiness of the sunset, Katya blushes.

The sky goes from naphthol red to quinacridone. Trixie swings their hands together as they take the long road home. Their path is shaded by the trees, and a breeze causes goosebumps to appear all up her arms, so she tugs her sweatshirt on, and Katya carefully pulls her hair out of the back for her. She whispers something, but it is lost to the whistling of the leaves.

Sometimes Katya wishes they could go back to playing pirates. They could be pirate wives and gallivant about the woods, waving their sticks up high and pretending that they could always go home to each other. It would be easier, she muses, easier than enduring school with girls who call her a dyke and a lesbo and tell her not to look at them in gym class, when, really, she gets ready facing the corner. Pirate wives would be fanciful, but lovely nonetheless.

The softness of their footsteps stops as they reach the path to Trixie’s. It’s gravely and it crunches underfoot, but the streetlights cast shadows that make Katya yearn to dance with Trixie once more.

She gives in this time, pulling the younger girl into her arms so they can mock-waltz, imagining the streetlamps as spotlights and maybe their friendship as something more.

Katya’s hand slips onto the fullness of Trixie’s hip again, her skin hot under her cold palm.

“You’re my favourite,” Katya whispers, lips brushing the flyaways from Trixie’s ponytail. She cannot see the blonde blush, but she squirms a little in Katya’s arms and it makes her smirk.

“And you’re mine.”

and when i felt like i was an old cardigan under someone’s bed you put me on and said i was your favorite

They kiss under that streetlight.

It may be the first, but it’s the sweetest and the quickest and the kindest too - lips brushing like a promise. Trixie can’t say what she’s promising, but she’s pretty sure she’d promise her life away just to taste cola off Katya’s tongue again.

a friend to all is a friend to none chase two girls, lose the one when you are young, they assume you know nothing

part four. deception

make sure nobody sees you leave hood over your head, keep your eyes down tell your friends you're out for a run you’ll be flushed when you return

Katya pads quietly along the line - her socks not quite keeping out the 3am chill. She’ll have to wait until she’s out of the door to put her worn converse back on - the squeak of the soles bound to wake the whole flat up. She resists the urge to skid - knowing she’ll hit the front door with a thud that Trixie will struggle to pretend is the wind. It’s a calm night.

She’s left Trixie in bed - the duvet twisted around her recumbent form like a snake. She wishes, for a second, to turn around and snuggle back into the warmth of Trixie’s side. To sling a leg back over the plush of her thigh and rest her head on Trixie’s chest.

Cuddling, she decides, is god’s divine creation. And so is Trixie.

She manages to avoid the creaking floor panel in front of Mama Mattel’s bedroom door, hugging the wall opposite just to make it out unscathed.

She locks the door with the key Trixie gifted to her over summer - pressed at a locksmith two towns over. Mr Lackerty in the village centre would have asked too many questions. Trixie paid for it with her allowance, stealing change from her Mama to take the bus there and back. She’d gifted it to her in a little shoebox stuffed with pulled-apart tissue. Katya has cried.

Slipping on her shoes in the hall outside, she sighs in both relief and sadness. She leaves quickly.

take the road less travelled by tell yourself you can always stop what started in beautiful rooms ends with meetings in parking lots

Trixie shifts on the wooden desks - hoping her skirt won’t be covered in chalk and graphite when she gets up. She’s watching Katya, dark eyes trained on crystalline green, and Katya smiles up at her before focusing back on her canvas. Her tongue pokes out when she does something she deems good, her eyebrows scrunching in concentration.

The art room is empty except for the two of them and by the silence of the corridor outside, lunch isn’t over just yet. They’re safe.

It’s like their own little sanctuary, Katya with her paints and Trixie with her Katya. She gently brushes the girl’s fringe back whenever it looks in danger of getting messy - there’s already a streak of pink across the bridge of her nose, but Trixie doubts she’s noticed.

She starts humming to herself, an old song that she’s heard through the walls of the flat, and Katya looks up at her.

“You should sing more Trix,” she tells her, ever so earnest.

“You think?” Trixie tucks her hair behind her ears, eyes twinkling at the compliment.

“I do,” she muses, turning back to the painting so she can put a final stroke in place before she tugs on the edge of Trixie’s skirt.

Trixie brushes a hand at her, hoping there won’t be painted fingerprints on the corduroy before coming to stand behind Katya. She wraps her hands around her waist and balances her chin on Katya’s shoulder before finally allowing her eyes to fall on the canvas.

It’s the river. Their river.

And they’re on the banks.

Together.

and that’s the thing about illicit affairs and clandestine meetings and longing stares

Trixie turns sixteen in February. Her birthday is celebrated by the world even if they don’t realise it, pink hearts adorning every establishment in town. She spends the day with Courtney, as Pearl is smoking weed with her boyfriend from city college. He’s a forty-minute bus ride away on a good day, but Pearl says the sex is good, and Trixie just blushes softly because she shouldn’t know what Pearl is talking about, but she does.

She’s okay with it, though, spending the day without Pearl. She and Courtney get smoothies from the 'healthy’ diner that Courtney’s been going on about and talk about boys, and Trixie makes up most of her opinions, but that’s okay.

She decides that she’ll be attracted to Mathew because he’s tall and he’s got the same cheekbones, as Katya so she can just talk about that. Courtney’s raving about this guy called Danny that she wants to be friends with (make out with), apparently he’s in a band and he sings, and that makes Courtney positively ravenous for him.

They part ways after Courtney gives her the charm bracelet she and Pearl bought. It’s silver and has a little heart charm on it, but Courtney tells her not to worry, they can buy more.

It jingles, but it’s not as comfortable as the woven friendship bracelets she and Katya made when they were eleven.

Katya meets her by the river and they walk through the woods hand in hand till they reach the clearing where she’s laid out a picnic blanket.

They lay on it together, looking up at the sky and holding hands through their gloves.

“We met here,” Katya ponders, as she allows herself to get lost in the smell of cherries on Trixie’s breath.

“Huh,” Trixie replies, placing a gentle kiss on Katya’s nose, “I guess we did.” A blush spreads across her cheekbones and she feels the heat in her chest as she remembers the past few years.

“You’re my favourite,” Katya tells her, a whisper in the wind.

“And you’re mine.”

it’s born from just one single glance but it dies and it dies and it dies a million little times

They go through a rough patch. They’re only seventeen, it’s their god-given right to, and they’re hiding a secret that’s burning them both, slowly, but surely.

Katya spends more time with Danny and his band, and Trixie spends more time with Courtney and Pearl and Gigi and her boyfriend, who transferred at the end of last year. He’s got a mullet, and it’s confusing, but apparently it’s in fashion, so Trixie doesn’t try to argue.

They drift apart a little bit. It’s the kind of drifting where Trixie stares at Katya across the corridor - watches a boy with eyeliner compliment her rings in front of their lockers. Katya stares at Trixie too - watches her when Courtney and Pearl aren’t around to call her a dyke, and maybe she’s still hurt that Trixie chooses to be their friend.

She wonders what would happen if they knew where Trixie’s proclivities lie.

She slips a note into her locker, telling Trixie to meet her in the art room, 6th period on Thursday. It’s bound to be empty, the rest of the school busy with summer term exams and home study. She tells herself that she’ll wait till then. She can wait.

Trixie looks nervous when they meet, she’s pulling at one of her nails - the glossy pink peeling off.

“You wanted to see me?” She asks, voice low and cautious, and it breaks a little part of Katya that she doesn’t even realise is shattering.

“I’ve missed you,” Katya responds, honest and raw. She’s twisting her fingers together too, subconsciously mirroring Trixie, or whatever Danny was trying to tell her about psychology. Trixie nods slowly.

“I’ve missed you too,” she agrees, gulping air like she’s drowning. The tension is sucking all the air out of the room, but she’s only just noticed it’s ugly form. She manages a smile, and it’s softer than she thought she could muster.

“I love you, you know?”

Katya frowns, and it makes Trixie back into the table she’s been stood in front of.

“I don’t think you do,” Katya says, and suddenly the silence feels like it’s been shattered.

“Wh-” Trixie stutters, feeling like the air has been sucker-punched out of her lungs leaving her winded.

“I don’t think you do,” Katya repeats plainly, her eyes suddenly emptier than Trixie’s ever seen them. She’s gripping the table behind her so hard that her knuckles have gone white - gathering all her resolve because she’s sure she’ll crumble if she lets go for a second.

“Who are you to tell me what I feel?”

“You don’t.”

“Just because you’ve decided you can’t accept it.” Trixie’s indignant now, she wants to scream and shout and yell, but most of all - she just wants to understand.

“You don’t love me,” Katya says again. “You say you do, but you can’t. This hasn’t meant anything to me.” It’s a lie. She watches Trixie crumble and then pick herself back up again all in the space of a few seconds.

“You know what, you can go fuck yourself.” She throws it out there and watches it detonate - the harshest words she’s ever said to Katya.

She turns to leave, inhaling deeply to try and keep the tears in her eyes instead of streaming down her face where they want to be.

“Dyke,” she mutters as the door slams.

She leaves, and Katya finally falls apart.

look at this godforsaken mess that you made me you showed me colours you know i can’t see with anyone else

#rpdr fanfiction #trixya #trixie mattel #katya zamolodchikova #bendelacreme #dela x trixie #miz cracker #coming of age #childhood best friends #fluff #angst #friends to lovers #i swear there is a happy ending #folklore #just like a folk song #pinkgrapefruit #concrit welcome #tw use of dyke

[mcheang]

Lila the evil witch

Inspired by the Disney evil sorceresses: Mother Gothel, Ursula, the Evil Queen...what if Lila was an illusionist...but what was she after? The Disney villains were literally after a physical component: hair, voice, heart... the exception was Queen La of the Leopardman, she wanted Jane’s Husband

WARNING: THIS IS A DARK STORY...involving religion and exorcism.

The Daughter of Mrs Rossi was dead.

Inhabiting her youthful skin was an evil witch’s spirit named Lila. She even legally changed the name of the diplomat’s Daughter.

In the past; Lila had posed as a sweet Wiccan in an American village, living humbly. But she wanted more! (Inspired by Sarah Ravencroft from Scooby-Doo)

Lila was in truth a witch, and she longed to have the materialistic desires that everyone else desired. She was just willing to risk her soul in the process.

Lila cast love spells on the richest boy, causing him to obsess over her. She stole the beauty of the fairest maidens in the land to heighten her own. And those that opposed her soon found themselves sick.

It was the second issue that got the reverend concerned. His own daughter had suddenly gone from pretty to having burned skin.

He prayed in the Church for wisdom and guidance.

And perhaps it truly was holy intervention that caused a hypnotizing ray of moonlight to lead the reverend into the woods where he found Lila the Witch preparing a bath in a sunken pit of dark liquid. (Inspired from the book Another Faust where Belle took a painful chemical bath to maintain her beauty and allure.)

It was a repulsive bath. There was nothing so horrifying as the smell of blood, but there were crushed butterfly wings floating on it.

The reverend had seen enough. Lila was no innocent Wiccan; but a witch!

He wanted to expose her right there and then, but Lila had the male youth population on her side and was engaged to a very wealthy lad.

The reverend left the witch to her evil bath salts without alarming her to his presence.

So, the reverend gathered trusted adults for a secret plot to drive out the witch to the community.

He waited till the next moonlit night to lead them to the sunken pit and there they exposed Lila as a witch.

Lila snarled at them and raced out, her stinking naked body painted red. The men raced after her, determined not to let the evil escape.

They succeeded when one of their own threw a pitchfork at her torso. Lila lay dying in agony.

The villagers gathered around her in grim triumph.

But Lila had the last laugh, while she mocked them about their daughters’ disfigurements, she secretly cast a spell so her soul would not leave the earth. She knew hell awaited her for her crimes.

But being a disembodied soul is no picnic. And yet Lila knew currently, the judge’s Daughter was wasting away in bed from her curses.

Lila waited until the girl’s soul had passed on, before moving in on the still warm body.

When the judge returned from the witch hunt, he was jubilant that his Daughter had been cured.

Lila played her role carefully, lest she arouse suspicion again. She waited years before deciding to move to another town. By this time, Lila’s stolen body was middle-aged. She kept her eyes out for young blood.

And so it went on, Lila looked for a body with a wonderful lifestyle for her to steal. With her acting skills, it was a breeze. The few who noticed were silenced.

Of course, there were the other magical folk who realized what she was. The goody kind sought to exorcise her. They never succeeded.

One day, she came across a diplomat’s Daughter. She had a good life. A sufficient allowance, fabulous travels around the world, and little parent monitoring. She became Lila’s next victim.

After a couple of countries later, she legally changed her name.

Then Mrs Rossi announced they were moving to Paris. Lila initially had some concerns. The Miraculous were ancient relics lost to time. But given Hawkmoth’s failures and the heroes’ inexperience, Lila suspected they were not well versed in identifying magical creatures.

She studied her talented new class, looking for possible new victims. Living a life of travel was fun and all, but it wasn’t fully luxurious.

Obviously those with artistic talent like Marinette, Nathaniël and Kitty Section were out.

To be fair, the only viable candidate was Chloe. The girl was served hand and foot and got to be mean! That sounded ideal to Lila.

But, with Hawkmoth around, Lila suspected the mayor would get akumatized trying to cure her. Or even Sabrina.

Ugh, she’ll have to wait till he is busted then. What a bummer. Who knows how long that will take?

In the meantime, Lila might as well have some fun. Her gullible classmates were her new servants. But Adrien and Marinette kept their distance.

You see, upon first sight, the kwamis saw her for what she really was and warned their holders to be cautious. Thankfully they were strong enough to counter whatever magic tricks Lila could come up with.

Lila didn’t do that though, she relied on her lying talents.

As a result, Marinette never got the chance to spy on Adrien once Tikki strongly told her to not raise the liar’s suspicions.

Also, Plagg thoroughly was alarmed by this Lila girl and warned Adrien to keep his distance while they were separated in the library, and don’t let her take anything that belonged to him. As a result, the book is safe. And Lila doesn’t have a chance to be akumatized.

Ladybug and Chat Noir discussed how to exorcise her. It would take joint efforts but the original soul inhabiting Lila’s body was gone. After the exorcisement, the body would be a corpse.

The action itself was simple, Lila was physically no match for them. All Ladybug had to wind her magical yo-yo string around her and let its magic nullify Lila’s own. (Tikki’s magic can’t do that for Nooroo’s akumas) then all Chat had to do was literally push her with his baton.

Plagg’s power would destroy whatever was anchoring Lila’s soul and force her out.

But how to go about it? In public? In private? How do they convince Mrs Rossi her real Daughter is dead and an evil spirit now possesses her body?

No, the real daughter of Mrs Rossi deserves to be given closure. Her Mother should be mourning for her real daughter, not the Lila ghost!

Ladybug and Chat Noir brought in Alya’s help for this, as well as tell her Ladybug is so not BFFs with Lila!

Lucky charm: an actual recent video of the real Miss Rossi at the zoo for her birthday. Apparently she has an intense fear of snakes.

Ladybug and Chat Noir visit Mrs Rossi at work and ask to speak with her in private. Mrs Rossi is of course, disbelieving, until Ladybug suggests they use the snake test. If Lila acts as Mrs Rossi expects her to, they won’t perform exorcism. But if she does not, Mrs Rossi will let them go through with it.

Mrs Rossi is still skeptical about this bargain before Ladybug points out that with all the akumas and superpowers, how can she doubt what was happening? Even New York has superheroes!

Mrs Rossi admits she doesn’t want to face the truth that her Daughter has been dead all this time and she never even noticed.

Chat consoles her that she can at least give her real Daughter justice.

Alya and Marinette organize a class field trip to the zoo.

Mrs Rossi disguises herself as a zoo attendant.

Lila is paired with Alya to study the snake exhibit. Lila shows no apprehension whatsoever.

At the dim, empty snake exhibit, Ladybug and Chat Noir act. Lila shrieks and demands to know their reason behind this. She pleads for Alya to intervene but Alya just stands back, with the zoo attendant. Both watching silently as Chat Noir gently pushes her with his baton.

Lila’s body collapses. And a visible spirit manifests, still trapped by the yo-yo.

The spirit of Lila the witch is no longer youthful, and they finally see what her real form looks like. An ancient, withered hag snarling and screeching in hatred and agony.

Mrs Rossi condemns Lila for killing her Daughter.

Lila spits at her. “What can I say? A Daughter with little to none parental attention? She was such easy bait! I’ve been here for years and you never noticed.”

Mrs Rossi flinched at the accusation.

Alya stepped forward. “And what about Marinette? Were you going to target her too?”

Lila laughed. “I target those with envy-inducing lifestyles. Marinette may have the connections but she’s no Chloe. I was waiting till Hawkmoth was defeated before I took care of her. Marinette though, was open game. I don’t tolerate people who call me a liar.”

Chat: you are a liar.

Lila glares hatefully at the heroes. “You won’t win. I’ll be back, and when I do, I’ll kill everyone you love.”

Chat: yeah, I don’t think so.

He plunges his baton through her spirit, into the earth. The baton channels the evil spirit away from the earth. In the afterlife, there are 2 paths. Lila obviously has shown no repentance...her destination is obvious.

Back at the zoo, Mrs Rossi weeps for her Daughter. The heroes assure her that Lila is gone and won’t return. Alya is preparing to tell her class the news. They decided to keep this matter private. Mrs Rossi isn’t ready for this to be public.

The fake story: Lila suffered a sudden stroke.

The class wants to hold a funeral but Mrs Rossi insists on going back home immediately. She can’t stand the thought of the class mourning for that horrible ghost. They never knew her real Daughter.

Oh, and btw, Plagg finally convinced Adrien to take pictures of the book and send the information to the Guardian.

#miraculous ladybug fanfic #miraculous ladybug fic #ml fanfic #ml fanfiction #ml fic #miraculous ladybug fanfiction #lila gets exposed #lila is exposed #volpina au #lila is a witch

[perpetuelledaydreaming]

Back to you (Chapter V)

Summary:  Y/N Stark and Peter Parker are unconditionally and irrevocably in love with each other, being friends for years was just the step before making it official. BUT, just the weekend they did, Thanos and the snap happened, leaving Y/N broken: without friends, avengers family or Peter Parker. So, she has to move on, at least that’s what everyone’s telling her and she really tries to do it and who better to help her than Harry Osborn. But, has she really let Peter go? What if Tony Stark -genius, billionaire, playboy, and philanthropist- knows how to bring Peter back? And what happens when he does? Is Y/N going to avenge again? Who’s going to lead the avengers now? Who is she going to choose? Harry or Peter? and who the hell is mysterio? *He doesn’t even go here

word count: 10.6k 

author’s note: I really loved how this chapter turned out, I had to go back to my dairy when I broke up with my ex to remember those really raw feelings that I had and place them in the story. I love Harley and Y/N relationship because it’s just banter and it lets our girl have a nice laugh before she has THE TALK with Peter. Next chapter it’s going to be so interesting because we can finally see the new dynamics between Y/N and her friends and dealing with Harry and being an Avenger or head Avenger I must say. As you know I love your feedback so please please let me know what you think, like and repost it and I receive any request! I’m already thinking about the next series, it’s going to be a continuation of this but based on my blurb Hey Hey you yeah I don’t like your (boy) girlfriend. 

Enjoy! Love -J. 

series masterlist

______

Proof that Tony Stark has a heart 

You’d read the inscription on that arch reactor a thousand times or even more through the years. It was always on your father’s lab and since Pepper had gifted to him, it became a relic in your household and a token that represented how your father had subsequently changed. He carried it to New York when you moved, it was saved when your house in Malibu was destroyed by the Mandarin, it eventually came to the cabin when Tony moved, with Morgan and Pepper, Upstate. 

So, it was beyond unbelievable for you to be carrying it over the flower arrangement that Pepper had ordered to let it float on the lake at your father’s funeral. 

Because although you knew that Tony wasn’t immortal, it was still implausible for you that he wouldn’t come home anymore. 

He wouldn’t see you graduate college; he wouldn’t officially pass his legacy to you as the head avenger, he wouldn’t walk you down the aisle if the time came. He wouldn’t see Morgan grow-up or grow old with Pepper as he had wished. 

It didn’t even seem real to you as you walked towards the dock, holding one of Morgan’s tiny hands while Pepper was carrying her, Happy and Rhodey close to you and the whole Avengers team walked behind as you did your best to keep it together. Your eyes trailed back to Morgan and by seeing her eyes sparkling with tears, your heart broke, she could already understand what was happening. 

As soon as you arrived at the cabin, she had been asking for Tony too. Pepper let you know that she had been waiting for you to tell her together. Honestly, the last couple of days had been a swirl. The last thing you remembered about the fight was Tony’s arch reactor turning off, after that, it was just uncontrollable sobs that left your lips and Peter’s hands holding you as tight as he could ever do. You thought that you had passed out after, your body had bare way too much than it probably could: From time traveling to Natasha dying, to be injured while facing Thanos and his army, to seeing your father dead. 

It was too much and for some reason, you thanked your brain for letting you rest. 

Still, the pain didn’t go away when you woke up. 

You were driven upstate by Steve and Rhodey who were waiting for you to wake up and were taking care of you along with Bruce. They had to help you get dressed and got you down to the car as if you were a child again and you thanked them for that. In all honesty, you were acting as best as you could but it seemed as if you were barely there. It could’ve been because of the PTSD or the shock. The only thing Steve and Rhodey got out of you were short answers, nods, and hums, not even Happy, who was already in the cabin, got more than a hello and a hug. It wasn’t because you wanted to be rude but because your mind was still trying to process all that you had been through in a couple of days and how you were trying to piece back together life. 

It was like the snap all over again, but now it was far more complicated. 

Dad died, Harry’s in L.A. probably with his father, the universe is back, I’m not longer avenging, I have to tell Morgan that our father died and Peter’s back, you repeated over and over again on your head. 

Not because you wanted to torture yourself but because you really wanted to know how to map out your next step. Tony’s words of not wasting your life, were in the back on your mind but along with them, those chocolate eyes with golden specks were also waiting for you to do something about them. 

Steve and Rhodey let you know that Peter had gone with you to Stark Tower, he refused to let you go until it was completely necessary. He had waited for you one whole day, still in his iron-spider suit, but as time passed and you didn’t wake up, Steve told him to go check on May and his friends. It had been an order, otherwise, he wouldn’t have left. He followed through but asked them to tell you that he would try to go Upstate as soon as he could, that he would be texting you. 

And he did, but you didn’t answer. 

After telling Morgan that Tony hadn’t made it, you didn’t even have the energy to see what he had said, so you simply turned it off as you tried to spend as much time with Morgan and Pepper, trying to somehow make sense of what had happened. 

It might have been a selfish move, it made you feel even worse that you were acting like a dick and you were not facing him. In the back on your mind, you were trying to think how on earth you were going to handle this, you hadn’t figure it out not even when you saw him at the funeral. 

You reached the water, carefully placing the flowers over it, and, as your heart clenched on your chest, you let it go. It didn’t actually dawn on you that you were crying until the tears were blurring your sight and Pepper helped you stand up as you held on to her and Morgan. 

As distraught as you were by looking at the art reactor floating away, you didn’t want to look back because you knew that everyone was watching you and there was no way you would let them see how weak you actually felt. Especially since Peter was standing next to Steve, crying as well and being held by Aunt May. 

It was silent for a few moments.

And as you watched the arch reactor disappearing into the water, you felt the unbearable weight on your shoulder that Tony had told you about many times that he felt. Now what? you thought to yourself. 

“I want Y/N”, Morgan mumbled as she pulled away from Pepper’s chest and moved her tiny hands towards you, signaling for you to grab her. 

Morgan was far more advance than Tony or even you were at her age, she was already talking coherent sentences while you had to turn two before you could do that. So, it wasn’t a surprise that she was way more perceptive and wanted to comfort you somehow and the hugs that she gave you, how she clung to your neck and nuzzle on your chest, it was as if everything was okay again. 

“Come on baby”, you answered back with the best smile you could possibly give her, and Pepper passed her to you, she kissed your forehead and turned around to face the rest of the people. 

“Thank you so much for coming and being here with me and my daughters”, Pepper announced, choking up a bit as she said the word daughters. “There’s food inside or you are free to leave, I know you are all busy people”

You could hear a few mumbling thank you’s or humming, you heard some steps following Pepper inside the house but others lingered around, still, no one dared to interrupt you or Morgan at the moment, and you felt thankful because it was indeed a hard time for both of you. 

But then someone touched your shoulder and a part of your mind prayed that it wasn’t Peter; it wasn’t.

 As soon as your eyes connected with those sterling blue eyes, you couldn’t help but smirk. 

Part of you really thought that Harley Keener would skip the funeral, you had sent the invitation yourself but it was still a longshot. 

Harley had been in your life since the Mandarin deal with Tony, Tony always used to go to Tennesse to visit him and he flew with you once. The first five minutes of meeting each other weren’t that nice, he was two years older than you and said he was smarter than you; at the end of the day, you managed to get along (not without a threat from Tony). And so, Harley Keener became your first crush, and apparently, it was beyond obvious that years later, both Harley and Tony gave you a hard time when he would come and visit from his little town or MIT. 

It was one of the losses you and Tony had to endure as well when the snap happened. 

“Surprised?”, the lanky boy with dark hair that one day used to be a light blonde asked. 

“I am, indeed”, you answered softly as you swing from side to side, trying to make Morgan a bit sleepy. 

“You really thought I wouldn’t come?”, Harley cried in an overdramatic way and you couldn’t help but smile a bit as he walked next to you to stare at the lake. “Hurts that you thought of me in that way.”

“I just… I understand that coming back isn’t easy”, you said, noticing Harley tensing to your words, his face deadpan and you could see his jaw clenching. 

It was unusual for Harley. Harley was playful, loved playing coy, flirty, snarky and witty comments here and there, plus a good touch of sarcasm. In all the years that you had come to know him, he was never tense, not even bother by anything. Hence, why you liked him so much at one point, you could be the opposite of super easy-going in moments like these.  

“Yeah, well…”, Harley sighed as his eyes focused on Morgan that was watching him apprehensively, he smirked in return and then gazed at you, something in his eyes gleaming. “She looks just like him”

It was true, Morgan was the spitting image of Tony with the soft features of Pepper. It was the complete opposite of you, you looked exactly like your birth mother but had inherited all the little gestures and behaviors that Tony had. If you were placed side by side, you would act like his clone. 

It pained you a bit when Harley denied saying his name out loud. 

“Morgan, you want to meet Uncle Harley?”, You whispered as she held tighter, a bit nervous but at the end of the day, she nodded. 

Morgan wasn’t really into a lot of people. She was a calm and observant baby, but mostly a bit shy at first, which was a surprise for Tony, although you had been the same. From the Avengers team only Rhodey, Nat, Steve, and Bruce managed to get to know her, but still, she remained quiet most of the time, especially when they came to plan the time-heist. And at the funeral she had only made eye contact with Happy or Rhodey out of all the guests, Steve a little but not too much. 

“Hey, Little Stark”, Harley beamed as he made a big gesture and offered Morgan his hand with a bow. 

In returned Morgan giggle on your chest, making you feel the vibrations of her laugh and she placed her tiny hand on Harley’s. It could’ve surprised you that Morgan had agreed to interact with Harley, but it really wasn’t. He was charming and everyone loved him, he had a way with people. 

“A pleasure.” He announced and he quickly placed a quick peck on her hand but Morgan reacted rather poorly. 

“Ew!” She shouted between chuckles as she shook off her hand from Harley’s and wipe it on her dress. 

You couldn’t help but to chuckle along at Harley’s chagrined expression, his eyes opened like plates and completely frozen where Morgan had let him. It might have been a first for him.  

“I didn’t see that coming, Little Stark”, Harley grumbled as he scrunched up his nose while watching Morgan with a half-smile. 

“First time you are rejected?”, you asked playfully. 

Harley rolled his eyes at you, “Maybe… but I could remember a time where you were dying for me to do that”, he answered.

The heat you felt on your cheeks gave you away, it had been years but the embarrassment didn’t go away completely. Now it had become a joke between you, to remember how dumbfounded you were with the blonde boy that came over sometimes to New York or that you went to visit as well. 

“Oh my god, please it was almost like ten years ago, get over it”, you scoffed and rolled your eyes as Morgan watched the conversation good-humoredly as if she understood better than you thought the comments threw to one another. 

“You get over me!”, Harley cried “You are jealous that you are not my favorite Stark anymore?”, he said as he winked at Morgan who replied with a giggle. 

For a lanky boy, Harley didn’t show his dorky side a lot. He always seemed so graceful with his movements, his touches, and gazes. As if they had been rehearsed to be eloquent and elegant. 

“I see that you are into younger girls,” you cooed as you watched Morgan with a smile and rubbed your nose against hers, “and a girl can share” and you winked. 

Harley chuckled as his eyes trailed back to the lake, he shook his head and bit his lower lip. Trying to find an answer to your comment, those were the times that you bonded the most when you could leave him without a proper answer. It felt good to remember past times when everything had been easy, it had been a hard month, to say the least, and the last time you had been this carefree was when you last saw Harry. 

“Just into Stark’s that are younger than me”, Harley replied, making you shake your head.

But then it hit you, the word younger echoed through your head like if someone had yelled something to a cave. 

“That was…”, you sighed as you placed Morgan on your other hip. “We are basically the same age now, you know?”

You saw how Harley looked a bit dazed, his eyes moving a bit too quickly as he stared into space, he stayed silent for a couple of moments; you could see him calculating his thoughts. 

“I… I can’t really process that”, Harley stammered as his frantic eyes finally connected with yours, his feet tapping the floor. “You were always like a little bean and now, you… are you 21?”

You shook your head a bit your inner cheek. 

“Almost…” you trailed off, staring at Harley as your mind tried to find a way to come back from that. “I know it’s hard, sorry for bringing it up”

“No, it’s okay” Harley insisted as he cleared his throat. “Anyway, it’s not like we can be together. I saw your loverboy around here, somewhere”

You hummed as you felt your body tensing up, you winced at the memories of Peter and Harley together.

Peter and Harley, they had a difficult relationship. 

They had always been seen by Tony as his surrogate sons, he loved them both equally but god, the way they competed for Tony’s attention and yours too was unbearable. Not that Peter would ever be point-blank rude to Harley or that Harley actually wanted to make Peter feel bad (most of the time) but it was a tension that was always silently in the room when both of them came in and all of you knew it. 

For one part, Peter was clearly jealous of Harley when Tony would invite him to work on a project and make him fly from MIT to Stark Tower or the compound. Peter always had to share his lab with Harley, which was usually flowing with work on Spider-man related things or Peter’s own inventions but he had to move everything aside for him. It even annoyed Peter more when Tony said that Harley would have his own as soon as he graduated from MIT and come to work for Stark Industries. Peter felt like he was second to Harley most of the time because of the way that Harley and Tony went back, but he tried to brush it off most of the time in order for Tony not to notice although it didn’t work. 

Regarding you, it was even worst. Not that Peter felt any kind of property over you, he just felt insecure with Harley around. Each time Harley visited it occupied a lot of your time and you invited him everywhere. The Midtown gang adored Harley as well, so there was no way Peter could freely complain about the lanky smooth boy because MJ and Ned would always say that Harley was the best and that he was exaggerating. But it got worse, the flirty banter that you and Peter usually was overshadowed when Harley arrived because he was much more obvious with you and wasn’t afraid or embarrassed by it and neither were you, mostly because both of you knew that it was in a joking manner. But with Peter, it was stolen glances and touches, that was obvious but never spoken. 

Until Harley actually made you realized what was happening during Junior year. It made you feel so stupid and after that, you decided to have a talk with Peter about it although you weren’t together at the moment. It made the tension dissipate a bit but Harley still liked to rile Peter up and had a shit-eating-grin every time he would flirt with you while Peter was glaring at him. 

You didn’t even know what to say.

“What?” Harley asked as he placed his large hand on your shoulder and squeezed it a bit as he realized how you chewed the inside of your mouth. “What happened?”

Tears threaten to fall from your eyes again as you sighed and closed them for a bit, you refused to cry anymore. 

“Peter snapped and I’m with someone,”, you blurted out, unsure on how to continue the conversation with Morgan on your hands but she was gazing at you closely. “Harry Osborn, we have been together for a year”

“What!?”

“Harry!”, Morgan exclaimed with a giggled. 

Morgan had seen Harry a couple of times and although they weren’t really close, he always knew how to made her laugh by the end of their time together. She remembered him of course and it brought back the memories of you playing with her after work or on the weekends that you decided to spend it with her. It had been really important for you that Morgan felt happy with Harry, she was basically the most important person in your life aside from Tony, Pepper, and Peter. 

Harley nodded, shifting his position as he raised and curved his brows. 

“Does lover-boy know?” Harley asked. 

It was like a punch in the gut because it was horrible that Peter wasn’t even aware of it, lips pressed firmly together as you shook your head. Harry saw how your features changed and he pulled you into a hug.

“It’s okay, I guess you haven’t had time”, Harry mumbled as you pressed your head against his chest. “But we can’t deny that you liked them smart, don’t you?”

A smile appeared on your face although you tried so hard not to smile because it wasn’t funny, it really wasn’t a good mess that you were in but the way Harley’s lips were curling up and Morgan was gleaming at you, you couldn’t help it. It had been a bit since you had laughed like this, a sparkle of something came out of you and you felt okay.  Holding Morgan on your hip with her cheeks tainted pink as she giggled while Harley’s eyes screwed shut while he laughed with both of you as he held you. It was like a song and you felt somehow normal, at least for a little bit, a calm washed over your chest as the sun came down. 

Peter liked that you were laughing as well. It wasn’t as if he was trying to be a creep, his senses were dialed by eleven and were the reason he could hear your laugh, at least that was what he wanted to say if for some reason someone asked him. He shook his head as he removed his sight from the window looking at the lake and tried to focus on how May was talking to Pepper while he was in the corner of the large cabin, trying to get away from anyone. These days people were asking Peter a lot of things: How are you? Did you snap too? Do you have PTSD? Where were you on that day? Are you okay with what happened with Tony? Do you want to talk? Where is Y/N?

 If we were being honest, he was asking the same questions as well. 

The trauma from the snap, it wasn’t easy. It was as if someone had broken him apart and then pieced him back together bit by bit until he was able to breathe again. It could’ve been two seconds on his mind, two seconds of nothingness. He remembered his breath starting to slow down as he clung to you, he remembered each final breath, how all the oxygen left his body and suddenly everything seemed to stop, all his organs stopped working, finally, his mind gave in with his last thought being you. 

And then he gave it air, life again.

He was alive and he didn’t know how to get out of those two terrifying seconds of nothingness, it was overwhelming until he had found you and those moments had been instantly forgotten. You were the air and the life he needed right at that moment, you were alive and well, beautiful as always and he had kissed you as if he was a man deprived of air because he really felt that way. 

For him, the kiss was like the kisses you had been giving him that same day at the MOMA and he had done it with the same desire.  He had rolled his lips against yours; he had felt you melting into him and whimper into his mouth because of the fervent nature of it and he loved it. But he couldn’t help to think that something was different. He couldn’t place why, the hunger for you didn’t stop, it was just different. 

And as he opened his eyes he realized why. 

Your usually long hair that had been a bit wild during High School was now shorter and with a straight cut, your features had somehow sharpened and they had become more defined, like your jaw or cheekbones, even your suit fitted better to your body and your eyes, those beautiful y/e/c eyes, that always shined each time he saw you had now a touch of ripeness and gloominess. 

How much can someone really change in a few years? he thought to himself as he saw Thor walking towards him. Maybe a lot. 

“How are you doing, little Spider-ling?”, Thor asked with his large voice that still somehow shook Peter to the core as he smiled ghostlily, he remembered that Thor had copied the nickname from Tony and it had stuck with him until this day. 

“Si- Sir” Peter stumbled as he straightened himself up. “I’m okay”, Peter muttered as Thor stood next to him, both of you watching the few people that still remained there talking softly with a heaviness in the air that Peter couldn’t stand. 

They remained silent for a few second and he felt how Thor’s gaze was burning him. 

“I know you are not”, Thor replied seriously as he crossed his arms over his chest, helped by his now larger gut. “It’s okay not to be if you need to talk to someone I'm right here. I’ve been through it, you know?”

Peter simply nodded and smiled at Thor for a second. Maybe he had really gone through it, Thor seemed different from the last time he had seen him and it had been a long time ago. Peter and Thor weren’t necessarily close, he had been for around for two months after Peter joined, then he had left to go deep into space. But the moments that they had to interact were filled with Thor’s long stories about his adventures and wars as you and Peter listened to him carefully, explaining Peter how those worlds worked and how he could travel through them, along with trips to Thor’s favorite ice cream shop. But what Peter loved the most was how you saw Thor as this big teddy bear and how couldn’t you see him that way? Thor had developed a soft spot for you honestly. Since Tony had introduced you to him, he was extremely protective of you, loved to spoil you and making you laugh. 

That laugh. 

He heard it again, Peter noticed that you were walking back into the cabin along with Harley and Morgan. His mind trailed off as his eyes followed you. 

Peter had been overthinking everything, all of his worlds with you for the last few days but his breath was still stolen every time he watched you, maybe you had changed but it was still you. 

But who was him for you? 

He didn’t know anymore and it scared him to the core to even ask or bother you. He saw you walking through the house with a long and simple long-sleeves black dress, giving everyone warm enough smiles to be polite but not enough that they thought that maybe they could ask you questions. Peter knew you care about every single person in the room but he recognized how tired you look and he could see right away the same look that Tony had when he confessed Peter after he had messed up the ferry when he was trying to get the Vulture, that if he died, he would feel that it was on him. 

He knew right away that you felt the same as Tony did. 

“You should talk with our little warrior”, Thor insisted as he caught Peter looking at you as you passed Morgan to Pepper and said hello to May in a polite manner. “You two have to catch up”

Peter felt a knot on his stomach as he saw you saying goodbye to everyone and began walking towards him. He was never hesitant about talking to you or seeing you, until now. Because by the way, you were watching him, with a slight frown and your eyes trying to avoid his, it wasn’t a good sign. 

But was it?

He didn’t know because he maybe didn’t really know you. He hated that so much time had passed for you, that he knew that neither couldn’t even be at ease around each other like how you used to. Peter understood both of you were hurting and Peter knew it might be for different reasons but he wanted to try to understand you as best as he could take into account that he missed so much the last few days. 

He was still eighteen and you were coming up twenty-one. 

Peter got that but he wished that it wouldn’t really change the love between both of you.

“Peter”, the way his name rolled out of your still gave him shivers. His face was pale as he watched you carefully without answering. His eyes too focused on your features and trying to decipher you while his gaze burned yours. 

“Spider-ling, she’s talk-”, Thor started but was quickly cut by you. 

“Uncle Thor, I’ll borrow Peter”, you interrupted, stiffly tossing a look at Thor who simply nodded and walked away with a pace that you hadn’t seen in a while, raising your eyebrows in surprise before you gazed back at Peter, who was still pale and dumbfounded, “Follow me.”

The statement had this lingered order and Peter knew better than to refuse, although every inch of his body was begging him to run the other way. While you were trying to stay calm but it was too hard, your body was locked up with each step that you gave towards the door, out of the house, and into the grass. You wanted to believe that Peter wasn’t noticing your body language or that maybe there was a way you had change enough for him not to know what you were thinking. But Peter knew everything, he was the only one that was aware of how you worked, he understood you better than anyone and all the years that he had passed getting to know you wouldn’t change even if he had missed a couple; but he tried to brush away how you were acting, assuring himself on those few moments that it would be okay. 

So, when you stopped in front of your car to finally face him and he walked a bit over to you, he knew nothing was okay as he noticed how you curled up when he was getting even closer. 

“What’s happening y/n?” Peter stated, maybe a bit too direct and with harshness in his voice. 

You shuddered and he detected how you winced before looking away from him. Peter never got really mad but today he was in his right to feel that way. It was unfair for you to disappear for a couple of days after he had been dead for a couple of years. 

You sighed as you passed a hand through your hair, your gaze falling into him again and making your stomach flip while you watch those honey specks on his chocolate eyes. 

“I understand you are mad; it just has been a lot”, you replied with a croak, still refusing to cry once again because you were so tired of feeling this way and you weren’t in a position to feel weak. 

Peter touched the base of his neck as he shook his head, his eyes never leaving yours. Yes, it wasn’t fair what you had done but Peter couldn’t say he didn’t understand how you felt, Tony had just died and Natasha too. 

“I’m not mad, it’s just,” Peter started, taking a step away from you as he screwed his eyes shut for a second. “You don’t think that is too much for me too?”

He didn’t want to be selfish but you were supposed to be together, and if because of time you had decided not to be together he wouldn’t complain but you were supposed to be best friends and not even time could change that, at least that’s what he had hoped. 

But for you, it was as if he had punched you in the gut as you heard him. Peter realized that as soon as he saw the wrinkles on your forehead and the stone look in your eyes. 

“Please, you were gone for basically five minutes Peter”, you scoffed as you treated carefully towards him. “It has been two years since I had to mourn you and everyone else that died when Thanos snapped his fingers”, you explained, your eyes fixed on the boy. “And when we managed to fix it, my dad dies.”

“That’s right Y/N, I died. Did you ever think what was that for me?”, Peter replied with the same stone look on his face. 

“I did, I thought about it every day for the last two years and I’m sorry,”, you said a little bit louder than you meant. “I really wished that I could’ve taken your place but you didn’t go what I went through.” 

“And you don’t know what I went through either!” 

Peter usually didn’t yell or even got mad, if you reviewed your fights over the years they had been for small things that could be fixed in less than an hour, the only big fought you guys had was when he went for the Vulture alone and it was mostly because he kept it a secret. But this was something neither of you was expecting and you hated it, both of you were going through things and it wasn’t fair. 

But then again, when was life fair?

Peter sucked in a breath and he lowered his head. 

“I just thought that you wouldn’t disappear after,” Peter’s voice trailed off. “I just wanted to be with you after everything.” 

Peter’s voice was small and it broke your heart as you watched tears dangerously close to spill from his eyes. If you could do anything you would’ve just pull him in and kiss his tears away, if you could you would hold him and ask him to hold you as he had done so many times before this nightmare happened. Breaking his heart was everything you wanted to avoid but could you really avoid it? Your mind went from Peter and Harry every second that pass and the more you stare at him, you felt more and more claustrophobic. 

“Peter, it’s not that simple”

Peter raised his head, eyes red as he watched you carefully. Peter felt like if a crack began opening his heart and the two seconds of nothingness was coming back. 

“But it is Y/N, age doesn’t matter”, Peter insisted as he walked closer and his lips tight up for a second. “We can start training again, like partners, and the rest it’s not that hard if we are together.”

“Peter, I need you to list-”

“Y/N, anything else doesn’t matter because I know that you still have feelings for me, with that kiss even if two years have passed”

“Peter…”

“But that’s the thing Y/N, I kissed you,” Peter’s eyes looked so gloom and tired. While you just wanted to vomit because you were in no shape to have this conversation or a way to tell Peter that you were with someone that you cared about. “Come on Y/N, just…”

So, it just came out.

“I’m with someone”

The statement felt so final and you felt like you had just lost all the air in your lungs as you waited for Peter to say something, anything. Peter stayed silent for a few more seconds, something that felt like an eternity for you.

“What?”, he asked lowly. 

He wanted you to tell him it was a lie. He was begging for you to tell him it was a lie. He didn’t want to believe that this had happened while he was gone, he didn’t understand why it had happened. You and he were in love and now… now you had decided to leave him? The two seconds of nothingness came again, he felt as if a shadow was eating him alive. His eyes fixed on you and he noticed how your chin was trembling. It was hurting you too. 

“It was almost a year after it happened. I met someone and…”, you didn’t really know what to say and you stumbled with your words. 

Peter’s eyes narrowed and if it was up to you, you would just have flown away. Because it wasn’t fair and it felt as if you were killing whatever bond Peter and you had. 

“Who is he?”, Peter asked, tears falling from his eyes as you tried to avoid his gaze. 

“Harry Osborn”

His face was still and you couldn’t see any emotion on the boy. He was stunned and tears began appearing from your face, one by one they fell from your eyes. He wasn’t saying anything and it drove you insane, it felt as if your skin was being pinned by a thousand needles. If there was any chance to save Peter all the pain and put it into you, you were sure you would have done it, but this was your doing and you had to be honest. 

“Peter, I was mourning you and I just…”, you bit your lip and tried to avoid the rest of the tears to follow like a stream as you looked up into the sky. “There was no way we thought we could get you back sooner because we didn’t know if it was even possible”

“So, you moved on?”, Peter retorted and you gave a step towards him.

“No!”, you yelled, trying to keep your own voice from breaking. 

It was such a delicate statement to make and the way you reacted; it was as if you were offended that he would phantom that one day you would forget him. Peter never left your mind not even for a day and so it was clearly more complicated than anything you had wondered. Because you did love Peter, but now you cared about Harry much more than you thought you would.

“Then why are you with him?”, Peter asked while he stared at you, frowning. 

“Because I care about him, Peter! He’s been there for me and he helped me,” you explained coldly as you lowered your eyes towards him. “You didn’t understand how messed up I was after you died in my arms”

Peter stayed silent for a few second and honestly, he didn’t know what to actually feel. So many years ago, Peter could recall the time when he had wondered if there was any chance that you would break his heart. He thought it the second he met you, the moment when he realized you had become best friends, the moment he had fallen in love with you. He had let the idea drown in his favorite memories of you, he was sure both of you were meant to be, especially when you had come to confess your feelings for each other after he had finally kissed you after Scorpion’s attack. 

“Do you love him?” 

The statement felt so final and you tried not to look phased by his words and you stayed silent because you didn’t want to answer, you didn’t even know the answer yourself. What was love but what Peter had shown you for so many years? But then how could you discredit what you had come to feel for Harry?

Peter rolled his eyes and he shook his head as he gave a step forward to you. Being closer than what you had been on that day and although he wanted nothing more than to cry to you right there and then, beg you to hold him and not to leave him; his heart was also being filling with the horrible thought of anger towards you. 

“Do you love me?”, his voice gravelly as he asked, red-eyed and with a stoned face. You connected your eyes with his and stayed silent because you felt it was unfair to actually say yes, but then telling him that you just couldn’t break up with Harry, but it just served to annoy Peter even more. “Can’t you at least answer me that?”

“It’s not that-”, you said. 

“-It really is,”, he stated.

“-simple”, you finished. 

Both of you were breathing the same air, the awkwardly silent was filling the air along with pain. This was just painful, both of you were crying and your bodies were aching to hold each other. If there was nothing stopping either of you, you would’ve laid down on your bed for days and just talk and kiss the pain away. Be there for each other as you had been for so many years. 

But this was the reality you were in and you had to face that it wouldn’t be possible. 

“You really forgot about me?” Peter asked as he looked down, his voice was so soft and small. 

He looked so fragile and the statement settled heavily on your chest because there was nothing farther than the truth, and you almost felt like you wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him because it was a concept that didn’t exist for you. 

You shook your head. “I never did Peter, there wasn’t a day that I didn’t think about you”, you answered as honestly as you could, it was almost like a whisper.

Peter’s eyes connected with yours again and you saw how hesitant he was to ask anything else; you looked down and it was almost an impulse as you reached out to grasp his hands but he gave a step back. You looked up almost as in shock as if he had just punch you in the gut. Right there and then you saw something in Peter than you hadn’t even thought it was possible, something you had experienced only in nightmares: a gleam of resentment. 

“When were you going to tell me?”, he asked. 

“Soon”, you whispered, closing your eyes as guilt crawled into your heart. 

“But you decided to leave me hanging?”

You understood where this was coming from, and it was started to settle on your mind that you had caused him more pain than what he felt when he turned into ashes. It was your fault if he hated you, it was your doing and you had to live with that forever. Like the fact that you could’ve maybe done more to avoid Tony dying. 

“My dad just died Peter”, you answer coldly. 

Peter clenched his jaw as soon as he heard you, he threw you a side-glanced. He felt even more offended with the statement and he gave another step back, like if you had burned him. Because Peter now not only had to deal with his heart being broken by you, he didn’t have to deal only with losing you but also, he had to deal with Tony dying. He had managed to conceal the death of Tony, managed to distract himself enough, being too busy thinking about you to even mourn Tony as he had wished. 

“He was like my father too Y/N!”, he spat as he glared at you, you closed your eyes in response and tried to hold back any tears left. Peter saw you and he shook his head as he placed the back of his hands on his eyes, trying to wipe the tears. “I- I have to leave”, he stuttered. 

“Peter, we haven’t finished”

“I have”, he stated.

Peter didn’t talk to May all the way home, not a single word and he didn’t intend to as they got home in Queens. His brain was too busy rewinding you, in the black long-sleeved dress telling him that you were with someone new and the more he thought about it, the more the pain in his chest settled. He had never wonder how would it feel to have his heart broken by you, maybe the possibility but not the feeling, but now that he was feeling it, it was as if he was dying all over again. 

When Peter and May got to the apartment, he just gave her a bullshit excuse that he would patrol. He couldn’t even remember what he had said when May allowed it, although she knew it was a bullshit excuse. And as he was putting on his first suit, he realized as he saw himself in front of the small mirror in his room that he had been crying all the way home. He watched himself, red-eyed, and his lips tightly pressed together as he remembered your words but he shook his head as if he thought it would help him to forget. 

He quickly placed his mask on and he only gave four paces before he was out through the window. He didn’t exactly know where he was going, usually, his patrolling nights were spent with you or if he ever felt the need to, he would twhip! his way to Stark Tower where you would leave a window open for him to sneak in and climbed on your bed. 

He thought about you, your soft hair, your smile, those y/e/c eyes that made his heart stop, the way you would have his back in a fight, the soft hugs you gave him, and your laugh and that were his before today. But now they weren’t his and there was nothing he could do about it because you had decided to let him go. 

Peter wondered if there was any space in his head for hatred to you, but the more he thought about it there was just pain and anger when he thought of you and the events of the past week in his head, but no hatred. He thought about what Tony would’ve said to him and another wave of pain just washed over him because he realized that Tony wouldn’t be there anymore. Tears stung his eyes as he shot a web to another building, swinging slowly because honestly, he did not have so much energy. 

Part of him was somehow begging that there would be a crime so he could unleash his pain on something or someone, but as he watched carefully the streets of New York, not many people were out. He thought that even the bad guys were reuniting with the ones they loved but not him. Maybe, it was better that there wasn’t anyone on the streets because he didn’t know what he would do.  

The two seconds of nothingness was trapping him and there was no escaping it. 

For your part, the tears came down as a river as Peter walked away from you. You didn’t stop crying or thinking about everything that was happening as you drove to New York. Tony, Nat, and Peter flooded your head and you almost felt claustrophobic on your own mind. Even in your own heart as the guilt tugged your chest and questions reminded on your mind, like why didn’t I wait? Could I have saved them? Could I have done more for them? Is he ever going to forgive me?

When you got to Stark Tower, it felt cold. There was no one there, at least that was the instruction given from Pepper to the staff. The last few nights the lights on the tower had been turned off to honor Tony and his sacrifice. The only people that had been allowed were yourself and the few Avengers that had been allowed to enter to take care of you or any other injury they might’ve had. 

So, to say the least, it was a surprise when the elevator doors opened to the penthouse and you saw him. 

“Harry, how?”, you stuttered. 

But he didn’t say anything. 

His body just crashed against yours, he wrapped his arms around your body and lifted you, he held you so tight that you were sure you were having trouble breathing. He held you for so long that your body began buzzing because of the lack of movement and you shrugged a bit as a signal for him to let you down, he got it and let you fall delicately on the floor. You knew that if he held you for longer, you might want to start crying again and you refused to do it. 

Part of you felt so bad that you hadn’t been in contact with him for the last few days as you finally were able to see him, it wasn’t pretty. 

His usually sleek black hair was messy and all over the place, his usually well-kept facial hair was a little bit more than you expected and his dark eyes were accompanied by those dark circles that only appeared when he was really tired. His cheekbones and sleek jaw that made your heart skip a beat were okay, but it was a bit puffy as if he had been crying. Your usually put together boyfriend had been through it and you pouted as you saw him, feeling bad that he had been feeling like this without much company.

“I’m so sorry Y/N” “I can’t believe I missed the funeral but my dad-”, Harry started, with a taut feeling along with it, but you quickly cut him off.

Now you knew why he was like this.

“How’s your dad with everything?”

It was a polite question to ask, but you knew the answer to it because Harry had told you enough of his relationship with his dad to know that it was no good. As you knew from what Tony had told you and what Harry had said as well, Norman Osborn wasn’t the kindness person in the world, when Harry was smaller he barely saw him and since his mom had passed away when he was six-years-old; Harry was delegated to a bunch on nannies that would play the role of his father. As Harry grew, he believed that if he showed his that how good in bioengineering, he was, probably he could strengthen their connection but the more time Harry had spent with his dad, the more Norman put him down. 

Harry hadn’t the sickly ambition of his father, neither he liked to make people miserable or himself miserable, and even more important to you: Harry understood that he was privileged, not only with his money but with his brain. He liked to do something good with what he had, and he had managed to do so in the time after Thanos had snapped. But now that Norman was back, you didn’t want to imagine what he had said to Harry about his direction as head of Oscorp Industries. 

“You really want to be talking about my dad?”, Harry asked a bit stunned as he watched your features carefully. 

You nodded in response as you took off your coat and shoes while you tie your hair into a ponytail, Harry following you as you reached the kitchen. 

“Honestly, I just need to talk about anything that’s not Avengers or my dad or …”, you trailed off. 

…Spider-man

“It’s okay. I get it”, Harry agreed and leaned down in the counter as he watched you carefully as you reached for some tea baggies, thinking it could come you down. He watched you carefully and it was obvious how worn-out you were, along with the injuries that you had sustained like the cut on your brow. “Let me make you something while we talked”

Your gazes locked and you knew it was his best intention at heart, both of you seemed so tired with everything that you thought it might be for the best, so you agreed. 

Harry did an amazing dinner with wine included and you felt so thankful that he had traveled all the way from Silicon Valley to New York for you. Norman Osborn had been clearly upset when he told him he was going to see you and you couldn’t help to wonder how he really felt when he found his father in his office as he entered it after a meeting with another non-profit. Harry said that he was glad that Norman was back, that it was a way to really be a good son and that he was thankful to you and the avengers for the opportunity, but you could tell by his dark eyes that he wasn’t being honest. And although Harry assured you that his father wasn’t too bad, you had already got to the conclusion that Norman Osborn was a dick and that nothing that Harry lied about now that he was back, was going to change your mind. 

The dinner went along without much trouble, part of you was grateful that Harry had respected your space and didn’t ask too many questions regarding how you had reversed the snap or how you got those scars or how Tony had died or why were you a little but off. He just talked or remained silent or answer your questions, it calmed you down for a bit and you were glad that he was back. 

Still, you couldn’t help to think about your last conversation with Peter. 

It pained you to remember Peter’s face, your chest felt like it was going to explode the more you thought about the last moments with him. The way he had looked at you, he had never looked at you in that way, you two had never fought like this before and it scared you. Because although you had lost Peter before this was a whole different reason on why you were losing him, this was on you. There had come a time when you had been denying that you were completely head over heels for Peter that you thought that it could ruin your friendship and that you wouldn’t have Peter on your mind anymore. The thought of it terrified you, which only served to put in the back burner your feelings for a bit longer. Now, you regretted it but this was it, this was the same feeling. But now it was worst as you thought about what Tony or Nat would’ve said to you and it burned your eyes and chest to even begin thinking about them or the whole thing. 

And so, when Harry fell asleep on the couch as you watched a stupid movie that he had decided on, that you didn’t even pay attention to because you were rewinding the moment you told Peter the truth; you decided to do something that you hadn’t done in a long time. 

Maybe it was because you had just been tinkering in labs for a month and got back in the grind while you helped build the time machine. Maybe it was because it remained you of your dad and how he had gifted you your first lab and all the memories you had there with him. Maybe it was because it remained you of Peter and how you tinkered and planned every new piece of gadget you developed well into the night. 

But you enter your smaller lab at Stark Industries after years of not going down there. 

You leaned against the glass wall and you stared at the small lab for a moment. At its prime, before the compound, the lab was bright, full with objects that were whirring and flashing, your suits were kept in their own stages and it would’ve been full of holograms while J.A.R.V.I.S first and then H.A.P.P.Y showed you the calculations you needed or the programs that you were working on. 

Now it was all dusty and seemed so lonely. You turned around to see the other labs that surrounded it. Clearly, the larger was Tony’s and you could still see some prototypes of the Iron suit there but you decided not to look at it so much. The other one, it was neater than any other because it was Peter’s, Pepper had told you after the snap that Tony had decided to clean it because Peter had left his plans and prototypes of different projects everywhere and it was a bit too painful to Tony to actually see it. He didn’t throw away anything, he just tidied it up for his own mental health, he couldn’t live with expecting to see Peter there each time he was down there. The other one was still in construction and by the looks of it, it had been left in construction. It was Harley’s and you knew it had stopped since he had been snapped as well. 

Although now, you thought, it was time to finish it. 

“H.A.P.P.Y”, you stated as you walked through your lab and realized the great majority of the equipment needed an update. 

Nonetheless, it felt like you could breathe again. It was your place with your father’s and Peter’s,  and although neither of them was there, you thought you could feel their presence. 

“Mrs. Stark, a pleasure to see you here again”, H.A.P.P.Y stated and you smirked as you clapped your hands and the lights on the room turned on along with Twist and Shout from The Beatles. 

“We need to do some work here buddy”, you said as you swayed your hips side to side while watching the holograms appear in front of your desk and you watched it carefully. “Please, can you take all the information on the lab from the compound and install it here?”

“Sure thing Mrs. Stark”, your AI answer back. “It’ll take a few minutes”.

You nodded and saw carefully how H.A.P.P.Y was recalibrating and updating everything. Even your past suits light up for a moment and you walked towards them. A knot formed on your throat and you wanted to cry, it had been so long since you had been there and the memories flashed on your mind: Tony and you building your suit, trying it for the first time with the help of Bruce and Tony, late night with Peter trying to redesign some stuff, Tony giving Peter his lab. 

Ring!

The sound of your phone made you come back to reality and you took it from your desk. You thought it might have been Pepper or maybe even Harry, who hadn’t been allowed to any other part of the building that wasn’t the penthouse; you thought he might have gotten worried to not see you if he had woken up. But as you watched the unknown number, it made you shiver. 

“Stark?” Stephen Strange’s voice startled you.

Hours prior to the call, he had shaken your hand and told you how sorry he was about the death of Tony; the only answer you had given him was a nod and a tight smile. Somehow the fact that he had the exclusive knowledge that your father was going to die, felt like a sick joke to you. The fact that he had allowed it and not prepare you somehow, made your blood boil. 

You closed your eyes and sucked in a breath before answering.

“What do you want?”, you sneered as you opened your eyes again.

Maybe he hadn’t got it, the fact that you didn’t like him and in the back of your mind, you thought about the fight on Titan, when Thanos snapped half of humanity away and how he hadn’t allowed you to stop him. 

Stephen breathed out as if he was annoyed at your attitude but he disregarded and continue. “Where are you?”, he asked. 

“Stark Tower”, you mumbled, crossing your arms over your chest.

Suddenly, those same portals that had appeared on your last two battles appeared in the middle of the hallway between the other labs. The same golden light blinded you as Dr. Stephen walked through it. He wasn’t in his usual outfit, or at least the only outfit that you had seen him in but in a darker tunic. The Eye of Agamotto no longer around his neck, since the time stone had been destroyed by Thanos and you didn’t even want to think of the ramifications of that.

“What are you doing here Strange?”, you asked as he entered your lab as if he had invited himself in. 

He watched your lab carefully, millions of holograms processing a whole lot of information and he seemed surprised to even see you there. But soon his green light eyes connected with yours, you were glaring at him.

“I’m here to talk about-”, he stated but you quickly interrupted him. 

“-don’t say his name”

“-Tony”, he finished. 

You rolled your eyes as you walked towards him and sat on your chair while you began typing some codes for H.A.P.P.Y to take them into account. 

“You know, I would’ve loved if you told me that my father was going to die either way”, you grumbled.

Maybe it was petty and you knew it wasn’t necessary but the only person you had been angry at since what happened had been yourself and today, it was the day when you apparently decided to let everything out. 

Strange somehow understood. 

“It was the only option we had, the only option the universe had”, he replied with a stentorian tone that made grinned your teeth as you kept typing. 

“Yeah, I get it”, you noted, “Said the same thing to your boss when we got back in time”

Stephen walked towards the front of your desk and you didn’t even look up, you were tired and he didn’t need to show up, especially today. 

“I know”, he replied.

Making you raise your head at stare at him quietly. 

“You didn’t answer my question, what are you doing here Strange?”, you insisted. “I don’t know if it wasn’t obvious enough but I don’t want you here”

You stood up from the desk and walked towards the platform that was used to suit you up or take scans of your body, it had to be updated. 

“I know you might be mad at me, but I need to give you something”, Stephen said as his eyes followed you, but you paid him little attention. 

“Oh, the knife that you used to stab me in the back?”, you shrugged as H.A.P.P.Y. scanned you. 

“You are so dramatic”, he responded and you swore you felt how he rolled his eyes without even looking at him. 

“You should see my dad, he’s much more dramatic”, you answer as you look back at him. “Oh, wait he’s dead”

“That’s not a good joke”, he said giving you a stern look. 

“It wasn’t supposed to be”, you retorted as you walked towards him, down from the platform. 

He gave you a sideways glance and shook his head. You could see how he squirmed a bit and you notice that he did mind those kinds of statements, were you detecting some kind of remorse? And so, you decided to stop the banter, maybe he really needed you for something and now, it was your responsibility. 

Stephen gave you a pointed look as you stood in front of him, his eyes gleaming something but his features still stone cold. “Tony left this at the sanctuary, the hologram it came with told us to give it to you in case he didn’t make it”, he finally said as he took out of his pocket something and placed it on your hand.

It was a small USB and it seemed even more intricate than a normal one. It was branded as Stark Industries and you felt your breathing getting a bit shaky as you stared at it. Tony had left it for you, only you and in all honesty, it took you by surprise. Tony had only left the hologram for Morgan and you, along with a letter to Pepper that was only directed to her. There wasn’t really a message for you and you had assumed it was because he thought he would make it or not by your side.  

“Okay…”, were the only thing you could mumble as you watched it carefully. 

Stephen's eyes were burning you and it was almost as if he felt sorry for you but as your eyes connected with his, you walked away towards your desk once more. 

“He said you would know how to decipher it”, he informed you. 

“Okay…”, you answer again not even looking at him

“I’ll leave now”, Stephen stated as he watched you carefully while he passed by you, but you were startled as he placed a hand on your shoulder and it made you look up. “You know, if you ever need my help with anything and whenever you want, I’m at your service Stark,” he said with a sadness lingered on his voice, “Just like your father was for the universe”

The way he was looking at you, it seemed so real. Stephen hadn’t known your dad for any time, he hardly knew him or you. Your team had just winded together because of the circumstances with Thanos and at first, it hadn’t been pretty. But the more you thought about how Tony had listened to him when the time came, it came with a trust that Tony had only given to such a small amount of people that it actually surprised you. Maybe Stephen felt compelled to be there for you because of Tony’s death and he really did felt sorry. 

So, you simply nodded and gave him a tight smile as he did the exact same thing back to you. You waited as he opened another portal and left you alone.

You stared at the USB and tried to remember anything that your father might’ve told you before, but nothing was coming up. 

“H.A.P.P.Y, we have something to figure out”

____________

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#peter parker #peter parker spiderman #peter parker fanfic #peter parker avengers #peter parker headcanon #peter parker x stark!reader #peter parker FEELS #peter parker headers #peter parker angst #peter parker fan fiction #peter parker fanfiction #peter parker fanart #peter parker fic #peter parker oneshot #peter parker one shot #peter parker fluff #peter parker x reader #peter parker x y/n #peter parker smut #peter parker scenarios #peter parker series #peter parker au #peter parker aesthetic #peter parker x stark!oc #peter parker x you #spider-man #spiderman #spiderman series #spiderman headcanon #spiderman far from home

[emersonmanandnature]

July 6, 2021

Jesus, Mary, Joseph and Mary Magdalene, a son, a mother, a step dad and a wife.

It wasn’t an affair of priestly delights it was a love at first sight.

Do you think an all powerful loving god would demand that anyone who is androgynous be condemned to hell not only in the afterlife but now on this planet of corruption, vice and hate of individuality.

For god is our creator and he blesses all of his children equally!

Our god is supposedly the god of everyone not a selected few with narrow blinded sight praying for the end of days.

God’s money flows upward as the people wait for their salvation living in poverty and hate from the so called christians of our lord who seems to be never present and yet he is adored for what his apostles wrote after he was sacrificed on the cross for our sins.  

Does this mean from now on we would be born free of sin? Are you kidding without sin and finger pointing and priests insisting they are the only intermediary in order to find your real salvation, how would these thieves of guilt, hypocrisy and hate ever make a living if we could pray directly to god ourselves and ask for his forgiveness. The only problem is you have to be a ventriloquist in order to talk to an invisible, silent god through your own voice and hear his response with your moving lips.

And yet millions of people pray directly to their god without the money men demanding payment for their words of repetitive wisdom.

All is an illusion of ones single mindedness, to think doesn’t mean your alive what makes you alive is how you spend your time helping or stealing from others.

But if jesus came down from the heavens in his father’s place and died on the cross for our sins why would anyone in their right mind still believe that man, woman and child are still filled with the devils sin because an apple was taken when people were hungry.

What super godly power would use such a flimsy excuse to pour hate and sin on innocence and then like the landlords of today boot them out of the garden. What kind of a god does this, well it is not a true god it is mankind’s invented god. Made to keep people placated and remain frightened of their future and their only escape is to die and be lifted up into a heavenly paradise where this holy place is a guessing game but the true effect of these words in a bible made to control the forces of individuality is to believe in an afterlife and ignore the paradise you have let the wealthy dismantle and pollute without a fight.

And now as the earth dies quicker your so called paradise is an allusion to keep you contained and to follow orders given by the true reason we see no light at the end of our tunnel, for the powerful own the people and make them their little worker ants just getting by without any hope of a better life.

Having a demanding god directing souls to repent and praise a mysterious, invisible master of the universe is incomprehensible. Man judges man period.

Man looks for any excuse to demean, accuse and destroy others not only because mankind is incapable of living a life without violence, as we did when we began to stand upright and make weapons to kill animals and each other but also because our lord, god is also violent and murderous destroying life, his supposed creations, what father would think of extinction as a means toward salvation and then handpicking a few that are obedient to his every word, where was our freedom of thought our choice of how we want to live our lives the good, the bad and the ugly, does our holy father enjoy the suffering of the masses, his creations, by these small minded thieves with only one goal more and more power and money over people.

And that explains our godly maker for why live if you don’t have power over others. Yes, that seems selfish but if god can be selfish in his anger then we can be selfish in our killing fields, our disrespect toward other human beings, treating them as if they were nonexistent, just something to exploit and then let die.

What we worship is our greedy selves, especially when we can make big profits off the backs of the working force.

Worship is not external, worship is internal and the more you own other lives the more you feel godlike. The more you become addicted to your god given power therefore you must be special and your voice must be obeyed.

It wasn’t a women’s forceful voice evicting them from eden it was a deep voice, a man’s voice from the clouds that told them to get lost but not totally lost but lost in this world alone without mercy, to be evicted from eden, your home by a mean old landlord their innocence destroyed having now to fight for their very lives, all this brought on by a supreme being, a child playing with human toys, it seems he has been doing this for thousands of years up to our present catastrophe of criminal wealth.

A silent boss, demanding a special payment to himself, it seems he loves suffering, why send your only son to be nailed to a cross if you didn’t enjoy his suffering, his cries to his father up in his heavenly paradise, acting like some sort of sociopath drooling with sweat as his only son is murdered for his creation of himself in all beings, who also love to see the suffering of others because it gives them that flash of power of being saved through their selfish prayers.  

And lets not forget that we are continually under the thumb of a god that cares more of his beautiful image, portraits of man’s egos, than making changes that could stop his flock of criminal minds that continue to do more harm than good and lets face it god, jesus and the holy ghost have been shut-ins afraid it seems to step out into the universe they made.

God has been on vacation now for twenty centuries since he saved mankind well jesus at any rate, we are not sure where god was or is and we never see the holy ghost but we know all three must be in the universe somewhere doing their godly thing, gaining respect from outer planets, doing his egotistical spellbinding worship of himself to help others pray for their own salvation for why should an all powerful god, faceless, invisible and silent reach out and finally present himself to his fan base!

The big question is do they really care or need his approval because the wealthy seem to be doing what god did and that is take from the people what is rightfully theirs.

Religion is an ugly affair, a pretend faith but if you feel the undercurrents of mankind’s need to blame others for their problems then you will begin to see the phony impostor of religious fever, hatred of self. For we are a jealous race to think we can’t begin to measure up to our triple gods of power.

How could a god who we have never heard personally speak to his flock, allow human beings to continue living in squalor with wars necessary violence unless you seek profits from the weapons sold to foreign countries creating their own personal killing fields?

Doesn’t weapons of mass destruction allow the elites eyes to widen with the possibilities of the end of this speck of dust and these men of narrow beliefs will gladly push the final button for it is god’s will that we all die in fear and pain. For we are just worthless sinners and I always wonder about these evangelical worshipers of self-loathing how they can look themselves in the mirror and believe they are the chosen ones to lead a massacre for god, jesus and the holy ghost of the very people that worship a fairy tale.

All of this brought to you in prime time by the catholic, protestant, evangelical, mormon, latter day saints, episcopal, lutheran, baptist, the word of life, risen hope, mega churches, methodist, christ the king, presbyterian, seventh day adventist, pentecostal, trinity bible church, and more and more sprouting up to confuse the true purpose of religion, control of the people to placate them into believing that their lives mean something to an invisible persona, who else but us our imaginative nature finally revealed.

The wisdom of the ages came up with a nauseating bluff of fear to keep people afraid of life and the wealth that rule us, and then they wrote in a religious relic, a book of peoples fears created centuries ago and to keep fear, hate and sorrow in their lives by creating a reality of poverty ruled not by a missing god but by our man god his hatred toward themselves and all people of unbelief, stating the ultimate lie and that is the only way to find or rise up to heaven is death.

How silly it is that to keep human beings occupied for centuries by religions controlling force, abusing innocence as their whipping post and making sure that no one returns to this planet of greed for that is only for the wealthy to rule generation after generation not as real gods but these men of criminal minds and you will never return to this once paradise destroyed by the rich but by dying you are freed from the brutality of this world and will be able to return to god’s paradise somewhere in space, maybe in his minds eye for isn’t god the almighty link to death and resurrection and we can be in heavenly peace but certainly not until were dead by fire or soil in a box.

So the people can’t just skip ahead to a paradise that is seemly invisible to the poor human population but yet it exists and is waiting for you to die and how you die doesn’t really matter for not all can leave this retched place like jesus did by being nailed to a cross.  

It must not be that important to god how we get to his heaven for we have to pass the time here on this criminal planet being robbed of our dignity, our home, our life just so we can work for pennies on the dollar by being servants to the new order of religious zealots, it is called profit worship. Let us all kneel in silent prayer, their will be no giggling at the amount of money we just stole, oh I mean made off the sweat of those hard workers that just gave us a year end bonus plus we were not indicted this year so all is well here in the money pit of new homes, yachts and travel and oh yay our new homes guarded by military personal.

Why in gods name would you wait to die and not stand up to these men and women of greed that have exploited this earth and its inhabitants since the beginning of man walking upright.

Heaven is an illusion a prefabricated cage, a con game, a piece of candy given to a child to keep them from crying and going berserk in public. We are given just enough fake power to keep us placated in doing the dirty work for the elites of crime.

Death is an illusion of power given to others taken by the fear of revelation, the real truth that god is only a symbol to keep the populace in chains, surrendering their hope of eternal peace which is of course death, by doing the work for the true powerful men and women that own this planet, and not mother earth our true goddess.

God’s power from above is a lightning strike of death.  If god can kill without regret so can mankind.

God is our example and in the bible god has murdered innocence to make a point and to control the necessary egos of his people. God wipes out the entire planet in a flood without blinking an eye and noah begins a new life as his family populates the world to once again worship a god that isn’t present in our reality but in our minds riddled with fear of his anger.

I guess his anger would be toward those crooks of wall street that didn’t meet their billion dollar bonus by cheating the people of their hard earned pay check.

Gods wars are our wars for we were made in his likeness?  Amen

#zealots #power #crooks #cross #greed #destruction #religion #cjcorwinoriginal

[mareebird]

a wee fic for sunday night

By request, from @diggerkaren​: “"How about a side trip in the Relic universe - where Nebula and Rocket come to visit Thor.... Has Loki met Nebula before?"

So this takes place in the Relic universe, but Relic isn’t totally Infinity War or Endgame compliant, so I’ve taken a few liberties.  Nebula has never met Thor, but Rocket still has.  It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but I don’t think it’s going to hurt anyone’s brain too much.

Rated: Teen and Up, TW: Serious physical injury; Wordcount: 3977

Read on Ao3, or below here on Tumblr...

The Relic is also on Ao3

------------------------------------

I Got Better (by Mareebird)

As usual, they needed to make a side trip.  “Needed” to make one.  Nothing could ever be over and done when traveling with her sister’s friends.  Rocket tried Nebula’s patience sometimes.  There was always some item the small creature needed to buy (or steal) or a person he wanted to see (or rob).  She did not care, not in any moralistic sense, but there was never anything quick about it and she hated wasting time.

They had been in New York for a day, dropping off equipment to Tony Stark.  It was what they had come to do.  It was a regular delivery, one they made every few months, in Rocket’s modified Class-M.  Nebula did not typically come along, because she did not like Earth, but Rocket needed a co-pilot, and all of the capable members of their team were otherwise occupied.  Not even the Flora Colossus had come along.  He was shedding leaves and needed privacy.  Nebula suspected that it was code for something and she did not want to know what.

It was her first time seeing Tony.  Nebula was glad the man had lived.  He seemed happy.  He had a wife and child.  She told the softer, organic parts of her brain not to think about what might have been, had she needed more oxygen and food while the two of them were adrift on the Benatar.  Tony was fortunate to have been trapped with her, of all possible companions, although it would have been easier to survive had he been alone.  Nebula could have lasted for months on her own, if she cared to go on that long.  Tony had kept her alive in his own way.

She enjoyed hugging Tony and his family when they said hello and goodbye.  She did not hug any of the other humans they encountered.  Perhaps they thought it might offend her.  They would not have been entirely wrong.  No one dared to touch Rocket at all.

After one night of sleep, it was time to depart, but not for home.  Unfortunately.  They needed to make their quick side trip first.

“Where is this Norway?” asked Nebula.  “And is this absolutely necessary?”

“I just want to see how an old friend is doing,” said Rocket.

Nebula scowled.  Rocket did not have old friends.  He barely had new ones.  They were similar that way, but she strapped into her seat without comment.  Arguing was merely a waste of time on top of what was already going to be a waste of time.

And she hated wasting time.

--

Norway, as it turned out, was on the same planet as New York, to the east and slightly north.  The flight was short, but the star Sol was straight overhead by the time they touched down.  They landed in a remote field, at coordinates which Tony had given.  It lay several miles from where Rocket’s friend had been conducting...whatever it was he that was doing here.  Apparently, this friend was not native to Earth.  That he happened to be here at the same time was fortuitous, if only for the fact that it saved time.  Nebula made peace with letting it play out.  Interference would only lengthen their stay.

They had arranged to meet Rocket’s friend at a safe distance from the city, so as not to cause alarm.  Earthlings were embarrassingly skittish.  The field in which they landed was pocked with rocks and patches of snow.  It was pretty, in a barren, naturalistic sort of way.  There were mountains in every direction.  It could not have been more different from New York.  Nebula had not been aware that places like this still existed on Earth, unruined.

Rocket unfastened his flight restraints.  “You coming?”

Nebula shrugged.  Her intention was to stay inside and let Rocket take care of whatever this was on his own.  “Is it necessary?”

He rolled his eyes.  “Suit yourself, friendly.”

Through the view-shield, she watched him march steadily through the field, frowning to herself.  Sometimes, Nebula wished she was not the way that she was.  Then again, someone would probably die if she allowed herself to become as easily distracted as the rest of them.

Rocket’s friend was not alone when he appeared on the horizon.  They were so far off that Nebula first mistook the figures for a ripple in the wind.  She honed in on the pair with her artificial eye, curious as to what sort of deplorable miscreants Rocket considered his buddies.  They were two males, Terran in appearance.  Both were tall, nicely-built specimens.  Nebula wondered if she wanted to say hello to them after all.  Her remaining organic parts still appreciated the company of attractive people.  One man had light hair, the other, black.

And he was familiar.

The black-haired one, fox-faced and angular and...

Her bald brow furrowed like a cabbage as she leaned closer to the view-shield and a chill rippled down her spine.  Her organic parts, it seemed, could also still react to shock.

Nebula threw off her flight restraints and ran outside, tearing through the dead grass at full speed.

“You’re alive!” she cried out.

The black-haired man’s eyes sharpened on her while she was still far away.  He leaped backward and, for a flash, appeared as though he might bolt, like he was laying eyes on a predator, which was fair enough.

The other man simply looked confused, as did Rocket, but he raised a hand to hold her off, positioning himself in the center of it all.  He was ruddy and muscular and effortlessly in command.

Nebula halted.  She did not blame the man for attempting to run, nor did she underestimate him.  He was Asgardian.  (Well, really he was Jotun, that was detail.)  He was an Asgardian prince.  But more importantly, he was one of the finest fighters she’d ever sparred against, if you could call her father’s predilections training.  They were more...exercises in survival.

She had to stop calling Thanos that.  Father.  He was not her father.

“Loki?”  She uttered his name cautiously, but she knew it was him.  Those eyes were unforgettable, deep-set and haunted.  She knew that he recognized her, too, the way that the harrowing memories of their time together splintered in his gaze like broken glass.  The face that surrounded them was a little different.  Older.  His youth was utterly gone.  When they met, he had almost looked like a boy.

Nebula wondered if her face would ever change, or would parts of her simply fall off as time passed?  She tried to be pragmatic about such things, because what was the alternative?  But that Loki had aged at all, that he was alive, that he was actually standing before her -- it was almost more than her brain, sharp as it was, could process.

How was this possible?  Thanos had hunted Loki like a cat after the last mouse in the universe.  And by the story he told after leaving the Asgardians behind, he might as well have come home with a tail between his teeth.

“Hey, you know Nebs?”  This came from Rocket, who sounded more concerned than impatient for once.  Slowly, Loki nodded.

“Norns…” breathed the other man -- the taller, thicker, fair-haired one.  “She’s one of Thanos’s daughters, isn’t she?”

Nebula grit her teeth.  The other man was Thor -- Nebula realized it all once.  The other Asgardian prince…the older one...was he the Allfather now?  Loki’s brother.

Thor had been a mark.  He had been part of the reason why Thanos wanted to train Loki in the first place, rather than kill the poor boy straight away, when he first arrived at Sanctuary.  It was surreal to see him on the flesh, standing before her.  He looked so different than the person she had been shown, and nothing at all like Loki, but there was no reason to expect that he would.

What were the two of them doing in Norway?

Except for the fact that Asgard no longer existed.

Loki cleared his throat.  He put on a smile, of all things, and returned to the group.  “Forgive me for reacting as I did.  Old habits.”

“I don’t blame you,” she said coolly.

Rocket snapped his fingers until everyone looked down.  Being the size that he was, it was necessary for him to be rude to get attention -- or at least, that was his excuse.  “Hey, I’m dying to know the story.  Really, I am.  But is there any chance we could catch up, I don’t know, indoors?  And not in the middle of a frozen wasteland.”

Nebula was vaguely offended.  She blinked at the mountains in the distance.  It was beautiful here.  But Thor waved a hand and ushered them forward.  “Right.  The portal is at the bottom of the hill.”

With a glance over his shoulder, Rocket jogged ahead.  Nebula lingered, standing very still, as did Loki, as though he expected her to wait.  “I was told you were dead,” she said.  “Thanos told everyone about what happened on that ship.”

Loki’s eyelids fluttered.  And then, with a wry smile, he patted his chest, proving how solid he was.  “Surely, you think more highly of me than that.”

Nebula did not laugh.  There was nothing funny about this.

He gestured that they ought to catch up.  “I’ll explain once we get into town.”

---

The next few minutes of their journey would remain a blur in Nebula’s mind.  Loki brought them through a portal, one which he may or may not have created himself.  Passages through magical doorways did funny things to her non-organic parts.  It never lasted very long, and she had only traveled using them a handful of times, but It always left her feeling staticky and dull until the effects faded.  It was an annoyance, but she couldn’t do anything about it.

All she could recall was following everyone, like the runt of a litter, as the mountains transmuted to a seaside street, until her fleshy brain and cybernetics synced up with one another.  With a jolt, Nebula realized that she was sitting in a hard chair, indoors.  There was a table in front of her.  There was a cup of something hot in her hand.

She tilted her head.

She was in...a coffee shop?

Two tables had been pushed together, around which, in addition to herself, Loki, Thor, and Rocket were seated.  At the counter, a human man and woman were buying drinks.  They finished, turned around, and offered polite smiles as they passed.

Nebula anxiously flexed her blue hands and vaguely recalled Loki saying something about casting a spell on her and Rocket, so that they would appear Midgardian.  Human.  Apparently, it was not something she could see with her own eyes.  Pity.  She was curious what sort of disguise Loki would choose to paint on her.

But not curious enough to ask.  The longer Nebula thought about it, the less she wanted to come face-to-face with a flesh-and-blood version of herself, free of the metal that held her together.

A bell jingled as the door closed.  The woman behind the counter circled around and locked it.  Apparently, she was an insider to their meeting.  She was a woman of average height and build, for a human.  She sat down next to Loki and Nebula noted the way he leaned ever so slightly into her presence at the table.

So, not only was Loki alive, but he was apparently doing well for himself.  It still boggled her mind.

Though it did make her feel slightly less guilty for what had happened between them.  That horrific moment.  Involuntarily, she shivered.  She hoped no one noticed.

“All right,” said Rocket, “now that we’re alone, time to tell the story.”

“There isn’t much to say, other than the obvious,” said Nebula.  She lifted her coffee to her lips and took a sip and hoped no one had noticed just how dazed she had been seconds ago.  “We trained together.  Briefly.  All of Thanos’s children did.”

It was not the whole truth.  That wasn’t hers to tell his people.

Across from her, Loki lifted his heavy brows, but he did not comment.  Rocket shifted in his chair, trying to get a little more height at the table.  “Right,” he said, “but training with you was top of the class, wasn’t it, Nebs?”

Was that a compliment?  She shrugged.  “Thanos wanted Loki trained quickly.”

“I think I learned more from you than a thousand years on Asgard,” said Loki.  She noted a tightening of his throat, as well as his fist around his drink.  He looked to be drinking tea, not coffee.

Nebula remembered pitying him when he’d first arrived, even though there had been no logical reason to care about a fallen Asgardian prince.  Pity was a dangerous thing.  She knew that far too well.  “But how are you still alive?”

Whatever was left of Loki’s thin smile vanished, like a shadow blotting out a little sliver of sun.  The woman beside Loki turned ashen, as well.  Nebula wondered if she had been given her name.  She did not remember.

With gravity, Loki turned his eyes upon his brother.

Thor shifted his weight against his seat.  “I brought him back using magic, I suppose you could say.”

Nebula lifted her brows, or what sufficed for them on her face.

“And not to forget,” said Loki, “there are times when one benefits from having a sister who guards the gates of Hel.”

“So you were dead?” Nebula asked.

“I got better.”

Everyone chuckled.  Everyone except her.  She did not understand why they laughed.

But she was not one of them.  And they were not her.  And they had not been there the day Thanos shipped her off to Ronan.  Only Loki had been there.  Only Loki knew.

So why did he laugh, too?

Her organic parts felt numb.

----

Nebula never finished her coffee.  She’d never cared for the drink all that much.  Mild stimulants were fairly useless.  What she really wanted was strong alcohol, but it was clear she wasn’t going to be offered any.  Rocket had a supply on the ship.  She would help herself to it later.  He would get pissed off, but he wouldn’t get in her way.

She didn’t divorce herself from the rest of the conversation, not completely; she tried her best to focus.  She was good at that, focusing on two things at once; the others probably couldn’t tell that her mind was elsewhere.  She suspected Loki could tell, though.  His mind was probably stuck on the same thing as hers. 

His eyes were glassy.

It was Rocket who rose first, signalling their exit.  He was satisfied to hear that Thor was doing well.  Nebula did not fully understand his concern, and she assumed she would never hear the full story.  Once they left, Rocket would move on to other things and so would she.  Thor seemed well enough, aside the missing eye.  She knew what that was like.

Rocket tried to make a trade for the eye, but Thor didn’t accept.

Rocket was disgusting sometimes.  Nebula didn’t know why she enjoyed traveling with him so much, except that he was the least idiotic member of their little crew.  Except for her sister, of course, but that was a given.

She pushed her mug aside and stood.  Good-byes were said.  Thor hugged Rocket, which was a sight to behold.  Maybe the little beast was a niche interest.

No one hugged her, not even Loki, though she hadn’t expected he would.  They weren’t old friends; they had briefly been in the same place at the same time.  Nebula dipped her head in a formal farewell.  Chances were slim they would ever run into one another again.  “It was good to see you,” she said.

Loki bowed.  Stiffly.  When he rose, his face was drawn, and he looked somehow older still.  He lifted his eyes over Nebula’s shoulder, to the door, through the tiny window.  “Actually, would you mind if we spoke in private?  Just for a minute.”

Nebula blinked.  She did not want to waste time.  She glanced over her shoulder at Rocket and Thor, still chatting outside.  Laughing loudly.  She wondered what on earth Loki was doing to shield his non-human appearance, because Thor was still looking at the ground when they spoke.  Was Rocket playing the role of a foul-mouthed child?

The blond woman whispered something in Loki’s ear and shuffled outside.  Their eyes met.  The door shifted into its latch with a click and Loki locked his hands behind his back.  She remembered that stance and how his limbs went rigid when he was frightened.  Was he frightened now?  What did he intend to say?

Nebula tilted her weight from hip to hip.  “Your woman seems nice,” she said.

Loki made a funny sound, losing some, but hardly all, of the tension in his jaw.  “I’ll tell her you said so.”

He stared at her, then, taking too much time.  Slowly, he drew a breath in and out of his nostrils.  Nebula’s chest tightened.  

“I wanted to say thank you,” he said.  Nebula felt the floor tilt beneath her feet.  Thank her?  For what?  The corners of Loki’s mouth twitched, as though he had felt the little earthquake himself.  “You’re surprised.”

“I…”  Nebula opened her mouth to discover it had gone dry.  She tried to clear her throat.  “I didn’t do anything.”

“Isn’t that the point?”

The image of Loki suddenly wavered before her, like water over a pane of glass.  “I…”

“You could have finished me off,” he said.

“Your back was broken.”  She sent it bluntly, like she was finding her voice, like it was an excuse.  It was.  But Nebula had never spared anyone else during Thanos’s training sessions.

Loki unclenched his hands long enough to massage his right hip.  The fated moment flashed in her mind, not for the first time today.  His blood curdling scream, his bent body.

“I was the one who broke it,” she said.

Loki shrugged, as though he disagreed, somehow.  “I tripped.”

“Hardly.”  She swallowed, and then she whispered.  “But it was not intentional.”

“I know.  Just as I know you could have finished me then and there, but chose not to.  You could have impressed your father.  I’m sorry.  Thano--”  Loki’s voice wavered before grinding to a halt.  His Adam’s apple lifted high and fell.

“He was not my father,” she said quickly.  “And nothing I ever did impressed him, anyway.”

Loki nodded, his eyes taking on a far-away glint.  He blinked and it vanished, like one of the tricks that he’d shown off before every playful impulse had been beaten out of him at Sanctuary.

What happened that day felt as though it had taken place in another lifetime, but it had not been so long ago.  Still, it seemed like someone else’s life that she’d been living, a person without freedom, without control over her own mind.   She had jobs to do; occasionally training her father’s latest acquisitions was one of those jobs.

She’d been fucking fed up with it.  She’d known all about Thor and about Odin, or as much as Thanos had wanted her to know.  She'd known Loki was the younger brother of the future Allfather, the son of the current Allfather -- and she'd known he was no Asgardian.

She'd had every intention of proving that.

Loki’d spoken of impressing Thanos, but he’d gotten it completely backward.  She was sick of the game, sick of her father, sick to death of herself.  What was Loki to her, but the latest in a long, long line of challengers to her fly-speck of a purpose in this damned galaxy?  Another thorn in what remained of her hide.  He was a threat.  Nothing but a threat.

He’d proven a more worthy opponent than his meager, hungry look suggested, but Nebula underestimated no one.  She remembered it was raining that day.  Thanos preferred they train in real conditions, real settings.  He obsessed on being one with nature, which was why it was such cruel punishment to cut her up after every failure and, piece by piece, slowly turn her into a machine.

If she killed Loki, she would at least be spared that.  For only a day, perhaps, but her life was a day-by-day existence, minute-by-minute.  She numbered her small victories and her even smaller rewards.

Loki tripped that day, but in reality the water-logged ground beneath him had given way.  The earth swallowed him.  The fall alone should have been his end.  Perhaps he would have been luckier to die, but Nebula suspected the man had never possessed a lot of that.  Luck.  Neither had she.  People like them scraped through life without luck.

The sound that erupted from his twisted body was the most agonizing noise she had ever heard, minus her own screams, when Thanos spliced her into pieces.

He never bothered to dull the pain.  He always made sure it hurt, that it was flame and agony.  He made sure everyone heard her scream until she begged for release.  Until he was satisfied that everyone knew that the Mad Titan could make a machine weep real tears.

Nebula remembered tearing down the wet hill, over the rocks, through the mud.  She’d been shocked to see that Loki was still alive, but he was a retching, shivering, gnarled mess.  She remembered her hands shaking just as much as she stupidly reached for him.  Stupid, stupid girl!  She remembered the blood and snot and mud slapped across his youthful face.

Her heart exploded.  And then came the frigid snap of numbness, shock, and disbelief.

Loki was nothing to her, nothing except a threat.  Thanos had plans for him, plans he did not have for her.  She ought to have ended Loki, thwart her father and remain blameless, because it was her job to weed out the weak.

Loki was nothing.  Nothing.

The poor boy was nothing...

Nebula recalled the shouting of her father’s footsoldiers in the distance, racing toward them to assay the damage.  Loki drew a sharp breath and held it, lifting his eyes, not blinking as the rain pelted them.

He knew.  He knew he was nothing to her, to anyone.  He was a prince who would never be a king, a son without a father, without a family, and now he was physically broken.  Nebula had every right and reason to put him out of his misery.  He wanted her to do it.

But it was too late.  Loki had already become something to her.

She could not kill him.

That night, her father tore out what little flesh still remained in her left hand.

Loki went on to do terrible things.  So had she.

There were years behind them, now.  Thanos had bragged about finally catching the younger Asgardian prince.  She’d made peace with his death, because what else could she do, but apparently Loki had more luck that she realized.  If she had not spared him that day, perhaps his brother never would have been able to ultimately revive him.

And now, as she stared at his gently lined face in a Norwegian coffee shop, she was happy to see that he’d had the opportunity to leave his youth behind.

“I wish you safe travels,” said Loki, “wherever you’re off to next.”

“Back… Back to where my sister is.”  Nebula dipped her head, bowing her farewell and blinking quickly, before she teared up.  It wreaked havoc on her cybernetic parts.  “What happened to Asgard was...unfortunate.  I’m sorry.”

“Yes, well, I have my brother.  Sometimes that’s all the home you get.”

Nebula almost laughed.  She turned toward the door.  “How is your back, by the way?”

“Honestly, it was never quite the same, but it could have been far worse.”

She nodded.  “Yes.  It could have been much worse.”

#I Got Better #nebula #loki #thor #relic universe

[ineffably-good]

The First Heist Of The Rest Of Their Lives

I wrote this story for two different people -- first it was for @tlou15, who asked for a story about Aziraphale and Crowley finding one of their skulls from a prior incarnation. And then I also worked it around to cover the heist story I promised  @lovermrjokerr for their 8k writing challenge, which I signed up to participate in two months ago! I’ m two days late posting my story for that challenge -- but I had to get through the rest of my May story prompts first! Too many irons in the fire, as they say!

Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley come across a relic of one of their former corporations in a museum, and immediately realize they have to liberate it. Hijinks ensue. 

______________________________

There were times when being an ethereal entity capable of dying and recorporating came back to bite you in the ass.

Over the years, Crowley and Aziraphale had become increasingly good at limiting their discorporations. It took a couple millennia of practice, however, to learn to recognize and avoid the obvious dangers in this new world of theirs. At first, the fatal accidents were more frequently and somewhat unexpected. A fall from a high cliff (demon), simply because neither of them knew that a fall could kill them. A rather unnecessary drowning (angel), simply because the entity in question didn’t know that failing to hold one’s breath underwater would result in death. A kick in the head from a large land ungulate (demon) with a grudge. A rather deep spear injury (angel) that could have simply been side stepped. The list went on and on.

Luckily, Above and Below were also somewhat more accommodating and liberal with the issuing of new bodies than they came to be in later years.

As time passed, they got to better at the protocols of losing a body, too. Go back to home base, fill out the paperwork (in triplicate, for hell, using a scratchy pencil whose point always broke off), be polite (in Heaven) or surly (in Hell) to the body clerk, and get a new one issued as quickly as possible. Make your way back to Earth and then go back and clean up the scene of the crime, so to speak, so you didn’t leave the remnants of an ethereally-issued skeleton around. Tidy up the memories of anyone involved in the incident, and reassume your old life if possible, or, if a funeral had already been held and too many people were involved, simply move on to a new location or assignment. It all worked out.

For the most part. 

Being, as they were, two of the more lackadaisical, non-detail oriented entities ever stationed in this sphere, though, it was natural that here and there a few of the details got missed.

Which is what led to the two of them, standing in front of an exhibit in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, filled with a deep sense of foreboding.

“Is that…” Crowley muttered.

“No, it couldn’t possibly be…” Aziraphale said under his breath.

“I’m fairly certain it is…”

“Oh, dear lord,” Aziraphale breathed. “Yes, that’s one of mine!”

In front of them, an exhibit on the Mayans did an admirable job showcasing their culture and achievements, dispelling the pervasive myths of human sacrifice, and above all showing a recreation of a temple display used to honor their dead. By punching holes in each side of a series of skulls and stringing them on a pole, like beads, to be displayed and revered.

And right smack in the center, oddly devoid of the same signs of aging and decay as the ones around it, was a brilliant white skull that bore more than a passing resemblance to the man staring at it in horror through the glass. To the human observers, it just appeared oddly pristine. But to Crowley and Aziraphale and any other ethereal entity who bothered to take a look, it was pulsing with remnants of celestial energy.

Crowley dissolved in laughter. This earned him a stern glare from the angel.

“What?” he said, snorting. “Your skull is hanging like a pendant on a stick in the Natural History Museum and I can’t laugh? How could you just leave one of your skulls laying around in – in what? Peru? Where did this come from?”

Aziraphale sniffed. “Mexico, I believe. I spent some time there, in San Lorenzo, the first Olmec capital.”

“You did?” Crowley asked. “Why didn’t I know about this?”

“We weren’t speaking at the time,” Aziraphale said. “Remember that big fight we had in Persia?”

“Oh, that…” Even after several thousand years, Crowley still managed to sound vaguely resentful. “You mean when you clocked me unconscious with your fist?”

“You hit me first!”

“Not the same, and you know it,” Crowley sulked. Being hit by a snake demon who was not bred for fighting was nothing like being punched in the jaw by the Guardian of the Eastern Gate. It was like being hit by a locomotive – although the comparison wouldn’t come to him for a few thousand years.

Aziraphale glanced over at him, taking in the sulky look on the demon’s face. “Oh, come now, my dear,” he pouted. “We’ve long sense settled that particular kerfuffle. I apologized multiple times, didn’t I?”

Crowley mouthed the word ‘kerfuffle’ to himself with a grin. “I suppose we did, yes.” He stepped over a few feet and read the long and detailed card about the skulls in front of them. “Oh angel, listen to this.”

He read from the placard:  

Called a tzompantli by the Mayans, these ritual displays were believed to be used to showcase were originally thought to be a grotesque display of slain enemies, placed to rally the Mayan’s support for their leaders and to serve as a warning sign to others to stay away from Mayan territory. Although rumors have abounded about human sacrifice in Mayan culture, recent evidence reveals that these displays may have been more funerary in usage, highlighting the revered ancestors and that many of these skulls shows signs of being dead long before the post-holes were cut in them.

“How, pray tell, did you become one of the honored dead for the Mayans?” Crowley said, grinning. “Or were you actually sacrificed at one of their temples? Drowned in a cenote?”

Aziraphale frowned. “That’s a story for another time, my dear.”

“Oh, but I haven’t even gotten to the good bit. The part where they talk about the gleaming white skull in the center and how it shows signs of having been treated with some unknown and lost technology that made it ‘impervious to decay’.” Crowley chortled.

“I really should find a way to remove it from the display,” Aziraphale fretted. “Before someone decides to take a closer look at it under one of those – scanning microscope thingies they have now and discovers it doesn’t appear to be fully human. Or before one of the archangels finds out about it…”

“Ha!” Crowley shouted. “Imagine the uproar. Evidence of ancient aliens discovered in Smithsonian Museum! The chaos around the world!”

Aziraphale turned fully towards Crowley and looked menacing in the way that only he could. “Whatever foolish idea you’re forming right now for mischief,” he said warningly, “I absolutely forbid it!”

“Aw, angel,” Crowley whined. “Come on, I never get to have any fun.”

“You can have some fun by helping me pilfer this exhibit once the museum is closed tonight,” Aziraphale said. “I do believe the security here is rather prodigious.”

“You intend to rob the museum on our vacation?” Crowley asked, astonished. “You could just… you know… miracle the skull out, replace it with a duplicate.”

Aziraphale studied the exhibit for a long slow moment, considering, then turned and settled a blinding grin on his demon spouse. “I could,” he drawled, “but where would the fun be in that?”

Crowley felt a warm rush of something run through him. Love? Joy? Slight anxiety? Who knew. All he knew was the angel was quite possibly the most perfect thing on the entire Earth. No, in the galaxy. Quite possibly the galactic cluster.

“So,” the angel continued. “Are you in or out?”

“I’m in,” Crowley managed to croak, through his haze of feelings. “I’m so in.”

Aziraphale rewarded him with a peck on the cheek, then offered his arm to the demon and shepherded him down to the café, murmuring something about having heard they had the loveliest cakes here. Time to do a little planning, and what better way then over a little dessert?

 --

They hunkered down in the museum’s café, over a gaudy orange tray that held two lovely napoleons and two cups of a rather poor excuse for tea, and started making plans.

Aziraphale surveyed the room around them. “We could just – you know, hide somewhere until everything is closed tonight. Saves breaking in.”

Crowley took a sip of his tea, made a disgusted face, and nodded neutrally. “We could, of course. That’d be the sensible thing to do.” He took a smaller sip. “Or, we could really go for it. Assemble a crack team, get some tech, do that thing with carabiners and cables.” He mimes a Tom Cruise, Mission Impossible style, arms-out float down from the ceiling and manages to convey that he would also be holding a knife in his teeth at the same time.

Aziraphale smiles, noncomittally. “Well that does sound exciting, my dear. But I can’t quite imagine that we have time to set that all up by tonight. And I do think we ought to get my skull out of there as soon as possible. It could hardly be a coincidence, don’t you think, our running into it here today?”

Crowley frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, just that we have a way of stumbling onto things at exactly the right moment,” the angel said. “Who’s to say that if we put the recovery off for a week, we wouldn’t somehow have Gabriel leading a team of school children through here tomorrow for some reason and discovering it, or some stupid Earth magician about to steal it for his own magical purposes?”

Crowley blinked at him. “You’re saying it’s fate that we came here today and that we’re not meant to leave without the skull? It’s not Armageddon, angel.”

Aziraphale took a bite of his napoleon and then delicately tapped the edges of his mouth with the napkin. “Well,” he said, leaning forward. “Doesn’t it feel a bit urgent to you? I mean, underneath it all?”

Crowley had to admit, the angel had a point.

“Fine,” he grumbled. “No tech. Can we at least synch our watches or something?”

Aziraphale stared at him flatly for a moment and then pulled out his ancient pocket watch, complete with chain. “If we must.”

Crowley grinned.

 --

It was funny, Crowley thought, that it was Aziraphale who insisted that they be appropriately attired for their heist. They’d hidden themselves away in a maintenance wing close to the Mayan exhibit, and Aziraphale had first used a miracle to suit them both up in black, skin tight cat-burglar type outfits, then another miracle to cover those up with maintenance worker uniforms and caps which made them fit right in so that no one would give them a second look.

“Stop fidgeting with your coveralls, Crowley!” the angel hissed, handing him a push broom. “You look very suspicious. Now get out there and let’s figure out where all of the cameras are.”

It was nearly closing time, and no one noticed anything awry when they wheeled their carts out into the Mayan area and began putting up bright yellow “Wet Floor” signs and started sweeping up the debris of the day. A quick, small miracle made them completely unnoticeable to the other maintenance staff – just two ordinary guys, no different than the guys they saw every day working this area, obviously well underway on their evening chores and with no need of any further supervision.

Soon enough, the building was closed and even the maintenance staff was putting away their equipment and getting ready to leave through the service entrance, leaving the building in the hands of the security staff. Crowley and Aziraphale made themselves scarce in a storage closet, until all the sounds in the building had ceased. Then they took off their coveralls and headed out to the exhibit in their dark-colored gear.

A quick miracle took care of the cameras, shifting them just slightly so that they showed everything except the skulls display. After that, they stood in front of the glass case, examining it closely.

Aziraphale rolled his shoulders. “Shall I just dissemble the case, then?” he asked quietly, reaching up to place his hands on either corner of the front panel.

“No!” Crowley all but shrieked. “Stop. Look, there’s a laser, right there.” He pointed at a small blue light that was shining on the edge of the glass door, just above the lock. “Clearly if the door is opened and the light beam gets interrupted, an alarm will go off. Don’t you watch movies, Aziraphale?”

Aziraphale dropped his hands and stepped back. “Not unless you make me, no. So, what do we do about this laser?”

Crowley thought for a minute. What would James Bond do? Shoot someone and kiss a girl, probably. He failed to see how either was helpful at this point in the process. And if he was kissing anyone, it was going to be the angel, and he had that activity slated for quite a bit later in the evening. He sighed. What was the world coming to when even James Bond couldn’t provide insight?

Aziraphale looked at him, a little worried, and that spurred him into action. Crowley held out his pointer finger and concentrated until a demonic claw sprang into existence where his fingernail should be. He sharpened it, made it harder, and whittled it down to a fine, fine point.

“Stand back, angel,” he said. “If we can’t open the door without setting off the laser alarm, we’re just going to go in above that.”

And feeling just like every bad-ass heist hero he’d ever watched in a movie, he started carving a large circular hole in the glass case in front of him. This normally wouldn’t work on the specialized shatter-proof glass that the museum used, but the one thing the special chemistry of the glass wasn’t prepared to repel was demonic intention. It cut before him like butter, silently and gently, until a large, 12” circle of glass fell loose in his other hand.

Crowley turned and handed the removed glass circle to Aziraphale, who carefully put it on the floor and gave the demon a bright smile.

“Oh, that was very nice, dear,” he whispered. “Very slick.”

“Now,” Crowley said, aware he was showing off a little bit, “we just reach in there and remove your skull from the pole –”

He stuck his hand through and then froze as several things happened at once.

One, a large alarm started blaring.

Two, they both suddenly realized that the skull was affixed to the horizontal pole through both sides of the brainpan, and that they could neither straight-out remove it nor could they slide it off the pole because of the number of other skulls hanging from the same pole on either side of it.  

Three, a huge puff of some kind of gas came shooting out of the display case, hitting Crowley directly in the eyes. He dropped to the floor like a stone.

Aziraphale, having a slight second more warning than Crowley did, immediately stopped breathing, picked up his demon, and bent time and space to manifest them both back to their hotel. He put the demon down on the bed, covered him up, ensured he was breathing, and then realized he’d forgotten the skull.

“Oh FUCK,” he exclaimed, using the word for what was only the third time in his life. He snapped again, miracling himself back to the scene of the crime, and used magic to remove the central skull (and a portion of the pole with it) from the display. He had just raised a hand to disappear himself home when three security guards with guns drawn came running into the room.

“Freeze!” the shouted, their flashlight beams playing over him. “Hands up and turn around!”

Aziraphale turned slowly. “I can’t put my hands up, as you can see --” he called out in his most soothing voice, blinking through the blinding beams of light to try to see who he was dealing with, “-- because I am holding a rather priceless artifact. Please stay calm.”

He heard the safety on a gun click off and did his best to raise both hands and the pole with it over his head. The skull – his skull, disturbingly – rattled ominously as he did so. This was most offputting, he thought.

“Kneel!” the frontmost officer shouted, and Aziraphale sighed and rolled his eyes at the absurdity of all of this, but did so, carefully balancing the – his – skull overhead the whole time.

“Really, gentlemen,” he said quietly, using a tad of angelic influence. “We can talk this out. No need for those weapons.”

“You can talk it out with the police,” the front man said. “Lay down the artifact in front of you VERY SLOWLY.”

Aziraphale sighed. “I’m so sorry, but I’m rather afraid I can’t do that. You see this skull is nearly three thousand years old and if it touches the ground it might disintegrate.”

“Lay it down, NOW!” the man screamed, and Aziraphale suddenly noticed a couple of red laser sight dots playing about on his chest. This, he decided was getting much too serious.

Oh botheration. He usually left this kind of manipulation to Crowley to carry out – he was so much better at it. Nonetheless, Crowley was home and unconscious and possibly injured, and he wasn’t helping anyone by allowing himself to be shot or captured, and there was no way it was going to get back to heaven that he had been arrested – and for BURGLARY! – so with a deep, dejected sigh, he conjured up his powers and sent a wave of gentle but unavoidable exhortation and watched as all three men froze in place.

He slowly made his way to his feet, cradling the skull to his chest with one arm, and walked over to the exhibit, where he created and inserted an identical but non-ethereal copy of the skull and pole he’d removed, replaced and repaired the glass, and turned off the alarm. He checked the cameras to ensure that they were all still off. They were. And finally, he walked over to the armed men and gently touched each of them on the temple, one after the other.

“You will not remember the events of the last fifteen minutes,” he said, poking around the tiniest bit to ensure that this was true. “You will wake in a few minutes, after having a lovely dream about whatever you like best.”

And with that done, he returned to the hotel to tend to his demon.

 --

Crowley woke up a few hours later, groggy and confused. “Angel?” he shouted, leaning up to look frantically around the room. “Angel?”

“Hush, dearest, I’m here,” Aziraphale said, sitting down on the bed beside him.

“What happened?”

“Oh, well,” the angel said. “We got interrupted. You set off a second alarm when you reached into the case and were sprayed with some gas that essentially knocked you out for a few hours. I brought you home and then went back for the skull.”

Crowley moaned and flopped his head back down on the pillow. “You mean – I missed everything? You went back without me? Angel, how could you?”

“You were unconscious, my dear,” the angel said reasonably. “And it wasn’t so hard. I removed the skull, put in a duplicate, wiped the memories of the three security guards who were thinking about shooting me, and popped back home, quick as a jiffy. No harm done.”

“Three men with guns?” Crowley said, looking suddenly very alert. “You went back alone to face three Americans with guns? You know how they are, angel.”

Aziraphale tutted. “Well in my defense, there were no men with guns when I left, so they were a bit of a surprise. However, I assure you that I was never in any danger. I turned their bullets to marshmallows as soon as they entered the room.”

“Marshmallows,” said Crowley flatly. “Really?”

“What’s wrong with that?” the angel asked, a tad indignantly. “I thought it was a rather nice solution to the problem.”

“Not very criminal of you,” Crowley muttered. He looked, the angel thought, jealous and pouty.

Aziraphale smiled softly. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to finish the heist with me, my dear. It would have gone so much more smoothly if you were there.”

“’m good at heists,” Crowley mumbled.

“The very best,” Aziraphale said, wondering if he was laying it on too thick. “Definitely as good as anyone in the Bond films.”

“Only as good?” the demon said, with the hint of a smile.

“Oh, definitely better than some,” Aziraphale replied. “I’d say you’re head and shoulders above Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, and Pierce Brosnan.”

The demon preened a little, although he was clearly trying to hide it. “And Sean Connery?” he asked.

“Hrm,” the angel said, consideringly. “I’d say you’d give him a good run for his money.”

Crowley sat up more fully, looking much more like himself. “And let’s not even start on Daniel Craig,” he said. “Hey, do you think the hotel television has movie channels? Maybe we can find a couple Bond films to watch before we eat dinner.”

“Might be wise of us to lay low tonight,” the angel said. “After all you were injured and we did just break into the Smithsonian. Perhaps we’ll order room service instead of going out.”

“Dinner and a movie?” Crowley said.

“That sounds just lovely.”

In the corner, in a duffel bag, a blindingly white skull with two large holes in it just above the ear canal sat quietly, a piece of ancient wood tucked carefully in beneath it. They’d take it back to London, Aziraphale had decided, and find some way to dispose of it there, or simply lock it up in one of Anathema’s spell-guarded chests if they couldn’t destroy it. It could take up a new life beneath the floorboards of the bookshop, somewhere where no one could find it or use it to cause them any trouble.

They were safe as houses, Aziraphale thought, problem averted. But just in case, he carefully warded the doors and windows as soon as dinner had been delivered so that no one could enter or leave for the rest of the night.

You could never be too careful.

#lovermrjokerr8kchallenge #good omens #good omens fanfiction #Aziraphale x Crowley #ineffable idiots #heist stories

[danielmouradjensen]

Canterbury Tales - in a historical/social context

In this essay the reader will be enlighten with an extremely short introduction to Canterbury Tales and the skillful poet behind this unique master piece, written in Middle English. Due to the size and focus of the paper, the Pardoner’s Tale, the Parson’s Tale and the wife of Bath’s Tale, including the prologues, will be selected among the 24 stories in Canterbury Tales. It will therefore be these three tales, which will be placed in a historical and social context. The main question in the essay is, “Which historical events are worth mentioning when discussing, the three specific tales, in Canterbury Tales?”

In Canterbury Tales (1387 - 1400.), the readers are introduced with a variety of personalities, like the Pardoner, the Parson, the Clerk, the Knight and the Wife of Bath. These mentioned characters are all pilgrims heading towards Canterbury. The tales are not written in Latin or French, which were languages preferred at that time but in Middle English. The Canterbury Tales were meant for a specific group of people and not the whole population in England1. Reading aloud was regarded as a social event in the time Chaucer.

It is also presumed that Geoffrey Chaucer did not write to achieve the benefits of fame. Canterbury Tales were of course handwritten on various manuscripts because it was much later, more specific, in the year 14762, that William Caxton introduced the first printing press in England. When the tales, which are quite amusing, were written, it was in a time or period of war, sickness and despair. It is from within the tales that the reader learns more about the society in the late Middle Ages. It is worth mentioning, that Chaucer had an advantage among his peers, in that he was a member of the court of King Richard II of England (1367-1400).

Furthermore, it is quite important to take notice that Chaucer the Poet uses a light satirical tone when introducing the many characters, in the different tales. Geoffrey Chaucer, as the genius he was, created a persona who is himself, in order to be part of the tales. In Canterbury Tales, the author and the narrator merge - another unique feature in the tales.

The Pardoner’s tale, the Parson’s tales and the Wife of Bath

As promised, the three tales will be placed in a historical (social) context: the role of the Church in England, the Great Western Schism, the Lollards, and the Hundred Year’s War as well as the Black Death. The Peasants’ Revolt, in 1381, will unfortunately not be discussed in this essay. This historical event would be interesting in connection with especially the Knight’s Tale.

The Pardoner’s tale

But, sirs, one thing that slipped my memory when I spoke my tale: I've relics, pardons in My pouch, in England none could finer be, The pope's own hand entrusted them to me. If anyone devoutly has resolved To make a gift and by me be absolved, Come forth at once and meekly on your knees Receive my pardon. Or, if you so please, Take for yourself a pardon as you go--One fresh and new at every town--just so You offer to me, all the while we ride, Some pence and nobles that are bonafide. (l. 919 – 930, Canterbury Tales, “the Pardoner’s Tale”)3

Is the Pardoner a charlatan or a true holy man? Geoffrey Chaucer describes this character as a man more interested in selling relics and enjoy life’s pleasures than helping others of the goodness of his heart. As an example from “The Pardoner's Portrait”: “He'd make more money in one day alone Than would the parson two months come and gone. So he made apes, with all the tricks he'd do, Of parson and of congregation too.” (l. 703 – 706, Canterbury Tales, “General Prologue”)4. However, in line 708 Chaucer writes: “In church he was a fine ecclesiastic”. The theme in the Pardoner´s tale is that the root to all evil is money. And money is what the pardoner likes. A greedy man who speaks about greed. Again, it becomes evident that Chaucer does not find the Pardoner worthy of his position as a man of the Church. Because of irony, the reader has to read between the lines.

In the late Middle Ages many historical events occurred, among them was the Western Schism (1378-1417), which resulted in a slit of the Roman Catholic Church. During a very long period, rivalries for the papacy led to a deep political crisis within the Church. Even after the truce with France, in 1389, England continued, very firmly, to support Rome, not Avignon, and would not offer any real solutions to end the Schism5. In the tales, it is also from Rome where the church authority derives from.

It is here, it is very interesting to talk about the role or status of the Church in England, during the lifetime of Chaucer. Was the Church in England strong or weak? At the time of Chaucer, the church was weak due to the Western Schism, mentioned above, the Black Death (1346–1353) and greedy/selfish churchmen6.

In England, the Black Death, which almost killed half of the population and the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453), led to an increase of self-serving churchmen – like the Pardoner in Canterbury Tales. The people of England were in pain and needed help and guidance, which meant a great opportunity for greedy and self-absorbed men of the church to exploit it. To further elaborate on the Hundred Years' War, which Geoffrey Chaucer himself participated in, even more death and suffering befell the people of England. France was also hurting and bleeding. The long war did not only bring serious social and economic changes in the English and French societies but also affected the writing of Geoffrey Chaucer.

The Black Death had a huge impact on the English society as a whole, not only were people dying but the way they died was horrific. There is a line/phrase saying: “there were hardly enough living to care for the sick and bury the dead”7. The plague affected the economy, politics and religion. It also had an impact on culture and arts. What is quite interesting is that the plague as well as the Hundred Years' War actually empowered the people.

Geoffrey Chaucer knew because of his place in the higher classes, the realities of the church and the abuses of the clergy. This gave Chaucer the opportunity to use humorous irony in the tales. Making fun of the mischiefs of the clergy was not something new at that time8. In addition to this, Chaucer was acquainted with John Wyclif, theologian and reformer, which contributed to a harsher stand towards the clergy in England.

No institution in fourteenth-century England was so often the object of satire as the Church. The great organization, with its wealth, its power, and its conservative traditions, might have been expected to offer a safeguard against social decay; but the Church itself was a fruitful breeding-ground for the very things, which were disorganizing feudal society. (A Chaucer handbook, p. 35)9

Going in depth with the Pardoner’s Tale, Death has a vital role, and might be viewed as the plague, which, stated above, ravaged England. Death, or the personification of Death, was something that Chaucer’s audience could identify with. The Pardoner’s Tale is the only tale set during the Black Plague.

The Parson’s Tale

There was a good man of religion, too, A PARSON of a certain township who Was poor, but rich in holy thought and work. He also was a learned man, a clerk; The Christian gospel he would truly preach, Devoutly his parishioners to teach. Benign he was, in diligence a wonder, And patient in adversity, as under Such he'd proven many times. And loath He was to get his tithes by threatening oath; For he would rather give, without a doubt, To all the poor parishioners about From his own substance and the offerings. (l. 477 – 489, Canterbury Tales, “General Prologue”)10

In the Parson’s Tale, the reader is now introduced to a different character than the Pardoner. It is the last and longest tale in Canterbury Tales. The funny thing is that, the tale is not even a tale:

It is a penitential manual,  a  curious  choice  because  nearly  all such  vehicles  of religious  in­struction were prepared  by the clergy or by mystics.  It is largely derivative, using  material common  to  so  many  treatises  that  only  a few  of the  actual sources can be established with some certainty. (Sermon and Penitential in The Parson’s Tale and their Effect on Style, p. 125)11

The Parson tells the others that he does not want to amuse them and therefore he chooses instead a sermon. From the Prologue: “You won't get any fable told by me; For Saint Paul, as he writes to Timothy, Reproves those who abandon truthfulness for fable-telling and such wretchedness.” (l. 31 - 34, Canterbury Tales, “The Parson's Tale PROLOGUE”)12

He could definitely be viewed as a more positive face of the church, according to Chaucer, than the persona, which the Pardoner represented. It is also worth noticing that, from the descriptions in the Prologue, the Parson, the Knight and the Ploughman represent the three traditional spheres of medieval society13.

It could also be worth placing “the Parson’s Tale” in context with the Lollards. As mentioned before, Chaucer was in contact with John Wyclif, who was convinced that the Bible and God had the highest authority and that the clergy should not own property. He also translated the Bible into Middle English14, which made it a lot easier for those who did not understand Latin. The Lollards followed John Wyclif and in the beginning, his supporters were from Oxford University and the royal court but the “movement” became increasingly popular outside “the inner circle”. The Lollards were critical towards the Church, which of course made them quite unpopular with the established clergy. The monastic leaders were not keen to follow or abide the views of John Wyclif and his followers. During the Black Death, Wyclif saw many flaws and weaknesses in the Church. It was believed that Rome was the enemy, and that the devote Christian only needed the local pastor and congregation15. The Lollards also saw sacraments as fake, which meant the reformers wanted to change the core in the Catholic Church. Wyclif died naturally even though the Church wanted him executed for heresy.  

There could also be links between Parson’s tale and the ideas of the Lollards. According to Frances McCormack,16 there could be some similarities with the vocabulary in the tale and that of the Lollards. As also stated in the beginning that Chaucer did not write to a large group of people, he had a specific audience (like the royal court) and among these members were those who, in one way or another, supported the ideas of the Lollards.

The Wife of Bath’s Tale

She was a worthy woman all her life: At church door with five men she'd been a wife,             Not counting all the company of her youth.(No need to treat that now, but it's the truth.) She'd journeyed to Jerusalem three times; Strange rivers she had crossed in foreign climes; She'd been to Rome and also to Boulogne, To Galicia for Saint James and to Cologne, And she knew much of wandering by the way. She had the lover's gap teeth, I must say. With ease upon an ambling horse she sat, Well wimpled, while upon her head her hat Was broad as any buckler to be found. (l. 459– 471, Canterbury Tales, “General Prologue”)17

Another very interesting character and pilgrim in Canterbury Tales is the Wife of Bath who sounds more like a modern woman and a feminist from the late 20th century than a woman from the late Middle Ages. This eccentric character, actually named Alison (line 804, The Wife of Bath's Tale PROLOGUE), is not afraid to speak her mind about former husbands, marriage and her sex-life. She does not sound like what a typical pilgrim should be and act. As an example, in the following quote, the reader learns what men’s “instruments” are actually used for:

That learned men I not provoke to oath, I mean to say that they were made for both--That is, both for relief and for our ease To procreate, so God we not displease. Why else should men into their ledgers set That every man yield to his wife her debt? And how can he pay this emolument Unless he use his simple instrument? That's why upon all creatures these are set, To urinate and also to beget. (l. 125 - 134, Canterbury Tales, “The Wife of Bath's Tale PROLOGUE”)18

She is one of the few women among the pilgrims, but she is not afraid to speak her mind and rebel against the patriarchal powers19. The Pardoner tries to interrupt her by flatter, but it does not work and she continuous:

The Pardoner spoke up immediately. "Now dame, by God and by Saint John," said he, "As a noble preacher on the case you'll pass. I almost wed a wife, but then, alas, Why buy it with my flesh, a price so dear? I'd rather not get married, not this year." "Abide," she said, "my tale is not begun! No, you'll be drinking from another tun, Before I'm through, that tastes much worse than ale. (l. 163 - 171, Canterbury Tales, “The Wife of Bath's Tale)20

In “Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature”, a very important point is made: “Recognition of the cultural meanings that are spoken through female voices can be a starting place for the exploration of forms of power and power relations in the Middle Ages.”21 The Wife of Bath (still looking for husband number six), is also a woman who has been on several pilgrimages. Furthermore, she is a woman who travels alone. In her tale, the readers learn about the knight, who rapes a fair maiden and as a punishment/challenge must answer what it is women what most of all. The queen who offers the knight a second chance is none other than Guinevere, the wife of King Arthur. What is important to point out, is that stories of King Arthur were quite popular at the time of Chaucer. Alison speaks of magic and magical creatures, which at that time, the established Church viewed as pagan beliefs. The tale begins with:

In the old days of King Arthur, today Still praised by Britons in a special way, This land was filled with fairies all about. The elf-queen with her jolly little rout In many a green field often danced. (l. 857 - 861, Canterbury Tales, “The Wife of Bath's Tale)22

When exploring the Wife of Bath’s tale in a historical context, it is also interesting to look at the Beguines in the mid and late Middle Ages. The Beguines were women who devoted their lives to God. In a time where there were more women than men, this specific life of a Beguine provided a safe haven for women without husbands.

The conclusion of the essay

When the Geoffrey Chaucer created the 24 spectacular tales, which were not only amusing and ironic/satirical, it was in a period of war, illness and despair. It is from within the tales and prologues that the reader has the opportunity to study the English society in the late Middle Ages. It is also worth mentioning, that Chaucer had an advantage among his countrymen, in that he was a member of the court of King Richard II of England (1367-1400).

A crucial religious and historical event took place in the western Christian world, which without doubt affected the religious thoughts and views of many people, in the different layers of the societies, in the late Middle Ages. The Western Schism (1378-1417) resulted in a slit of the Roman Catholic Church. During a very long period, rivalries for the papacy and/or authority led to a deep political crisis within the Church.

At the time of Chaucer, the church was weak due to the Western Schism, mentioned earlier, the Black Death (1346–1353) and corrupted churchmen.

In England, the Black Plague, which almost exterminated half of the population and the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453), led to an increase of self-serving churchmen – like the greedy Pardoner in Canterbury Tales. The people of England were in pain and were in seek of help and guidance, which meant a great opportunity for greedy and self-absorbed men of the church to exploit it. As mentioned in the essay, the Black Death had a huge impact on the English society as a whole, not only were the population dying but the way they died was unbelievable. There is a line/phrase, to further illustrating the Black Plague, saying: “there were hardly enough living to care for the sick and bury the dead”. The Black Death affected the economy, politics and religion. It also changed the culture and arts (including, the writing of Chaucer).

Placing “the Parson’s Tale” in context with the Lollards, makes som sense. As mentioned before, Chaucer was in contact with John Wyclif, who was convinced that it was only God and the Bible, which had the real authority. That the clergy should not possess property, which they indeed did. The Lollards were critical towards the Church, which of course made them quite unpopular with the clergy. The monastic leaders were not keen to follow or abide the radical views of John Wyclif and his supporters. During the Black Death, Wyclif saw many flaws and weaknesses in the established Church. Geoffrey Chaucer knew, due to his status and as member of the royal court, the realities of the church and the abuses of the clergymen. This gave Chaucer the opportunity to use humorous irony in the tales. Chaucer had an idea on how the clergy should act and was frustrated with how they actually acted, as an example the Parson vs. the Pardoner.

It is also worth recalling that, from the descriptions in the Prologue, the Parson, the Knight and the Ploughman represent the three traditional spheres of medieval society. Another very interesting female character and pilgrim in Canterbury Tales is the Wife of Bath. She sounds more like a modern woman and a feminist from the late 20th century than a woman from the late Middle Ages. She might even represent some women in this specific period.

Bibliography

Blades,William. The Life and Typography of William Caxton, England's First Printer - With Evidence of his Typographical Connection with Colard Mansion, the Printer at Bruges. Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Byrne, Joseph. Encyclopedia of the Black Death. ABC-CLIO, 2012.

Creighton, James Joseph. Chaucer's Presentation of the Church in the Canterbury Tales. Master’s theses, Loyola University Chicago, 1957

Evans, Ruth and Leslie Johnson. Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature: The Wife of Bath and All Her Sect. Routledge, 2005.

French, Robert Dudley. A Chaucer handbook. New York, 1947.

Manly, John Matthews. Some New Light on Chaucer. Henry Holt, 1926.

McCormack, Frances Mary. Author of Chaucer and the Culture of Dissent: The Lollard Context and Subtext of the Parson's Tale Four. Courts Press, 2007.

Palmer, J. J. N.. England and the Great Western Schism, 1388-1399”, The English Historical Review Vol. 83, No. 328 .Jul., 1968.

Rowland, Beryl. Sermon and Penitential in The Parson’s Tale and their Effect on Style. Florilegium 9, 1987.

Black Death: The lasting impact by Professor Tom James, last accessed Monday, October 24, 2016, http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/middle_ages/black_impact_01.shtml

General Prologue, last accessed Sunday, October 23, 2016, english.fsu.edu/canterbury/general.html

John Wycliffe and The Lollards, last accessed Sunday, October 23, 2016, http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/varia/lollards/lollards.html

The Pardoner's Tale, last accessed Friday, October 21, 2016, http://english.fsu.edu/canterbury/pardoner.html

The Parson's Tale PROLOGUE, last accessed Sunday, October 23, 2016, english.fsu.edu/canterbury/parsonpro.html

The Wife of Bath's Tale, last accessed Sunday, October 23, 2016, http://english.fsu.edu/canterbury/wife.html

The Wife of Bath's Tale PROLOGUE, last accessed Sunday, October 23, 2016, http://english.fsu.edu/canterbury/wifepro.html

1 John Matthews Manly, Some New Light on Chaucer (Henry Holt, 1926), 76.

2 William Blades, The Life and Typography of William Caxton, England's First Printer - With Evidence of his Typographical Connection with Colard Mansion, the Printer at Bruges (Cambridge University Press, 2014), 62-63.

3 The Pardoner's Tale, last accessed Friday, October 21, 2016, http://english.fsu.edu/canterbury/pardoner.html

4 General Prologue, last accessed Sunday, October 23, 2016, english.fsu.edu/canterbury/general.html

5 J. J. N. Palmer, ”England and the Great Western Schism, 1388-1399”, The English Historical Review Vol. 83, No. 328 (Jul., 1968): 516

6 James Joseph Creighton, “Chaucer's Presentation of the Church in the Canterbury Tales”, (Master’s theses, Loyola University Chicago, 1957): 13

7 Black Death: The lasting impact by Professor Tom James, last accessed Monday, October 24, 2016, http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/middle_ages/black_impact_01.shtml

8 James Joseph Creighton, “Chaucer's Presentation of the Church in the Canterbury Tales”, 11

9 Robert Dudley French, A Chaucer handbook (New York, 1947)

10 General Prologue, last accessed Sunday, Monday 24, 2016, english.fsu.edu/canterbury/general.html

11 Beryl Rowland, “Sermon and Penitential in The Parson’s Tale and their Effect on Style”, Florilegium 9 (1987): 125

12 The Parson's Tale PROLOGUE, last accessed Sunday, October 23, 2016, english.fsu.edu/canterbury/parsonpro.html

13 Black Death: The lasting impact by Professor Tom James, last accessed Monday, October 24, 2016, http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/middle_ages/black_impact_01.shtml

14 John Wycliffe and The Lollards, last accessed Sunday, October 23, 2016, http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/varia/lollards/lollards.html

15 Joseph Byrne, Encyclopedia of the Black Death (ABC-CLIO, 2012), 214

16 Frances Mary McCormack, Author of Chaucer and the Culture of Dissent: The Lollard Context and Subtext of the Parson's Tale (Four Courts Press, 2007)

17 General Prologue, last accessed Sunday, Monday 24, 2016, english.fsu.edu/canterbury/general.html

18 The Wife of Bath's Tale PROLOGUE, last accessed Sunday, October 23, 2016, http://english.fsu.edu/canterbury/wifepro.html

19 Ruth Evans and Leslie Johnson, Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature : The Wife of Bath and All Her Sect (Routledge, 2005), 1.

20 The Wife of Bath's Tale, last accessed Sunday, October 23, 2016, http://english.fsu.edu/canterbury/wife.html

21 Ruth Evans and Leslie Johnson, Feminist Readings, 2.

22 The Wife of Bath's Tale, last accessed Sunday, October 23, 2016, http://english.fsu.edu/canterbury/wife.html

#geoffrey chaucer #history #litterature

[sage-nebula]

mannnnn thank you for validating my dimitri salt because the fandom take of (usually f!)byleth """saving""" him with their (usually her) """warm hand""" etc. etc. gives me the heebie jeebies. i get that there's a lot of young people in this fandom who haven't necessarily worked out yet that no one should feel responsible for "changing" their significant other! but seeing it everywhere is annoying and i'd rather be over here in my own private salt mine, thank you very much >:(

You are very welcome. Putting the rest of my response under a cut so those who don’t wish to see this don’t have to.

First off, as a disclaimer, I just want to say: I don’t think you necessarily have to be young to be attracted to the “power of love saves all” trope, and I am also a firm believer that you can enjoy something in fiction without endorsing / liking it in real life. I myself am a fan of some dark tropes; I love drama and angst, and I have been known to put characters into downright awful situations that I would never want anyone to suffer through in real life. Fiction serves many purposes, but one of those purposes is to allow people to explore ideas that are dark or terrible in safe avenues that hurt no one. This is why there has been fiction that depicts things like gruesome murders, for example, for centuries. People who write books about murderers (usually) don’t actually murder people themselves, nor do they want anyone to be murdered. They’re just telling a story they thought might be interesting, and others who enjoy that type of story (but also probably aren’t murderers and wouldn’t want to murder anyone in real life) are reading it. So it’s entirely possible that people who are drawn to the idea of F!Byleth “saving” Dimitri from his “darkness” with the power of her love are adults, and are also people who wouldn’t go for that sort of thing in real life. That’s completely possible, and I don’t begrudge those people for it. You do you, and all that. If that’s your type of thing, great. More power to you.

But as you’ve gathered from your posts, I personally don’t like it at all.

I haven’t finished Azure Moon yet, but so far I hate … pretty much everything about the way Dimitri’s character has shaken out, and how his relationship with Byleth is being forced now. Because let’s get one thing clear: Dimitri’s feelings that Byleth “saved” him are almost as much of a 180 as his feelings regarding not wanting to kill Edelgard, with potentially even less explanation if you can swallow that he, for some reason, believed that Patricia was the first Flame Emperor because Cornelia (enemy and known liar) said so as she was dying right off the bat without any proof to back up the claim. When Dimitri first saw Byleth after five years, he at first thought they were a ghost, and then accused them of being a spy, and THEN went on to say that he didn’t really care either way so long as he could keep murdering people (and still later said that he would “use [Byleth] and [their] friends until [their] flesh fell from their bones” so, yikes). It wasn’t until Dimitri saw Dedue that there was any sign of his behavior changing even slightly. Dedue’s reunion got the romantic sounding music. Dedue brought out the softness in Dimitri. Dedue comes across as a far more natural love interest for Dimitri than Byleth ever could. Once Rodrigue kicks the bucket, Dimitri still pushes Byleth away until he breaks down into a Woe Is Me speech and Byleth offers their hand. At that point Dimitri’s gratitude and fondness for Byleth begins being pushed very hard, in a way that feels unnatural and unrealistic given how he’d behaved up until that point. If Dimitri had been more broken up and touched at Byleth’s reappearance after five years, sure, maybe. But as it stands it feels unnatural, and leads me as a player to believe that Byleth flat out just did not mean as much to Dimitri as they meant to Claude or especially Edelgard.

But all of that—the bad writing, of which there are other instances in Azure Moon, to the point where in my opinion this feels like the Conquest of Three Houses—is a minor issue. The bigger issue is the fact that the game pushes that we’re supposed to sympathize with Dimitri and see him as a tragically heroic figure when I … don’t, at all, for multiple reasons.

The first, and perhaps biggest, issue is the way his trauma and mental illness is being used by the narrative as the defining reason for why we should sympathize with him. Dimitri was traumatized when he was about fourteen by seeing his parents, friends, and others killed brutally in front of him during the Tragedy in Duscur. (Note that in this same incident Dedue witnessed GENOCIDE CARRIED OUT ON HIS PEOPLE, HIS FAMILY MURDERED RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM, but the trauma that he should have from this is basically never touched upon, and instead he acts as though people from Faerghus—you know, the kingdom that COMMITTED GENOCIDE AGAINST HIS PEOPLE—should not associate with him lest it stain their reputations. Hmm. Hmmm.) Somehow, at the tender age of fourteen, Dimitri went on a brutal killing tirade during this incident, delighting in bloodshed, which understandably disturbed and traumatized Felix (whose own brother was slain during that incident, mind, albeit not by Dimitri obviously), who then cut ties with him, not wanting to be friends with someone like that anymore. (Note: Everyone acts as though Felix was the bad one for this, rather than thinking it reasonable to not want to be friends with someone who delights in murder and bloodshed.) As a result of all of this, Dimitri regularly hallucinates the ghosts of his dead relatives and friends, and devotes his entire life to avenging them by murdering whoever was responsible for the Tragedy of Duscur, as well as whoever gets in his way of accomplishing that. (Note: “Who was responsible” is something Dimitri will accept with basically no evidence. He believes Edelgard was responsible because she called herself the Flame Emperor and wore a similar outfit to the one he saw back then. Never mind that she is his age and thus was also a fourteen-year-old child at the time; no, he believes she must have magically made herself the size of an adult and was capable of killing not only her own mother, but also his father (who carried a Hero’s Relic!) and countless others. Because that makes sense.)

So. It’s clear that Dimitri has deep-seated trauma, and it’s understandable that he would have trauma from such a grisly, horrible event. It is also true that not everyone reacts to trauma in the same way, and that there is a definite stigma against those who don’t react to their trauma in ways that people can twist to be “cute” or “endearing”. I’ve talked about the Good Survivor vs. Bad Survivor dichotomy among fans on my blog before, and I stand by everything that I said. However, there are several key points to keep in mind:

Not all behaviors can be classed as just “Good” or “Bad”, and furthermore, even if two behaviors are agreed upon to be “Bad”, that doesn’t mean they’re on the same scale. Being asocial and snapping verbally at people isn’t the behavior of a “Good” Survivor, but it’s also not nearly as bad as actually murdering people and doing it as slowly and painfully as possible. Getting on someone’s case because their trauma makes them reluctant to socialize or trust isn’t the same as calling them out for torturing people to death. This shouldn’t have to be said, but this is tumblr, so I’m going to say it.

Succinctly, a shitty past does not excuse a shitty present. Yes, Dimitri was traumatized. No, this DOES NOT justify his actions even before the timeskip, much less after it. Similarly, Dimitri lampshading that his behavior is bad and calling himself ~a monster~ doesn’t make it better, either. If anything, it makes it worse, because Dimitri knows that what he’s doing is horrible and he continues to do it anyway. Just because you’ve been traumatized (rather through a single incident or years of abuse or whatever) doesn’t give you a free pass to do whatever you want. You are accountable for your actions and behaviors, always. Trauma may explain why you behave the way you do, but it does not excuse it.

The problem with the narrative portrayal of Dimitri on Azure Moon (and arguably Verdant Wind as well, since we had an Alas Poor Dimitri moment when he was killed on Verdant Wind despite him literally calling for the deaths of everyone on the field in that path, straight up telling Claude to his face that he was going to kill him) is that the game pretty much flat out tells you that you should sympathize with Dimitri because of his trauma. Oh sure, Felix calls Dimitri “the boar prince” and routinely chews him out, but if you tell Felix that you’re not going to talk to Dimitri shortly after the timeskip, Felix tells you to “not give up so easily” and that Dimitri surrendered his humanity in pursuit of becoming a better killer, as if that’s supposed to make him sympathetic. Rodrigue tells Byleth that he wishes that he had the courage to “scold” Dimitri, but doesn’t actually do anything about it. And every single person present, including both Rodrigue and Gilbert, go along with whatever Dimitri wants, even when what he wants ignores the problem of the fact that Faerghus citizens are starving to death in the streets because of the situation in the capital. Dimitri flat out tells EVERYONE that he is all but abdicating his duties as king in the name of revenge, but rather than Rodrigue or someone else experienced coming to the logical conclusion taht he is therefore no longer fit to be king and relieving him of those duties (not necessarily violently; I doubt he would have put up an argument), they instead just go, “welp, nothing we can do about it we guess” and go along with what he wants, leaving the people to suffer, because Dimitri is of the Blaiddyd bloodline and, well, he’s a sad boy and they feel bad for him.

I shouldn’t have to say it, but I’m going to: This is disgusting. It’s disgusting that Dimitri’s trauma is used as a way to try to make the player feel bad for him despite the atrocities he commits time and again right there on screen. When Byleth first returns to the monastery after five years, it’s to find that he’s decorated the place with Empire soldier corpses. Byleth has to mercy kill Randolph before Dimitri can rip out his eyes, something Dimitri grows angry with them for. Dimitri says, immediately after that, the line that has stuck with me: “I’ll use you and your friends until your flesh falls from your bones.” He’s told that the people in Fhirdiad are starving and dying in the streets and need help and he flat out says he doesn’t care. He relishes in bloodshed and crows at every opportunity about how he wants to kill. While both Claude and Edelgard look regretful about the battle at Gronder Field, Dimitri just once again roars about how he wants his soldiers to kill every single person present. And through it all, we’re told that this is okay and we should forgive and feel sorry for him because he’s traumatized. It’s not really his fault, it’s just, ooh, that darn trauma!

As someone who has C-PTSD from years and years of abuse, I can’t begin to tell you how much narratives like this infuriate me. Those of us with trauma aren’t mindless infants who are unaware of our surroundings and incapable of controlling our behavior. When I say “a shitty past doesn’t excuse a shitty present” and “traumatized individuals are responsibel for their behavior,” I say that from the perspective of someone with trauma that affects me to this day. My abuse was such that sometimes I still have nightmares about my biological mother that leave me dazed and distracted for the whole day. I’ve really been through it. But I’m also 100% responsible for my own behavior. It’s my responsibility, and no one else’s, to make sure that I don’t hurt others. If I do something wrong, that’s on me, and my trauma will never excuse or justify it. 

So for the narrative of Three Houses to act as though Dimitri’s rampant murder, (attempted) torture, and love for bloodshed and violence is excusable and forgivable because of his trauma is infuriating to me. It’s infuriating to me how, after that insipid ~warm hand~ moment, Dimitri launches into constant Woe Is Me speeches where we’re meant to reassure him that it’s okay that he committed so many murders for no reason other than to quench his blood thirst, it’s okay that he wanted to use his former friends as meat shields to get what he wanted, it’s okay he abandoned his people to die in the streets, that he’s still a good and worthy king and ~just what Faerghus needs~. We’re supposed to see his return to Fhirdiad as a good thing, an inspiring moment. We’re supposed to side with him when he (I assume) later acts the hypocrite by telling Edelgard that People Dying Is Wrong and that she should surrender to him instead. (Never mind that deaths caused by Edelgard’s actions were caused as a result of a war that was necessary to take down the Church of Seiros, which actually had been ruling all of Fodlan under the guise of letting the different territories rule themselves for ages, while Dimitri just killed Empire soldiers for his own blood thirst and revenge, but you know. If you ask most of the people in the fandom, Saint Didi can do no wrong.)

But the thing is, all of that is bullshit. It wasn’t okay that he committed so many murders for the sake of his own revenge fantasies and blood lust. It wasn’t okay that he wanted his former friends to be his meat shields. It wasn’t okay that he abandoned his people. None of that was okay. And I don’t want to sit here and console him and make him feel better just because he apologies and cries about how he’s The Biggest Monster Ever as a result of his actions. Because a.) his actions were monstrous, and b.) that’s an emotionally manipulative tactic, and I’m here for none of it.

Before I go any further, let me state flat out: I’m not calling Dimitri an emotional abuser. I don’t think that was the intent behind those Woe Is Me pity parties of his, from a writing standpoint, and therefore that’s not what he’s thinking he’s doing when he goes on them. I will call Dimitri many things, including a murderer, but I won’t call him an emotional abuser because I don’t think that was the intent in the writing. However, regardless of whether that was the intent in the writing or not, it doesn’t change the fact that one of the oldest tricks in the emotional manipulation book is, when emotional manipulators / abusers are called out on their behaviors and forced to answer to the things they’ve done, they’ll flip the script and start degarding themselves and talking about how awful they are so their victims end up comforting them. A very basic demonstration of what I mean:

Victim: “It really hurts me when you act like you can’t trust me and go through my phone to see who I’ve been talking to. I feel like my privacy is being violated and like you think I’m dishonest.”

Manipulator: “You’re right, I know I should trust you more. I just get so insecure and scared that you’ll leave me.” 

Victim: “I know you deal with insecurity, but that doesn’t give you a right to go through my things. It really upsets me when you do this.”

Manipulator: “I know, I’m such a horrible person. I’m the worst partner. You deserve so much better than me, I understand that you hate me, I’m just the worst and am absolutely useless and terrible and not fit to be even your friend, much less your partner.”

Victim: “No, wait, that’s not true …”

And on and on. Even if they pepper in “I’m sorry”s in there, it’s never once a genuine apology, because they spend so much time tearing themselves down in an exaggerated fashion that the victim feels like they have to comfort the person who hurt them. Similarly, when Dimitri goes on his speeches about how he’s ~unworthy to be king~ or a monster or whatever, the answer choices given are Byleth comforting him one way or the other. We’re never given an option (beyond telling Felix we won’t talk to Dimitri right after the time skip) to tell Dimitri that he is awful, that he doesn’t deserve to be king, or really to revoke our support in any way at all. And because Byleth is not given that option, the narrative is telling us that the correct “choice” (because there really isn’t one) is to sympathize with and empower Dimitri despite how heinous is behavior is. Because Dimitri was traumatized, poor thing, and thus it’s okay that he brutally murdered all those people for no reason other than his own satisfaction. 

(Note: The game never once says “revenge is wrong because it just breeds more revenge.” Even though it seemed like they were going that way with Randolph and Fleche, it’s not Fleche wanting to murder Dimitri that makes Dimitri realize that what he’s been doing is fucked up, it’s Rodrigue dying defending him from Fleche. So even if you wanted to say that Dimitri being blood thirsty and out for revenge was meant to teach him a lesson about how he should behave, it’s not, because that’s not a lesson he ever actually picks up on.)

And that finally ties into what I think you were driving at in your ask (boy, I’ve been at this for a long time), which is the narrative of someone “saving” someone else with their love. By telling the player that they, as Byleth, should excuse and forgive Dimitri for his atrocities because he was traumatized and sad, the narrative (and all the characters in the narrative) are basically pushing Byleth to be Dimitri’s therapist. And as I said in the tags on one of my Azure Moon hate posts (or maybe on twitter, I can’t remember, it all blends together), I am not here for that.

Aside from the fact that both Edelgard and Claude seem to genuinely care for Byleth the whole way through, the other primary difference between them and Dimitri is the fact that Byleth doesn’t have to play therapist for either of them. Claude, for the most part, doesn’t have any major traumas; he did have to grow up being outcasted for being mixed race, and that is its own kind of trauma which I am in NO WAY diminishing, but that trauma he faced was the more realistic type of trauma that people in real life face every day. He is still the most well-adjusted of the three. As for Edelgard, she is in my opinion even more traumatized than Dimitri, but not only is her trauma handled in such a way that it’s never used as an excuse for her behavior (the experiences that traumatized her helped her form the beliefs that spur her actions, but her actions always route back to those beliefs, not to “ghosts made me do it”), but she also pretty much keeps her trauma to herself as best she can and never hinges her emotional stability on Byleth. Yes, Byleth’s presence helps balance Edelgard since Byleth is a secondary confidant and can therefore offer counter-influence to Hubert’s toxic influence (not bashing Hubert here, I’m just saying, he is the WORST influence), but although it’s made clear that Edelgard deeply missed Byleth for the past five years to the point of lamenting about it constantly to the rest of the Black Eagle Strike Force, she also kept her shit together and didn’t wantonly murder people as a result of Byleth’s absence. When she comes to Byleth with issues, they’re usually tactics or strategy related. Byleth is only ever able to learn about Edelgard’s past in late night moments of emotional vulnerability, such as after a nightmare. And even then, Edelgard sharing those moments is less “HEAL MY PAST TRAUMA AND MAKE ME BETTER, PROFESSOR” and more “okay, I trust you enough to tell you this.” It’s not about helping stabilize Edelgard, it’s about earning enough of Edelgard’s trust to learn of her past.

This is in stark contrast to Dimitri, who, again, is completely off his shits, and him being off his shits is treated as a problem that Byleth (/the player) needs to “fix.” Felix tells you to do something about Dimitri. Rodrigue asks you to steer Dimitri in a better direction. Gilbert and Dedue both thank you for “saving” Dimitri even before he finishes being off his shits. The Azure Moon route is about forcing Byleth into the position of therapist and having them do emotional labor for Dimitri, which is hilarious if you think about how Byleth didn’t even start having emotions until teaching at the academy, but also unbelievably aggravating to me, as a player, because I don’t want to be a therapist for a murderous sadboy. I don’t like Dimitri. I don’t approve of his actions or behaviors. And I don’t give a shit what his reasons are for it. I’m not here to be his therapist or do that emotional labor, and I shouldn’t have to be. No one should have to be, except a paid therapist, and only because they’re being paid and have agreed to take on the job. But even then, Dimitri is still his own responsiblity. He is a grown fucking man. It shouldn’t be my or anyone else’s job to do this for him. Neither Edelgard or Claude (or Yuri, for that matter, in Cindered Shadows) required this much emotional labor and bullshit, for fucksake.

But of course, in all of this, I think what gets me more than anything present in the entire game is the fact how, from what I’ve seen, people in fandom by and large worship Dimitri and bend themselves into pretzels painting him as heroic while simultaneously spitting bile at Edelgard and making her out to be a villain. The contrast in their respective pages on TV Tropes is stark. I know I shouldn’t be surprised, given that Edelgard is a woman (and a queer woman, at that) and Dimitri is a blond white boy, and that’s just the way these things tend to be, but it still pisses me off and frustrates me to no end. Fandoms are simultaneously the best and worst of times and this will likely never change. (But honestly, if Edelgard’s role was filled by the blond white pretty boy while Dimitri’s was filled by the woman, I guarantee you that reception to them would be flipped right around. Guarantee.)

Anyway, this turned into a huge rant. I didn’t even expect it to be this long when I started writing. But suffice to say that while I’ve not yet finished Azure Moon, it’s currently my least favorite of the routes I’ve played (best is Crimson Flower, then Cindered Shadows because shut up I’m counting it, then Verdant Wind, and then Azure Moon; I’m ignoring the existence of Silver Snow since I cannot imagine ever not siding with Edelgard when I’ve chosen the Black Eagles), and I cannot stand Didi. He is the worst of the House Leaders by far. Considering how much he has in common with Rhea, it shouldn’t be surprising I feel this way about him, but boy, do I feel this way about him. So go ahead and feel validated, anon. You will not find Didi or Azure Moon love on this blog. You are not alone in this, trust.

#this got so long wow #but i mean every word #fucking hate azure moon and cannot stand Dimitri #this is a Didi Alexandre hate blog #(well not really since dedicating a blog to hatred for a fictional character is stupid but) #(you know what I mean) #also it really is fucked up how Didi's trauma over the Tragedy at Duscur is highlighted so much #and he's treated as being so tragic because of it #but Dedue watching his people be genocided and then being discriminated against for his race #is like . . . completely glossed over #and he's OKAY with it and encourages The Whites not to interact with him lest their rep be tarnished #and also is okay with it bc of White Savior Didi #g o d #fucking nasty #worst route #(again not counting Silver Snow in rankings bc I won't play it bc what is the point) #(how could anyone side with Rhea over Edelgard) #(that route doesn't exist tyvm) #anyway #rant over now i promise #fire emblem: three houses #dimitri alexandre blaiddyd #Anonymous #meta

[willofhounds]

Storm that shakes the pine ch1

A/N yes I know I have a lot of fics to finish but I couldn't help myself. If you dont like m/m go elsewhere. If you dont like soulmates go away. For the rest of you enjoy the story.

Once the reincarnation happens they will be called by their new names. Not by their old.

:thoughts:

"Speaking"

Ozpin's POV

Oscar's body was barely holding itself together. Around them lay their comrades and Salem who was finally dead. Three years in the new reincarnation and they had finally done it.

A tinge of guilt and sadness went through him. This was his fault. If he never returned to the world he this wouldn't have happened. Salem would have stayed a lone witch in the forest.

As his green brown eyes swept over the field he saw Ruby Rose. His brave silver eyed warrior had been the one to defeat Salem.

With the help of Maria Calavera she mastered the powers of her eyes. In the end Jinn had been right. Ozpin and Oscar fighting together in harmony were unable to kill Salem. Their shared body sustained mortal injuries. It was a testament to their sheer willpower that they stayed standing.

All of his friends and colleagues lay dying now. Just when they had saved the world from Salem they weren't going to see it rebuild itself.

Oscar he could tell was tired of war. The war had burdened them all. Oscar being as young as he was got hit the hardest. He was just a boy who was pulled from everything he knew into a war he never wanted to fight.

Ozpin guided Oscar. Trained him mentally and physically. There was only so much one could prepare. Watching ones friends die wasn't something he could prepare Oscar for.

:Oz... it's not your fault. We did all we could was fight our hardest. We won...: came Oscar's tired voice.

Ozpin answered as his own exhaustion coming out, :I only wish I could have done more. We've lost our friends.:

:Oz...:

There wasn't a chance to respond to Oscar. The four relics began to shine their power enveloped them. All of his aches and pains receded.

Ozpin blinked. The world around them whited out. A familiar setting was before him. A golden dragon floated above him.

It took Ozpin several seconds to realize he looked like Ozpin before he was Oscar. Looking around he saw Oscsr. For the first time in thousands of years he was alone in his head.

Ruby and the others also stood around the dragon. As the God of Light he would be able to bring their souls to him. Just as he had done with Ozma.

Ruby asked carefully, "Are you the God of Light? Why are we here?"

The God rumbled as it looked at each of them, "Each of you have played a pivotal role in bringing down Salem. You have overcome your shortcomings and put aside your differences. Some of you even learned from mistakes of the past to get where you are now."

Ozpin flinched. That last part was meant for him. It was his actions that led Salem here.

God of Light continued, "Each of you have earned the right to either go on to the after life. Or to go onto another world where you will be reborn. Things will be different in this world than what you know. No creatures of Grim as you call them. Magic is born into some souls but not others. As a gift those that choose to go to this world will be given magic."

Oscar questioned softly, "What about me? My soul is intertwined is intertwined with Ozpin's."

"That is up to you. Should you both go on to the new world you will not be the same person."

Relief flooded them both. The last thing they wanted was to forever be connected to each other again. Ozpin knew what a burden it was. He didnt want to be such a burden upon the boy again. Let him live his own life without the threats of war and death.

This was a second chance for him to do good. Good without having causing the evil.

Ozpin declared, "I will go on to this new world."

"As will I," came from Qrow.

"You're not getting rid of me that easy, Ozpin," from James.

"I want to see this new world," Ruby.

The God of Light rumbled once more, "Despite you all leaving this world at the same time; not all of you will not enter the next at the same time. Ages and lives will vary but you will all find your own path. Never forget the bonds you have forged. They will serve you well.

White lights surrounded them accepting their choices. Yang was the next to speak, "I'm sorry Ruby but I will not be going with you. I'm tired of the war and fighting. All I want is peace."

They didnt get to hear what anyone else said. The God of Light sent them on.

In the end Ozpin was reborn as Newton Fido Artemis Scammander. He was the second son of the Scammander family.

The Scammander family was a Dark family. His magic was naturally dark as it came from blood first then what was practiced second. Even if Newt was to practice light magic his magic would never be any lighter than dark neutral.

His parents were not what he had grown to expect of the dark. They were gentle with him. There wasn't an ounce of hatred in their eyes.

Newt's biggest struggle though was accepting help. It had been thousands of years since he was so vulnerable. In his previous reincarnations they were all at least 12 or older. They were able to take care of themselves.

Along with accepting his parents help he had a brother five years older than himself. Theseus Scammander was an intelligent boy if his parents were to be believed. They treated him like he was a genius.

When they first came face to f eyes were familiar. Three years of seeing that when he looked in the mirror made them hard to forget.

They were Oscar's eyes. His own eyes were green with a hint of an amber swirl. Both of them groaned internally. The God of Light had a sick sense of humor.

When Theseus turned seven he did something unexpected. Newt was watching from one of the chairs as he unlocked his aura.

Theseus's aura was a dark green. No longer the light green that they had grown used to. The look on his brother's face was comical. It was the final proof that their souls were no longer fully connected. That their destinies intertwined but not overlapping.

Not two months after that Theseus got his soulmate mark. It was that of a raven taking flight. His brother was excited and so were their parents.

Powerful families had the crest of the raven. His parents offered to help Theseus with the search but his brother only shook his head. He would find his soulmate on his own.

The years passed until Newt was five. One day he was out in the gardens and a small green twig like creature moved down the tree he was laying against. From the children books he was allowed to read he knew it was a bowtruckle.

Normally a shy creature it came to rest on his shoulder. With a fascination that he had not felt in a long he began to play with the bowtruckle. Through trial and error he found out that they had their own language. It was through clicks.

With its helps he was able to meet the other bowtruckles in tree. Unlike the one on his shoulder they were more suspicious of him. Earning their trust took weeks but eventually they accepted him.

On Theseus's eleventh birthday they went to Diagon Alley. He got his Hogwarts letter. As Newt would find out every magical child in Britain got this letter. One day Newt would too.

It was in one of the lesser shops that Newt found his cane. It seemed that even in a new world he would never escape the past fully. At first his parents didnt want to buy it since it was Theseus's birthday.

At Theseus's insistence however they got it. As with all his previous lives it felt right in his hands; though to small to wield it properly. Theseus watched over him as he began to practice movements that were second nature once.

By the time he was seven Theseus was a second year in Hogwarts. His own soulmate mark had appeared. It was a circle in a triangle with a line through the middle. The symbol he recognized through his books. It was that of the Deathly Hallows.

Who his soulmate was he didn't know. What he did know was that they would be searching for the Hallows. Most believed it was just a fairy tale. Newt knew that every had some truth to it. Wherever the Hallows were he would avoid them. He had no interest in soulmates.

So he hid his mark with long sleeved shirts or a bracelet. If no one saw it then there was a lesser chance that he would find whoever his soulmate was.

He had learned that dark, light, and neutral magic weren't evil or good. It wasn't like Remnant were dark magic was evil. A lot of it depended on the wizard's intentions.

This made accepting his heritage easier. Having seen what the darkness had done to Salem he at first was wary of it. Now he knew as long as his intentions were true then he would not be consumed by the dark. That was what would push him forward.

The main event in his seventh year of life was unlocking his aura. He remembered the power and sense of duty it gave him every time he had unlocked it. The oath every huntsman had made. This would be his final time making it.

Inside the library away from prying eyes he said, "For it is in passing that we achieve immortality. Through this, we become a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all, infinite in distance and unbound by death," his heart pounded in his chest. Something in him gave away at the words and a new feeling of duty filled him, "I release your soul, and by my shoulder protect thee."

A familiar light green light erupted from his chest. It flashed over his body exhausting his energy. His energy was the same level of a seven year old so he couldn't hold it for long.

This encouraged Newt to train every day. On the holidays when Theseus came back he was surprised when his brother offered to train with him. Theseus had decided to be an auror the police of the magical world. He wanted to train both his body and magic for whatever was to come. Newt obliged.

Spars were immensely difficult for the younger Scammander. He was smaller and lighter than his brother. His reflexes slower than he would have liked. Giving up wasnt in him and he pushed through working the old memories into muscle memory. His aura growing stronger with each passing day.

Along with reading and retraining his magic there was little time for idleness. What little time he did find was spent with the creatures. The creatures watched him as he worked through his training. Slowly but surely warming up to him.

From Hippogryffs to bowtruckles all creatures of his home accepted him. In turn he accepted them. They were beings to be cherished.

Finally his eleventh birthday came and he like his brother. Theseus was entering his sixth year and still had not found his soulmate. Not unusual by any means but it discouraged him.

Newt knew that Theseus would find the one meant for him. As long as they lived he would search. Newt would look for the mark that matched it.

September 1st rolled around and Newt felt excitement. He was curious to see what was learned in the schools here.

#rwby #reincarnation fic #grindelnewt #gellert grindelwald #fbwtft #fbtcog #newt scamander #ozpin #qrow branwen #raven branwen #ruby rose #blake bellodona #fanfiction