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hisui-dreamer · 9 months

Note

Hi, congratulations on 1k followers! I love your writing a lot and I was hoping you could do Villainess AUs with Malleus? Like isekai manhwa style? Thank you!!

the gazelle's sweet briar

Pairing: Malleus Draconia x f!reader

Synopsis: your first objective was to avoid the main characters, but it's not easy when you only have the memories of your friend's ramblings to work off of

Tags: cliché isekai plot, reincarnation, fluff, arranged marriage, tw (mentioned): bad parenting, patriarchal society, death

Word count: 1.6k+

Notes: @coralinnii has an amazing series based on isekai villainesses, so i definitely recommend you check out her work too! im so in love with it (⁠≧⁠▽⁠≦⁠)

Masterlist

Once upon a time, there lived a villainess of exceptional allure, her visage as enchanting as a moonlit night. However, this bewitching beauty concealed a heart blackened by a singular obsession with appearances.

From the earliest days of her upbringing, her mother, a woman who had managed to step into aristocracy by charming a noble, had instilled in her a cruel belief: that those who were not blessed with physical perfection were destined for lives of relentless mockery and eternal solitude. This twisted ideology consumed the villainess' every thought, blinding her to the virtues of education and morality. She became nothing more than a porcelain doll, admired solely for her aesthetic charm.

The King arranged a marriage between her and Duke Draconia, the enigmatic descendant of the dragons who ruled the northern lands, believing that such a striking bride would surely please the reclusive Duke.

However, the King remained oblivious to the swirling rumours that pervaded the courtly circles. Whispers spoke of the Duke as a hideous man who had never once revealed his face, perpetually concealed behind a forbidding black mask. When the rumours reached the villainess' ears, she threw tantrum after tantrum, vehemently refusing to wed a man whose appearance couldn't possibly match her own.

Yet, a royal decree could not be denied. Reluctantly, the villainess embarked on her journey to the northern realm in bitter acceptance. It had rained the moment she arrived, the castle dark and uninviting, with thorns crawling onto the obsidian walls. The Duke, an oblivious and shy man, did not greet her at the grand entrance. Instead, she was met by the Duke's advisor, a man with a curiously boyish features.

Humiliation welled up within the villainess' heart, for she felt as if she were being played the fool by the entire duchy. On the eve of her arrival, anxiety gnawed at her like a relentless spectre.

As night descended, the Duke, mustering his courage, attempted to approach the vexed lady.

But when the villainess beheld his masked face, terror seized her like a vice. "Stay back! You hideous beast!" she cried out, her voice trembling with fear, and she recoiled, her steps faltering as she retreated from him.

The Duke, wounded by her cruel words, attempted to console her, his outstretched hand beseeching understanding. Yet, her irrational dread overcame her, and she continued her backward retreat until, with a heart-stopping scream, she slipped from an open window.

That was how the villainess' life ended.

you hadn't actually read the book, but it wasn't difficult identifying who you got reincarnated as

especially with how your best friend obsessed over this villainess because, and i quote, "if pretty, why evil, huh???"

you woke up a week before the villainess would depart for the North, but that week alone was enough to make you understand the way she acted

every day, you were fed portions fitting of a child, had your skin rubbed raw as you were bathed, and not a moment of your mother's nitpicking about a sudden imperfection she found in you

in truth, you were more than glad to leave for the North, even if that's where your life would be on the line

the survival plan was simple: maintain an amicable relationship with the duchy until the night the heroine stumbles in to ask for a night of shelter, to which the heroine would heal the emotional wounds of the Duke, and share with him the beauty of love, bringing warmth into his heart

and so, you arrived at the estate, the castle tall and intimidating with the clouds dark and foreboding

still, you stepped out of your carriage (with wobbly legs) and met the advisor (your friend's favourite character, in fact)

the advisor, lilia, though seemed young, was actually the very man who raised the duke in the absence of his parents

he welcomed you as the lady of the duchy, and led you to your quarters

by nightfall, you were quite comfortable with living in the estate

everyone was polite, the food was delicious (and properly sized), and you had no doubt you'd settle nicely here

as a precaution to the death sequence, you decided to take a stroll in the rose garden after dinner

if you were already on the ground floor, you couldn't fall to your death, right?

but unexpectedly, you encountered a lone figure in the centre of the garden

he was incredibly tall, dressed simply, his emerald eyes fixated on the estate

upon closer inspection, you noticed he had long horns as well, perhaps he was a gazelle beastman?

either way, you were curious about what it was that held his attention so strongly that he couldn't notice your presence

"Excuse me, sir? May I ask what is so interesting about the building?" you timidly break the silence of the night.

The man turns to you, his eyes widening in surprise. "... Do you not know who I am?"

You blinked in confusion at his words. His words filled you with a sense of foreboding. You wondered if this person matched any of the characters your friend had so fervently described, but all you could recall was the beautiful villainess and the enigmatic advisor to the Duke.

"My apologies, I'm afraid I do not... May I know your name, sir?"

A faint smile tugged at the corners of his lips as he considered your question. "No... If that is the case, you may call me whatever you wish."

Perplexed by his response, you tried to come up with a suitable name. "Then... May I call you Mr. Gazelle?"

Upon hearing your words, he burst out in laughter. "Hahaha! What an interesting choice. Very well, I accept the name," he said. "In response to your first question, I was observing the gargoyles of the building."

on that night, not only did you learn more about the fascinating functions gargoyles serve, you also made your first friend in this life

strangely enough, you didn't meet the duke at all unlike the novel, which though strange, you greatly welcomed

if you didn't have any ties with him, then it'd be so much easier to just divorce him, get the money, and live a comfortable luxurious life far away from the main characters

though as you say that, you find yourself wanting to spend more and more time with "Mr Gazelle"

despite his intimidating appearance, he turned out to be a very generous person, frequently gifting you little trinkets he's made or bouquets he's arranged

he's started calling you "Briar", after the roses in the garden where he met you

you greatly appreciated the nickname, it felt better to be called that than the name of the villainess, that you could just be yourself and not play the role of a villainess avoiding ruin

you also find that whatever musings you've mentioned to him, they somehow manifest themselves

oh? you wish you could learn about embroidery? the next day there's a basket full of the highest quality threads and fabrics, with a gentle tutor to help you learn

(you still remember how cute "Mr Gazelle" looked when you gave him your first finished product, a handkerchief with an embroidered gargoyle)

what's this? you'd like to try more desserts from the capital you were never allowed to try? say no more! the next day the chef presents you with 10 different choices!

so you assumed he was an advisor of sorts to the Duke, because how else could your requests be granted so easily?

but one day, around two months after you started living in the duchy, "Mr Gazelle" asked you questions about the duke, whether you were afraid of him, would you prefer to meet him, curious questions like that

though surprised by the topic, you answered honestly, saying you don't really believe in the rumours (because you know from your friend he's an ethereal beauty) and yes, you would like to meet your husband

and what do you know? lilia informs you the duke wants to share dinner with you. what a coincidence!! :)

Nervousness held you in its grasp as you stepped into the room. Your gaze remained fixed on the carpet beneath your feet, and your knees bent gracefully as you executed the perfect curtsey.

"Your Grace."

You could hear sounds of shuffling, and then a pair of black boots entered your field of vision. Familiar hands found yours, guiding you to rise and stand upright. "Rise, my Briar," he murmured gently.

With hesitant anticipation, you finally looked up, taking in the obsidian mask that concealed his face. That voice, that nickname, and those enchanting eyes—it was all too familiar.

"Mr Gazelle..." you whispered in disbelief.

His eyes narrowed in mirth as he chuckled. "Although I hold great fondness for that name, I do wish you could call your husband by his name," he said as he began to remove his mask.

"Malleus..." you breathed.

A tender smile graced his lips, and his eyes sparkled with affection as he delicately brushed a stray lock of hair from your face—a gesture he had done countless times before. "My sweet Briar, I implore you to forgive me for deceiving you. I wished nothing more but to know you," he pleaded.

Oh, with how loud your heart was pounding in your chest, you realized that you were irrevocably and hopelessly ensnared in a love story that had deviated far from the original story.

But you didn't feel a single ounce of regret.

Masterlist

if you liked this post, don't forget to reblog!

#bts of writing this #malleus fell so hard on the first night #he gave gifts as a form of courting #cuz dragon instincts #also lilia the whole time was like “young people and their love issues”#✧1k! another life✦#twstnexus #twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland x reader #twst imagines #malleus draconia #malleus draconia x reader #twisted wonderland malleus

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ramblings-of-a-chaotic-neutral · 1 day

Text

I was going to post a different au idea tonight, but this idea caught me in a death-grip and would not let me go, so enjoy!

Note: You can find the translations for the old English at the end!

In this au, Merlin dies at Camlann instead of Arthur, and his magic was diffused into the king and kingdom he so loved upon his death, making everyone in Camelot immortal. After a few centuries of thriving though, Merlin's magic starts to fade, and everyone falls into an almost comatose state. It keeps them all alive and protected the kingdom from intruders, but it could not keep them awake. However, the people of Camelot did not worry about this. Both the druids and the dragon had proclaimed that Merlin would return to the world of the living again one day. So, they were content to sleep peacefully and await the day of their friend's return. Slowly, the earth rose up to swallow Camelot, and the sleeping kingdom was buried underneath the earth.

Fast forward to modern day, and Merlin's been reincarnated without any of his memories or his magic. He winds up as an archeologist, and eventually is sent out to a promising dig site on the border between England and Wales. There, his team unearths a window into an old fortress. Their sonar equipment has revealed a full castle underneath their feet, and they have everything prepped for a preliminary excavation! They've already found coins and a few blades on the site, dating back to the 6th century!

Now, stories of the "immortal kingdom of Camelot" and its undying and legendary king Arthur were commonplace, and Merlin quite enjoyed those stories as a child. However, historians doubted if Camelot was ever a real kingdom at all, and no one past the age of six believed in an immortal kingdom! Merlin, deep down, was hoping that the dig site was indeed the historical kingdom Camelot itself, as much of the kingdom's history had been lost and buried under ridiculous myths about magic and dragons.

However, the issue is that the window that they discovered is pretty small. Merlin, as the skinniest out of all of them, would probably be the only one who could fit through it. Excitedly, Merlin puts on his safety harness and hard hat and descends through the window and into the castle.

Merlin explores for a bit, constantly telling the team on the surface all about the amazingly preserved artifacts in the castle. There's tapestries, suits of armor, furniture, even clothing still in wardrobes all in perfect condition! The entire team is besides themselves with excitement! They've just made the most important discovery of their careers!

Merlin spends a few more days exploring the castle by himself. Eventually, he comes to a rather impressive and ornately decorated door and decides to find out what's behind it. It must be something pretty important to warrant such an impressive door! Perhaps the throne room?

As he opens the door though, he lets out a loud gasp, shocked by two things in the room. First, the large round table in the middle of the room. He knew that he was near the supposed site of the lost kingdom of Camelot, but this confirmed it! All of the legends spoke about king Arthur's round table, and here it was before him, confirming the legends!

However, Merlin's elation was dashed by the second thing he noticed: bodies. There were bodies occupying the seats around the table, all of them slumped over or slouching in their seats with their eyes closed, but they were not skeletal remains that should have been there, seeing as how no one had set foot in those room for hundreds of years. No, these people looked like they had only been there for a day, with no signs of decay on them.

As Merlin's fear began to rise, he tried to reason with himself. Maybe this kingdom had surprisingly advanced embalming techniques and had unusual burial rituals? What other explanation could there possibly be?

As Merlin reported the bodies to his colleagues on the surface, they warned him to be careful is something didn't feel right, which it certainly didn't. Something about these bodies creeped Merlin out in a way that no other human remains had ever done. However, Merlin's unease lessened somewhat as he described the bodies to his colleagues, his excitement at such a well-preserved find started eclipsing his fear.

There were in total five male bodies and one female body, with four of the male bodies being clad in chainmail, surcoats, trousers, and long bright red capes with an insignia of a golden dragon sown into it. The other male body was similarly clad in chainmail and a cape, but wore a golden crown on his head. Lastly, the lone female body, who was sitting to the left of the crowned male body, was a dark-skinned woman wearing an ornate and richly decorated dress along with a small silver crown on her head.

Merlin's heart stuttered in his chest as he came to the natural conclusion of these observations: he had just found the perfectly-preserved bodies of a king, queen, and four knights. Forget making his career, Merlin was going to be put in the history books for this discovery! Quickly, he called his colleagues (who had finally found a way to safely widen the entrance at the window) to follow the line of his harness and join him in the room he had just found. They needed to see this!

Finally turning away from the bodies, Merlin let his gaze wander around the room. He takes note of the impressively high ceilings for the time period, the repetition of the dragon crest on decorations around the room, and the designs carved into the wood of the round table. However, one of the most intriguing elements of the room, was the lone empty chair sitting next to the king.

The fact that there was only one empty chair was strange enough, but there were a few even stranger elements to the chair. The chair was directly to the right of the king, presumably reserved for the king's right hand, his chief advisor. Why would such an important figure be missing here? Another puzzling feature of the chair was the scrap of red cloth that was tied around one of the arms of the chair.

Stepping closer to examine the little piece of cloth, he could see at first glance that the cloth was old, battered, and made with cheap material, unlike the richer cloth that made up the knights' and kings' capes. What was this random piece of cloth doing tied around the arm of this chair, which presumedly belonged to a powerful figure in the kingdom?

A sudden piercing shriek caused Merlin to jump into the air. He looked up and across the table, relieved to see that it was just four of his colleagues who had just entered the room. They must've been freaked out by the well-preserved bodies too! Merlin certainly couldn't blame them for such a reaction.

Merlin chuckled a bit and spoke to his frightened coworkers. "Well, what did I tell you? This is going to shock the world! We've just made the discovery of a lifetime!"

However, his colleagues were only getting paler by the second, not even looking at him, instead looking... past him? Merlin frowned a bit and turned to look over his left shoulder, at the body of the king, which was where his coworkers were staring. What could possibly...

His eyes were open. His eyes were definitely not open before.

As soon as his brain caught up with what his eyes were seeing, Merlin let out a panicked shriek and flung himself backwards, away from the king who he swore was dead just a second ago what the fuck was happening?!

Unfortunately, Merlin desperate attempt to get away from the maybe-undead king sent him sprawling to the ground, having tripped over the empty chair, and his shriek had jolted his colleagues into action. The four of them ran forwards and grabbed ahold of Merlin, dragging him back towards the entrance to the room while never taking their eyes off of the maybe-undead king.

As they made their way back to the entrance though, something truly horrifying happened. The king moved. He blinked and moved his neck to track their movements.

Oh god, that thing was awake and aware that they were here! They needed to get out of there!

Together, the group turned and ran as quickly as they could back towards the entrance. Horrifyingly, as soon as they were out of sight of the king, they could hear the screeching sound of a chair sliding against the stone floor. Each one of them could feel their hearts pounding with fear as they all realized at once: the king, whatever he was, was going to chase after them.

They nearly all have heart attacks when they hear a voice roaring after them, "Gripan híe! Híe syndon fandian to niman Myrddin!"

After a tense few minutes of running with the terrifying echo of boots chasing after them ringing in their ears, they finally reached the hallway connecting to their window entrance. They could see the light outside! They were almost free!

Fear gripped all of their chests, however, when a group of what should have been corpses blocked their path, cutting them off from the sight of the daylight. For a second, Merlin thought about making a break for it and attempts to run through them, but then the probably-undead knights unsheathed their swords (which were still somehow sharp and pristine after 1500 years, this was getting ridiculous!)

The group quickly turned around, hoping to run back and perhaps find another path towards their freedom, only to have their hopes dashed by the sight of the undead king storming towards them with his sword (why was it golden?) unsheathed and rage in his eyes.

Looking between them, the closest thing that they had to a weapon were a couple hard hats. They were doomed, and they could see their death marching towards them.

Getting closer, the king furiously shouted at them again with unfamiliar words. "Hū darrst þū āsceacan hine from mē! Iċ hæbbe bīdode ofer þūsend geara for þisne tīman, and þū ātēowedest tō nīefre hine from mē stelan! Þū scealt āgildan for þis!"

The group of five archeologists are shaking in their boots at this point, fearing for their lives. Each of them had reached the only logical conclusion about their ludicrous and possibly deadly situation: they must have woken the king and his knights from their eternal rest, and they were now angry at the archeologists for disturbing their final resting place.

As the knights close in on them and grab ahold of each of them, they're all prepared for the worst. As the king barks commands at the knights, all of the archeologists are prepared to be meet with some horrible death.

"Nimðað þa ungewelwieras to ðære cyrcan cwellan, wē magon dēmian mid him æfter. Gwaine, nim Myrddin to his geardas and hafa Gaius locian ofer hine. And be mildheort, he sceal hæbbe geferod eft fram Avalon and mæg swilc bēon in pinunge fram his wundum! Gecyða eft to mē mid Gaius's gemetungum ��onne hē geendod hæfð."

At the king's commands, the knights nodded, and while Merlin was led down the hallway to the right, the others were led back down the dark hallway from which they had fled. Merlin tried to call out to his colleagues and to shove his way out of the knight's grip, but the knight responded by picking Merlin up and slinging him over his shoulder in a fireman's carry, eliminating Merlin's ability to fight back.

Merlin tried to calm his mind and to avoid thoughts of what horrible fate would be in store for him at his destination. His treacherous mind spun up terrible theories as to why he had been separated from his group, each one more horrifying than the last.

Finally, the knight seemed to have arrived at his destination. As the knight pushed the door open, Merlin tried to brace himself for what horrible instruments of torture were surely inside.

However, there were no torture instruments at all. There were only sheets of paper strewn about, some herb bundles here and there, lots of little vials and pots scattered around, and an old man slowly walking towards them.

The old man blinked in what looked like surprise, followed by tears seeming to brim in his eyes. What the hell was going on?! The man spoke softly, "Is hit sōþlīce hē? Āh, mīn cniht, þū eart eft tō ūs āgēan cuman! Hēr, Hlāford Gwaine, sete hine dūn on þæt cot and hæbbe hine his scyrte āweg þæt ic mæg gesēon gif his wund is ēac þǣr."

The knight deposited Merlin gently on a nearby small bed and gave him some sort of smirk before speaking to him in a surprisingly gentle, almost teasing, voice, "Þu gehyrde þone wer, Myrddin! Of mid þinum scyrte nu. Ic wat þu maegst beon sceamful be þan, ac þises sio tid is swiðe aðele."

When Merlin could do nothing but stare at the knight, more bewildered than he's ever been in his life, the knight seemed to take offense to his inaction and began tugging at the bottom of Merlin's shirt, trying to pull it over his head. After a brief struggle, the knight emerged victorious, holding Merlin's shirt in his hands and grinning like a loon. Why on earth had the knight wanted his shirt of all things? What was he about to be subjected to?!

After a tense few minutes, the old man pottered over to where Merlin was sitting, bringing a small bag along with him. The man then began looking over Merlin's torso, paying particular attention to a certain to a spot underneath Merlin's ribs, prodding it repeatedly.

Merlin was quite uncomfortable being examined like this, but with an undead knight in the room still armed with a sword, there wasn't much Merlin could do to without risking getting stabbed. Well, at least the old man wasn't hurting him, so he supposed that he could look on the bright side and be grateful for that.

Eventually, the old man seemed satisfied with his examination of Merlin and addressed the knight again. "Hwæt, he þinceð tō bēon on sīðfæt hāl! Þū mæġst secgan Ārthūre þæt ic blīðe eom tō secgenne þæt ic ne mihte findan nān tācn his ǣrran lȳtlunge."

The knight nodded at the old man, looking pleased at whatever he had just been told. Then, the old man turned to him and handed him the small bag. "Min cniht, ic eom swiðe blīð tō gesēon þē eft. Þū eart swīðe þearle gewilnod! Hēr, wē hæfdon sume þīnra reafa gehealdene for þē! Ic trowe þæt þū þē beteran gefēlan wille þonne þū sum þing gelīclicre gescēawian."

Merlin gently took the bag from the old man and tentatively opened it and pulled out its contents. Inside the bag were a scratchy red tunic, a pair of old trousers, a brown jacket, a thin leather belt, and a scrap of blue cloth. Merlin looked up at the knight and the old man, unsure of what to make of these clothes.

The knight just rolled his eyes, snatched the tunic out of Merlin's hands, and started pulling the tunic over Merlin's head. Did they... did they want Merlin to put on the clothes? That seemed like the correct answer, as they looked happy when Merlin complied and put on the tunic, and they pushed Merlin towards a small room in the back of the chambers with the clothing still in his hands.

Alright, Merlin thought to himself, he would change clothes in this odd little broom closet if that kept him from being stabbed.

(And he did not acknowledge the part of his mind that swore that he knew this room, that this room was his. That was ridiculous, he had never seen this place before in his life!)

After putting on the trousers, belt, and jacket, all Merlin was left with was the scrap of blue cloth. What the hell was he supposed to do with this? Should he keep it in his pocket or something?

However, it seemed like his hands moved before his mind had a chance to catch up, as his hands, seemingly of their own accord, wrapped the blue cloth around his neck a couple time before typing it in the front. Huh, that was strange. Merlin normally didn't wear scarves, why did he know that this piece of cloth was a scarf?

It was... strange. However, there were more pressing matters at hand, namely not getting killed by undead medieval knights. After taking a deep, calming breath, Merlin opened the door and stepped back out into the main room, where the old man and the knight were waiting for him.

They both smiled at the sight of him, and the knight quickly slung an arm over Merlin's shoulders, said what was presumably a goodbye to the old man, and started leading Merlin back out they way they came.

At this point, Merlin started struggling again. If he could just escape from this knight, he could get back to the surface and gather a rescue team to save the others! But the knight's grip of him was tight, and after a certain amount of Merlin's struggling, the knight just sighed and threw Merlin over his shoulder again. Damn it!

Merlin tried to reference places that he had already seen as the knight dragged him deeper into the castle. An escape route would be essential if he was going to make it out of here alive. However, Merlin's hope was quickly running dry as he was carried further and further away from the only exit to this godforsaken castle and further away from any area that he had explored so far.

What's worse was that, as they went, Merlin could see more and more undead (maybe undead? what else could they be?) people throughout the castle. And it wasn't just knights either: there were guards, servants, and even what looked like noblemen and noblewomen running around the castle. What made all of this truly eerie for Merlin though, is that all of them would stop and stare as soon as they saw him. Even though he was dressed like one of them, they could still somehow tell that he was an outsider, not one of their number.

After what felt like an eternity, the knight finally stopped in front of a large door and put Merlin down. Merlin's dread skyrocketed as the guards opened the doors and the knight dragged him inside.

The room itself was richly decorated, with a dining table, a study, and a plush canopy bed. If looked like a room fit for... a king.

Oh no.

As if summoned by Merlin's thoughts, the king rounded a corner and appeared before them, thankfully looking less angry than before, but still sending Merlin's fear into overdrive. Merlin jumped at the sound of doors slamming shut behind him, leaving him trapped with the king.

Merlin was sure that he was shaking terribly, but he managed force his joint to work and took a step backwards as the king began to approach him. Merlin continued to back away from the king until his back met the cold, unyielding wood of the door. Slowly, the king stepped towards Merlin, his eyes never leaving Merlin's form.

In what was entirely too short of a time period in Merlin's opinion, the king had closed the distance between them and was within an arm's reach of Merlin. Merlin's eyes desperately darted around for a weapon, anything he could possibly use the defend himself with, but there was nothing that he could reach.

As the king took one last step closer to Merlin, Merlin closed his eyes and braced himself for pain, even death. However, to his shock, no pain came. Instead, the felt the king's warm hands on his shoulders, and without warning, he was roughly pulled into a hug. What the actual fuck?!

Through the king's ragged breathing, he could hear more of those unfamiliar words, this time spoken tenderly.

"Oh Myrddin, hwǣr eart þū bēon?"

TRANSLATIONS:

Gripan híe! Híe syndon fandian to niman Myrddin! = Catch them! They're trying to take Merlin!

Hū darrst þū āsceacan hine from mē! Iċ hæbbe bīdode ofer þūsend geara for þisne tīman, and þū ātēowedest tō nīefre hine from mē stelan! Þū scealt āgildan for þis! = How dare you try to take him from me! I have waited over a thousand years for this moment, and you've attempted to steal him from me! You must pay for this!

Nimðað þa ungewelwieras to ðære cyrcan cwellan, wē magon dēmian mid him æfter. Gwaine, nim Myrddin to his geardas and hafa Gaius locian ofer hine. And be mildheort, he sceal hæbbe geferod eft fram Avalon and mæg swilc bēon in pinunge fram his wundum! Gecyða eft to mē mid Gaius's gemetungum þonne hē geendod hæfð. = Take the intruders to the dungeon cells, we can deal with them later. Gwaine, take Merlin to his chambers and have Gaius look over him. And be gentle, he must have just come back from Avalon and could still be in pain from his wounds! Report back to me with Gaius's findings when he's done.

Is hit sōþlīce hē? Āh, mīn cniht, þū eart eft tō ūs āgēan cuman! Hēr, Hlāford Gwaine, sete hine dūn on þæt cot and hæbbe hine his scyrte āweg þæt ic mæg gesēon gif his wund is ēac þǣr. = Is it really him? Oh, my boy, you've returned to us! Here, Sir Gwaine, set him down on the cot and have him take his shirt off so I can see if his wound is still there.

Þu gehyrde þone wer, Myrddin! Of mid þinum scyrte nu. Ic wat þu maegst beon sceamful be þan, ac þises sio tid is swiðe aðele. = You heard the man, Merlin! Off with your shirt now. I know you can be shy about it, but this time it's pretty important.

Hwæt, he þinceð tō bēon on sīðfæt hāl! Þū mæġst secgan Ārthūre þæt ic blīðe eom tō secgenne þæt ic ne mihte findan nān tācn his ǣrran lȳtlunge. = Well, he seems to be in perfect health! You can tell Arthur that I am pleased to report that I could find no sign of his previous injury.

Min cniht, ic eom swiðe blīð tō gesēon þē eft. Þū eart swīðe þearle gewilnod! Hēr, wē hæfdon sume þīnra reafa gehealdene for þē! Ic trowe þæt þū þē beteran gefēlan wille þonne þū sum þing gelīclicre gescēawian. = My boy, I am so deeply glad to see you again. You have been dearly missed! Here, we've saved some of your clothes for you! I'm sure that you'll feel better wearing something familiar again.

Oh Myrddin, hwǣr eart þū bēon = Oh Merlin, where have you been?

Well, I hope you guys liked this au! What I originally planned to be a short little prompt turned into this beast of a post! I probably won't be able to post on Friday (since I'm planning on adding a new chapter to my fic on ao3 on Friday or Saturday), so hopefully this will tide you all over until the weekend!

And, as always, thank you for reading through my ramblings! :D

(And please let me know if you'd like a continuation of this au!)

#bbc merlin #merlin #arthur pendragon #merlin bbc #merlin au #protective arthur #merthur #merlin prompts

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serenescribe · 2 months

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the once (and many) prince(s) Twisted Wonderland | 3.3k Summary: Silver is, has always been, and will always be, the crown prince of his kingdom. AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54424864 Collaboration with @ohsleepie | Potential spoilers for elements of Chapter 7

Hi everyone! @ohsleepie and I are back at it again with another collaboration based on his wonderful "The Prince and his Physician" AU! This fic is meant to act as a companion story of sorts to the Malleus-focused "the prince's physician," this time focusing on Silver within the AU! Once again, this fic features incredibly beautiful and amazing art drawn by Sleepie; please check him out and follow him, if you haven't already!

I hope you all enjoy!

The worst part of reincarnation, Silver thinks, is the constant cycle of relearning everything all over again.

Okay, perhaps it would be a bit of a stretch to call it the worst part. There are many negatives, many downsides, far too many to count, to being stuck in a loop of constantly dying and reincarnating. But this particular aspect is, in Silver’s honest opinion, one of the worst out of them all.

There is a bookshelf carved from expensive ebony that sits in his chambers, nestled against one side of the wall. There are several bookshelves in his room, but this is the only one that Silver ever uses, filled from top to bottom with centuries worth of journals — leather-bound books gilded with gold and silver, every detail immaculately painted and carved, the cover opening to expensive parchment made from calves. He tends to absentmindedly run a hand along the spines, eyes glazing over the muted leather colours, before plucking out a book, and reading it through.

Silver only lives a good seventeen years at best, always dying before crossing the pinnacle into adulthood. How much of those seventeen years consist of just… reading? There are, of course, his early years, where he is much too infantile to read and write. But he barely has a few years of reading simple children’s stories before the latest journal is pressed into his hands, and he is briefly explained about the details of his curse.

He pores over the words of those who came before him — the Silvers who came before him, his previous iterations, all dying to form the next one. Their handwriting ghost his own, not just similar but straight up identical, and if he stresses his brain hard enough, he can almost conjure up wispy, fading memories of putting a quill to paper, ink curling across the page in the same, sweeping cursive.

And yet, it is a necessity to read all of it, all over again. Because Silver remembers — but not enough.

His memories are shattered, like an ancient mirror that has been cracked right through the middle, fractured into thousands of tiny, individual pieces. It is akin to a kaleidoscope of lifetimes; when he gazes into this metaphorical mirror, a thousand Silvers stare back, each one reflecting his exact appearance, yet distinct and different in their own ways. And yet each piece is but a shard; Silver remembers only the smallest bits of each past life, the pieces coming together to form a jumbled jigsaw of sharp-edged recollections.

He has lived far too many lifetimes as Silver — the crown prince of his kingdom, the only living heir of their royal family. He has lived far too many lifetimes as a Silver — distinctly different with each rebirth, living a short number of years until the day he inevitably dies.

Silver is immortal, and yet he is not. He lives on as the royal, the prince, a beacon of hope—

But Silver the person changes, with each new looping cycle.

(And so he reads through their journals, no matter how much it exhausts him.)

Many a time, his gaze wanders to his bedroom window.

As the sole heir to the royal family, Silver resides in the largest chambers of the castle, a sprawling set of multiple rooms, from a drawing room to receive guests, to his private bedroom where he slumbers at night. What this also means is that he is privy to the best views of everything within his kingdom, from the area stretching across the castle grounds, to the rest of the kingdom beyond tall and guarded stone walls.

There are many things for him to peer at, but today, he is gazing at the soldiers’ barracks again. They have their own section of the castle, tucked out of the way, but Silver can view them from the sanctity of his study, a room where he pens his thoughts in his journal and reads through old ones.

The emotion that dwells within him is nigh imperceptible, difficult to describe. It feels as though someone has tied a rope around his ribcage, double-knotting it and pulling it tight before tugging at it, and pulling him forward. There are twinges and pangs that cross his heart, a hollow cavern yawning as his soul collapses into itself.

He feels this as he stares out the window at the soldiers training in their courtyard. His eyes fixate on the swords in their hands, at the way they slash and thwack their weapons against straw-stuffed training dummies. Occasionally, he will spot the soldiers gathering together, jumping and yelling as two of them spar with wooden swords, all of them oblivious to his peeping.

He wants this. He longs for this. He—

“Your majesty?”

Silver blinks. It takes him a split second, pulling himself out of his thoughts, shoving away the deep desires that permeate his heart, but he quickly turns around, eyes fixating on the familiar figure in the doorway.

“Malleus,” Silver greets, shoulders relaxing as a smile slips onto his face. Of course it is Malleus; there are few who have his explicit permission to enter without needing to knock, and his physician is one of them. He waves his hand, ushering him in. “How long have you been standing there? Come on in, take a seat wherever you’d like. And what have I said about the formalities?”

Malleus is here for another check-up, and Silver gladly acquiesces. He can think of no other person he trusts more with his very life and soul than Malleus himself. He allows the man to lead him through familiar routines, magic permeating his body as he searches for something Silver cannot see, before shifting to more physical methods of testing Silver’s health.

Still, as Malleus works in a near-silence, preferring to focus and get his duties done before they can relax and spend some time together, Silver cannot help his thoughts from wandering off again. His desires are not new; he has seen them expressed across multiple journals, scrawled in identical, curling scripts across expensive parchment. The desire to pick up a weapon, to learn to fight and defend, to learn how to wield a blade like a true prince — that is what he so desires.

But he is frail, and the council insists that he stays in, that he can learn to fight once they break the curse. So never, Silver thinks bitterly, eyelids slipping shut as he feels cold claws brush against his forehead. Never in this lifetime, and not while I’m alive.

Malleus is many things.

To the populace, he has many names, many signifiers, viewed in many different ways. He is a blessing and a curse, for his magic is by far the only thing that can cure their prince, but all of it comes at the cost of his very existence itself: A fae; a deplorable, wicked creature; a monster that is the very scum of the earth itself. The history of their kingdom is written in the blood of their ancestors, shed through grievous wounds inflicted by the sharp claws and gleaming maws of the fae that slaughtered them all.

To the nobles, the members of the council who govern over the kingdom in Silver’s stead, making decisions on his behest, Malleus is something they tolerate. They do not speak of what will happen after the curse is broken and Silver is cured, but Silver knows, from their whispers and sly glances, from the words penned by the others who came before him, that they wish for nothing more than to rid the world of the last of the wicked — not, and never, fair — fae.

Humans gaze upon Malleus with distrust, wariness, abject hatred.

But for Silver, Malleus is one simple thing alone.

To him, Malleus is his friend.

There are two distinct points in the history of Silver’s incarnations: Before Malleus, and After Malleus.

The difference is like night and day. The journals of before are dismal and depressing, imbued with a bone-deep loneliness that carried all the way through into the parchment pages, stained in the very ink used to scrawl thoughts across the pages. The Silvers of that time tried — truly, they did — to cling to hope, to believe in what their people believed: that one day, their prince would be freed from the shackles of his horrific curse.

But with the passing decades, the many years, the many Silvers that lived and died, they all seemed to suffer from the same truth: there was no cure in sight.

And then there was Malleus.

The guards found a young fae child today, lurking in the borders between what remains of the valley and the kingdom, his own handwriting reads, the parchment yellowed with age, the ink long-since dried. This, Silver knows, is the first point at which Malleus is mentioned, though not yet by name, tucked away in a notebook he recognises by the distinct fern-green colour of its cover. Even now, as I write this, I still cannot believe the abysmal state he was in upon meeting him. No child, whether human or otherwise, should have that many injuries on their body, and though I have had a stern word with those who found him, I fear for his safety.

He shall remain with me for the time being.

Though Silver does not have favourite journals — for such a concept is lost on him when all the journals are such a drag to read, recounting the day-to-day experiences of his past selves, a depressing fog seeming to permeate every page of words — this one is perhaps the closest one to such a concept. Because this journal is different — he clings to every word, phantom feelings of a fierce protectiveness flaring within him, as though this particular incarnation has stirred somewhere deep within him and seized his soul.

It is so painfully obvious how much his past self had cared for Malleus — taking care of him, granting him such patience and endless kindness, spending time with him teaching him the human tongue, of how to read and write. There is a page filled with endless delight upon learning the fae’s name, ink smudged together where the page reads Malleus. Their activities did not end at the crude essentials; there are sweeping recounts of games played together, of crayon drawings and delicious platters of sweet treats — and Silver aches when he reads every word of it, possessed by a longing to return to those simpler times, when Malleus was not his physician, and was merely his friend.

And this care is made so apparent by the last few pages, the cursive made shaky by the cold, approaching winds of Death. To the next Silver, it reads, take care of Malleus. If there is any hope of breaking this curse that ails me, it lies within the powers of the fair folk. And yet, the rest of the page is filled with sentiments, rather than explaining how Malleus is the key to breaking the curse:

I wish this could last forever, these sweet days of playing together. For much of my life, I have been haunted by a bleak loneliness, isolated by my circumstances, and haunted by the weight of all our pasts. I have never had any companions my age, and I know from my readings that all of my predecessors shared the same lonely fate. To indulge in such fleeting luxuries, to have someone to speak to as though we were on the same level, intimately so— it is a happiness unlike anything I have ever felt before.

Blotchy circles stain the pages, the ink smeared in places.

Things may be different from now on. I understand that the council wishes for him to begin his work when the next cycle begins. And it is with that knowledge that I must remind the next Silver: Malleus may be our physician, and he may be tasked with breaking our curse—

But before that, before any of that, he is our friend.

Never forget that, for as long as we may live.

“Thank you for joining me today.”

Wispy trails of steam rise from two cups of tea, sitting in elegant saucers. Before Silver, and in the middle of the round tea table, is a small spread of sweet delicacies: scones accompanied by small glass jars of jam; finger sandwiches, some filled with goat’s cheese and roasted pepper, others filled with cucumber and salmon; and a small, round cake, tiny enough that it’s perfect for just the two of them.

“Of course,” Malleus replies, his voice smooth as usual. He raises his head slightly, slitted-eyes roaming over the tea-time spread before them, before he dips his head. “I thank you for the invitation, your majesty.”

“We have been over this many times, Malleus,” Silver says, unable to hide the exhaustion that spills into his voice. “You need not refer to me by such formalities.”

He knows why Malleus does so, of course. The answer is written across several different journals — It is difficult for him to reacquaint himself with us in each new cycle, and I truly cannot blame him. How alienating must it be, to witness someone you grow close to, time and time again, look upon you with no familiarity in his eyes? There is another reason too, though one of mere speculation, for Malleus has never confessed the truth by his own tongue — Earlier today, I witnessed a council member chide Malleus for regarding me with such familiarity during our meeting. I do wonder if this may be another factor into those needless formalities.

Thankfully, Malleus always obliges whenever Silver asks this of him — though whether it is because Silver is his prince, or because Silver is his friend, he never knows. “Is there any occasion for this meeting, Prince Silver?” Malleus asks, as Silver beckons for him to help himself, unwilling to dig in first when the fae’s eyes are flickering over the food, glinting with hunger. I wonder if he has forgotten to eat again, Silver thinks. Malleus carries over a scone and a sandwich with his utensils, leaving the cake intact. “Not that I mind it, by any means; it is always a pleasure to spend time with you.”

“There is no special occasion,” Silver answers, finally reaching for the spread as Malleus cuts into his meal. “I… only wished to spend time with my friend.”

Their relationship is a strange, tenuous thing. There is undoubtedly a bond there, from the way that Silver always feels so safe and secure in Malleus’ presence, and the gentle way that Malleus treats him, always appearing whenever Silver calls for him. There are even some rare occasions where the facade of dutiful physician slips, a careful veneer crafted for the sake of survival in the court, and Silver relishes those times, watching as Malleus’ expression sours, the stinging barbs that spit from his mouth more endearing than his usual regal elegance.

But all the same, compared to the earlier journals after Malleus’ appearance, filled with much more warmth and life — even as he learnt his role, Malleus would still happily chat with those Silvers, accept his offers to play games, spend the night with him on many occasions — there is a gap between them now. Driven by age, driven by time, and driven by the eternal, scathing judgement of the many humans of this kingdom, who cycle in and out of life and death, but are all fuelled by the same spiteful hatred and prejudice, taking it out on the only fae they know.

Still, Silver tries his best. He knows Malleus does too.

He sees it in the way the fae’s shoulders relax, expression smoothing out at the edges. “In that case,” Malleus says, after a moment’s pause, “let us indulge. How have you been lately… Silver?”

It is a good day for the two of them, Silver reflects. They drink their cups of tea and drain the pot of its excess drink, and the tray of delicacies are filled with nothing but crumbs by the time they’re done.

Even the cake, a dessert regarded with conflicting feelings by Malleus, is finished by the end of it. For once, Malleus eats his slices with a small smile, both their forks scraping the bottom of the plate as they help themselves to their fill.

Death no longer scares him, unlike everyone else. Death, in its own way, is a comfort, an inevitability: Silver knows he will reach his demise at the same time, at the same age. Very few people can ever be privy to such knowledge, going through their lives not knowing if they will pass on at age fifteen or fifty.

In that vein, what does it matter if Silver chooses to speed up the process?

He is not allowed proper access to weaponry. The council states that it is because there is no need for him to pick up a blade when he has guardsmen patrolling the halls around his room at all times, but Silver knows better. This is not the first time he has longed to die earlier than he usually does; he can count the other occasions on two of his hands, based on cryptic journal endings dated months earlier than they usually do.

To an extent, a part of him wonders what the point of it is. He will die, inevitably; why inflict such pain and suffering if he knows he’s going to come back? What is the point of it all?

The point, Silver tells himself, is that there isn’t one. He’ll always come back. He’ll always return — and so why should he languish and rot in his bed as his body slowly gives out on him? Why waste those months feeling his muscles weaken and his grasp on reality slip?

Why not do everyone the honour of ending it early, ending it now?

(The silver blade of the dagger, requested from some rookie soldier who knows no better than to deny this particular request from the prince, is cold against the flesh covering his heart.)

Silver is so, so tired. His life is stagnant, unchanging; he lives and he dies the same person, the same name, the same cursed prince of the same bloody kingdom, every childhood filled with days of reading the same handwritten journals signed with the same, stupid name.

When will he be allowed to rest? The weight of a legacy, the weight of his people’s hopes and dreams, drag him down, like impossibly heavy weights that are shackled to his limbs, pulling and pulling until he’s flat against the ground. He never asked for this — and god, it’s so selfish to even think of that, but it’s true.

Nobody ever thinks about him, Silver the person. They are only ever concerned with Silver the prince, Silver their saviour.

Except—

A memory flashes to mind, unbidden — of twisting, dark horns and raven-spun hair, and slitted green eyes that crinkle at the corners as he smiles at him.

(His hands tremble.)

Malleus.

The name fills him with an ache. If there is anything Silver can take comfort in as he straddles the line between life and death, it is simply that Malleus will always be there. Malleus is a constant throughline throughout Silver’s life, and while Silver may ebb and flow, weaving in and out of the many, many years of a fae’s long lifespan, Malleus will always be there.

And though the thought of that face, rendered a child once more in its shock and sadness, causes his chest to knot itself with hesitance and reluctance, Silver steadies himself.

The humans may come and go, live and die, but Malleus will always remain.

(And the blade plunges down.)

#my writing tag #writing collaborations #twst #twisted wonderland #twst fanfiction #twst writing #malleus draconia #twst silver #the prince and his physician au #once again it was an absolute delight to be able to collab w sleepie on this!#i really do love this au so i'm so happy to get to write something for it

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abyssruler · 2 years

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amor vincit mortem

pairing: zhongli x gn!reader

summary: there’s a fragility to each moment spent with you, finite and fleeting as all mortal lives are. but you always find your way back to him, even when you return missing fragments of yourself. he has loved you ever since he was naught but a mere hatchling you’d dug from the earth, and he will continue to do so through war and peace and retirement. (reincarnation au)

note: writing for one of my favorite tropes again, zhongli my beloved i will always give u happy endings, might be a bit inaccurate in some lore and timeline aspects but i tried my best to stick close, multiple character death/s (reader), depictions of blood and death

word count: 4.1k

“Hello again.”

Morax—back in the days when he was just a little dragon incapable of much thought, back when the name Morax hadn’t even been granted to him—nuzzled his little snout against your hand.

You smoothed your fingers over his soft scales, an indication of youth in dragons, and smiled as he melted at the simple affection.

There had been a softness to that moment, a memory untouched by the grimness of war, in a time when peace reigned and the three sisters ruled over the skies, not a floating celestial castle to be seen.

He remembers your voice and your touch, the way your eyes brightened when you smiled and the way the corners of your mouth quirked when telling a story. He didn’t know your name then, only that you were a local in the nearby village who once unburied a small dragon from the earth as a child and had taken care of it since.

That dragon was, of course, him.

✧

“Here for another meal, little dragon?”

You brought a small piece of meat to his snout, cooing when he took it from your fingers and delicately chewed on the meat.

He doesn’t remember what it tasted, only that it had a soft, chewy texture that made it easier to eat for his soft teeth that were still in the process of hardening as he aged.

A hand ran over the scales on his head.

“You’ll need a name, won’t you? Something to be remembered for all ages.” The sun had hit his eyes then, making him incapable of seeing what kind of expression you’d had. “I just know my little dragon will grow to be a fearsome one.”

✧

“Morax!” You laughed, running as the dragon that was now at the same height as your hips chased you across the clearing. “I told you, no more meat or else you’ll become overweight!”

It wasn’t about the meat, he remembers, it was how you always seemed to shine brightest when you were running about without a care for the world around you. He’d only wanted to keep that smile on your face.

You leaned on your knees, gasping for breath, and still, you shone as radiant as the sun to his eyes.

✧

You struggled with carting a box full of all sorts of fruit and cooked meat. He used his hardened snout to help you push the cart near the entrance of the cave he usually dwelled in.

“Thank you.” You softly patted the scales beneath his chin. “I’m not as young and spritely as I used to be.”

He huffed an indignant snort as if to disagree with you. A soft exhale left your mouth, fondness evident in the quirk of your lips.

“You understand me, don’t you? You always have, my smart little dragon.”

✧

He sat beside you, quiet and solemn as you hummed a tune beneath your breath.

“Morax,” you started, something different in the inflection of your voice. It never returned back to its normal cadence after you caught an illness that had lasted a year and nearly took your life. “I’m not long for this world—”

He shifted in protest, a snarl in his throat that you wave away with a wrinkled hand.

“Don’t be so upset,” you soothed, “It’s simply the way of life.”

You ran a hand through the underside of his chin, feeling the hardened scales that will continue to grow stronger until it can withstand the force of steel—or a meteor.

“You’ll live for a long, long time, and by the time you reach your prime, I will be nothing but a distant memory to you.”

He remembers disagreeing but never outright conveying it to you. He had thought you understood what his silence meant. If only he’d been able to speak back then, he would have spent hours upon hours telling you how much you meant to the little dragon you had dug up from the earth.

✧

You laid down for a nap beside him, still managing to look at him with those bright eyes of yours amidst a face weathered by time.

“My little Morax, you’re as big as a house now, aren’t you?” You had softly pet the side of his head as he curled around you. “Wake me up when the sun rises, okay? I want to hand feed you meat like I used to...”

He closed his eyes and let dreams sweep him away once he felt you fall into a deep sleep.

In the morning, he would awake to the sun casting light over him and the stillness by his side.

You never woke up again.

✧

He took to guarding your small village from petty thieves and the occasional mercenaries sent by neighboring villages. It’s what you would’ve wanted, he thought then. You had no family, but the elders and the children and the workers you’d made friends with were dear to you, and so, they were dear to him as well.

Word spread of a village being granted the protection of a mighty dragon. More people came asking for shelter and to settle in, he never showed protest to it.

Years passed, the village grew, and he continued to wonder what it would have been like to watch over these people with you by his side.

He remembers days spent lounging in the clearing he buried your body in, an era where peace still reigned and rest was not yet a luxury he couldn’t afford.

✧

You appeared on the second century after your passing, wide-eyed and mouth parted in awe as you stared at the large town that used to be your homely little village.

“Morax?”

He had thought it a dream then, a mirage his mind consumed. There was simply no fathomable way you were here in the flesh, alive and whole and young—so much younger than he remembered you being.

But your eyes were still the same, still as bright and resplendent as the sun. You were here. You were real.

He doesn’t know how he ever managed not to squish you beneath his weight back when he’d been young and excited with less restraint to his actions. It is a memory he remembers fondly, stored tightly within his chest, a moment of peace amidst the war looming on the horizon.

It was a comical sight, a human holding their arms out to their side yet still not managing to encompass the entirety of a dragon’s snout. He used to fit so snugly at the palm of your hand.

“Look how big you’ve grown.” You press your lips to a single scale, already as large as your head. “I have missed you, old friend.”

✧

It was a worry that niggled at the back of his head amidst questions of how you came back and why you remember him.

Morax, for all his years alive that would seem many to mortals, was still but a young dragon then. Even when he was roughly the size of five houses.

He didn’t want to see you grow old, to watch as time eroded your spirit and left nothing but a husk of what you once were. The thought of having to relive those days when you could barely stand up to meet him at the clearing outside your village made him want to curl up and burrow deep into the earth.

He didn’t want to sleep beside you only to awake to the sight of your chest still and your breaths nonexistent.

He didn’t want to watch you die again.

✧

The choice was taken out of his hands when he returned to his town—your town, just as much as it is his—and found it burning.

“There’s a nearby village that needs your help. Go, Morax, lend your hand to those who need it,” you had told him as you caressed his scales, and he had obeyed, because while the elders and the people come to him with their pleas and their wishes, he will only ever answer to you.

It had been a trick to place his attention away from your town.

He learned what anger meant that day, learned what it felt to crush a house beneath his claws and how to move the earth to his will and what it meant to take a life.

He was young and furious and mourning. It is a dark memory he doesn’t like to dwell on, full of pain and regret and the vicious sense of satisfaction that came with killing. It was the first time he had ever shed blood. It wouldn’t be the last.

As he watched the village be buried beneath the earth and the stone he’d called upon, he turned his back and made the long trek back to a home that was now nothing but ash and dust.

And as he rooted through the rubble in the vain hope of finding your body to bury, Morax learned what it meant to be an unwilling participant in a war.

✧

It was as if fate was paying back the abundance of time you’d spent with him in your first life with short moments that were always cut too soon.

In your third life, you found him sleeping on the remains of what was once your town. You had wept and embraced him as much as you could, and he, in turn, tried to convey how much he had missed you.

The two of you traveled together for a while, and that life was where you rode on his back for the first time as he soared the skies.

“They’re like your eyes,” you once said, holding onto his scales as he flew above the clouds, the light of the setting sun casting the two of you in molten gold, “Golden. It’s been my favorite color ever since I first saw you open your eyes. They always shine so bright.”

You died that same day, having encountered a vengeful deity after he set foot on the ground. He had won that fight, but he wasn’t able to protect you.

✧

It was in a battlefield that he saw you again.

He remembers how the small deity’s blood had felt upon his tongue, dripping down sharp teeth and soaking the battle happening in the ground below with blood. It had been sunny then, he remembers, when he descended from the skies in triumph and looked down the masses gazing at him with fear.

And then there was you.

Blood and dirt and other unnamable things clung to you like a second skin as you clumsily held a spear close to your chest, but you had beamed at the sight of him and yelled out his name.

“Morax!”

It was short-lived.

It had been a stray arrow, they would later plead with tears and mud streaking through their terror-filled faces. But all he cared about at that time was that one moment you dropped your spear to run to him, and the next you were falling to the ground, an arrow lodged right where your heart lay.

He left that field bloodied with corpses, your body strewn on his back as he flew to the clearing in your first life. There, he buried you beside your other incarnations.

✧

“I’d like to settle one day, once all the fighting and killing has stopped. Maybe in a house overlooking the sea. Somewhere surrounded by mountains. Just a place where there’d be lots of space for you too.”

You leaned against the bulk of his frame, burrowed in a cliffside to wait out the fight between two gods happening on the other side of the lake.

✧

“That was never there before,” you said, squinting at the castle in the sky as you laid on his back.

He rumbled his agreement.

You sighed, hearing the war going on below and wondering when it was all going to end.

“The stars don’t shine as bright as they used to.”

✧

“Are you alright?!” You yelled as you frantically helped the woman—a deity—up from the ground.

Morax’s thundering roars echoed in the air as he summoned pillars from the earth and shattered the feeble ice that the opposing god put up.

The woman stared at you with wide eyes, noticing how labored your breathing was but otherwise looking unbothered by the fight happening in front of you.

“Are you not worried…?” She asked, her voice sounding as delicate as she looked.

You turned to her with a grin you’d hoped was encouraging. “There’s nothing to fear, Morax is strong!” Then, you offered her your hand. “Here, you can hold my hand if you’re afraid.”

She accepted it, feeling the tremors in her fingers calm at the warmth emanating from your palm.

“Guizhong,” she suddenly said, looking up at you, her heart racing. “Forgive my rudeness but… my name is Guizhong.”

You smiled, as bright and lovely as Morax would have described had he been there to see it. “Allow us to lend you and your people a hand, Guizhong!”

And for the first time since the war began, she felt hope blossom in her chest.

✧

“Which life is this now?” Guizhong asked him.

“Nineteenth,” he answered, more of a growl that resembled a word. Morax, in his newly obtained form, was still not used to the ways of mortals, namely, the fact that he can now speak his thoughts out loud.

You were conversing with Cloud Retainer, something regarding a weapon that could be used to help the war. The mechanics were lost to him. For all that he could now be considered a deity, for all that the people have started calling him Rex Lapis, he was still so oblivious to the ways of the world.

Guizhong placed a hand on his shoulder, a reassuring smile on her deceptively gentle face. On that day, she promised to help him protect you.

And that life was one of the few where he got to watch you grow old.

✧

“You don’t know how to read?” Guizhong asked you, surprise coloring her face.

You sheepishly laughed, “I’ve never been taught in all the lives I’ve lived. And most of my time with Morax was spent fighting and running from the war.”

You looked down your hands, feeling the smooth, unblemished skin of them. Young and unscarred. There had been a large gash that ran across your back in your previous life, and when the night got too cold and you were left alone with your thoughts, you felt the ache of thousands upon thousands of wounds you’d collected throughout your lives.

A dainty hand covered your own. You looked up to see Guizhong watching you with a fond smile.

“Let me teach you, then.”

✧

Guizhong always invited you to sing to the glaze lilies scattered around the Assembly. She claimed your voice was like a melody that soothed the flowers to bloom.

In truth, she only wanted to hear you sing.

✧

“No, that’s not how you hold chopsticks, Morax!” You laughed, taking hold of his hand and rearranging the chopsticks haphazardly held in his fingers. “There, much better.”

His fingers remained clumsy, unused to such sensations, but you promised him that he’ll get used to it in no time.

✧

You slowly guided him through each step, gently correcting a mistake in his footwork and adjusting the spear in his hand when needed.

Morax was a fast learner.

Soon, he would develop his own way of wielding the spear, but for now, you coached him through the right techniques and laughed whenever he dropped the spear in a spin.

✧

“The moon,” he suddenly said, looking at you with wide, earnest eyes.

“Yes, what about it?”

He seemed to struggle with finding the right words to convey what he wanted to say. You patiently sat and waited for him to gather himself.

“It’s beautiful tonight.” Then, as an afterthought, he added, “Isn’t it?”

You tilted your head to the sky, a nostalgic smile on your lips, lost in memories of days spent lazing about in that old clearing and staring at the starry sky. “It is.”

His hand felt warm around yours.

✧

“I don’t want to die anymore.”

He held you as your blood seeped from your clothes and painted the grass a dark shade of red. It was a slow process, bleeding out, to wait for your blood to drain until your heart stopped beating and your eyes lost the light in them.

“Morax.”

You were crying, clutching your side where a god had pierced their blade clean through. You were dying so slowly, yet there was no time to get a healer.

“Please.”

Your eyes begged for an end to this pain.

His tears fell and mixed with your blood.

On your twenty-ninth life, he cradled your head to his chest and wept as he gave you a quick, painless death.

✧

When he saw you again, he held you until the sun disappeared and his arms felt numb before reluctantly pulling away.

You held his face between the palm of your hands and kissed his forehead, your eyes red and smile brittle at the edges.

“I’ve missed you,” was all you said before you leaned close.

Your lips felt impossibly soft against his.

✧

“Morax,” you whispered against his skin, on your thirty-first life when he finally found the courage to show you what being loved by him meant. “I love you.”

It was the first time you spoke those words to him.

It wouldn’t be the last.

He kept you awake all night, ignoring the war happening around him and pretending, just for a moment, that the world only consisted of you and him.

✧

During your forty-second life, an anomaly happened.

He and the rest of the adepti were unable to gauge how it happened. Guizhong, for all her smarts, was not able to discern the reason for it either.

And then there was no time to ponder upon it anymore, because Osial attacks the Guili Assembly, and not only does he lose you, he also loses a friend.

Her last words to him consisted of a riddle and a memento in the form of a lock. “I never stopped searching for a reason. I think… this may be it.”

And in her eyes, he saw a confession — she had loved you too.

Thousands of years later and he is still no closer to opening it, and thus, no closer to figuring out what caused the loss of your memories.

✧

On some lives, you remember, eyes lighting up with recognition as you abandoned everything you’d been doing to run into his arms.

“Morax,” you would whisper as he nuzzled his head into the crook of your neck.

On some lives, you would pass by him with blank eyes, the same lilt to your voice but without the fondness that came with it.

“Hello again,” he’d say.

You would smile awkwardly. “Hello?”

And he would mourn you all over again.

✧

“He’s suffered enough, hasn’t he?”

Your words were enough to still Morax’s spear.

You knelt in front of the young-looking deity, offering your palm to him. “We will not shackle you, and neither will we force you to serve.”

His eyes were wary, yet so incredibly full of disbelief and hidden hope.

You gave him a smile you hoped was as gentle as it seemed.

Rough, battle-hardened hands clasped onto yours like a salvation.

“Please,” he whispered, something so undeniably broken in his tone as looked up at you the same way one might look up at the stars.

Later on, Morax would name that young deity Xiao.

✧

There were tales and poems written about you. Rex Lapis and his undying lover.

It was widely romanticized and highly inaccurate. For one, he didn’t meet you in your first life as a large and intimidating dragon. He was naught but a hatchling you used to feed fruits and meat with a childish laugh. The two of you had grown up together, but where you had grown old, he remained young, a dragon who hadn’t even reached a fourth of his lifespan.

You always laughed as you read to him some of the more outlandish ones, in those lives where you remembered enough to love him as deeply as you used to.

“‘And they fornicated upon the moonlit night, a dragon and a mortal—’ I’m sorry, I can’t take this seriously.” You burst into a fit of giggles, leaning against him on your shared bed as the book you’d been holding fell to the side, forgotten.

“Shall I have a word with the authors of such books?”

“No, no!” You were quick to refuse, placing both palms on his cheeks and grinning. “They’re amusing to read. Perhaps I should commission a play, that would be so entertaining…”

He gazed at you fondly, cherishing each precious, limited time the two of you have.

✧

When he ascended the throne of Celestia, you were the first person to greet him upon returning to Liyue.

There was a nervous edge to your smile, but still, it came as naturally as breathing to you. You often questioned it, how everything just seemed to come easily for you.

“I think I know you,” you once told him a week after you met in this life, “I just can’t remember where.”

And you would always come across the numerous retellings of your lives, hands shaking and so full of regret and grief for a life you could never quite recall.

You never failed to apologize to him after.

I’m sorry I forgot.

I’m sorry I can’t remember.

I’m sorry I don’t love you.

✧

It became increasingly frequent with each century that passed. Only one incarnation of you every six lives remembered your past.

He made you love him in each one. Even if he had to start from the bottom, even when you looked at him without a spark of familiarity, even when it hurt—he never failed to capture your heart again and again.

✧

The Cataclysm happened in a lifetime where you remembered.

Morax, to this day, wishes it hadn’t been the case. Perhaps then, you wouldn’t have insisted on fighting alongside him.

Perhaps then, you wouldn’t have died so early.

Your body was left beneath the rubble and ruins of Khaenri’ah’s Royal Palace. The only thing that stopped him from upturning it to search for you was the Sustainer of Heavenly Principles.

✧

In the twentieth year after the destruction of Khaenri’ah, he made a contract with a golden haired traveler who carried the aura of the stars.

Five years after the contract was signed, your body was returned to Liyue in a casket covered with Inteyvat flowers.

✧

He remembers waiting, and waiting, and waiting a little more until he looked up and realized that four hundred years had passed without you.

He searched each nation, visiting village upon village, hoping to hear news of you or a past life of yours having lived there, but there was nothing.

It was as if you had simply ceased to exist.

He refused to believe it.

✧

Mountain Shaper advised him to rest.

It was strange to walk the streets of Liyue again after a hundred years of absence. He never failed to appear during the Rite of Descension, but taking on his draconic form and parading as a mortal man were two different things. And the latter, he found in all the years he’d been ruling Liyue, was much more preferable than the former.

Conversations flowed around him, and he wondered what you would have been doing had you been here with him.

He stared into the Harbor, smiling as he remembered your quiet musings during the early days of the Archon War.

I’d like to settle one day, once all the fighting and killing has stopped. Maybe in a house overlooking the sea. Somewhere surrounded by mountains. Just a place where there’d be lots of space for you too.

Settle.

It was a wishful thought, but…

He turned on his heel, mind made up.

If he couldn’t look for you, then he would have to wait for you to come to him. In the meantime, he would arrange the finest house for you to live in peace after five hundred years of being apart and a lifetime of war and bloodshed.

✧

Morax—Zhongli sits at a table at Third-Round Knockout, leisurely sipping tea as he listens to the story teller regale the tragic tale of your second life. A little inaccurate, on a few accounts, but for the most part, it was as he remembers it.

The tea tastes exceptionally sweet today. A good omen, perhaps.

He feels the vibrations from the ground, telling of a person approaching him from behind. He lets whoever it is get close, unable to detect any malicious intent.

“That’s completely false. I, for one, never ‘wept in delight as I was reunited with my dragon lover’.”

He nearly drops his tea in shock.

He turns his head to the right, his heart in his throat as he hopes and begs that his ears did not deceive him. He sucks in a breath—

And meets the loveliest pair of eyes gazing down at him with mirth.

You smile.

“Hello again.”

#genshin x reader #genshin impact x reader #zhongli x reader #genshin zhongli x reader #zhongli x you #morax x reader #gn reader #did any of u notice the tense changing from past to present once we got to the canon timeline hehe

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veryrealimagination · 7 months

Text

“Would you lie with me and just forget the world?”

Day No: 16

Prompt: Flatline

Fandom: Murdoch Mysteries

Medium: fic

Trigger Warnings: none

SFW

Henry was held back by Murdoch when he tried to follow George into the operating area. “Higgins,” he said, grabbing his attention and wordlessly asking for a report.

“It, it was the twins, Amelia and Dorothy. Had Amelia down and Dorothy shot him. I had to uncuff her so I could call for the ambulance.” He looked around and saw Llewellyn in one of the waiting room chairs. No Ogden, but he knew that the woman sometimes agreed to substitute during bad situations at the local hospitals.

“I’ll call it into Giles, he’ll add it to the list of people that we’re hunting down right now,” he relayed, “Had someone that may have been manipulated by Ralph Fellows try to shoot me. Julia took the bullet in the arm.”

Oh, that’s why they were here.

Henry jumped when someone coded in the operating room. There was a small gap in the curtains, and he thought he saw George with a flatline on the monitoring display beside him.

Two sets of arms stopped him before he could rush over. “Higgins, they have to do their work,” a low voice told him. He hadn’t hear the young man speak like that, almost to his former self. “You’re scared, you’re terrified, and that is perfectly normal. You cannot approach George right now, you cannot be in the area.”

“Call Ruth, see if she can’t come down,” Murdoch ordered. One of the sets left while he listened to the call for code blue and wondered if George’s heart wasn’t strong enough. “I don’t think that’s George. Woman came in with health issues.”

That wasn’t as comforting as he wanted to be.

#whumptober2023 #no.16 #flatline #fic #murdoch mysteries #henry higgins #william murdoch #Llewellyn watts #castle reincarnation au

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orqheuss · 1 year

Text

In any version of reality

(Ominis Gaunt/F!Reader FLUFF)

Reincarnation!Soulmate AU

Summary:

In the world of soulmates, ties told through memories of past lives and reincarnation, Ominis was sure that he had to be a very new soul. *** Ominis Gaunt was more sure than anything in his life that he did not have a soulmate. He had heard tales from others about their experiences, how lovely it was to finally find the one you had been searching for through any timeline, and he had resigned himself to the fact that his soul was too new to have a past life. But, after hearing you sing in the deserted music room sends him on a journey back in time, could he have truly found the person he had been longing for since before the dawn of creation?

Story is based off of "Epic iii" from the Hadestown 2017 Original Cast Recording.

Word Count: 4.7k

In the world of soulmates, ties told through memories of past lives and reincarnation, Ominis was sure that he had to be a very new soul. He had heard stories told through grapevines, whispers in the night of people finding their loves at a young age; how their timeless histories came flooding back to them like a torrential downpour of emotion they couldn’t identify until they tasted their loves name on their lips— heard their voice flitter through their ears like a soft ocean breeze for the first time. Some said it happened suddenly, as soon as they brushed against each other or looked into each other's eyes for the first time. Those people said it was like being struck by a falling star, burning to the touch and gloriously wonderful all at the same time. Some said it happened gradually, after years and years of knowing each other, only to be triggered by an oddly familiar moment in time or a feeling, like a song murmured from an ancient gramophone in the corner of a room they’d long forgotten about. Those people said it was warm, like a blanket you’d just cast a drying charm on— like they were coming home after a long trip and the hearth was already lit for their arrival. No matter how much he longed to tell stories like this himself, how much he yearned to find that grand, timeless love that he could only read about in books, the universe did not have a past life to spare him.

For a while he blamed his parents, like they were the ones that ripped him into the world before one of the many ghosts floating around in the stratosphere could latch onto him and call him theirs, but he knew that they had no control over ethereal beings like that. Then, he blamed his disability for his woebegone-ness. Every story he had ever heard told tales of looking into their soulmate's eyes and seeing the world as it was for the first time— could it be that because he could not see he would never know the feeling of holding someone's gaze and seeing yourself as you truly were the day your ageless soul was born into the world like a bursting supernova? Not knowing anyone else that suffered the same blindness as him, he didn’t have anything else to go off of. And so, that was the only answer his feebly human mind could give him— the only thing that actually made sense in his brain.

Being born without sight had never really bothered Ominis much until he got to Hogwarts. His childhood home was dreadfully quiet, and very few members of his family were home at a time, so he didn’t have any sounds invading his sensitive ears very often. All of that changed as soon as he crossed the threshold of the grandiloquent school. The tall ceilings echoed all voices like a cathedral tower echoed the hymns of a choir— he knew everyone's business better than his own, sometimes before his peers even learned of it themselves. With that came the knowledge of everyone's soulmate encounters, each story different from the last but just as magical each time. Down the castle stairs, tucked away in the corner near the one-eyed witch, Ominis heard Adelaide Oakes recount her story of brushing against a muggle boy in her village and seeing a post-colonial British soldier standing at her doorstep, stretches of farmland spanning farther than her eyes can see over his shoulder. In potions, he heard Garreth Weasley whisper to his cauldron partner about how he had known his soulmate for years, only realizing that they were meant to be after seeing them lounging on the shore of the pond behind his house— one moment they were strewn across the damp, summer-green grass, and the next they were curled around his past in a bed made of purple silk, the Paris skyline just beyond his reach through their bay windowed apartment. He could distinctly recall all of the details of Sebastian’s revelation, having heard how he saw himself galloping through a field of flowers with a lovely princesses arms wrapped around his waist, pressing her delicate fingerprints into his shiny chain-mail armor as they laughed into the sun many a time before drifting off into a dreamless sleep in their common room. Even Leander Prewett found his one true match, spinning the tale to anyone who would hear in their herbology class about how he was a British king once, married to a beautiful woman dressed in green with a matching choker necklace of pearls and emeralds— how the large “B” charm caught the light just right during their private garden strolls to make her blue eyes sparkle (Ominis also remembered the next day when he stumbled upon the frazzled Gryffindor in the library annex, filled with dread as he poured quite anxiously through the books and reading about that particular necklace, as well as the pretty neck that went along with it. Poor sod).

No, Ominis Gaunt had not found his soulmate yet, nor did he think he ever would, and he was perfectly fine with that, thank you very much.

At least, that’s what he told everyone when they asked.

What didn’t help his case, unfortunately, was that he was irrevocably and incandescently infatuated with the new fifth year. It had taken him some time to get used to their presence in his inner circle. All of his friends had a very distinct magical signature that he memorized after knowing them for some time— every magical being had one, really. Magic to Ominis felt like the fizz of cider against his skin, some slightly more carbonated than others and carrying a different taste in his mouth. Anne felt like the sparkling citrus water that the kitchens would bring out on particularly hot days before finals. Sebastian felt like the burn of firewhiskey on an autumn night, the bonfire in the center of the circle warming the tips of his nose and ears. Both were refreshing and lovely in their own right, but his newest friend was something he had never felt before. He was never able to feel someone else's soul under their skin and determine how old it was, but there was no way you were a young, or even new soul like he was. Even your magic felt old. Your signature was the most distinct one he had ever felt in his short life; it wasn’t a soft fizz like the others, or a pleasant warmth, it was a firework in his chest. You smelled like the smoke after a particularly rowdy Guy Fawkes Night and felt like tiny smoldering ashes falling against his skin, not too hot, but more of a pleasant kiss of heat. He got used to your voice quickly, no matter how your laugh made his knees want to buckle and cause his heart to race faster than a stampeding graphorn, but your magic took some time, even after he found out about your proclivity to ancient magic. There was something so distinctly familiar about it to him, like he had met you before coming to the castle. He didn’t recall ever doing so, but his family threw so many parties in his youth he wouldn’t really question it if he did. Once he started to get used to the feeling, maybe even crave it a little, he realized it was too late to stop the tumble his feelings were taking off your sweet, summer-side cliff.

Ominis knew that you hadn’t found your soulmate yet, but it was only a matter of time before your soft brushes and lingering stares disappeared into the air like everything else in his life. He was doomed to never have anyone by his side, but he knew deep in his heart that you were not destined for loneliness like he was. You were a flowering weeping willow at the edge of a monumental body of water, and he the lowly lake lapping at your petals as they fell, forever in the others orbit but never within arms reach.

That’s how Ominis found himself wandering that day, high up the many stairs of the magical castle and steadily walking towards the deserted music room, his favorite place as of late. Very few people knew where the room was, let alone that the school even had a music room to begin with. Here, he could wallow in his self pity with only the soft sound of his piano to keep him company. About a week ago a line of melody came to him in his dreams, soft and sweet but full of so much empty melancholy that he was on his feet at that very instant, quickly jotting down the notation on one of the many pieces of sheet music that he had lying around his desk. Ever since then, he had gone to the musical tower in the sky to sit by his lonesome and chart out chords like constellations. The song was ethereal to his ears, something that came from the universe itself as a gift that he was destined to write. Ominis was nearly done with it after hours of slaving over the parchment and quill, his fingertips surely staining the ivory keys of the baby grand piano to the point where the house elves despised his presence. He was like a man possessed whenever the melody came to mind, like something in the world was trying to tell him something very important but it couldn’t find the words to do so. The notes rose and fell like a bird flying south for the winter, wings stretched across the sky, swooping and diving only to rise again and kiss the sun. Some parts felt like a walk through a beautiful meadow, the sun on his shoulders and the wind blowing through his hair. Others were dark, like descending a staircase into the very center of the world with no light to guide you, just its ghostly melody to call you home. And some were both at the same time— a shady spot under a corkscrewed sycamore, tiny graves for the woodland creatures of the forest taken over by the wilds of nature, hidden off the beaten path in lamentable isolation. It told a story of everlasting, encompassing love that was ripped away too soon, found again after searching every possible and impossible place for their hand to hold, only to have to part ways once again until their effervescent hereafter. It reminded him of some of the muggle mythology he picked up last year for some light reading during one of his bouts of nightmares— how each tale began weaving together a love that would break the very fabric of the universe until it was taken from the pair by Fates' terrible string. The blond could tell that the song needed lyrics to be complete; Ominis was many things, but he was not a poet. So, much like his future to come, the song would forever remain unfinished. Even still, his forlorn melody kept him company, and he was perfectly fine with that.

Today was different; Ominis knew that as soon as he rounded the bend to the music room and felt a presence inside. The blond cursed to himself, resigned to find another corner of the castle to mope in his hopeless romanticism for the time being until the other person left. He turned on his heel and was about to leave when a sound stopped him in his tracks, his ears pricking up like a startled deer. From the crack in the door came a haunting voice, soothing through a melody that was vaguely familiar to the boy. He curiously took a few steps closer, pressing his ear to the tiny opening to hear better. The voice was one of the most beautiful things he had ever heard. Its tone was clear like the church bells outside his family home, soaring around the room up to the top of its spiraled ceilings and diving downwards towards the bordeaux patterned cherry floor. It caught the acoustics of the room like a wind chime in the beginnings of spring, and his entire body visibly softened at each lift and fall of its gentle ballad. Ominis listened intently to the lyrics as they made their way through his ears, swirling around his brain and kissing him just behind the eyes with winsome adoration.

Heavy and hard is the heart of the king King of iron, king of steel The heart of the king loves everything Like the hammer loves the nail.

The woman’s voice was like honey in his favorite tea, soothing and with just the right amount of sweetness. Her dulcet tones took Ominis into their arms and waltzed with his heartstrings like two ghosts lost to time. He couldn’t help but keep listening, diving deeper and deeper into her saccharine song.

But the heart of a man is a simple one Small and soft, flesh and blood And all that it loves is a woman A woman is all that it loves. And Hades is king of the scythe and the sword He covers the world in the color of rust He scrapes the sky and scars the earth And he comes down heavy and hard on us.

Hades. Something about the name shook the blond to his core, the word feeling strange at the tip of his tongue like a word he knew but couldn’t remember. Little flashes of light burst behind his closed eyes, bright but not painful, carrying the feeling of…grass under his feet? He wasn’t truly sure what he was feeling, but he knew it wasn’t the wooden floors of the hallway anymore. For a moment he could feel the luscious heat of the spring on his skin and hear the soft call of whippoorwills from the tree tops just beyond where he stood, even though it was a cold and stormy winter outside the stone fortress walls. He continued to listen to the song, careful to not let himself be known to the angel of music just out of his reach.

But even that hardest of hearts unhardened Suddenly, when he saw her there Persephone in her mother's garden Sun on her shoulders, wind in her hair.

Persephone. Why was that name familiar too? Why could he suddenly feel the phantom of long, thick hair stream through his fingers like a waterfall, the tresses gently caressing his skin in a way that he only dreamed of? Ominis flexed his fingers, swaying his hand in the air to feel around for a sudden body in front of him; he found nothing there except dust and stale air. The scent of wildflowers invaded his nose harshly, leaving him twitching and fighting off a very unbecoming sneeze until the strong scent pittered away to a delicate gale of sugared anemone and aster flower. The taste of nectar and pollen were heavy on his tongue. He listened closer, eager to hear and experience more. There must be a charm on their voice, the boy reasoned. That had to be the reason he was experiencing all of these things so suddenly.

The smell of the flowers she held in her hand And the pollen that fell from her fingertips And suddenly Hades was only a man With a taste of nectar upon his lips, singing: La la la la la la la…

It was like suddenly being dropped into the icy waters of the black lake. That melody, no wonder it was so familiar to him; it was the piece of music he had been working on nonstop for the past week! Just as the realization dawned on him, the magical aura of the person behind the door struck him harder than anything he had ever felt before— harder than when he had first felt it outside the Undercroft what felt like years ago.

It was you. You were the one singing.

You were the missing piece to his lonely symphony.

Seeing flashes of your past self did not feel like how Ominis originally thought. It wasn’t quick like a speeding bullet into the brain, or loud like a confringo smacking into the pillars of the Undercroft. The flashback started soft and hazy— his vision blackening around his normal shadows and all sense but sight returning first. First came his smell, his hearing, his touch, and his taste while he listened to your silvery cadence fade away into the heavens. All of the feelings that had come one at a time earlier suddenly slammed into him in an influx of sensations, shocking his system into a more startling consciousness than before. Lastly came his sight, coloring his once grey and silhouetted world with a plethora of hues that he had never heard of before. If the boy was being honest, in all the moments where he had imagined finding his soulmate, he hadn’t pictured anything at all. He had never known the gift of sight, so how could he truly prepare himself for what it meant to see? Was that what green was, in the grass below his shined oxfords? Was that blue, in the sky above that stretched on forever? Was that yellow, in the little bumblebee that buzzed around his head searching for a flower to land on? There was so much that he wanted to see, so much that he wanted to know now that he could. His subconscious reminded him that this was not the time for that though, when he spotted a figure bent at the waist in the garden just over the hill from him.

Ominis gulped against the knot forming in his throat, the lump pounding with the beat of his heart just under his ribs as he stepped out of the trees and into the clearing. He had never seen a creature as beautiful as you before; it was like everything in his life had led up to this very moment of meeting. Watching the way your hair glimmered under the summer sun like the jewels adorning his home as you tended your mothers garden, he was nothing more than a man in the presence of a nymph of the forest— something otherworldly, something too beautiful to touch. The sun danced across your skin like the finest silk, creating star-kissed freckles at the apex of your shoulders and down your toned arms, and oh, how could he do anything but remove his hat from his head and gaze at you with awed, enraptured revelry? The air around you smelled like his future— like pomegranates and the promise of forever. He felt in his very being that you were his one love, far before he truly understood the meaning of the word. The emotion could not be named with words, only the feeling of coming home. All he knew is that he needed to know you more than he needed to breathe, more than he needed to eat and drink and sleep and live. Your souls sang in tandem with each other, calling your names into the void and waiting for the shout to come back to them— to sing with them forevermore. Ominis was useless under your charm, like a siren luring an unsuspecting but oh so willing sailor to his doom under the frothing sea waves. He had never spoken to you, but he knew in that moment he would happily die by your hand if you would just meet his gaze one time. He would build whole worlds for you if that was what you wished— tear down entire galaxies if it would make you smile his way.

All of his dreams came true seconds later when you stood from your hunched position, tossing your hair over your shoulder in the intricate braid you wore, each strand decorated with the honeysuckle that bloomed at your feet, before turning and staring at the man before you. You startled at first, unaware that you were being admired for so long by someone so breathtaking. The blond haired beauty under your maple tree was like winter incarnate. His hair was quiffed and slicked away from his face, allowing you to see his strong jaw and perfectly sculpted facial structure. Your eyes drank him in like a garden in a drought with his tasteful three-piece suit, black from the collar at his neck to the wing-tips of his shoes— an unusual color for somewhere so sunny. He was as pale as fresh fallen snow with tiny moles breaking up the color— birdseed trapped in a thin layer of ice. He would be called monochrome if not for his eyes. They reminded you of the Grecian sea, those eyes. Like two pools of seafoam, or two small bouquets of baby's breath and cornflower. Your heart called to him like a lighthouse across a stormy ocean. Fate rarely ruled your life, you’d decided that from a young age after listening to the warnings of your mother, but if the Fates brought you him, you would listen to their words from now on. With one glance it felt like you had known him for years, and yet you didn’t even know his name. He was your past, your present, maybe even your future if you allowed it. He was not one of the flowers like you, more like one of the dead, but you’d happily plant your gardens in his domain. You’d plant flowers that thrived in the dark and the cold, flowers that only bloomed under moonlight, if it meant the universe would be kind enough to let you keep him.

It was you that spoke first, breaking the spellbound trance you both were in from the first moment of contact. “Hi…”

Your voice was like the sweetest music ever played— sweeter than those of the muses, those of the deific. They were nothing, for it was you who was truly divine. He was the moon, and how he longed to know the sun.

His voice was little more than a breath as he murmured in return, still caught up in the sheer transcendence of your beauty. “Hello…”

Your soft laugh shook him from his stupor, softening the frozen heart in his chest as you warmed him in both body and soul. He cleared his throat, shifting his feet for a moment before taking a bold but respectful step forwards, his hand reaching out for yours like a sunflower reaching towards the brightest star in the sky. Around you, the mockingbirds began to sing a tune for your love. You couldn’t help but think it was familiar, like something from a dream you’d had long ago. Their soft song echoed through the trees, each new whistle bringing a new melodious harmony.

La la la la la la la~

“My name is Hades,” he said, the softest smile you had ever seen turning the corners of his mouth.

You return his gaze shyly. There was a smear of dirt across your face, painted across the turn of your nose and the rosy apple of your right cheek like a thick splattering of freckles. The man thought he had never seen anything so beautiful.

“Persephone,” you whispered, smiling ruefully at the flustered pink that colored his face. “What took you so long?”

In a moment it was all over— Ominis’ world dyed grey once again and only the shadows of the things around him visible. Never had he mourned his sight before, but before he had not known the beauty of seeing the night sky in your eyes; he did not know the delightful turn of your lip when you grinned or the crinkle of your nose when you laughed. He knew now that you were not the thing that he could not have, you were the thing that the universe created just for him to hold. You and him were not just a weeping willow and a babbling brook; you were the water that breathed life into your roots and the tree that fed the fish under his waves. You were not simply the sun and the moon, passing constantly but never crossing paths for long; you were an eclipse, two celestial beings dancing together and showering the world with your lovely glow.

You both had done this dance before many a time— taken many a shape before. How could he have ever thought of you as anything other than his other half, his soulmate, his world? He revolved around you, and your benign gravity kept him steady.

That pull was why he had just enough courage to push open the door to the music room, stepping into the sunlit space and basking in the feeling of your seraph-like presence. Ominis knew exactly where you were when he spoke, his soul knowing the feeling of yours for longer than this earth had been breathing.

“Persephone.” It was a breath. A whisper. A prayer.

You looked at him like he hung the very stars you love so much in the sky. There was no one else in that moment, just the two of you and the soft echo of your past lingering in the lines of sheet music strewn across the piano bench.

“Hades,” you simpered, a smile glowing in your voice.

It was moments later that he was upon you, hugging you like your body needed to be a part of his, kissing you like you were the oxygen he needed to live. You met him with the same enthusiasm, finally whole after years of being apart. You pressed your face into his neck, soothing tiny kisses along any skin you can reach, stretching from his collarbones to the tip of his nose. He smiled down at you, his hands reaching up to cradle your face like he was holding starlight in his palms.

“I never thought I would find you again.”

You laugh, your own hands reaching up to cover his. His heart skips a beat when you nuzzle into his skin. “I knew we would find each other again, just as I knew the sun would rise again every morning.”

He was frowning now, a look that did not suit his face in the slightest. He couldn’t help but feel insecure after his years of festering in his terrible self worth. “But how?”

You flipped his world on its axis, removing his hands from your face and in turn placing your palms upon his, caressing your thumb along his jawbone. “Ominis, my darling Hades, did you think I ate those pomegranate seeds unwillingly? Did you think I did not wish to fall into your darkness with flowers in my hair?” You stood on your toes, bringing his face down further and raising yours to rest your temple against his. You found your happiness in his tiny smile. “My love, I chose you that day in the garden. I would find you in any lifetime, any version of reality that calls our name. I would never let you stay too far from me, that I promise to the gods themselves.”

He sealed your words with a kiss, accepting and agreeing with your terms proudly and eagerly. Never would you ever separate again.

And so there you stayed that day, curled in the far corner of the music room with your soft, no longer so lonely melody singing from the baby grand piano. You took turns feeding each other grapes from the vine, laughing like you were the world's sunlight and lounging under the tresses of your own created sky. Behind that, now closed, door was the real world, a terrible thing that brought torment and woe to even the happiest of souls, but in that little space at the top of the tower, you had found your own personal cosmos.

The king of the dead had finally found his queen of the flowers once again.

like what you read? here's more!

#tina speaks #hogwarts legacy #ominis gaunt x mc #ominis gaunt x reader #ao3 #ao3 fic #ao3 writer #ominis gaunt x you #ominis gaunt #soulmate au #harry potter soulmate au #reincarnation au #fluff #romantic fluff #hades and persephone #hades #persephone #greeky mythology #masterlist

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