#did so like i get that neither is ideal but at least one's the lesser evil :) nvm that it directly set the stage for the greater evil rathe | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cinaja · 3 years

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Before the Wall part 57

Masterlist

A/N: I've decided to use a more omniscient narrator for this chapter to allow me to jump between povs/places. I hope this isn't confusing, I usually don't write omniscient povs.

----

On the first day, the sun rises to a land drenched in blood. Maybe some of the citizens mistake it for the trick of the light at first, the red morning sun reflecting on the water, but soon enough, they realize that this is no illusion.

The news spread through the land like a great weave, bringing panic in its wake. The river running through the Black Land is essential, its water sustaining the life in the region. There are secondary rivers and wells, of course, but those are turned to blood as well. But Fae cannot drink blood, and neither can their cattle. They cannot use blood to water their crops, either.

The humans are not panicking, although the Fae do not notice this (humans are below their notice, and this goes double when they are currently so occupied with themselves). They are giddy with excitement, even though they are trying to hide it. Having been sent to fetch water for their masters, they were the first to notice something was wrong, and in the beginning, they were worried, but it wasn’t long before the first of them found out that the blood turns back to water in their hands.

In the Seraphim army camp, the soldiers are above all confused. It falls to Drakon to explain the situation to them, as Miryam is still resting in their tent, sleeping so deeply she might as well be unconscious. He keeps his explanations short since he does not want to give any spies who might be listening any important information, but he takes care to make it clear that the curse is set to only affect those who have harmed the human residents of the Black Land, so they should remain unharmed.

Later, in a tent with his army commanders, he goes more into detail. The curse is tied, he explains, to the suffering of the humans here, past and present, and it will continue to punish those who caused that suffering until the humans are freed. As long as they aren’t, things will continue to get worse.

After he has finished, his commanders are silent for a moment. Then, Sinna nods slowly. “If anyone disagrees with this approach,” she says, “you are free to return to Erithia. This decision will have no consequences for you, and no one will think you lesser for it.”

Looks are exchanged, some of them wary, others unsure. No one leaves, though.

On the other end of the country, the Alliance council receives the news of what is happening in the Black Land. Andromache smiles darkly, whispering good riddance to Nakia. Most of the Fae frown, muttering amongst themselves. In the end, a missive is sent out to Miryam, asking her to appear before the council and explain herself. It goes ignored.

In her lavish suite of rooms in her palace, Ravenia receives the news that her rivers are now running with blood together with a letter. It is sealed in the Erithian seal and when she opens it, there is only one word written on the paper: Surrender.

----

On the morning of the second day, Ravenia has the two witchers remaining in her service after Artax’s death herd three-hundred-forty-one humans into a witch circle, making it seven times seven times seven people in the circle in total, and orders them to break the curse. The witchers die. The humans die. And in answer, the earth under them rumbles. Cracks form in the land, running through the ground like spiderwebs.

Out of the cracks crawl insects. Lice and fleas and mosquitos. Within an hour, every Fae throughout the land is covered in itching bites. Some try to flee into the water, but the rivers are still running blood and anyone who does dare to go into that doesn’t last long inside.

Before midday, even the last of the Fae have noticed that the humans are miraculously unaffected by the insects.

Drakon spends the day sending out messengers to all the corners of the country. The message they bear is simple: Free your slaves and this will all end. Refuse, harm them, and it will grow worse until your country is reduced to ashes. He prays they will be reasonable.

A few hours later, Ravenia sends out messengers of her own: Every person who chooses to free their slaves and send them to the Erithian army is guilty of treason and will be executed accordingly.

----

On the third day, the livestock begins to grow sick. No one quite knows where it’s coming from. It’s like the grass has suddenly turned poisonous, even if this poison affects only domesticated animals. By now, people are truly beginning to panic. The water being turned to blood is already bad, but most of them still hope it will be turned back to water soon enough. Dead livestock remains dead, though, and it might cause problems for years to come.

Miryam is still in pain from the spell by then, but it is manageable enough that she feels she can probably get up without falling over immediately. Gritting her teeth, she forces herself into a sitting position on her bed and begins to fumble for some proper clothes. Getting dressed takes thrice as long as usual, but she does manage to stand without falling over, which she counts as a victory. (Less fortunate is the fact that her power is still drained.)

Slowly, Miryam pushes the tent’s entrance open. As soon as she steps outside, the entire camp seems to freeze. The soldiers, who went about their activities until a moment ago, stop mid-motion to stare at her. After a heartbeat, they seem to realize what they are doing and quickly look away, most of them returning to their activities with a stiffness that wasn’t there before.

Miryam desperately wants to tell them that they needn’t be nervous about her, but she forces herself to ignore the awkwardness. If they are scared of her, she will not make it better by calling them out on it. At least the humans don’t seem to be wary of her when she visits their camp – they are more excited than anything – and as the day progresses, the Seraphim relax as well.

In Lako, Ravenia’s situation is growing worse by the hour. Not only is her entire body itching dur to these cursed fleas, she is also under more and more pressure from her nobles. They want to see her acting, and ideally not in a way that sets of a plague of insects all over their country. The last thing Ravenia wants is to show any weakness to Miryam, but right now, another meeting seems inevitable, if only to convince her people that she isn’t just sitting around doing nothing. If it was up to her, she would simply attack the army camped before her city, but her own army is still several days away, and besides, her people don’t seem all too eager to provoke the person who is currently holding their water reserves hostage. So Ravenia grinds her teeth and sends a letter to Miryam, asking for a meeting.

When Miryam receives the letter half an hour later, she frowns and shakes her head. “I’m not going,” she says. “Negotiations? None of my demands are up to negotiations, and anyways, she isn’t in a position to negotiate.”

Of course, if Miryam doesn’t go, Ravenia might use it to pretend that there is no peace because Miryam refuses negotiations. On the other hand, if she does go, Ravenia will just as easily be able to pretend that it was Miryam who caused negotiations to fail, since they would be meeting in private this time, away from the palace and any spying eyes. Either way is a mess, and so Miryam will pick the more pleasant option, which is not going.

“I’ll go,” Drakon says, and when Miryam turns around to frown at him, he shrugs. “I know she likely doesn’t mean this offer, but if there’s any way to resolve this without bloodshed, I think we should take it.”

Miryam nods. She doesn’t exactly agree – mainly because she really does not think Ravenia will listen to reason before she is on the brink of dying of thirst – but she can understand why Drakon feels the need to try. She feels bad enough about the idea of him facing Ravenia alone that she almost offers to come along, though. But Drakon didn’t ask her to, and since she doesn’t want to look like she doesn’t trust him to handle Ravenia on his own, she stays silent.

Two hours later, Drakon sets out for the meeting with Ravenia. He is nervous, but not as nervous as he was during earlier meetings. He doesn’t think the meeting is a trap, and apart from that, there’s little Ravenia can do to him anymore.

They meet by the side of the Klei river. It is a strange meeting place, lacking all the splendour and grandeur of the palaces that hosted all their previous meetings. To Drakon, Ravenia looks entirely out of place here. He can only imagine her in palaces, surrounded by servants, guards and courtiers. Not standing alone in the blood-stained earth, no companions to be seen.

“I was expecting your wife,” Ravenia says by way of greeting.

She is wearing a long, loose silk dress and her usual golden jewellery, but even her expensive clothes cannot hide the stings covering her entire body. Somehow, she also seems smaller than usual, far less imposing.

In her palace, she always manages to make herself seem more-than-Fae, invincible and untouchable. Out here, with the red river only feet away, though, it is obvious that she is just a person who happened to be born into power.

“Miryam is otherwise occupied,” Drakon says. His voice is even, and he is surprised to find that he isn’t terrified. For once, Ravenia’s mere presence isn’t enough to make him want to cower.

“And what would I have to discuss with you?” Ravenia asks.

“You called this meeting,” Drakon says. “I’d assume you would know why you did it.”

Ravenia lets out a long-suffering sigh. “I called the meeting to convince my country’s nobility that I am doing something to solve this unpleasant curse business. If you had any understanding at all of how politics work, you would know that.”

The jab fails to hit its mark. Not long ago, it would have stung, but right now, Drakon doesn’t even understand why he ever let her words hurt him. She is a tyrant, a monster and slave owner. Cauldron, why does he care what she thinks of his competence as a ruler? If anything, he should take it as a complement if she thinks him a bad ruler.

“You ought to surrender,” he says. “No one died yet, but if you continue to refuse, people will die. Your people. End this now, before any lasting damage is done.”

He doesn’t even understand how there can be any debate for Ravenia, how she can so casually risk her peoples’ lives over an already-lost battle.

“I have no intention of surrendering to you,” Ravenia replies evenly.

“What other choice do you have?” He shakes his head. “You’ve lost. Do you truly want to wait until hundreds, thousands of your people have died before you will finally admit it? Would that satisfy your pride?”

“If you’re so concerned about my peoples’ lives, you should not have set off that curse. Make no mistake, Your Highness – any deaths that will happen in this will be on you and your wife.” She laughs. “Or maybe only your wife, since I doubt she even discussed it with you first. It must be such a relief for you to finally have handed over your country to someone else.”

Drakon stares at her, lightly shaking his head. How did he ever allow himself to be this terrified of her? She is just a person. Someone with power, yes, but a large part of her power also comes from other people allowing her to have power over them. And right now, in their current situation, she has no power at all if Drakon doesn’t play along with her games.

“I don’t need to listen to this,” he says, nearly smiles at the surprise on her face. “I’m just here because I wanted to see if there was a way to avoid unnecessary deaths. It seems there isn’t, so I’m leaving. If you change your mind, send a letter.”

He winnows away without giving her the chance to reply. The meeting might not have led anywhere, he might not have managed to convince Ravenia of a peaceful solution, but still, this feels like a victory, if a smaller and more personal one.

----

On the fourth day, people begin to grow sick. It’s like the sand has turned to acid – wherever it touches them, it leaves boils and burns. None of it is life-threatening, but it is certainly painful.

The council sends another missive to Miryam, demands that she is to explain herself growing more urgent. She writes back this time, a short, polite refusal. The last thing she needs right now is the council meddling in her decisions.

According to her estimations, the surrender should arrive within the day. Fae can go five days without water. They are on the fourth day and by now, even Ravenia should have realized that there will be no breaking this curse. Theoretically, she has until tomorrow, but it would be smarter to surrender now, when her people aren’t yet on the brink of dying from thirst and she still stands a chance of making her position seem less desperate.

No royal messenger arrives, though. Miryam spends most of the day walking around the camp, trying to hold casual conversations with people. The Seraphims’ nervousness around her has eased somewhat, as they seem to have realized that Miryam cursing a country does not mean that she will be acting any differently towards them.

A delegation from Lako arrives at dusk. Miryam’s heart leaps, but then, she sees that these people don’t come bearing Ravenia’s coat of arms. Their expensive clothes mark them as nobles, and indeed Miryam recognizes a few of them, but they were not sent by Ravenia.

The leader is a woman dressed in a long, purple gown. It is cut longer than is fashion, with a high neckline and long sleeves, but even those don’t entirely manage to conceal the boils and stings all over her body. After a moment’s hesitation, Miryam recognizes her as Lady Seliah, one of the higher-ranking nobles in the city. She bows before Miryam, which comes as a surprise.

“Your Highness,” she says, then bows before Drakon who appeared next to Miryam. “Your Highness.”

“Lady Seliah,” Miryam replies, watching surprise flicker over the other woman’s face. Of course, she wouldn’t remember that they have met before. “To what do I owe this visit?”

“We have come to ask, no, to beg you to end this curse.” Seliah keeps her eyes lowered as she speaks. “We will gladly meet your demands – “

“Will you?” Miryam cuts her off, although she keeps her tone pleasant. “Because I think I made my demands quite clear, and still, I have not yet received news of you freeing your slaves.”

Seliah squirms. “Queen Ravenia has forbidden us from releasing them. We would gladly meet your terms, but there is no way for us to do so without risking our lives.”

“Given how easily you accepted my peoples’ suffering – and, in fact, accept the risk to their lives right now – you’ll understand if I find myself struggling to sympathize,” Miryam replies. What is it with these Fae always thinking that no matter what atrocities they commit, they will come out unharmed? Do they expect Miryam to be moved by them suddenly feeling threatened by the very ruler they supported all these years?

“I’m not asking in my name, but in the name of the innocent people who are suffering,” Seliah says.

A noble dressed in fine silks as a champion for the common people. Well, that is certainly something new. If this was the route they wanted to go, you’d think they would have been smart enough to at least send someone who isn’t noble.”

“And it’s the innocents in this country I am thinking of when I refuse,” Miryam replies, deliberately twisting her words. After all, which Fae here is truly innocent? She shakes her head. “If Ravenia is your problem, I suggest you deal with it. And quickly, since I believe you might be running out of water soon.”

If Seliah is angry, she hides it well. She merely bows her head, thanks Miryam for her time and returns to the city.

By sunset, her and the other nobles who accompanied her are dead, their bodies hanging from the walls of Lako, a message to anyone else in the city who might consider going behind Ravenia’s back to negotiate with the enemy.

----

By the fifth day, the earth has taken to trembling slightly every couple of minutes. That’s not the worst of it, though. When the sun rises, it is quickly obscured by a buzzing cloud of insects. Locusts, who descend upon the fields, bushes and trees with a vengeance. Within hours, they have devoured any leaves they managed to get a hold on, destroying this year’s harvest within hours. People are panicking.

And still, there is no word from Ravenia.

This is not what Miryam planned. Ravenia ought to have surrendered by now. She needs to surrender – without any water supply, she has no other choice. Yet five days are almost over. By now, people must be dying of thirst, and still, Ravenia hasn’t sent word.

Miryam wanders through the camp, restless. Something is going wrong, but she doesn’t know what. She supposes it’s possible that Ravenia has people winnowing water in, but they could never bring enough for the entire population. And surely Ravenia wouldn’t sacrifice thousands of her people, right? (Killing thousands of people was never part of Miryam’s plan. She knew there might be casualties, yes, and she willingly accepted it. She did not anticipate that everyone might die, though.)

She figures out what went wrong a few hours before sunset, when a stack of barrels in the centre of the camp she passes for the fifth time that evening catches her attention. She stops one of the soldiers rushing past.

Nodding towards the barrels, she asks, “What’s in those?”

“It’s mostly water, Your Highness,” he replies. “It is customary to keep some storages in case the river gets poisoned.”

Miryam nods slowly, horror dawning on her at the realization and growing worse as she looks into one of the barrels. The water in those barrels is still water. Every river, every will and spring in the entire Black Land is running blood, but a curse on the land apparently does not affect water that is being stored in canisters and barrels. Most of the Black Land relies on water from the river, yes, but the cities would still have some storages, or at least some other beverages like wine, to last them for a few days.

This is all wrong.

Some part of Miryam is glad that at least she didn’t just cause hundreds of thousands of people to die from thirst, but at the same time… It wasn’t supposed to go like this.

It’s the same thing she tells Drakon, ten minutes later in their tent, after having explained to him and Sinna what happened.

“This isn’t how it was meant to happen,” she whispers, more to herself than to anyone else. “They should have been surrendering by now. Fae can’t go for more than five days without water – they would have had to surrender.”

This was the plan. Take away their water and make them uncomfortable. Scare them, force them into a surrender. This was the plan. No one would even have needed to die if only they had been reasonable.

Drakon’s face is dark. “Will Ravenia distribute her water supplies?” He asks.

Miryam flinches. She hadn’t even considered that angle yet. “I don’t know,” she says.

Ravenia will want to keep enough water for herself and her nobles, that much is certain. But at the same time, she will need to appease her subject somehow if she doesn’t want to risk riots.

“To the nobles for sure,” she says after a moment’s hesitation. “Probably also some citizens. But the poorer ones, those who aren’t living in the city…” She shrugs and shakes her head at the same time.

This isn’t how she meant it to happen. The people who will die will still be slave owners, still criminals, but… It wasn’t the lower classes she meant to hit with this. And she knew people would likely die, both from her curse and the consequences that might follow, but she had thought the deaths would be few and far between.

Now, they likely won’t be.

“Alright, then,” Sinna says, crossing her arms. “What will that curse of yours do next?”

“I don’t know,” Miryam says, voice small. She didn’t plan this far, didn’t think it would get this far. (Didn’t really care, if she is being entirely honest.) “This is complicated magic, and I only really planned it out for five days.” Because after five days, every Fae here was supposed to be on the brink of dying from thirst. “The curse is set in a way that will make it get worse, but how…” She shrugs. “I’m sorry, but I can’t tell.”

Sinna is silent for a moment. Then, she says slowly, “So you set a curse on an entire country without knowing what it will do should it go on for longer than you planned.” She shakes her head and cuts a glare at Drakon. “Both of you. And you didn’t think that might turn into a problem?” When neither of them reply, she sighs. “Wonderful.”

Miryam stares down at her feet and doesn’t say that she would do it all again for a chance to save her people.

----

On the sixth day, the sun doesn’t rise. Or maybe it does, but its light certainly doesn’t reach the Black Land. Throughout the country, torches are being lit, but even their light barely manages to pierce the darkness that has fallen. It is a darkness that can be felt, thick and heavy like ink.

Once again, the humans get away easily. To them, the darkness feels soothing and while they can’t see anywhere near as good as in light, they can still easily make out shapes.

Many of them decide to use the opportunity while it is there. Their masters cannot see in the darkness – they can. In thousands, humans flee from the cities, vanish from houses and fields and make for the centre of the country where they have heard they will find safety.

In one of the cities to the west, the Fae leadership decides enough is enough. They will not be humiliated by a mortal like this, and they will not allow their slaves to get away unscathed, to laugh at their misery and celebrate their own victory. They will show to that mortal girl who thinks she can force their hand and attack their country, show to every mortal worm what happens when they try to cross the Fae.

They give out the order to have every human in the city brought to the marketplace and killed.

The news spread through the city like wildfire. The humans clutter together, hold on tight to each other and prepare for the end. Most of the Fae stand tightly together as well – but where the humans are silent, they are whispering, arguing. By that time, it is common knowledge that this curse is punishment for slavery, for harming humans. It is also common knowledge that Miryam’s policy for people who murder humans is simple: Execution. In other words, killing a whole group of humans does not seem to be the smartest course of action in this situation.

The large majority of the Fae in the Black Land, the Fae in this city, doesn’t care at all about human lives. They do, however, care a whole lot about their own lives. And right now, they are quickly discovering that they aren’t ready to die so that their leaders can get a brief moment of empty defiance against the people invading their country – especially when those invaders have already promised to be lenient if their demands are met.

Within a few hours, leadership over the city has quietly changed hands. The city council has been, for the time being, locked into the dungeons. After quite some arguments and even more grumbling, the humans are allowed to leave the slave quarters and instead given proper rooms in the Fae’s houses. No one is quite fond of that arrangement, but well, the curse is said to be tied to human suffering, and since no one is quite sure what counts as suffering, being extra careful seems only sensible.

Of course, the story of what happened there does not stay confined to one city. Within hours, all of the neighbouring towns have heard and many of them quietly decide to follow their example. That there is no immediate reaction from Ravenia only makes people grow bolder.

A meeting is called and held that night, with a good half of the Black Land’s city leadership in attendance. After a few hours of arguing, they come to the conclusion that there is only one sensible course of action right now: To fulfil Miryam’s demands even if Ravenia refuses to, and hope that will be enough to keep them safe. They are all aware that Ravenia would have their heads for this decision, but they have long reached the point where a soon-to-be-dead queen is far, far less daunting than what might happen if they refuse Miryam’s demands for any longer.

Throughout the country, Fae are beginning to die of thirst by now. Some are lucky enough to have found water, and the children, as it turns out, can still drink from the rivers and wells, but the death toll still climbs quickly, reaching and surpassing one thousand before midday. Everyone who survives is hungry and miserable and, by now, ready to do just about anything to end this curse. Still, though, Ravenia does not surrender.

----

On the seventh day, a thunderstorm breaks out. Lighting flashes through the sky, piercing the darkness that is still reining in the country for seconds at a time. Thunder roars, and hail falls to the ground in giant chunks, destroying fields and injuring or killing anyone who is stupid enough to be outside. (Notably, it doesn’t hit a single human although some of them have been sent outside to bring in any surviving livestock.)

Throughout the country, cities and villages are beginning to free their slaves and send them on their way towards the capital. Groups of thousands form, slowly marching through the storm.

On the other side of the Continent, the council is horrified. At least that’s what the Fae members keep repeating, even though most of them are honestly more horrified by the idea of what Miryam being able to completely wreck a country within a few days might mean for them than by the moral issue of sending giant chunks of ice raining down on a country. Meanwhile, Andromache is just about ready to punch the next person to talk about how horrifying Miryam’s actions are, especially when these are the people who, through years and centuries past, were never once been horrified by the crimes committed against humans.

She does not see the undercurrent moving through the Alliance, just below the surface of civility and righteous outrage. She does not notice the looks that are being exchanged while the human councilmembers are no looking, the meetings that are held, in secret and behind closed doors. Zeku notices, though, and he watches the events unfold in silence. He could stop it still, he supposes, or at least try to alert someone to it. But he has his own people to think of, and he cannot throw their lives away over a lost cause. Besides, it’s not like he didn’t try to warn Miryam, time and again. No one can blame him that she never listened.

The seventh day is also the day when Mor finally loses her patience. She has been watching in silence so far, horror growing with each day, unable to comprehend what she is seeing. In the beginning, she tried to tell herself that Miryam wasn’t harming anyone, that she was just trying to pressure the Fae into doing her bidding, but now, people are dying and Miryam still shows no sign of stopping.

She doesn’t understand. Cannot wrap her mind around how Miryam – Miryam who values kindness and hates unnecessary cruelty – can do this.

Mor has come to the decision that she will make her see reason. This needs to end, now, and somehow, Mor will convince Miryam. She steps out of her tent where she was hiding from the thunderstorm outside and begins to search the camp for Miryam.

The Fae camp is emptier than usual. It seems that even with the storm not affecting them, most of the soldiers prefer to hide in their tents. The humans are out and about, though, sitting about campfires and talking. Some of them must have dragged some of the smaller balls of hail over, and now, children are gathered around as some of the adult divide up the ice between them. They seem to be enjoying themselves. And well, why shouldn’t they? After all, none of the curses ever affect them.

It is that precision, more than anything else, that scares more. Because a spell this precise is no accident, no result of a moment’s desperation. It is calculated, and that makes it worse.

She finds Miryam on the second round through the camp, as she is just about to enter her tent. Drakon and Sinna are with her. Mor hurries over to join them.

“You need to end this,” she says by way of greeting. This was not how she meant to approach the topic, but damnit, there are chunks of ice that are bigger than her raining from the sky.

Sinna arches an eyebrow. “Hello to you, too, Mor,” she says. “Pleasure meeting you.”

Mor ignores her and instead turns to Miryam. “You need to end this,” she repeats. “Before any more people die. Miryam, please, so many people are already dead, it can’t go on like this.”

Miryam sighs. “And what other choice do I have?” She sounds so tired. Looks tired, too. Mor didn’t notice the last few days, but she looks like she hasn’t slept at all since she cast the spell. “If I were to end this now – which I can’t, by the way – what do you think would happen? This is the only protection my people have, Mor.”

On another day, Miryam’s words might have gotten through to Mor. Today, though, she doesn’t even notice the implications of Miryam saying that she can’t undo the curse, she is far too caught up in her horror and confusion about how Miryam can stand there and defend what is happening.

She shakes her head. “No,” she whispers. “This goes too far, Miryam.” Miryam doesn’t reply and Mor gestures wildly to the sky. “Have you looked outside lately? There are human-sized chunks of ice falling from the sky. You can’t just destroy an entire country for revenge!”

Miryam’s face hardens. “You think I’m doing this for revenge?” She asks.

Yes, Mor does think that. At least partially. If it wasn’t out of revenge, no one would ever do this. Certainly not Miryam, who hates hurting people.

“Does it matter?” She shoots back, voice rising. Heads are beginning to turn in their direction. “There is no reason good enough to justify this! You are killing thousands of innocents!”

“Funny, because I thought I was saving the innocents, and the people who are dying were all slave owners,” Miryam snaps, although she keeps her voice hushed. Then, she shakes her head and her posture relaxes slightly. “Besides, there’s no point in having this argument. I cannot stop this curse – it’s set to continue until the Black Land frees its slaves.”

Mor shakes her head, a chill running down her spine. Miryam couldn’t have… She wouldn’t have… She would never have set a spell to destroy a country without leaving a backdoor to stop it.

“And what if Ravenia doesn’t surrender?” She asks. She wants to take Miryam by the shoulders and shake her until she understands, but from the way Sinna is currently looking at her, she probably wouldn’t get away with that. “What then, Miryam?”

Now, finally, Miryam lowers her eyes. So she does feel bad after all. But it is clear that she still doesn’t regret what she did. To her, this seems more like this is an unfortunate side effect, something she doesn’t like to consider but still willingly accepted to get what she wants.

“Then I imagine the next Loyalist country will think twice before refusing to surrender,” Sinna answers for Miryam. “And now lower your voice. You’re making a scene.”

Mor stares at her like she’s seeing her for the first time. Then, she turns around to Drakon, who has been watching in silence until now. He has to agree with her. Surely he cannot like this any more than she does.

“Drakon,” she says, almost pleading, “you cannot agree with this. Tell me you don’t think this is right.”

But Drakon, Cauldron damn him, merely shakes his head. “Five hundred thousand people, Mor,” he says softly. “We are talking about five hundred thousand people who will all be murdered if Ravenia gets her way.”

Mor gapes at him, unable to believe that he is taking Miryam’s side on this. If there is one person who she was sure would disagree with this, it was Drakon. But well, Miryam is his mate. Maybe she should have expected that he would back her up in anything, no matter what.

She turns back to Miryam. “There are lines!” She snaps. By now, people are beginning to stop and stare, but Mor doesn’t care. “Lines you can’t cross, no matter what! And murdering thousands of civilians is one of those lines!”

“And what would you have me do instead?” Miryam asks. She doesn’t sound angry, just tired. Somehow, that makes it worse. If she was angry, Mor could at least tell herself that this was a spontaneous decision made out of anger or fear, not a calculated plan. “Do nothing and allow them all to be murdered rather than jeopardize my moral integrity? Would that make me a good person in your eyes?”

Mor opens her mouth – and closes it again when she realizes she doesn’t have a reply. The way Miryam puts it, there is no possible reply she can give. She doesn’t know how to explain that this simply isn’t right, and she’s too angry, too desperate to be particularly eloquent anymore. How did she come to be standing here, arguing with Miryam about whether it is okay for her to take an entire country hostage or not?

Miryam sighs and takes a step towards Mor. “You think I like this any more than you do?” She asks. “Believe me, if there was any other way, I would have gladly taken it.”

Mor takes a step backwards. “Yeah, well, I’m sure Ravenia thought she was justified in destroying Erithia as well,” she snaps.

The tension that takes over the room is almost physical. It’s like everyone tenses at once, like the temperature drops by a few degrees. Sinna takes half a step towards Mor, hand clenched to a fist. Drakon grabs her by the arm and stops her before she can get any further.

“That was a sorry comparison, Mor,” he says softly.

“Oh, yes, my comparison is a problem but Miryam casually killing thousands of people is perfectly fine,” Mor snaps.

She is vaguely aware that she should probably take her comment back, apologize. But she is far too angry and she still doesn’t understand.

“I apologize,” Miryam finally says. Her voice is icy, her face carefully blank. “I assumed I made it clear enough what the goal of this campaign would be, and what I was ready to do to achieve it. I wouldn’t want to make you participate in anything you are uncomfortable with, so if you truly feel this way, you are, of course, free to leave.”

“I certainly don’t need your permission for this,” Mor replies, voice equally sharp. “You go commit all the crimes you feel like, but I want no part in that.”

With that, she spins around and pushes through the newly-assembled crowd of onlookers towards the edge of the camp. She winnows away as soon as she reaches the edge of the wards.

Miryam remains standing in front of her tent, staring at the spot where Mor was standing until a moment ago. Then, she slowly looks up at the soldiers who are standing around, staring. She hopes they didn’t hear everything that happened.

“We should probably go inside,” she mutters, pain twisting in her chest. She tries very, very hard not to think about what Mor said, or about the fact that this might just have been the end of their friendship. (Not necessarily, she tries to tell herself. People argue all the time and usually, they find a way to fix their relationships afterwards.)

As soon as they are inside, she slumps down on one of the cushions lying on the ground. She pulls her knees up to her chin and stares down at the ground. Drakon sits down next to her. Hesitantly, he reaches a hand for her, letting it hover inches away from her arm, until Miryam leans against him.

“Well, that was nasty,” Sinna says.

Drakon nods, face tight.

“I don’t want all these people to die,” Miryam says. “Of course I don’t, I just…” She shakes her head, fumbling for words.

She understands Mor’s anger, doesn’t blame her for it, and yet… She never made a secret of it, did she? Time and time again, she said that she would do whatever it takes to free her people. She always, always made it known that she would do anything, cross every line if it meant her people could walk free. So why is Mor surprised now?

The problem, she thinks, is that people use the words “whatever it takes” too casually. It’s just like with the word “hate” – people use it so often, so easily, that it loses its original meaning. When people promise “I will do whatever it takes”, they usually mean “I will try really hard”. There’s always some kind of line, though, something they won’t be able to do. They mean “I will go until a certain point, and if I haven’t reached my goal by then, well, no one can really blame me, right?”

And Miryam doesn’t have a problem with that mindset. People should have lines. It is deeply concerning when they don’t. She doesn’t blame Mor for disagreeing with her methods or not going any further, either. But it’s not like Miryam wasn’t honest.

Besides, lines or no lines, surely what Miryam is doing isn’t that horrible? It is terrible, sure, but Mor seems to be forgetting that the only people who are affected, the only people who die, are slave owners who, through seven years of war, refused to stop owning people as property. It’s not that Miryam wants every slave owner to die, she doesn’t even want these people to die, but they are hardly innocents. Each and every one of them has the choice to free their slaves and convince others to do the same. If they don’t, why would Miryam coddle them, these Fae who committed so many crimes against her people? Why is it that they get to commit atrocity after atrocity and still be considered innocent bystanders in this conflict?

“I don’t know what she expects of me,” she says out loud, jumping to her feet. She promised herself that she wouldn’t be angry with anyone for being horrified at what she is doing, but right now, she just can’t help it. “That I act perfect about everything? How am I supposed to free a single human if Ravenia can have each and every one of them murdered at will, but I am apparently a monster if I so much as kill a few slave owners?”

Drakon rises as well and puts a hand on her arm. “Mor was just upset,” he says. “I’m sure she didn’t mean it.”

Miryam is far less sure of that. For whatever reason, Mor cannot accept what she is doing and she highly doubts that will change.

“It’s a matter of visibility, I think,” Sinna says. “Wars usually kill far more civilians than this, but what you are doing is very flashy. Besides, those deaths are usually presented as accidents – even if they aren’t – while you appear to be attacking civilians on purpose.”

“Well, those civilians are slave owners and I’m trying to get them free the slaves,” Miryam says drily.

“I’m not saying you are wrong. I’m saying people will be more easily horrified by this because it is so visible.” Sinna shrugs. “It doesn’t make sense. I mean, this entire war killed far more civilians than what you are doing now, yet no one ever blamed you for starting it.”

Miryam freezes, staring over at Sinna. Some part of her realizes that she meant well, but… it’s bad enough to think about the thousand-or-so people who died in the last few days. She really did not need to be reminded that technically, every person who died in the entire war is her fault.

This is all too much. Why must everything always be her responsibility? All these hundreds of thousands of lives… no single person should be responsible for so much. It’s always her needing to make these choices, and while she thinks she is right, she really doesn’t have a way of knowing and this is just too much to handle.

She needs to get away.

“You’ll excuse me,” Miryam says, jumping to her feet. She pushes the tent’s entrance aside and rushes out of the tent.

The moment she steps outside, she realizes that this was a mistake. Soldiers pause to stare at her, their gazes almost a physical weight. Momentum carrying her forward, Miryam keeps walking.

Before she has made it more than two steps, Drakon catches up with her. He must have moved inhumanely fast, because he manages to be by her side quickly enough to make it seem like he was walking out with her all along.

“Sorry,” Drakon says as their guards fall into place behind them. “Sinna was trying to be comforting.”

Miryam nods. “I’m not angry,” she says, and she really isn’t. There’s just a wave crashing down around her and she can feel herself drowning and she needs to get out. “I just need a moment alone.”

She can feel Drakon’s hesitation, and his worry. But she isn’t trying to shut him out, really. She just… well. Sometimes, for some things, she needs time alone. And right now, she desperately needs to be alone, and out of this camp, away from watching eyes.

“Can we talk later?” She asks.

Drakon nods. “Sure. I have a meeting, anyways. I should probably go.” He squeezes her hand. “See you later.”

Miryam nods, manages a smile and hurries off. As soon as she leaves the tent, though, she realizes that being alone is an illusion. A group of five guards is trailing her. In the camp, that might have been easy to ignore, but as soon as she leaves it, it becomes painfully obvious that she is being followed.

Still, she does her best to ignore it, but it is simply impossible. For all that these guards are trying to be inconspicuous, Miryam knows they are there. And as long as they are there, she needs to keep up appearances when all she really needs is some time alone with her feelings to sort through them without constantly being under inspection from others. And she trusts her guards, she does, but there is always the chance that someone might be a spy. Or even without ill intent, they might just end up talking in the camp about how their Princess is losing control, and that would be bad enough.

Her hands begin to shake and she can feel a sob building somewhere in her chest. Somewhere close by, a chunk of ice hits the ground, sand spraying to all sides. Miryam abruptly stops walking and turns around to her guards.

“I would like to be alone for a bit,” she says. “Would you please wait here?”

Her guards exchange looks. “Forgive me, Your Highness, but we can’t… I mean…” He hesitates, looking down at his toes.

“A few minutes alone can’t be too much to ask, can they?” Miryam snaps.

Her guards flinch, and Miryam immediately feels bad. Now she is being an ass to the people whose job it is to protect her. Of course they can’t let her out of sight in the middle of a war, in enemy territory. But she really, really needs to be alone right now, preferably before her control fractures entirely.

Miryam takes a deep breath, trying to fight her rising panic, and looks around. There is a ruin peeking out of the sand in the distance. Not much of it is visible, but it might provide some cover.

“I’ll go over there,” she says and points. “And you stay here. That way, you’ll be able to keep an eye on me and I get some time alone.”

Still, Kalirin, the head of her guards, doesn’t seem entirely convinced. “Your Highness…”

Miryam sighs. “If anything happens, I’ll scream. Until then, you stay here.”

With that, she turns around and walks towards the ruin. The sand crunches under her feet and gets stuck between her toes. The camp itself is closer to the river, where the sand gives way to fertile earth and soft grass, but here, she is standing in an ocean of sand. The ruin pokes out of it like a shipwreck, half-buried and destroyed.

The sandstone the building was made of is withered by the centuries, but Miryam finds an entrance. She has to shove a bit of sand aside, but then, there is enough space for her to squeeze through.

As soon as she is safely hidden from sight, her composure cracks. A sob breaks out of her, an ugly, harsh sound, and then she is on her knees, sobbing. She curls up in the tiny space she made for herself and lets the tears flow.

Eventually, the tears stop. Miryam pushes herself up on her elbows and immediately bangs her head on the ceiling. “Ow,” she mutters and leans her back against the wall. She is trembling slightly and her face is probably swollen from all the crying.

She doesn’t want to go back. If she just stays here, she will never have to face the consequences of what she did. (It isn’t realistic, of course, but just for the moment, it’s nice to imagine.) She tilts her head backwards and stares up at the ceiling.

There are figures carved into it. That in itself isn’t unusual – murals and carvings are popular here – and Miryam is about to turn away when she hesitates. Having lived in the palace in Lako for years, she is familiar with the art the Black Land Fae favour as well as the major historic styles. This style is unfamiliar to her, though.

On any other day, Miryam would have dismissed it, but right now, she jumps at the chance to distract herself. (If she is thinking about these carvings, she isn’t thinking about her argument with Mor, after all.) It is too dark in here for her to make out much of the details, so she begins to shove more sand away from the entrance.

It takes a while, but eventually, Miryam has shoved away enough sand that it’s no darker inside the building than outside. (Which means pitch-black in both cases, but this darkness, Miryam can see through with little difficulty.) Now, with more light, it becomes increasingly clear that these carvings are old, far older than Miryam first thought. She twists around a bit to get a better look, brushes some dust away until she can make out one of the carvings, depicting a woman with a spear raised over her head. Her hair is tied back into hundreds of tiny braids, revealing rounded ears.

The woman in the carving is human.

Miryam’s heart leaps. She stares at the carving for a moment, then begins to hectically push away the sand from the rest of them. A group of people sitting around a table. A woman bathing in a river. People celebrating on a barge, a sunset in the background. There are more carvings in the back, but here, the passage gets too narrow for Miryam to squeeze through and there is too little light to make out the carvings.

Every single person in the carvings she found is human, though. And the Fae of the Black Land never depict humans in any way, deeming them too unimportant to commit and effort into creating drawings or carvings of them. Which means…

It means that these carvings were made by humans. Sometime, likely millennia ago, humans built this building and carved scenes from their lives into the walls.

It means that Ghost was right. Long ago, so long it has been forgotten by the world, there were free humans in this land. Maybe one of the women in the carvings is even the queen he talked about, Rashida. This land belonged to them, they spent their lives here in freedom, and they left traces of it in the walls.

Oh, how she wishes Jurian was here to see this.

Miryam runs her hands over the carvings like that will bring the scenes to life, summon some faint echo of the people who once carved these scenes. She so desperately wishes she could imagine what it was like, but she can’t even truly imagine the Black Land under human rule.

In another world, one where the Fae never took this country away from her ancestors, she might have been born free. She might have lived a happy life, never needing to know war and suffering. She might have loved this country as fiercely as she now hates it, loved it as the humans who made these carvings surely did.

In this world, though, Miryam cannot bring herself to feel any sense of positive connection to this land, no matter its history. This will never be here home. But if she succeeds, then perhaps in a few years, other humans will feel differently. If part of the Black Land goes to the humans, there will be human children born in this country who must never know slavery, who will love this land as a home. They will have everything Miryam didn’t, everything humans in the past had.

And if she needs to burn this country to the ground to get there, then so be it.

----

On the eighth day, the sky starts raining fire. It falls from the sky in huge balls, trailing tails of light behind themselves like comets. Maybe the first Fae to see them in the dark mistook them for shooting stars, or marvelled at their beauty. Maybe some even thought the sudden light in the sky might signal an end to this horrible curse.

They soon learn better.

Where the ice was devastating, the fire is worse. It slams through houses, through wood and stone as if it where paper and sets everything in its wake on fire. Soon enough, the darkness that is still reining throughout the country is replaced by the flickering, orange glow of flames devouring anything in their paths. Throughout the villages and cities, Fae are rushing around, trying desperately to put out the fires, forced to resort to blood from the river instead of water. It isn’t enough, though. Even the fire magic so many of the High Fae here have doesn’t manage to keep the flames at bay.

Miryam watches the flames from afar. The human and Seraphim camp is still dark around her, untouched by the flames, but she can make out Lako in the distance, a glowing orb orange light. She wonders if Ravenia is there, wonders how she feels to see her city go up in flames around her. For a brief moment, she wishes she could see the look on her face.

The triumph that flickers through her at the thought is short-lived. For the most part, she feels terrible. If she is being entirely honest, though, terrible is all she allows herself to feel. If she only feels bad enough about herself, maybe the guilt and horror will be able to drown out the part of her that rejoices at the sight of the city she hated so much in flames, these people who caused her and her people so much pain finally paying for it, Ravenia’s kingdom that was built on human blood crumbling around her.

Miryam could have lived, she thinks, without knowing that she is capable of watching a country burn, knowing that this will cost thousands of lives, and feeling triumphant.

Only a few miles away in Lako, Ravenia stands on one of the many balconies in her palace and stares out at her burning city. All day long, people have been rushing around, trying to put out the flames, but what good does it do when new fire keeps falling from the sky without pause? Even now, comets of fire are shooting down towards her city, tearing through buildings and people. Destroying millennia old buildings, killing and burning.

Ravenia tears her eyes away from the flames and looks out into the darkness where she knows the mortal worm who caused all this has set her camp. Oh, what she would give to see her head spiked to the castle walls. She would set fire to her capital herself, burn down each and every house by hand, if it means that she could get her hands on Miryam in exchange.

She knows, though, that Miryam is beyond her reach. With her army refusing orders, she has no way to get to the girl and she knows that by tomorrow, it will all be over anyways.

If it was up to her, she would take this to the bitter end. Let Miryam burn down the entire country, but Ravenia would see to it that she doesn’t get a single human out alive. She would kill them all and leave Miryam alone in the ashes, choking on her empty victory.

But Ravenia’s people are cowards. Weak-willed, traitorous cowards. Even now, she can see them gathering in the streets, whispering, cursing her name. They have been at it for some time now. Yesterday, when the hail started, Ravenia’s spies first reported that they were talking of an uprising, but now that it’s fire raining from the sky instead of ice, they are actually ready to go through with it.

Ravenia does not wish to surrender. Everything in her rebels against the idea of admitting defeat against a mortal worm, one of her former slaves no less. Yet she doesn’t doubt that if she doesn’t, her own people will drag her out of her palace and tear her apart with their bare hands. Maybe they will send her head to Miryam along with the surrender whoever they chose as their leader will sign, and while the idea of having to surrender and be exiled or executed stings, being usurped and killed by her own people is even more unbearable. If this is the end, then at least she will face it proudly.

Ravenia does not wish to surrender. But in the end, surrender she does.

----

On the ninth day, the sun rises to a destroyed country. The rivers may be running water again, but the end of the curse did not erase its effects. The fields are still destroyed, most of the land burned to ashes, the buildings in ruins. Thousands of people dead.

The palace is deserted. Putting Ravenia and her highest-ranking government officials in chains and sending them to Telique was the first thing Miryam and Drakon did upon taking control of the city. The nobles who were not imprisoned fled to their estates in the countryside, apparently fearing that the invaders might change their minds, and any humans who used to work here have no desire to return.

Miryam had no desire to return, either, and yet she did. Drakon merely shook his head when she asked him if he wanted to return to the palace one last time, but she felt she had to go and so she went.

Slowly, she walks through the deserted halls. There are a million memories connected to this place, and not a single one of them good. She isn’t entirely sure what she is looking for. Some sort of closure, perhaps. Not healing – that will take years and years still – but something to help her make her peace. She knows Drakon found it during his meeting with Ravenia, but when Miryam saw the queen being marched off in chains earlier, she only felt a bitter satisfaction. It doesn’t make the memories of what happened sting less, though.

She reaches the throne room. No guards to be seen, she pushes the doors open herself and steps inside. The hall is entirely empty. A polished floor, artfully decorated walls, an empty throne Ravenia will never sit on again. It looks strangely peaceful, deceptively unthreatening.

This is where Miryam watched her mother and so many other humans, more than she can count, die. This is where she stood, day after day for three years, cowering behind Ravenia’s throne. Where she broke into a million pieces.

She doesn’t know what she is looking for. There is no closure here, not for her. For all that she might want to lock her memories of this place away, it is not possible.

But maybe that’s alright. She has won the war, freed her people. Fulfilled her promise. She isn’t fool enough to think that things will be easy from here on, but she has decades to find a way to make it work. Learn to live with the nightmares instead of run from them. Deal with what was done to her, and what she did. Make a world where no one will ever have to go through the same things as her.

She has her entire life left, and she won’t waste another moment of it in this nightmare.

Miryam turns her back on this horrible, cruel place, this lavish palace now turned crumbling ruin. She does not plan on ever returning – not to this place, and not to this country. Slowly, she walks out of the palace gates one last time.

Outside of the city, she finds her people. They are camped below the city walls, thousands and thousands of them. All of them amazingly, miraculously alive. From where she is standing, she can see children running around between the tents, chasing each other. One of them lets out a breathless laugh.

And doesn’t that alone make every bit of blood and pain, every horrible loss and difficult decision that led her here worth it?

Miryam closes her eyes and lifts her face to the sun shining above. I came back for you, she thinks. Nine years and a war and countless deaths between then and now, but I made it. You are free. We are all free.

----

On the other end of the Continent, Ravenia, formerly Queen of the Black Land, is given a truly unpleasant cell. It comes as a shock, at least to her. She is a queen, after all. Surely they are not going to lock her up in a dreary hole like this, even if she is slated for execution? She always knew the Alliance has little manners, but this is even worse than what she expected. (Unbeknownst to her, some of the Fae on the council were in favour of giving her a pleasant suite of rooms, but they quickly got shouted down by their human colleagues.)

While in the Black Land, humans are travelling towards the capital where so many of their peers are already waiting, Ravenia sits in her cell and stares at the wall. While, eventually, Miryam, Drakon, their army and the hundreds of thousands of humans they are escorting make for the Erythrian Sea where they have arranged for a fleet of ships to escort them across the narrow channel into a more friendly kingdom, Ravenia grumbles about her food and the lack of proper entertainment and pretends, for whoever is watching (which, really, are only a few guards), that this cell is her palace and she still queen.

Her solitude is interrupted just over a week after she was thrown into the cell. Emperor Shey steps into the room. He is dressed in a pristine chemise, deep blue coat slung over his shoulders and his light hair shimmering in the candlelight. Ravenia rises, pretending she is as well-dressed as he is, even though her looks have suffered significantly in the last week.

“Your Excellency,” she says. She does not incline her head (after all, she is Ravenia of the Black Land and she bows to no one, even if she is a prisoner). “I would offer you a seat, but I seem to lack a chair to offer.”

Shey nods. “I’m afraid my mortal allies have little sense for hospitality.” He makes to lean against the wall, seems to notice that it is covered in dirt, and wrinkles his nose. “I come with a suggestion,” he says and holds out a hand. A small bronze key lies in his palm, glowing with some enchantment. Ravenia’s eyes dash from the key to the shackles tying her to the walls, then back again to the key.

“It is charmed to allow you to winnow out of the castle in spite of the wards,” Shey says casually.

Ravenia keeps her gaze fixed on the key but doesn’t reach out to touch it. “Betraying your own allies on your day of victory?” She laughs. “Seems unwise.”

“Not much of a betrayal, is it?” Shey shrugs. “You’ve lost the war, and nothing you can do will change that. But if I’m not mistaken, you still have an army under your command – and the person who is responsible for you losing everything would be within your reach, should you get out of this cell.”

Ravenia’s eyes spark. “So it isn’t your precious Alliance you are betraying. Just its leader.” She laughs again.

“I’m getting rid of a problem,” Shey replies coolly. “And you get the chance to get revenge before your death, so I don’t think you get to complain.” He brushes an invisible fleck of dust off his jacket. “Miryam and her husband are marching for the Erythrian Sea, the humans they freed in tow. They have only a small legion with them, less than the soldiers under your command, but they have ships arranged to transport them across the sea.” He shrugs. “Ships are terribly flammable, though, and these might just burn down before they reach them.”

“And I assume you’ve already arranged for someone to set the fire?”

“Me?” Shey laughs. “My people have no fire powers – unlike yours. The idea that I might be behind this seems outlandish, doesn’t it?”

A smile is tugging at the corner of his mouth, but he bites it down. Now is not the time to gloat, although he is rather proud of his plan. Initially, he had considered sending an assassin after Miryam, but that approach seemed far too risky. With assassins, there are always questions, and knowing these obnoxious mortals, one of them might just lay the blame at his feet. But if Queen Ravenia breaks out of her prison and ends up killing Miryam… well, who would ever think him involved in that? After all, she already has a motive, and no one will have reason to suspect anyone helped her flee her prison.

Shey tosses the key into the air once, then catches it. “A bargain,” he says, offering it to Ravenia again. “You get your revenge. All I’m asking in return is that you never let anyone know I helped you.

Something akin to disgust flickers over Ravenia’s face, there and gone in a moment. She hesitates briefly, fighting the pride that forbids her from doing Shey’s dirty work for him. Her thirst for revenge wins, though. “It’s a bargain,” she says, reaching for the key. Only when she has it safely enclosed in her fist does she look back at Shey. “You have even less honour than I thought,” she says.

----

Tags: @croissantcitysucks @femtopulsed @aileywrites

#more war crimes!#i really hope the way I handled Everything in thsi chapter was okay #i was kind of nervous about it #especially bc this is basically the climax and I really wanted to get it right #before the wall #cinaja talks about before the wall #miryam #jurian #drakon

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realcatalina · 2 years

Text

Real looks of Catherine of Aragon-Part 1

There are way too many wrong potrayals of Catherine regarding her looks. From her being very tall, or extremely slim to having black or raven hair, dark eyes and dark skin.

And recently people, seem to be obssessed with idea of her being auburn-haired and don’t mind using photoshop to make that ‘reality’.

But this potrait(Catherine as Mary Magdalene), clearly shows she wasn’t dark-skinned or blackhaired but neither was she auburn-haired. So where did this new myth came from?

-The misinformation started, with period description of her, stating she had red-gold hair. Nowadays people think red-gold means auburn. It does not.

Auburn by definition means red-brown hair. Reddish brown!

But actually the term has gained bit wider definition over the years and now includes hair where you’re not sure if it is red or brown. It’s borderline, red-brown/brown-red. And also, the hair which is either dark red, dark reddish brown, dark brownish red etc. All of those could be clasified as auburn.

Neither is synonymous to red-gold!

I didn’t count, but many biografies of Catherine, got this wrong and instead of writing red-gold as it was in original description, they wrote auburn! Misleading us fans of Tudor period.

(and very because reddish brown was probably real hair colour of Anne Boleyn! I bet Catherine’s contemporaries would be outraged by it.)

Sure, there are some people whose red hair is going bit towards brown. But usually red-gold refers to medium or lighter shade of red hair.

But when you look at Catherine’s hair, it is clear that person who originally described, didn’t mean red-gold, but reddish-gold.

Because back then people didn’t say strawberry blond. What we nowadays consider strawberry blond, is typically much lighter too and much less vidid colour than hair women from Catherine’s family had.

And yes, more women in Catherine’s family had this hair. At first I thought one or two. But after long research, it’s more like-which woman in her family didn’t have this hair? Her mum, her daughter Mary I, her sister Juana I, her sister Isabella, her nieces Catherine of Austria, Queen of Portugal, Empress Isabella of Portugal and I could go on.

You must be confused now. Surely, you’ve seen the potraits of those women and you recall most women in her family had brown hair.

Not so fast! There exists lesser known phenomenon occuring in 15th and 16th century potraits(and few iluminations), which causes hair pigments to go various shades of brown. Usually dark brown, that is why it is called darkening of pigments. I even found suggestion of one of reddening of pigments, but just with potraits of Catherine Parr, so I don’t think that was as common occurance as with darkening of pigments.

it’s so common, I don’t get how come most of historians are oblivious to this!

How confusing must it be when you’re reading period descriptions of Isabella I of Castille-where she is described as having golden hair, or hair mixture of gold and red, and then see portraits which show raven?

Clearly one or other must be wrong!

Personally, I call the shade of hair of Catherine of Aragon “dark golden strawberry blond”. Frankly, because I don’t know how else to describe it. Liquid gold? Literally gold-like?

In times when no modern dyes were available, she had this most amazing vivid, fantastical colour!

By the way, across Europe usually when people refered to golden hair, according to my research, they actually refer to some shade of strawberry blond hair, rather than blond. At least from c.mid 15th century.

It was the most desirable hair colour and Catherine’s fair white skin and blue eyes were also period ideal. She trully had angelic looks, and many female saints from this time are depicted with similiar looks.

When she came to England she was described as pleasantly round, and we can see it in her portrait by Sittow, that she wasn’t skinny. Ill-meaning tongues would call her chubby or fat nowadays, but I am of opinion that having few extra pounds is actually healthier than being too skinny and that this trend of promoting girls becoming anorexic is very unhealthy.

It is well-known that Catherine was on short side, though we don’t know how short exactly. Tudor average for woman was around 5′0′’-5′2′’, so she was probably close to 5′ and hence whole one feet shorter than her husband who was cca 6′2′’. Henry’s red hair on other hand are no myth, he was ginger. But even few of his potrait darkened and show him with brown hair, and iluminations too.

There is second reason why myth of her auburn or red hair spread besides people wrongly using term auburn:

-Discoloured varnish

On first glance another potrait of Catherine by Sittow(Madonna with Child or Virgin Mary) seems like it isn’t discoloured.

But put them side by side:

And suddenly it is very obvious. The discoloured varnish is still on the left painting and such varnish can significantly change colours underneath. Most notable it is on the skin, but hair is affected too.

I’ll get more into potraits of women in her family later on. But to give you idea how bad is the histrical innacuracy using photoshop:

Juana or possibly Maria as child/teen:(since Mary I had her mother’s nose tip as child, and it was visible, Catalina’s should be clearly visible as child too. It can be either Maria or Juana and we know Juana had nose this narrow.)

-on left, unphotoshopped original -on right: phottoshoped version

#catherine of aragon #historical potraits

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feanorianethicsdepartment · 3 years

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‘today’s silm vocaloid song: clear sky engine (クリヤスカイ機関) by nyanyannya and hara ft. rin kagamine and zunko tohoku

this one’s about elrond, maglor, and the sudden non-ending of the world. you know that thing where you build an elaborate fandom video in your head for a completely unrelated song, but you don’t have the most basic art skills you’d need to make it a reality? yeah, i square that circle by writing them out. here, have an extremely long songfic/filk/commentary/thing

It was just another day, beneath a black sky

The bustle of camp churned on around me

I wasn’t paying attention to what my hands were doing

Dreaming of a shining star-lit sky

we open on elrond, living in a world about to die. the fëanorians were forced to abandon amon ereb years ago, and now the last of the host ekes out a precarious nomadic existence, raiding deserted villages for food and losing more people they can’t replace with each battle. they’re still doing better than everyone else on the mainland, though. their blades, at least, remain sharp

(the smoke from the fires of angband has risen to cover the whole continent in dark clouds. some of the sun’s warmth still gets through, and on good nights the star of high hope is still faintly visible, but the light-filled skies of old are little more than memory. all the survivors know that the end is near. it’s only a matter of time)

He’d broken a promise he’d made to us

So I was a little more annoyed at him than usual

He chatted with me while I worked to make up for it

And I made all my usual complaints

elrond and elros are at this point... i’d say very early teens? not that they had much of a childhood; the fëanorians are so short-staffed the twins have been doing odd jobs around camp pretty much since it became clear they weren’t going to run away. today elrond is taking stock of the medical supplies, less because he has any interest in the healing arts than because it’s a job that needs doing and everyone else is busy

maglor is hovering within talking distance, doing elrond-doesn’t-care-what. the twins’ relationship with maglor is extremely complicated to say the least, their mercurial hellbeast protector who scares the shit out of everyone else they’ve ever met and who has stood between them and the darkness for as long as they can remember. recently, he promised to stay with the twins while they did something difficult, but he failed to do so for a whole host of reasons, including getting into a two-hour shrieking match with maedhros at the last possible moment. elros shrugged it off, like elros shrugs everything off, but elrond is a simmering cauldron of adolescent rage at the best of times

which is why maglor’s checking on him, giving him an outlet for his anger before it can turn into despair. because what would be the point, in the end? they’re all going to die anyway. one of the reasons maglor’s resisted sending the kids to balar so hard is that no matter where they are, eventually morgoth will sweep down and destroy them all. there’s nowhere safe left, nothing they can do to protect them. none of this is even new, it’s a shadow that’s hung over them all since the twins grew old enough to understand this

so maglor and elrond chat, or rather elrond grumbles incessantly and maglor snarks as upliftingly as he can remember to. it’s a day like any other, nothing about it to distinguish it from the hundreds that came before or however many will come after. that is, until one of the lesser minions comes over, yelling, ‘boss! boss! you have to see this!’

elrond turns around. for the first time ever, he sees true hope on her face

“Have you finally grown tired of us?” I hissed

But in that moment excitement ran round the campsite

And someone cried out with joy

“The hour we thought would never be, the return of the light, has finally come to pass!”

far, far away, the hosts of the valar are landing on the shores of beleriand. disembarking from their luminous ships, clad in radiant armour and carrying blessed weapons, their brilliance pierces the dark fog that has settled over beleriand for so long. shining like the stars come to earth, the hallowed army of valinor begins its long march towards the gates of angband. far above, ships riding jets of light slice open the smog

this news - this unexpected, unbelievable, impossible miracle bestowed unto doomed beleriand, this chance that their enemy might actually fall - is the greatest thing anyone in camp’s heard all century. maybe in more prosperous times the host would have groused about the valar finally seeing fit to get off their asses, but in this world turned to ash any chance at victory is to be celebrated. the minions throw a massive impromptu party, of the kind they haven’t since before sirion. elros is right there with them, singing off-key and laughing as loud as anyone else. even maedhros cracks a tiny relieved smile

maglor watches the festivities from the outside, more genuinely optimistic than he thought he was still capable of. elrond joins him, brow furrowed as he tries to comprehend it all. they talk

“It feels like a dream I’ll never wake up from”

“What are you blabbering about now?”

elrond is voiced by zunko, maglor by rin. the song’s more of a dialogue than a duet, so i’ll be bolding maglor’s lines

The sheet of paper I held in my hands read

“The hosts of the West have come! Our world is saved!”

the letter’s from gil-galad, or at least his administrative apparatus. it’s not even that hostile; apparently the armies of the gods showing up out of nowhere to save them all from certain doom has him in a magnanimous mood. there’s some drivel about surrendering and eärendil and all wrongs being forgiven, but neither maglor nor elrond is paying attention to it

“Hey, do you remember?”

“Remember what?”

“Love and justice and valour and hope”

“I remember the sea of blood you drowned everything in for them”

elrond didn’t really have any formal schooling - nobody had the time - but he has managed to pick up a lot of stuff from the stories the people around them tell. that the fëanorians came to middle-earth for high noble ideals, and that it was trying to fulfil those ideals that led them into darkness, is something maglor told him once, when he was in a darkly honest mood

“Haha, that’s just details, everybody makes that kind of mistake when they’re young”

“Why are you like this?”

a mood maglor’s obviously not in at the moment, if he’s laughing off the kinslayings like this; elrond knows this isn’t how he actually feels about them. normally elrond would just roll his eyes and move on with his life, but things are different today

The camp was full of laughter, as if everyone had lost their minds

elrond’s not used to happiness. not full, unironic happiness, untainted by the shadow of their inevitable death, not from the fëanorians. the sheer jubliation suffusing camp is fundamentally alien to him, a child of a world about to end. he doesn’t know what to do with the knowledge that maybe they won’t all get eaten by dragons. he doesn’t know what to do with the hope in everyone’s eyes

so instead, when maglor wanders away from the party, elrond catches him with a song

“What if for one more year, ten more years, a hundred more years, the shadow still reigns?”

“Then ten thousand years, a hundred thousand years, a million years later, we’ll see it fall! For certain”

“What if I lay out all one billion eight hundred million three thousand and sixty-eight of the fears I carry?”

“Then there’s one billion eight hundred million three thousand and sixty-nine songs I can give to you”

maglor’s been teaching elrond how to do this, how to snatch someone into a world of music and throw your voice at them until one of you can’t take it any more. maglor wins this one, as usual; even if his song is incapable of anything but violence he’s got centuries of experience on elrond, enough to turn the sharp edges of his voice into blades in elrond’s hands. and that is what he’s doing, clumsy and harsh as he is; he’s trying to give elrond a reason to hope

elrond is the one who breaks the spell, dropping the melody, letting the music dissolve into the air. maglor flashes him a grin and walks off, humming merrily. elrond just stands there, still unable to understand

I’ve heard it before, it’s all anyone can talk about, even if I try to avoid it it stabs into my ears

cut past a decade or so, to well into the war of wrath. elrond and elros are in their mid-teens now. they’re still with the fëanorians, but these days the fëanorian warband is effectively an auxiliary unit to the amanyar army, skirting around the edges of that much larger force. for the first time in a long while, elrond and elros have regular-ish contact with people outside the fëanorian sphere of influence, mostly peripheral edain and the sindar who run messages between the camps. it’s different, talking to new people

(the sky is still covered with smog, but it’s gloomy grey, not oppressive black. the sun is faintly visible through it, most of the time. the rain is much less poisonous than it used to be, and on good nights you can almost see the moon. the closer they get to angband, the darker the clouds grow)

“It is as the gods have decreed, soon the darkness will be swept away and the Enemy will be cast down

And after the war in the purified world, we will all live happily together

Building new homes in a land unmarred by evil”

the people outside the host are much more optimistic about the future, for one. the fëanorian minions are happy morgoth is getting trounced but they don’t really talk about what comes after that, like they can’t imagine a world without war. the sindar, and especially the edain, on the other hand, have all these plans about the cities they’ll build, the arts they’ll perfect, the children they’ll raise in a world without danger. elros is super into this; he barely spends time with the fëanorians any more, he’s so busy going between different edain camps, making friends, planning for the future. elrond, though...

Even my twin knows what future to reach out for...

elrond doesn’t know what to do with any of this. the very concept that someday the war will end and the sky will clear and he’ll have a bright future is still something he doesn’t fully understand. even more, he’s defined himself for so long as not-a-fëanorian, now he’s regularly interacting with people who doubtlessly aren’t he’s having trouble figuring out what else he is. he’s stuck between people who are lowkey hoping they’ll die gloriously in battle and people who have been dreaming about what they’d do in a world without darkness all their lives, and he doesn’t know what he even wants, not really, not yet

so he keeps on living, just like he always has. he’s been promoted to sick tent dogsbody and is learning how to heal with song from the last minion who can kind of still do it. he acts as a proxy between the fëanorians and the more timid outsiders they keep running into. when he goes (or elros drags him) exploring in other camps, he keeps track of every new detail he comes across, in case it’s somehow useful later

and he keeps talking to maglor, with anger and spite and sarcasm and whatever other emotion he’s covering his uncertainties with today. maglor always listens, usually offers to help, and sometimes elrond even lets him. the fëanorian camp settles into a rhythm of buildup-fight-recovery-buildup-fight-recovery, so regular it lulls elrond into complacency. he takes the future he still doesn’t quite believe in one day at a time, until suddenly the ground crumbles beneath his feet

You say it’s to ‘fulfill our ideals’ but what you mean by that is ‘to sate our bloodlust’, I know

With their blades and teeth sharpened for battle, the kinslayers broke away from the light and disappeared into the shadows

there’s a whole mountain of reasons why, as they draw near to angband, the dregs of the fëanorian host abruptly peel off from the valinorean army and vanish into the night. they know they're more effective as a stealthy shock ambush unit, they’re somewhat concerned the amanyar will turn on them the second morgoth is no longer a problem, they're making one last desperate rush for the silmarils, all that and more. it’s not the first time they’ve suddenly packed up and left before their enemies can react, probably not even the first time they’ve done it to the hosts of valinor. there’s just one little difference

Leaving us behind? Leaving you behind

they’re not taking the twins. said twins only find out about this, like, the day before they decamp. maedhros’ justification is something about them not being able to support noncombatants on the march, but the twins believe that about as much as they believe that the fëanorians are doing this for any kind of hope. elros, of course, was half-planning on leaving anyway, going off to chase his own ambitions with his new edain posse. he copes with it pretty well, relatively

but elrond’s mind goes blank. once he thought the day they let them go would be the best day of his life, but now it’s come it feels so wrong, and this horrible coldness is seeping into him. in a flash of what feels like foresight, he suddenly knows the people who raised him will never come back. how dare - why - he can’t -

with a sharp desperate burst of sound that’s a surprise to even himself, elrond lashes out a song to catch maglor

“For ten more minutes, one more week, half a year, please, let me stay with you!”

“In a year’s time, ten years’ time, a hundred years’ time, we’ll see the starlit sky together”

“What if one billion eight hundred million three thousand and sixty-eight times I begged you not to go?”

“Then there’s one billion eight hundred million three thousand and sixty-nine of your other wishes I’ll hear”

and elrond just stops. he lets the song trail off, staring at maglor. he’s in an incredibly weird mood, with something that could almost be compassion in his eyes

there’s only one way he can find out what’s happening, elrond realises

“In that case - !”

maglor was never really demonstratively affectionate with the twins. it would never have come off as real on his part, and they wouldn’t have believed it in any case. still, he supported them. he let them trail behind them, all but cling to the backs of his legs, in those first horrible weeks when they were terrified of absolutely everything. he taught them to ride and he taught them to read, how to reinforce a blade with nothing but song and close a wound with needle and thread. on the darkest nights, when all the world was filled by the howling beasts of morgoth and the wailing of the unhallowed dead, he held them tight and flared his own fires high, a warm smoky bonfire between them and the void. he answered their questions, and told them stories

and sometimes, he tried to be kind

“Sing me a lullaby like the flat of a blade”

“Which one would you like?”

“I want to see a flower that will still bloom”

“I know just the one”

“I don’t care what kind of monster you are! Just please stay with me, for even one more tomorrow...”

“...I’m sorry”

“What do you mean?”

“You were given your name because your parents wanted you to see the stars someday”

it was easy for maglor to justify keeping the twins when they didn’t have a future. the shadow of death blotted out the sky, so why not hold them close for whatever little time they had left? no matter where they were, the void would soon claim them all

except it didn’t. in the end they were not forsaken. the sacred light came out of the west to burn away the darkness and finish the war he once thought they could never win. the hosts of the valar have gotten farther in decades than the noldor did in centuries, and soon enough they’ll cast the enemy down and release the world from his terrible maw. and then the future the free peoples dreamed of will stretch out before them, full of possibilities beyond measure

and that’s why maglor has to let them go. the magnificent people that elrond and elros are already becoming will only wither among hopeless kinslayers who have nothing left but the sword. to flourish into their full glorious selves, they need to be with people who dream, who can travel towards the future alongside the twins with light hearts and songs on their lips. maglor refuses to let his own darkness drown the last people in the world he does not hate. elrond deserves so, so much better than maglor is capable of giving him. he deserves to see the stars

hearing all that, there’s only one thing elrond can say

“You can’t even keep one miserable promise! Don’t pretend like you’re my father, kinslayer!”

and that’s the last elrond sees of maglor. the fëanorians vanish in the middle of the night, leaving elrond and elros (and about half a dozen minions who are taking their last possible chance to get out) behind. elros takes up with his edain buddies and starts making contacts and forging alliances. elrond winds up in gil-galad’s orbit, surrounded by people who are very understanding about how awful his childhood was, which just pisses him off more. he doesn’t throw tantrums or refuse to work, those aren’t luxuries he was raised with, but he spends a fair bit of time spurning every bit of sympathy and aid he’s offered and trying not to cry himself to sleep

with time, though, he finds a place. it starts with círdan, the first person who believes elrond about what his time with the fëanorians was like. then he befriends erestor, and then gil-galad starts actually respecting the way elrond feels, and then he gets officially taken on as an apprentice healer. he starts learning about his own ancestors and their peoples, and reaching out for stories he never knew could be his. as the final battle of the iron hells begins, elrond is doing... better

and soon, the hope that no one in beleriand once dreamed would be fulfilled becomes a reality

And then, as if it had never held power, the darkness was cast down...

they win the war. the armies of angband are crushed. the peaks of thangorodrim are torn down. the prisoners of the deepest pits of the iron hells are freed. the forces of evil are scattered to the four winds. morgoth, the fallen vala himself, is defeated and captured and bound with great chains, unable to ever hurt anyone again. the precious remnants of the light of the trees, the remaining two silmarils, are recovered. the dark clouds evaporate, and for the first time elrond can remember, the sky is perfectly clear. the war of the jewels is finally over

elrond has grown so much since the day he first heard that the hosts of the west had come. he still can’t quite believe it

They held a great celebration beneath a star-speckled sky I’d never seen before

“The world is saved and we are freed! Evil has been vanquished forevermore”

The triumphant voices of the generals poured out over the victory feast while the stars shone true above the happy ending

the soldiers of valinor and the people of beleriand (what’s left of them) throw a truly massive party. it’s still tinged with their grief over everything they’ve lost, but the atmosphere is primarily one of ecstatic relief. they’re alive, and they’ve come out the other side. dwarvish tailors dance with high maiar, humans who don’t remember the moon get drunk with elves who remember cuiviénen. even after the official festivities die down and people start hashing out what they want to do next, the general mood remains buoyant and cheerful. at long last, they live in a world without danger

none of it feels real to elrond. gil-galad’s talking about building a kingdom on the other side of the blue mountains, elros and his grand edain alliance are trying to bully the maiar into letting them set up on tol eressëa, and elrond feels so disconnected from it all, like he’s watching someone else’s life. he’s happy the enemy has been overcome, of course he is, but he’s not feeling the overwhelming joy everyone else is. he can’t let his guard down yet, something is still wrong -

Except he hasn’t come back, they haven’t come back, where did they go, what have they done?

The word raced around as fast as the wind, giving me an answer I never wanted to hear -

where is maglor? the fëanorians broke off to fight the war their own way, but the war is over now, where are they? they were so happy to hear that the amanyar had arrived, he can’t imagine them not thrilled to see the enemy they hated more than anything else fall. in the warm afterglow of victory, it feels like even their sins might be forgiven, and they could finally go home. they have nothing else left; why wouldn’t they take that outstretched hand?

but nobody’s so much as glimpsed their flag since some time before the final battle. elrond quietly assumes, perhaps even hopes, that they all died fighting, and yet he can’t shake the cold dread crawling up his spine

elrond has mixed feelings about the silmarils, and doesn’t particularly care to be near them. by the time the news of their theft reaches him, maedhros and maglor have already fled into the night

Still driven on by their oath, they turned their blades on their kin one last time

“And stole away the hallowed light”

Yes, that light which sank all of our lands beneath a deep dark layer of corpses and ash

all elrond sees is the aftermath, the blood sinking into the ground. it’s far from the first time he’s seen people killed, but somehow now it’s all hitting him, all at once. he sees the bodies and it knocks the breath out of him. all he can see is the dead, from finwë on down, the rotting carcasses of every last person who was slaughtered for these gems, a whole continent bleached with death. they call the silmarils the most beautiful things in the world, jewels shining with the very light of creation, but elrond can’t see it for the blood they’re dripping with

that’s the immediate thing that has his hands shaking and his breath running cold. by morning it’s had a chance to sink in a little, and -

He lied he lied he lied he lied

maglor regretted the kinslayings! elrond knows he did! it was never even something he actually said, it was obvious from the way he talked about them. every single one was a complete disaster, nothing the fëanorians ever got out of them was worth what they lost in the process, and afterwards things always got worse in ways they never expected. and maglor hated the person the kinslayings had turned him into, elrond spent enough time around him to pick up on that much! surely he’d do anything to not have to commit another one?

apparently not! apparently all that regret, all that loss, the arguments and the nightmares and the coldly determined efforts to stop them following his path, it all meant nothing! he still gave in to despair or maedhros or whatever, killed yet more people, stole from the army whose return he said was like a dream come to life, spat in the face of his last chance to go home, and vanished! gil-galad’s people were right! he really is nothing more than a monster!

the shock of it all makes something snap in elrond, whatever fragile optimism he absorbed from the people around him draining away until he feels completely hollow. hundreds of years of suffering and death, and for what?

Smeared with the blood of untold hundreds, untold thousands, untold millions of people

Did they buy us peace for even half a year, even a week, even ten minutes?

Noooooooo!

Even the very land we lived on crumbled and drowned

What was the point?! What was the point?! What was the point?!

I feel like I’m going insaaaaaaane

morgoth may have fallen, but beleriand is dead! nothing remains, not the lush green lands of the stories, or even the dessicated forests of his childhood, just desolate earth and the devouring sea. almost everywhere he’s ever known, almost everyone who lived and fought and dreamed there, are lost forever. nothing was saved, everything was destroyed, what good is a clear blue sky when there’s nothing beneath it?! how can they call this a happy ending?!

elrond can’t see any light here, all the great battles and heroic deeds seem absolutely pointless in the face of everyone and everything immolated in the endless grasping for these gems. the hosts of valinor leave the continent they shattered, the remnants of gil-galad’s people escape the raging forces of nature, and the survivors bicker and fight over resources just like the fëanorian minions elrond grew up around. the world is never going to get better, he realises. the dream of a paradise will never come true

and then one night, running a message down the craggy still-turbulent coastline, he hears a snatch of a distant, familiar voice

I can hear a voice whittled away to a weapon singing what could almost be a lullaby -

elrond leaps off the ridge and onto the rocky beach, scrambling over the uneven ground. he’s heard the rumours about where maedhros and/or maglor went - all of them, there’s dozens of them, he didn’t pay any particular heed to the ones where maglor wandered the coast, but if they were right, if he’s here -

his own voice has grown strong over the years, solid and forceful and mature. elrond screams his song into the emptiness, hoping against hope it will be heard

“What if for one more year, ten more years, a hundred more years, the shadow still reigns?”

“Then ten thousand years, a hundred thousand years, a million years later, we’ll see it fall! Isn’t that so?!”

“What if I lay out all one billion eight hundred million three thousand and sixty-eight of the griefs I carry?”

“Then there’s one billion eight hundred million three thousand and sixty-nine days for you to live!”

“That must be it...”

the impression of a hand touching his cheek, the ghost of a smile. for a moment someone else’s voice slips into the ebb and flow of his song, a shadow reaches out to wipe the tears off his face. live, it whispers. you who i held dearest last, live

elrond’s breath catches in his throat, and the song, and the shadow, vanish. it’s just him on a forsaken beach, the only sounds the waves crashing and the gulls calling. the sky is completely overcast, the clouds dull and grey. he watches them drift along for a while, as his pulse slows down and his airways clear up. live, the word echoes in his mind

he waits until his breathing is back to normal and the churning emotions inside him have settled into a form he can handle. then he wipes his face and clambers back onto the ridge

(life. it’s not much, but it’s enough. it has to be. his home is destroyed, but he is alive; his family is broken, but he is alive. he is alive, and they want him to live, as much as he can while he still has a chance. the world he lives in will never be perfect, but he knows how to work with that)

(and besides - elros, círdan, gil-galad, erestor, the other healers, the small knot of elves of all stripes who seem determined to follow his banner. he hasn’t lost everything, not yet, and he won’t let the world take away what he has left. he’ll never abandon those he loves)

the clouds are lightening. soon the stars will be out. elrond takes a deep breath, and starts running towards his future and the person he’s going to be -

thousands of years later, a memory resurfaces

“Two million, two hundred and forty-one thousand, five hundred and thirty-nine days... Ah, yes. I know I forgot to say it earlier, but you did a very good job”

a smattering of notes are lifted by the ocean breeze. they travel inland, across the worn-down mountains, around the weathered hills, above the tangled forests, up the untamed rivers, and finally into the hidden valley

in the gardens of imladris, lord elrond hears a voice he hasn’t for millennia. a watering can slips out of his hands, and suddenly he can’t breathe

It was just another day, beneath a dark sky

The ocean and the wind roared on all around me

I wasn’t paying attention to how my tears were falling

Trying to remember a clear star-lit sky

that youthful dream of a world free from evil never came true. the shadow came back, and it kept coming back, taking his people, his friends, his family, his wife. everything they built after the defeat of morgoth has been reduced to dust by the weight of time, and every year more of it slips through his fingers. elrond doesn’t know how much more of it he can endure. he doesn’t know how much more he can lose

he chases that scrap of music all the way to the seashore

I ran down the path between the rocks and the spray following that voice I never knew why I loved

But in the end I could only stand weeping

elrond searches up and down the coast, scouring the shoreline for clues, asking the locals, listening. sometimes he hears whispers of song, long wailing lamentations that make his heart ache all the more now that he understands how that despair feels. occasionally it’s loud or consistent enough he can track it, trying to pinpoint the singer’s location in the intense storms of bitterness and grief

but he never finds anything

“You fool, he’s already gone. Like he was never there at all...”

all that’s left is a voice on the wind

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untamedunrestrained · 3 years

Text

Moral of the Story

I was scrolling through the WangXian tag on Tumblr when I came across a post that I eventually scrolled past but it seems to have planted a germ of an idea that I just can’t shake loose and I tried and I tried and then I procrastinated some more for good measure but it didn’t work. So, here I am trying to present my thoughts with some degree of coherency.

The post that was the impetus for this post, talks about LWJ’s punishment after the events at Nightless City just before WWX’s death. That post raises the question of how LWJ could forgive his uncle and brother for a punishment that would have killed a lesser cultivator.

The moment I read the post I disagreed with it but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why but since I have been thinking about it for the past few days, I now know exactly why I disagreed with the post in the first place.

Before we proceed, I would like to make it clear that while what I’m about to say tracks across every canon of MDZS, I’m going to pick the details from the novel verse because it’s more detailed with regards to this particular aspect of the story, and also if you have only watched The Untamed/CQL and not read the novel (albeit only in its translated form) it might be easier to fall into the type of thinking that lead to the previous post in the first place.

Ideally, I should just link to the original post but since I found the post while I was scrolling through Tumblr’s tag for WangXian and initially tried to ignore it completely because I didn’t quite understand why that particular idea was troubling me, I don’t think it would be easy to find it again and since I’m disagreeing with the post I don’t want the author of the post to find this because even when we try to be rational our first response to being disagreed with is hurt or anger and I don’t want anyone to feel that way. These are just my thoughts and you might agree or disagree with them but I feel like I should put them out there since the idea will not leave me alone.

So, let’s get into it.

LWJ is given thirty-three discipline whips for each of the thirty-three GusuLan elders he gravely injured to protect WWX.

When WWX sees LWJ scars in the novel these are his thoughts-

Usually, with only one or two strikes of the discipline whip, it would already be enough of a punishment for the bearer to remember it for their whole life, never to make the same mistake ever again. The amount of scars on this person’s back accumulated thirty at the least. Just what sort of monstrous crime did he commit for him to be whipped so many times? If it really was a monstrous crime, why didn’t they kill him?

As we will later learn LWJ’s punishment is a little more detailed than just whipping he was also made to kneel in front of the “Wall of Discipline” following the whipping.

It’s a barbaric punishment and of course, the ones ordering it are his uncle and his brother who have both been established as characters who truly do love LWJ. So, why? Why is LWJ’s punishment so severe, well there are two reasons for that and I will discuss the lamer one first.

His punishment was severe because by this point we know that LWJ is probably one of the best cultivators of his generation if not the best (I could definitely argue for the latter, I mean this guy can fight Xue Yang wielding his sword with one hand and keep an entire horde of zombies at bay while playing his guqin with the other. And, did I mention this is happening at the same time, he literally managed to fight a horde of zombies and Xue Yang with two different cultivation methods being practised simultaneously and of course, he won but not only that there wasn’t a moment during this entire fight when that wasn’t the expected outcome). So, of course, if you want to really punish this guy the punishment has to be on par with his own physical and spiritual strength, it wouldn’t be much of a punishment he was able to do it without even breaking a sweat. I told you it was a bit lame.

Secondly and more importantly, the punishment should fit the crime. If the crime is particularly grievous, the punishment must be as well, it must be severe and in this particular story, depending on the individual’s spiritual strength a severe enough punishment might be different for different levels of cultivation. So, the real question is did LWJ deserve the punishment and the answer is an unequivocal YES.

LWJ grievously injured thirty-three GusuLan elders who were looking for him specifically so that they could find him before the other clans did because if the other clans did find him first they would kill him. After all, he saved WWX and kept him alive. The same WWX who at the Nightless City declared war on the combined might of the Cultivation World and then proceeded to kill thousands of Cultivators and then when they died he resurrected them to fight their very own comrades, that WWX.

Now, we might all argue he only fought the Cultivators because they killed all the Wen remnants and that only happened because he killed Jin ZiXuan who he technically didn’t kill but he definitely provided the opportunity and the weapon for his death because his ego couldn’t let Jin ZiXun go. At this point, we don’t know that there is another player in the mix but both these fights that ultimately take the lives of Jin ZiXuan and Jiang Yanli respectively were both started by WWX and even if we forget about the inciting event (Jin ZiXuan’s death), WWX still killed thousands of people from all clans. But, we only know these intricacies because the story is told from WWX’s perspective. LWJ doesn’t know this and neither do most of the people in the Cultivation World.

What they do know is that LWJ took WWX after he had killed thousands of cultivators and depleted the remaining Cultivators of their spiritual energy so thoroughly it took them three months to recover enough to mount a second attack. No matter how you spin it WWX is responsible for those deaths and LWJ is responsible for saving an outright murderer and then he further cemented his crimes by fighting thirty-three of his own elders and grievously injuring them in defence of said murderer when it seems like they largely made the journey to protect LWJ's life and his reputation and not with the primary purpose of killing WWX.

So, yes he deserves his punishment and as he himself believes this -

But he (LWJ) said… that he could not say with certainty whether what you (WWX) did was right or wrong, but no matter what, he was willing to be responsible for all of the consequences alongside you.

The reason LWJ could forgive LXC and LQR for his punishment is because he didn’t need to. He understood exactly why he was being punished. At the end of the day, LWJ didn’t actually protect WWX thinking that he might be right, he protected WWX because he was intensely and irrevocably in love with him and he is ready to stand by his love right or wrong.

While these are all very valid points the real reason that post caused this disquiet to appear in me was because it was trying to paint LXC and LQR’s actions in a bad light with the power of hindsight completely forgetting that their actions were relevant in the context they happened in which brought me spiralling back to the story as a whole.

The story firmly tries to tell you that what you see and what you observe might paint a very clear narrative in your eyes but there is always a possibility that the narrative we feel is so immutable can completely change its structure if we were just able to see it in a different light as is beautifully illuminated by this story.

The other thing that we don’t realise is that in this story we aren’t depicted by LWJ or WWX or JC or JL or LSZ or even NHS and JGY for the matter. We are the mob, we are Sect Leader Yao, we are the people who are told stories that paint people in a certain light and then we can’t see them in any other light. In our very upbringing, some prejudices are a staple and we still harbour them and these influence how we interact with the world and more specifically how we judge people and their actions. This story urges us to remember that while things might seem black and white maybe unearthing the reasons behind them might make the story more grey, so the next time you decide to paint a group of people or even a particular person as wholly bad no matter how egregious their actions may seem remember the moral of Mo Dao Zu Shi, remember that there might be more to the story than meets the eye and more importantly remember that something in the future might make a success of today look like a blight on history.

If I have to be more precise, I would say the moral of this story is to be open to the possibility that we might not know the whole story and we might be wrong even when we are a 100% convinced we aren’t.

#mo dao zu shi #wei wuxian #lan wangji #lan xichen #lan qiren #wangxian #myposts

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hellorebecca · 3 years

Text

Back From the War

Some 80s era Stancest I wrote a while back. Inspired by some of @nekoaimy‘s posts on the subject.

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

"So, um, you okay?" Stan asked, his hands unsteady.

Ford nodded, and sipped from his mug of coffee. "I feel better, now."

"Okay," said Stan. He breathed out a sigh, ran a hand through his hair. "Okay."

It was almost surreal, remembering the events of the past hour: him and Stanley fighting over the journal in the portal room, him branding his brother's shoulder (and oh, was that going to leave a mark), the shove, the panic that filled him as he floated above the room--

Then, the rope, the relief, as he was slowly pulled back to earth by his brother's strong arms.

Stanley cleared his throat, snapping Ford out of his reverie. "So, what's up?" he asked, a look of concern on his face. "You kinda spaced out for a second there."

Ford shook his head. "Just thinking over the day's events," he said softly. Then: "How's your shoulder?"

Stan looked ashamed, as if he had been the one who had burned his own brother. "I mean, it hurts, but... it's fine, really. I mean, I can still use it." He rotated his right arm for emphasis. Ford couldn't help noticing the wince that Stan made at moving it around.

“Let me take a look at that,” he said, setting his mug down and reaching his hand towards his brother’s wound.

Stan hesitated; then, he slowly took off his jacket and shirt, carefully avoiding touching the cloth to the brand. Ford drew in a deep breath as he took in Stanley’s bare back. His muscles were cushioned under a layer of fat, and there were scars scattered across his skin. There was one particularly nasty one, just above his waist, that Ford wished he could ask about, but he just didn’t have the time.

Right. The brand. “How badly does it hurt?” asked Ford, as he carefully inspected the still-blistering scar.

“Honestly, it’s not too bad,” Stan answered. “I mean, I’ve definitely had worse.”

“Hmm.” Ford gingerly touched the tips of his fingers to Stan’s brand; he couldn’t help his heart from sinking when Stan flinched away from that. “Well, first we need to clean it, of course.” He went to the cabinet and got out a rag and the first aid kit. He ran the faucet cold over the rag, and added a little dish soap for good measure. Gently, he washed the burn, taking care not to pop any of the blisters. He then fished out a tube of aloe vera from the first aid kit.

“Pull your hair back for me,” said Ford. “I don’t want this to get messy.”

Stanley did as he was told, and Ford carefully spread the lotion over his brother’s charred skin. As he did so, he thought of long, hot summer nights, when they would rub aloe vera into each others’ sunburned backs. It was a good memory, and Ford felt a pleasant shiver thinking about it. Stan let out a sigh of relief, apparently releasing some of the tension from what had happened that night.

“Good, good,” said Ford, as he checked his handiwork. “Now I just need to cover it with a bandage.”

“You’re not gonna kiss it better?” asked Stan.

“No,” said Ford, suppressing a laugh. “It just wouldn’t be sanitary.”

“Ah,” Stan replied, and if Ford didn’t know any better, he’d almost say Stan sounded… disappointed. “Well, alright.”

Ford took out the gauze and the medical tape from the first aid kit and said, “Um, I can kiss you, though.”

“What?”

“If you want me to,” Ford added. “Not… not on the lips, of course, but I can kiss you. Just—just say where.”

“Um.” Stan craned his neck towards Ford. “Are you serious?”

Ford grew oddly hot. “I mean, ah, touch has been known to lower the body’s stress levels, which can help with, with the healing process—That’s... why I suggested it.”

“Ah,” said Stan, turning his head away from Ford again. “So you’re just being a weirdo.”

Ford swallowed. “Stanley, I...”

Stan waved him off. “It’s fine. Just… bandage me up, man.”

There was no point in disobeying that, so Ford carefully positioned the gauze on Stan’s burn wound, then applied the tape to make it stick. “We’ll need to reapply the bandage every day until the burn fully heals,” he said when he was done.

“‘We,’” Stan repeated. He turned around to face Ford. “Does that mean I’m staying?”

It was strange, how shocking Ford found the question. “I guess so,” he answered, considering his words carefully. “At least, for now. But—Stanley, it’s not… safe, here.”

“Because of the portal.”

Ford nodded. “Not just that, but yes.”

Stan groaned and ran a hand through his hair. “So, when do I need to leave?”

Ford held up a hand. “Stanley...”

“No, no, it’s...” Stan starting pacing around the kitchen, gesturing wildly. “I mean, I know you don’t—well...”

Ford caught Stan by the chin. “Stanley, please, just—listen to me.”

“C’mon, Stanford, it’s fine,” said Stan, who still resisted meeting Ford’s eyes. He sounded like he was going to cry. “If you don’t want me around...”

That definitely wasn’t true, so Ford needed to prove it false. If he was any less sleep-deprived, he might have done something else. As it was, his brother’s chin still in his hands, he laid a kiss upon Stanley’s lips.

Stanley tasted of cheap cigarettes and stale coffee, but Ford didn’t mind, far more interested in the way Stan warmed up to the kiss, tense at first but soon kissing back, running his hands through Ford’s hair. It was the culmination of everything they had been dancing around for a long, long time.

“Thought you said you weren’t gonna do that,” Stan gasped out, once they broke away.

Ah, right. The offer he made from earlier. “Guess I lied,” Ford panted.

They drew in for another kiss, deeper, more passionate. It left them so breathless and panting that it took a while before either of them spoke again.

“So, why can’t I stay, for real?” asked Stan. “Because I know there’s something there.”

Damn. Stanley knew Ford all too well. “There’s… an entity, that takes control of my mind when I sleep. I don’t want it to harm you,” Ford admitted, as much as he was willing to admit.

“Is that why you’re so strung out?”

Ford nodded. “Mostly, yes.”

Stan grunted and lifted himself about the counter, sitting on the countertop. It would annoy Ford were he not so charmed at the moment. “Okay, so, is there like, a way we can get that—thing out of your head?”

“There is one way I know of.” Ford scrubbed his face and frowned. “But it involves dealing with creatures that I’ve found to be—quite frustrating, in the past.”

Stan looked at Ford expectantly. “Well?” he asked.

“You’re going to laugh,” Ford replied glumly.

“C’mon, just tell me!”

“Unicorns,” Ford answered.

Stan let out a loud guffaw, and for a moment Ford truly hated him. “What, ain’t they really fond of virgins?”

“Actually, no,” said Ford stiffly. “Though the requirements for dealing with them seem just as strict as in legend. And by the way, I’m not a virgin.”

Stan grinned. “Sure you’re n--”

“Would a virgin kiss you as well as I just did?” Ford replied smugly. He took a certain amount of pleasure in the shock on Stan’s face.

“Man, you really have changed,” said Stan. “Gone a long way since your ‘kissing machine’ days.”

Ford groaned. “Please don’t mention the kissing machine, Stanley.” He took the journal off the kitchen table and started flipping through the entries. “Anyway, if you’re really serious about this--”

“Of course I’m serious,” Stan retorted.

“I’ll warn you again, unicorns are not easy to deal with,” said Ford. He found the entry on unicorns in the journal and handed it to Stan. “Their standards for good behavior are very exacting. I doubt you’d be able to live up to them.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Stan grumbled. He seemed upset by Ford’s assertion. He always had carried a chip on his shoulder on being the lesser of the two Pines twins. “I’ll just kill one of them, so what?”

“Stanley...” Ford started.

“What, they need to be alive?”

“No, you’ll just need the hair from their manes,” answered Ford. “But killing a horse—or horse-like creature—can be harder than it looks.”

“Eh.” Stan shrugged. “I mean, I killed a llama once.”

Ford raised an eyebrow. “Lama-with-one-L or llama-with-two-Ls?” he asked.

“Llama as in the weird animal with the long hair,” Stan said with an eyeroll. “Cripes, you’re a nerd.”

“Technically, that could describe both--” Ford got a poke in the ribs. “Oof. But seriously, are you sure you want to do this?”

“I mean, if it’ll keep you safe,” said Stan. He looked down at his bare chest. “Though, uh, I’m gonna need some clothes that haven’t been singed.”

Ford looked Stanley over. He was still naked from the waist up, and though that was fine for an evening of making out, it was less than ideal for a night in the cold and snow.

“Hang on,” said Ford. “There are some sweaters in my room.” He dashed over there as quick as he could, unable to suppress the irrational worry that Stan would be gone by the time he got back. He fished through his drawers and found a bright and cheery Christmas sweater, a gift from Fiddleford when they were still in college. (Ford didn’t have the heart to tell him that he was Jewish and had never celebrated. It was good at its main purpose, at least, which was keeping warm.)

Back in the hallway, he was struck by the sudden realization that this was real, that he had really kissed his brother and his brother kissed him back. It was funny, how repressed they both had been about it, and how open they were now. He supposed it made a certain amount of sense—incest was a Rubicon that neither of them were prepared to cross, even as odd a pair as they had been, but once they set their mind on something, there was no doubt, if it were in any way possible, they would get it.

Once they put their mind on something, there was no doubt they would get it. Ford smiled at the thought, and hurried back to the kitchen. He found Stan sitting on a chair, a far more reasonable position than the counter. “Here,” he said, and handed Stan the gaudy sweater.

“Bit late to be wearing this,” said Stan, looking it over.

Ford shrugged. “If it keeps you warm.” He grabbed his coat from his chair. “Here, wear this, too. Do you still have your gloves and hat?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Stan grumbled. “I’m not gonna freeze to death, Ford.” He grunted as he struggled to put on the sweater.

“Careful,” said Ford. He helped pull the sweater down. “You still need to look out for that shoulder.” He gave his brother a quick peck on the cheek.

“Heh heh.” Ford enjoyed the way Stan blushed. Stan cleared his throat. “Alright, so they live in this glade, right?” Stan said, as he put on the coat. “Shouldn’t take too long. I’ll be back in a jif.”

“Stay safe, Stanley.” Ford squeezed his brother’s hand. “Remember to come home in one piece.”

“I will,” Stan replied softly. He pat Ford on the shoulder, then pulled him into a brief kiss. “Take care of yourself while I’m gone, knucklehead.”

“Okay, okay,” Ford said with a soft laugh. He watched Stanley go out of the house and into the unknown, once again the brave hero of their youth. For the first time in a long while, he felt a deep, sustaining hope, one that would last him the rest of their lives.

#Stancest #I'm in the mood for sap okay so sue me #my drabblings

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maribabyart · 4 years

Note

Do you have any Demon Martha headcanons? How do you think her reunion with Mrs. Mayberry (The teacher who paid for her assassination) in hell would go?

OK YES I HAVE HEADCANONS FOR THIS HERE WE GO --

MARTHA HEADCANONS <3

So, I’m gonna start with her before she died so I can fully get into why every part of her is the way she is as a demon.

Martha is light skinned Latina woman with family coming from Venezuela. Her mother has a much darker skin tone than her, but her father is far more light-skinned, where she gets her complexion from. While she was raised in America, her parents were immigrants. She was born at home, and she didn’t get a birth certificate until she was four, the year before she started schooling.

She has three older brothers. They were very rambunctious with Martha as a child, pulling pranks on her/with her, taking her hunting, etc.

She was raised out on a farm in the middle of a forested area in Kentucky. They raised cattle, sheep, chickens, and horses. Martha’s main job on the farm was to groom/ride horses and feed chickens.

She learned her sharp-shooter skills in a more intense version of something like 4H unique to her area. She was fantastic with a bow and arrow, and even better with her firearms.

Cannibalism was normalized in Martha’s life from a young age. She knew that it must be kept secret from the outside world, and that it wasn’t accepted. However, it wasn’t something she found to be horrid.

Her family -- and their close friends -- came from a long lineage of Satanic cultists that practiced cannibalism to purge any bit of, “soul” remaining in the corpses of their sacrifices. Due to this, Martha had evolved to be able to be immune to the ill side effects of cannibalism, along with the ability to not feel repulsed by the idea of eating human meat.

Her favorite part of the body growing up was the brain, and it still is to this day. She loves the frontal lobe slathered in spices and hot sauce.

She began her cultish killings at age fourteen, when she officially joined the cult of her family’s descent -- Compañerismo de la Fruta Prohibida (Fellowship of the Forbidden Fruit, a refrence to their following of Lucifer)

Martha didn’t love Raphael Peterson, or, “Ralphie”. She was married of to him at age sixteen, when she became a, “Woman” in the cult’s eyes. They were both meant to appear as an ideal couple so that people wouldn’t suspect them, as their parents before them have.

Ralph and Martha always saw each other as friends with benefits.

They moved to Dayton, Tennessee to start their family when they turned eighteen.

In Nashville, Martha started singing to music her husband played in Taverns. Think Dolly Parton style music. She sounded a lot like that.

Their first child was born when Martha was eighteen: Their daughter, Jolene Peterson. Two years later, they had their son, Beau Peterson.

Martha was always really involved with her kids’ school activities, and she was always volunteering to work events, and her kids were in every activity they could be.

She used her physical attractiveness to seduce and kill men.

While sex favorable, Martha is on the aspec -- greysexual (sexual pleasure is irrelevant to her, and she only engages in it to appease her partner generally. She only finds sexual attraction in people while in the act.) Because of this fact, Martha only has affairs for the sake of gaining trust to bring the men home so they can be killed and eaten.

When Martha was shot, the community villainized Mrs. Mayberry because the town darling, Martha Jane Nunez Robles-Peterson, would NEVER cheat, right? The situation was misread: Martha was just talking to Jarold Mayberry that night about t-ball-related things, right? He WAS the the little league captain for her 6-year-old-son’s league, wasn’t he?

Martha was gifted millions by the community, and people were insanely supportive of her. They wanted the sweet Martha they, “knew” to get better soon. They loved her so -- such a darling woman!

Her music became more well known, and soon, Martha was all over TV. Her big musical break came from when she auditioned for American Idol and made it. Her sob-story propelled her, and she eventually won.

Martha was a hero to everyone around her -- surviving a traumatic event that was uncalled for, while also being so damn chipper and kind.

Hell, did you guys see the background in one of those scenes?! Martha was canonly proclaimed a SAINT! People loved her that much.

She used the public trust to lure in more victims and never be suspected.

Martha was 28 when she died. Ralphie was 28 as well. Jolene was 10, and Beau was 8.

Ralphie managed to survive the explosion, albeit he was completely paralyzed, and the two children went to heaven. Ralphie repented during his last month alive, and confessed to his crimes. He was sent to heaven as well.

Martha and the children were declared to have died in a bear attack, as Compañerismo de la Fruta Prohibida covered up their true demise with ease.

People were heart broken -- Martha’s music was used in sad collages on Youtube, Tik Toks had Martha’s face in them for memorials.

No one ever realized her crimes.

Now! As a demon....

In hell, Martha picked up the alias Hero -- it’s what she was in life, right? I’ll be calling her Hero from now on.

Hero is both different and similar to how she was when she was alive. She’s still the got her kind-hearted, southern mama vibe going for her: She tends to be able to fit into any demonic crowd well, either by attractiveness or by sheer, overwhelming allure -- she’s a very magnetic personality.

As far as powers go, Hero’s are mostly related to firearms. She’s acquired these powers through deal making and soul dealing, as most demons do. Her charming aura very quickly lure people into thinking she’s naive or really just being honest with them.

Her nails can peel back to allow her to shoot from, “finger guns”. Each finger is a different gun, besides her middle and index fingers. They are both shotguns. Together, they make a double barrel shotgun.

When in full demonic form, Hero’s bandages become sentient. They peel away from her wound, revealing a minigun like weapon in the hole in her head. This can rapid fire while the bandages can grab onto things or hoist Hero up. She can make this last for five minutes -- ten at the longest -- before she gives out to sheer exhaustion and needs to eat demon meat to replenish herself.

Within her first week in hell, she was known to be powerful. Not quite an overlord, but powerful enough to hang around overlords.

She hit overlord status three months later, during the terf war seen in Hazbin Hotel’s pilot: She took several areas of land, and was seen to have several lesser demons flocking to be on her good side.

Hero used her land to build up a bar and grill that serves strictly demon meat and blood, where demons can play music and dance. It’s like a fucked up country dinner. It’s an insanely popular addition to Cannibal Colony, where she lives.

The place is called La Cocina de la Calle Kuru (The Kuru Street Kitchen)

Hero REALLY wants to get her hands on exterminator tools, but she’s not really a fan of black market deals -- it’s too “trashy” for her.

Hero knows Alastor pretty well, as he’s came in for meat and to watch the music. They’ve had pretty decent conversations while she was on break, seeing as they were both influential southern, cannibalistic serial killers. It’s a running gag between them where they jokingly talk about who was more iconic -- “I bet I took out more belles in a lifetime than you could in your entire afterlife!” “Well hon, at least I could eat the brains without gettin’ Kuru!”

She talks to Rosie a lot about business, and has met Niffty and Mimzy before. (Al hooked a bitch up with some friends lmao)

She REALLY likes Mimzy. She reminds her of Ralphie, and they became super fast friends.

Vox and Hero have a confusing sort of friendship, as neither really wants to be seen with the other -- In his case, because she’s much lower on the overlord spectrum than him, and in her case, because she’s no stranger to Alastor and Vox’s hatred for one another. However, she often finds herself consoling Vox on sleepless nights after closing up the bar, trying to convince him that Valentino is NOT worth his time. Beyond that and him occasionally paying her back in tech at random hours of the morning, they don’t talk often.

Hero LOVES dancing! Like, a lot.

She’s seen Charlie’s ad for the Happy Hotel. Her and Mimzy watched it, and they both thought it was the stupidest damn thing they’d ever seen. However, Hero said she was happy Charlie got up there, because she was just, “Cute as a button, that lil’ sweatpea was!”

Hero’s best friends are Mimzy and an unnamed demon who specializes in black market, extermination tool selling (the one seen in in Addict -- Cherri Bomb’s former lover).

These two people, and these two people alone, can call her “Martha”

Hero cooks whenever she’s stressed. She also adores sewing and binging soap operas and reality shows on Voxflix.

Hero’s Instagram would be, “HeroicMelodies” in reference to her music career and name.

Hero gets hit on A LOT, and she despises it. She doesn’t need to seduce people anymore to get away with murder, and she doesn’t want to. She dresses the way she does because she LIKES that clothing. People can fuck off.

The reason Hero is white and pink is to show how innocent she looks. Her pitch-black eyes show her dark soul.

Hero sings in Spanish to herself when cleaning up.

Sometimes, Hero and Rosie spend holidays going around with ground demon meat to throw to the hell crows and other critters. They find it peaceful.

Hero, shockingly, holds no hatred for I.M.P., and commonly jokes about how the I.M.P.’s, “Did her a favor” by sending her somewhere she can actually be her. She has no idea who called for the hit, though.

Hero finds Blitzo’s Instagram posts being poorly spelled to be, “Damn near precious”.

She thinks he’s a teenager, and probably would think it less adorable if she knew he was a grown man with a grown kid.

Hero doesn’t care about Mrs. Mayberry at all. Like, at all. She honestly assumes the woman is in heaven. She knew Mayberry wasn’t bad -- she probably wouldn’t care if she was in hell, though. Oh well. Sucks to suck, bitch.

Husk frequents La Cocina de la Calle Kuru to drink and engage in the gambling scene. Hero finds him trashy, but can’t say she hates him. She finds him funny as hell, and enjoys the business. Just not someone she’d personally hang out with.

#Helluva Boss #Hazbin Hotel #Martha #Demon! Martha #Hero #Alastor #Vox #Rosie #Husk #Niffty #Mimzy #Headcanons #Head canons #AU #Sort off?#Hell #Mrs. Mayberry #Ralphie #Murder Family

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highladyluck · 4 years

Text

Here, have 4.5 pages of rambly Tuon meta. I wrote this to try to get a handle on Tuon’s character, and to develop the theoretical framework for a redemption arc for her. I’m hoping posting this doesn’t cut my motivation to actually write it...

Who is Tuon? Tuon Athaem Kore Paendrag, High Lady, Daughter of the Nine Moons; now the Empress of Seanchan (at least on the westlands side), Fortuona Athaem Kore Paendrag. To borrow some phrasing and framing from @websandwhiskers: She’s the pinnacle of Seanchan culture and an extremely functional tool of the state; responsible (both personally and institutionally) for psychologically and physically torturing people and enslaving them; she also has some compelling moral and personal qualities that she and the state have not yet managed to quash, which kind of makes it all worse, ethically speaking. She’s a villain whom the original narrative neither sufficiently condemns nor sufficiently redeems, married to one of the Big Damn Heroes in a match that’s both very odd couple and very complementary.

She respects people who stand up to her, as long as they aren't 'disrespectful' in the process- and the 'disrespect' is very situational, she'll accept things in private or in non-court settings that she can't let slide in court without losing face and therefore power. She cares very much about the legitimacy of authority, because it correlates positively with stability and is ingrained in her self-image, but she has an autocrat’s idea of what is legitimate. She assumes you know your own self-worth in relation to hers and are prepared to both display it and back it up. She has also internalized that other people's challenges of her are opportunities for her to prove her strength and fitness to rule, and she probably low-key seeks to provoke reactions now as validation/training, for herself and others.

She has rigid moral standards within the context she was raised in, and punishes herself first for perceived failure because if she does it first, perhaps she can avoid someone else doing it, with deadlier results. She has never been allowed to be less than perfect by her culture's standards- she can be (and has been) odd, but she cannot be flawed- and possibly expends all of her natural empathy on others instead of herself, because she can't afford that kind of indulgence herself, but she knows she owes it to lesser beings?

And as @websandwhiskers pointed out, she does have a lot of empathy within allowable contexts, and I think she is willing to push the envelope compared to her peers as long as she/the empire isn't directly threatened. That's what the kiss after Mat let the poisonous snake go was about. The snake was poisonous but not attacking, and not likely to attack unless someone escalated the situation, and Mat deescalated it. No harm, no foul. Mat responded to a fraught situation both logically and mercifully, in the way she imagined she would have if she had been in his shoes and known he same facts he did, and she rewarded him.

She’s competent and charismatic; I hesitate to say that she inspires loyalty in underlings because honestly with the damane it’s brainwashing (eurgh). But Selucia and Karede are both really into her, personally, even when there are societal inducements not to play favorites. Mat is loyal to her, though honestly Mat is loyal to like... anyone he’s responsible for, so maybe it’s more relevant to say that Mat genuinely likes her; at least, he likes the person he thinks he can coax out of her, and in terms of the persona she has more typically, I think he responds well to her competency and self-possession. The ability to project those things is probably a big part of what goes into charisma.

She thinks that the people who oppose her just don't have all the facts. She doesn't like to admit she's changed her mind; it looks like weakness; she's fine identifying it in others but not herself. Ideally she would pretend things have always been the way she now knows they are, and if she can't, she goes for the "Yes [fact], but [here's what I've decided is now germane to the argument at hand]." redefinition of the problem. She always thinks she’s right, though she does tend to leave some space between when she’s decided something and when she promulgates the decision, to allow for opposing arguments.

I think the original relationship Tuon has with omens is that she uses them to look for external justification from the universe for decisions she's already made. (I mostly like Sanderson's Tuon POVs, but I also I think Sanderson sometimes used omens as a 'make Tuon do OOC things for the plot' card.) Tuon's running dialogue with omens also shows that she's always observing the world and interpreting her effect on it and its effect on her. She loses her composure with omens when they are more concrete and less subject to her control (via interpretation), as with Lidya's fortune.

It makes sense that she's super controlling. It was how she was raised, and aside from having loyal/brainwashed companions (who are, themselves, a form of distributed control), being controlling is obviously the only thing that makes her feel safe. It's still interesting how it extends into a dialogue with the Pattern itself. Like Mat, she wants to survive and she wants to go her own way, and also like Mat she's caught up in the Pattern a little more tightly than others. I think she and Mat have both subconsciously decided that the only way to deal with what the universe wants you to do, when the universe is that powerful, is to say "Fine, I didn't really want to do that other thing anyway, let's learn how this path works and play to win."

She knows she makes bad decisions when angry, and I think in general she distrusts strong emotions, or at least tries to hold them at arms' length so they don't form part of her judgment. She's very very good at compartmentalizing, but as a result sometimes emotional stuff will come up and blindside her a little because she doesn't prioritize it or see it as a natural part of her decision-making. I think her emotions do influence her, usually subconsciously, but she's obviously a Thinking type. (Mat is also a compartmentalizer, but more somatic/emotionally focused; he's got his feelings directly wired into his body and together they make decisions that his brain then evaluates a second later, with running commentary that he never expresses to anyone else. They are both comedically un-self-aware, although Tuon is even less self-aware than Mat is, since at least on some level Mat knows he's been repeatedly traumatized even if he tries to pretend he isn't, while Tuon still thinks that her childhood was completely fine.)

Within the original narrative, I think her POVs are always a bit mysterious and her actions are always a little surprising. What’s impressive about that is that this is basically *always* true no matter what setting she’s in and what she’s doing. When you’re in her head you see her thought process ticking away, but RJ and Sanderson both have her constantly withholding important contextual details in her POVs, like Lidya’s prophecy (the hints are there and come out in bits and pieces, but she doesn’t reveal everything and slot it into context until 2 books later). Like with reading Mat, you’re aware that she obviously has reasons for what she’s doing and you even see her decision-making process, but because you’re missing the details, she remains opaque even though you’re in her head. (Mat’s decision-making process is more clear to the reader, but somewhat opaque to himself and definitely opaque to those around him.)

Meanwhile the things Tuon does share via narration or via action are always kind of buck-wild for the reader because her entire deal is such a culture shock. She’s obviously surprising Mat & co, but what’s weird is that she also seems to be constantly surprising her fellow Seanchan. Her scenes with her peers are usually punctuated with shocked murmuring in the background. They have trouble anticipating her, both because she keeps her cards close to her chest, and I also think because she’s a slightly different person from the one who lived her entire life in a cloistered murdersphere in Seanchan, and if she wasn’t a different person after leaving home, she’s definitely one after her kidnapping. But I think she is a fundamentally different person after leaving home, because of the structural parallels she has with Mat.

In Mat’s first POV chapter, he wakes up in Tar Valon with partial amnesia and a much stronger sense of self-preservation than he had before. As everybodyhatesrand points out (crediting but not tagging them since I feel like they wouldn’t appreciate being tagged in Tuon apologia), we have never been in pre-dagger!Mat’s head. We have never been in dagger!Mat’s head. Everyone in the books, throughout the books, is like “At least Mat’s still the same!” and yeah, he does do and say more or less the same things before and after the dagger. But we had to take it on faith that his personality is more or less intact pre- and post-dagger because we, the readers, only know post-dagger!Mat’s inner monologues. The Mat we inhabit in book 3? He’s been broken. The continuity between his old life and his new life has been disrupted (and will continue to be disrupted, including with an actual literal timeline reboot!) He immediately starts off to fix himself, others, and then eventually the world, so it’s motivating, but the hits really just keep coming...

Like Mat, Tuon’s first POV only appears after she’s left the traumatic environment that shaped her. We don’t know what travelling across the sea did to her sense of self (and we can’t really know since we don’t have that in-Seanchan-baseline), though we do know she’s changed after travelling with Mat (aside from catching feelings, I think she learned that the Seanchan are not always in possession of all the facts), and we know what becoming Empress did to her (she doubled down on duty and lost a lot of personal flexibility). I think there are major structural parallels between Mat and Tuon’s POVs because they’re both broken people who try their very best to act as if they are not broken. In Tuon’s case I think she just doesn’t know how broken she is. In Mat’s case, he knows, but he’s doing a weird balancing act of integrating lessons learned (healing!) while also, like, frantically trying to ignore or drown out the emotional cost of trauma (not healing!)

By the end of the series I think Tuon knows, but is not letting herself actually think, that being made damane is a) a real possibility for her, specifically, and b) that it is not, in fact, something she would willingly choose for herself even to serve the empire. I think this is different from the more intellectual disgust of the idea of herself channeling; that's abstract, and she imagines there's an actual choice for the person with the spark between channeling and not channeling, or possibly that there's an actual choice between learning to channel vs not learning to channel if you have the spark inborn. (We know that the actual choice if you have the spark is 'learn to channel properly or die'.) Tuon's out there like "If I were a marath'damane I would simply choose not to channel. RIP to marath'damane but I'm different".

She's never been a marath'damane in the sense of someone who started channeling involuntarily, and isn't interested in imagining herself as one, at least not when confronted by someone who is succeeding in making her angry. So even if you made her choose, as a theoretical marath'damane, between dying and learning to channel properly, I think she'd consider 'learning to channel properly' as 'becoming a murderer' and therefore the choice would be between dying and becoming a murderer. There's a clear argument to be made in that idiom that the marath'damane is 'becoming a murderer' in self-defense, which would have a different moral tenor (manslaughter vs murder). But Tuon strikes me as the type to say in an argument (and probably believe) that "The end result is the same & I would die before compromising my principles.”

I think in the confrontation with Egwene she probably internally justified not putting the collar on because there was a Seanchan audience and because the taunt came from an escaped damane, even though the actual reason was fear that it would work. She’s letting the circumstances invalidate the argument so she doesn’t have to think about it. I think if she were to let herself think about the authentic emotional response- and she probably has, I feel like she does a postmortem on all of her public discomposure- she would consciously know that her instinct was that it would work on her, and furthermore she would know that she does not want to be damane, even if the Empire would require her to be.

If she followed out the chain of reasoning, she’d know that if she were a damane, if she were actually leashed, she would be forced to channel. She’d know because she’s taken great pleasure in training and breaking damane, and she knows how to get damane to channel and how to break them. Therefore, if she were damane, she would know that she would need to be broken, and she knows how she would go about breaking herself. She probably thinks that her last act of free will would be to suicide if she possibly could. But I think that what she’s AFRAID OF is that she would actually convince herself that being the very best damane is all she wants out of life. And that's the scary, universe-ending thought she's avoiding the consequences of, because a) it’s about breaking herself (as Cadsuane points out, no one can easily think about breaking themselves) and b) the fact that she would need to be broken and that she doesn’t like the idea is a sign that she’s not the perfect avatar of the Empire that she thinks she should be.

I think becoming damane has been added- in the bare abstract- to her mental list of the price of failure. It's a very fundamental loss of control and identity, where all she has is resignation and brainwashing that- best case scenario- she does to herself. She's scared of it in a way she was not before, now that it's been made personal. Like Mat, she's going to shove that down deep and ignore the bad scary implications as long as she can, up until the point that they actually disable her or otherwise bleed out into her intellectual or physical world in ways that aren't as ignorable.

But while Tuon thinks she would die before compromising her principles, and even more secretly is extremely afraid that she *wouldn't*, I also think that like Mat, if it came down to it she would transform herself radically to survive *as herself*.

She’d realize that she has other principles, more human ones, underlying her socially acceptable and externally imposed principles of enforcing hierarchy and maintaining personal integrity. (Parallels to dagger!Mat being exorcised?) I think her basic motivations are that she should survive, that she should retain as much control/power over her own fate as possible, and that she should make decisions from a place of empathy rather than anger or fear. I think she would also realize that she does in fact value some principles over others. She would redefine the meaning of ‘personal integrity’ to separate it from what the state wants.

If she knew what was really driving her socially acceptable principles, and that there was a difference between what she really, fundamentally wanted & what she had been told to want, with encouragement she could prioritize the organic, primal ones and apply those to the external world. If she is a person, then everyone else is a person, and she should want for them what she wants for herself. I think she might get to the point of realizing there is an alternative path (of what looks like selfishness) but I don't think she's going to let herself be selfish (in this healing, positive way) without external prompting/confirmation, so this is probably where friends, positive role models, and finally omens come in.

#tuon paendrag #problematic fave tuon #meta #wheel of time #If I were a marath'damane I would simply choose not to channel. RIP to marath'damane but I'm different.

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purplesurveys · 3 years

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Do you own any Funko Pop! figurines? No. I had a brief period where I wanted to start collecting them SO BAD and often went to toy stores to gawk at the figures I felt like I needed to have; but I grew out of that and I don’t even really give Funkos a second glance whenever I see them anymore haha.

How many cats and dogs have you had as pets in your lifetime? We’ve had one cat and two dogs.

Can your mom and/or dad play any instruments, or how about anyone else in your family? My dad can play the guitar; he just absolutely never shows it off, not even if you lay out ten guitars in front of him. I think my mom played the piano as a kid.

Have you ever colored in an adult coloring book as a stress reliever? Yeah, it was my coping mechanism from a few years ago. I don’t do it nearly as often anymore, but I still have my coloring books and pencils stored in my room just in case I randomly want to get back to the hobby.

Can you crack crab legs without a tool? No, I ask my parents or grandparents to do it haha.

How many light sources are in the room you’re in? There are two, but I only use one. I never switch on my main bedroom light as I hate how brightly white it is.

What’s your favorite thing to put on bagels? I never get bagels so I don’t really have a clue what I prefer on them.

Who’s your favorite director? Stanley Kubrick.

Bats: cute or gross? Neither side of the spectrum; I just don’t think about bats.

What was the last really intense pain you felt? I got a particularly vicious scratch from Cooper around a month ago that left a deep cut on my thigh. The scar is still visible and I think it’s going to remain that way for a while haha I don’t see it fading out anytime soon.

Would you rather vacation by a beach or a lake? Both sound extremely pleasant but I’ll take the lake trip because I’ve never seen one, or stayed near one.

How would you feel about traveling abroad alone? I honestly feel like it’s going to be that way for me moving forward. I’m okay with it, though. I feel like it would be very calming and empowering to be able to explore the world on my own.

What is your father's middle name? He doesn’t have a second name.

Where did your last kiss take place? Outside my house, by her car.

Which movie villain do you find the most terrifying? I haven’t encountered anyone yet that truly terrified me.

If you married your favorite celebrity what would your last name be? Kim, hahaha.

Do you stick your tongue out often in pictures? I wouldn’t say so. I pull up the peace sign most often.

Which one of your family members are you closest to? My sister and my eldest cousin on my mom’s side.

Would you rather have name brand shoes or name brand clothes? Shoes. They stand out more.

Are you a good liar? Yes. Doesn’t mean I enjoy lying and take advantage of that skill as much as possible.

Are you proud of your parents? Sure.

If you could get backstage tickets to ANY concert - which would you pick? Paramore. I think Hozier would be neat as fuck too.

Which is better: orange or grape soda? I don’t like soda, so neither.

Was the last thing you ate hot or cold? They are meant to be consumed while hot.

Who was the last person in your house who isn’t family? Angela and Hans.

What color was the last swimsuit you wore? Pink.

Can you remember the last song you listened to? I just tuned into a random lo-fi playlist, so I’m not familiar with the tracks and the artists who made them.

Have you ever been dumped really harshly? Yes.

Can you do a back flip, or anything else of that sort? Nope.

Do you have any exes you can’t stand anymore? To a considerable extent.

What happened to cause you to feel that way about them? She is extremely selfish and the biggest coward I’ve ever met.

Are you more of a phone or a computer person? Laptop.

Do you have a job, and if so, where do you work? Yeah, I work at a PR firm.

If not, do you want one?

Do any medical afflictions run in your family? I know hypertension is kind of a thing on my mom’s side, but I don’t know if there are any other conditions I should know about.

What’s your favorite Mexican dish? Burritos and enchiladas.

Have you ever been to a professional sports game? No, just collegiate-league ones.

Do you prefer pads, tampons or something else? I use pads. I’ve never used a tampon or any other product, so there’s no basis for me to make a comparison and establish preferences.

Have you ever ordered a specially made cake from a cake shop? Yeppp, I got a customized cake for my birthday.

What months were you and your siblings born in? My brother and I were born in April; my sister was born in September.

What did you have for dinner last night? Barbecue chicken.

Have you ever had sex in/on a vehicle? In, yes. Do people have sex ON cars??????

Do you do anything to groom your eyebrows? I will shave extremely occasionally. Otherwise no, I don’t touch them.

Has your town ever flooded? This time of the year, always.

Have you ever played at the McDonald’s play place? Yup. I preferred Burger King’s playplace, though; it was lesser-known so there were fewer kids I was forced to play with.

Have you ever taken a picture of snow? I’ve never even seen it.

Do you cry easily? I can.

Are you happy with where you live? It’s quiet and safe, which is nice; but I think at this point I would be a lot happier and would be able to grow a lot if I moved to a big city.

Do people ever mistake you for being a different race? Not really; but as a general thought, it is an extremly big pet peeve when people only take into account East Asians when the topic of Asia comes up.

Do you hate the last person you kissed? I don’t hate her. But I can’t stand her.

What genre is your favorite movie? Drama, romance, a hint of comedy.

Who was the last person you were in a car with? My mom and my siblings.

Do you like the picture on your license/I.D. card? Yeah haha. I was allowed to smile on my license, so at least my photo doesn’t look gloomy.

When was the last time somebody hit on you? Hasn’t happened in a while.

Was the last person you met a male or female? For the first time? She’s a girl.

What brand is your underwear? I don’t remember the name anymore.

What’s your favorite Thanksgiving food? I don’t celebrate that.

Do you have a TV in your room? Nah. I don’t really watch the TV anymore, and using the living room TV to watch YouTube videos is enough for me.

Are any of your electronics charging right now? My laptop is constantly plugged in. My speaker is also charging at the moment.

What was the last video game you played? I have no clue, it’s been forever.

What’s the biggest promise someone’s ever made to you? Did they keep it? That they’ll always stay. I didn’t make her keep it; I was the one who moved on.

Google, Bing, or Yahoo? Google.

What was the last song you had on repeat? It’s been a while since I set a song on repeat. Maybe Film Out? If not that, maybe UGH!

Who is your favorite person to watch on YouTube? Rhett and Link or the Try Guys.

How many college degrees do you want? I’m okay with the one I have.

Can you wink? Yeah, but I’m substantially better at winking with my right eye than my left.

Do you own any jerseys? I don’t think so.

Have you ever tried to snort Pixie Stix as a child, or even an adult? No. I don’t even think I’ve had it ever.

Do you like going to baby showers? Do you go only for the cake? I’ve never been to a baby shower. Not a thing here.

Has there ever been a time in your life, you felt sexually undecided? I still am. I’m not bothered about it, though. Sex and who I have it with aren’t things I spend much time thinking about.

Do you think tattoos and piercings are sexy on the opposite sex? Depends. It certainly suits some people better.

Do people ever ask you to do things they’re too short to accomplish? No...I am the short person asking for help :)))))))

What color are the headphones you have at this moment in time? I have black ones but I literally just took them off five minutes ago so I can transfer my music to the speaker I mentioned earlier.

Ever choked severely on something during lunch at your school? I don’t think so.

Do you eat more vegetables or fruits? What’s your favorite fruit/veggie? VEGETABLES. I love green beans, eggplants, and bell peppers the most. I can’t stand fruits, with the one exception of avocados.

What would you say is the color of your favorite bra? Black.

Is anyone in your family a firefighter? Who is it anyway? I don’t think so.

What do you usually buy when you go to the dollar store? We don’t have a dollar store, and that should be self-explanatory hah.

Ever peed in the pool? Be honest! God no. That’s gross.

When you’re older, what kind of house do you want to live in? Something modern and minimalist.

Where do you want to get married? Idk, I’m pretty traditional when it comes to this. Booking an events place would be ideal for me; the only thing on my wishlist would probably be the fact that I hope my wedding could be held somewhere cold, like Baguio.

Do you plan on having both your parents at your wedding? Uh yeah, sure.

What is your favorite childhood TV show? Spongebob.

Honestly, do you like school? I liked it when I was granted more freedom to do things my own way, which is to say I really enjoyed college. But I didn’t mind school for the most part, especially since it meant being able to see my friends everyday.

Last thing that made you cry? I was listening to a song that resonated a lot with me at that moment.

Honestly, are you keeping a big secret right now? Nothing too big or life-changing to someone if they ever found out.

Last person you took a walk with? Idk, that’s not an activity I tend to do with other people.

Have you ever liked someone who didn’t like you back? No.

Who was the last person to actually pick you up in the air? My ex, probably.

Does any part of your body hurt? My shoulders are constantly hurting these days. I really need to buy a new work chair :(

If you had to choose between a million bucks or to be able to change a regret what would you do? Million bucks. Easiest choice.

Can you keep a secret? Sure.

Your favorite romantic movie? The Proposal.

How do you feel about Valentine’s Day? I honestly like it, and I celebrated it when I was able to.

Who was the last person you took a picture with? My sister and I took a silly selfie earlier.

Do your jeans have rips, tears, and holes in them? Some of the pairs I have do, but they’re meant to be ripped jeans.

Do you celebrate 420? Nope.

Have you ever kicked a vending machine? I don’t think so. I barely use them.

How do you eat Oreos? I just bite into them. No patience do the whole twist-lick thing. Sometimes I’ll dip them in milk, if we happen to have some.

Do you wear your shoes in the house? That is a big no-no.

Would you survive in prison? I might not.

Ever been to Georgia? No for both state and country.

Do you get your hair cut every month? No, just once a year. Which reminds me, I finalllllllly had my hair trimmed yesterday hahaha I got sick of my long-ass hair, which was starting to feel like a bitch to maintain. It’s only up to my shoulders now.

Current relationship in detail. I am single...nothing much to share about it. I get to enjoy to spend my money on myself, which is my favorite part about it hahaha.

If you were kicked out of your house, who would you call/go to? My grandma.

List things you spend money on in an average week. Food delivery and nearly every week, merch. I’ve considerably calmed down on the latter, though.

Rate each of your sexual partners (if any) from 1-10. I’ve only had one...I guess I’d give her a 9. A bit TMI but the oral could’ve been a little better.

Post the last FB group/page that you joined. I was looking for FB groups for a work deliverable, but I had to join one of them to give it a better scan. I don’t remember which group it had been, though.

Would you parents be mad if you were in a relationship? No. If they did, I would be very surprised they would still be meddling with a 23 year old’s life.

Think of the last person you had sex with. Do you think they’ve slept with anyone else since they last slept with you? I’m sure.

Is there someone that you believe you will always be attached to? I’m not now, so no.

What board games are you good at? I’m quite terrible at all of them, tbh. It’s why I’ve always preferred to simply watch over my friends when they do play board or card games.

Is there a sport/hobby you keep thinking about taking up, but that you’ve never quite gotten around to starting? Wakeboarding. Do you think pranks like egging/toilet-papering someone's house are funny or immature? Immature.

Do you think “sleeve tattoos” are a good idea? I’m not totally obsessed with the idea, but they do look good on people.

Is there anything in particular that your parents argue about? What? I don’t know. 100% of the time they are caused by my grown-ass mother throwing a petty-ass tantrum, so I could not care less about the things they fight about.

Do you ever actually read the “Terms and Services” when you sign up for websites and such? Nah.

If you have a handheld games console (a DS or GameBoy, for example), how often do you use it? I haven’t used the Switch since last year.

Your phone is ringing. It’s the person you fell hardest for, what do you say? Pick it up and wait for them to talk.

If your best friend was kicked out, would your parents let him/her live with you? Probably not, knowing my mom – but I would do absolutely anything else to help.

Are you afraid of falling in love? I guess you can say that, yeah. I’m not headed towards that feeling again anytime soon, though.

Is there anybody you wish you could be with right now? I wish I was with my friends now.

Have you ever kissed someone & wished you didn’t? No.

Did you get kissed last night? Nope.

Do you enjoy going through a carwash? Idk, I’ve never taken my car to one. That’s something my parents take charge of.

How did you get most of your scars? Cooper.

Ever had to take an inkblot test? I haven’t.

Have you ever been in trouble for something you honestly didn’t do? Sure. Like back in high school when a group of friends had been caught cheating on our chemistry exam – and we were told that the entire batch would be given a formal warning. I was on the minority side that found the entire situation hilarious, because I know they wouldn’t dare mar the records of everyone else who took that stupid test honestly.

Have you ever seriously slapped someone in anger? My brother, only because he put his hands on me first.

What/who woke you up this morning? Just me.

Who was the last person to be in your bedroom besides you? My mom, who always goes in there without knocking/warning.

What’s one of your locked text messages? I don’t lock my texts and I’m not sure if that’s an available feature on my phone.

Have you ever finished a game of Monopoly? I don’t even know how that game works lol.

Is there anyone you know who’s in any way paralyzed? Yes.

The truth all comes out when someone is drunk, true? I mean for the most part, yeah. It’s easier to be honest with a few drinks in you.

When was the last time you felt disappointed in yourself? Continued from the other day. Last week when I forgot about a virtual meeting and attended it 15 minutes after it started.

How about feeling disappointed in someone else? Last Friday when I had to watch my dad treat a service crew member like shit.

For you, do you commonly feel more jealousy or envy? Envy, I think. I don’t really feel jealous.

Do you rely on the heads/tails flipping of a coin sometimes for decisions? Nope, but close. I’ll do eenie-meenie sometimes haha

Do you have any specific chores you do around the house? Nothing I’m required to do but sometimes I’ll offer to wash the dishes or fold laundry.

For you, does comfort or fashion come first in dressing? It’s like 70% fashion, 30% comfort. Looking nice makes me feel more comfortable lol.

Have you had two friends that absolutely hated each other? Not each other; the dislike was one-sided. Gabie hated Andi for whatever reason, which in hindsight already should’ve been a red flag.

Do you like Laffy Taffy? No, I’ve never had one.

Do you prefer electric or manual pencil sharpeners? Manual, only because I’ve never seen, much less use, an electric one.

Are your biceps at all noticeable? Nah.

Have you ever seen a walrus? It’s possible, but I don’t have very good memories of it if I have seen one.

Did you ever have one of those Easy Bake ovens as a kid? Not a popular toy here.

Does your bathroom have a theme to it? It doesn’t. I think that would be a little tacky tbh.

From inside of your house, how many doors lead outside? Three. We have doors in the kitchen, dining room, and our main door by the living room.

Are there a lot of trees in your yard? Not really.

Have you ever liked someone that treated you like crap? Yes.

Have a best friend? Yup.

Does it bother you when your best friend does stuff without you? No? That’s pretty petty. Both Angela and Andi have big circles of friends and that would be stressful on my end if I made a fuss every time they hung out with anyone that isn’t me lol.

Is there a secret you’ve never told your parents? A bunch. I don’t count them as confidantes.

Does anyone hate you? It’s possible but I don’t care enough to want to know.

What’s the one thing you regret more than anything? Not breaking up with Gabie earlier, even though all the red flags were there.

Do you remember important dates? For the most part, yeah.

What’s some lyrics from a song that means a lot to you? “Dream, may all of creation be with you til the end of your life Dream, wherever you are, will welcome you Dream, may your trials end in full bloom Dream, though your beginnings might be humble, may the end be prosperous.”

Who gives the best advice? Andi. They’re able to tell me advice I don’t want to hear but am supposed to be hearing, which I appreciate.

Who do you usually see in your dreams? :) It’s a random cast every time.

What type of cake did you last eat? It was carrot cake with a really good cream cheese frosting.

How many of your friends are gay or bisexual? Almost all of them are...it’s easier to count friends who are straight.

What’s your favorite type of sandwich? Anything with pulled pork in it tbh.

When was the last time someone asked you out? Did you accept or decline? I’ve never been asked out.

Do you like The Offspring? I know a couple of songs but I definitely can’t call myself a fan.

One pillow or two? Two.

Do you like Mad Libs? I’ve never tried playing it.

Are you suicidal? Not lately. I haven’t been for a while, actually. I’m really happy about that.

Where do your grandparents live? My paternal grandparents live in the south. My maternal grandma lives in the village right next to ours haha, so not far away at all.

Do you cut yourself? Yeesh. Can’t questions like this come with a trigger warning? Anyway, no I haven’t in a while as well.

What is your pet’s name? Kimi and Cooper.

Have you ever been to Canada? No, but I'd love to visit. < Same!

Aren’t babies overrated? I think they are overrated in a sense that everyone always seems to want one of their own, but the circle gets extremely smaller when it comes to those who actually have the capacity to take proper care of an infant.

Have a built-in pool in your backyard? No.

Ever won yourself a stuffed animal? Sure, in like claw games and whatnot.

Ever had someone else win you a stuffed animal? No. I don’t really like stuffed toys lol.

Ever been to a circus? Nope.

Ever shot animals? I have not.

Do you consider yourself intelligent? I guess I’m booksmart more than anything else. I had good grades and can handle myself in arguments and debates...but I have my weaknesses in other aspects too, like street smarts lol.

Have you ever run away from home? I had a period when I wanted to, but never pushed through with it.

Do you put family first, friends, relationships, school, or something else? Work > friends > family.

What’s something you’ve stood up for in the past? I always shoot my mom a glare as if to say “be careful of the line you’re crossing” whenever she makes a homophobic, sexist, or racist remark.

What’s something you worked extremely hard to get? The healthy and stable mental disposition I find myself in these days. I would never give it up for anything ever again.

Are you satisfied with your body image? I mean not fully, but I also don’t have any complaints.

Have you ever been labeled negatively or otherwise been called something extremely derogatory? I’ve been called a bitch by this girl that was just a terror to be classmates with back in middle school. She was known to a big war freak and had her fair share of behavioral/anger issues, so it didn’t really affect me once I knew I was her next target. I didn’t encounter her again until college when we ended up attending the same university, and she’s changed a lot for the better.

Have you ever seriously taken advantage of someone or been taken advantage of? The former, no. Yes to the latter.

Have you ever been seriously ill? My fever last year really felt like the end of me lmao, so I guess yeah.

Have you ever befriended a former enemy? She wasn’t an enemy per se, but I just found myself immensely irritated by Sofie during our first few meetings; but then she ended up being one of my best friends for a time

If you’re not religious, would you ever pray as a last resort? If you are religious, do you often pray for other people? I did in the past. I wouldn’t do so these days.

Have you ever dated someone, then after you dated they came out of the closet or switched (for lack of a better word) sexual orientation? That hasn’t happened to me.

Has a boy/girl ever walked a ridiculous distance just to see you? How about vice versa? I think once? My ex was brewing a surprise for me for Valentine’s Day last year and to cut the long story short, she essentially walked a crazy long distance in my school to make the surprise a success. My university is huge and even I prefer to take my car whenever I have to go from one building to another, so I definitely saw the effort she had put in.

When was the last time you felt really uncomfortable? Right now. It’s really humid and my electric fan isn’t really doing anything to curb the heat :/

Is there anything that your mom is really known for as to how she is as a person? She is very uptight.

Who have you been talking to the most today? My co-workers, albeit virtually.

Are you nosy? Nah. I won’t really press and will wait for people to open up.

What’s the meanest thing you have done to a friend? I don’t do mean things to my friends.

If your ex called you crying, what would it most likely be about? Fuck if I know. Her pride is way up in the sky for her to do something like this.

Who was the best kisser out of all the people you have kissed? I’ve only kissed one person.

Have you ever been told that you have an annoying laugh? I don’t think so. It would be etched in my head if I was ever told this.

#survey #surveys

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sebastianshaw · 3 years

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Shaw and Monet St Croix

OH EW OH MY GOD WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?! I feel SO BAD for this but here!! Name: Aliya Faiza Jawaria Kinza Kiran St. Croix-Shaw. Look, Monet’s full name is Monet Yvette Clarisse Maria Therese St. Croix she is going to ensure her daughter has an equally fancy, worthy name; each of them has a meaning specifically for her chosen by Monet. I was originally going to go with French names, since the names of Monet, her father, and all her siblings are French, but since more recent stuff has seen Monet looking more fondly to her mother’s faith, I chose names popular in Islam instead. Gender: Female. Cis or trans, idk, but female. If she is trans, Monet is still the one who chose her new name. General Appearance: Absolutely beautiful, because she’s Monet’s daughter, but her features are probably less “conventionally gorgeous” because she’s also Shaw’s daughter. But honestly? That works. I’ve talked before about how a lot of the top supermodels out there often aren’t conventionally beautiful because that’s bland and blends in with all the others, they typically have “striking” features that stand out in some way. Aside from that, she’s tall and moderately toned, though not as much as either parent (great shoulders though) and a skin tone darker than Shaw but lighter than Monet. Unlike Monet and the St. Croix twins, who have straight hair, Aliya has wavy to loosely curly hair, as well as a light sprinkling of brown freckles across her nose and arms that neither parent sports. Her outfits are incredibly expensive casual-wear that she doesn’t realize is too upscale for everyday-wear because they’re what she’s used to. She also doesn’t give a second thought to overdressing, not as in wearing too much but as in wearing an outfit that’s a 10 when everyone else is just chilling in their 5. Again, she doesn’t do this deliberately. This is just her version of normal. And like her mother, looks GREAT in red. Personality: Vivacious, bright, very confident and open and sunny, at least that’s how she SEEMS and the mask goes very, very deep because she’s been perfecting it her whole life. Under her carefree and friendly and flawless facade, Aliya is. . . kind of a mess, actually. See, Shaw didn’t get a chance to be as bad to Aliya as he was to Shinobi, since Monet would send him into orbit if he EVER so much as IMPLIED that what came out of HER womb wasn’t PERFECT, but Monet has her issues as well. It’s not that Monet pressures Aliya to be perfect like Shaw would, she simply ASSUMES that she already is by default. How could she not be? Because of this, Aliya feels her mother doesn’t love HER, she loves the IDEAL of her that she has in her head, but not the reality, not the real Aliya. I can relate to this deeply; I was a gifted child and my parents thought I was a genius and some great future writer and artist and all this stuff and while I know having parents who believe in you and brag about you is like. . . the least sort of parents you can have. . . .it left me with a bad sense of imposter syndrome and I think Aliya has the same issue. As mean as her dad is, at least she feels he sees the real HER, flaws and failures and all. Though she certainly doesn’t like being criticized by him either! Aliya will insult people casually because that was what both her parents did, she thinks that’s normal acceptable behavior, and it takes people aback because she seems so nice where did that COME from? And given how neither of her parents were humble people, she mistakenly assumes that if someone ISN’T stating their accomplishments, means they don’t have any. So basically if someone ISN’T bragging about themselves, Aliya thinks they just must be useless, the idea of modesty as a virtue, or that modesty exists to all, isn’t a concept to her and she’s kind of confused by it. So, like Monet, she can be kind of an abrasive ass, but it’s in an innocent way. Likewise, she’s always going to talk up her own accomplishments because that’s how she was taught to behave, and can come off as egocentric for it, despite her actual insecurity. Back to that insecurity, having two such EXCEPTIONAL parents has really skewed Aliya’s view of what normal/acceptable is. So because she’s not a genius like Monet or business savant like Shaw, she thinks she’s stupid, if she’s not automatically perfect at something she thinks she’s a dud, things like that, and she tries to conceal these “failings” from others, which means never admitting she’s wrong or doesn’t know something or can’t do something. . .which, rather than making her look good/normal to others like she thinks, actually makes them think she’s a stuck-up pretentious asshole liar. Which she kind of is, but for far more sympathetic reasons than most people think. Also, unlike her parents, she does care what people think of her, but she grievously misunderstands what they think about her and why that is. Similarly, her parents never modeled how to apologize or forgive, and so she doesn’t know how to do either right. Nor did they ever prepare her for failure because Shaw doesn’t think that should be encouraged and Monet just never thought it would happen. I don’t want to sound too down on Monet though because she definitely loves and supports her daughter, but having a mother as perfect as Monet, and who KNOWS she’s as perfect as Monet, is going to have effects. But she definitely adores Aliya, to be clear. Unlike Shaw, who is. . . Shaw. The biggest area her parents differ is their morality, especially their morality around helping others. Shaw not only doesn’t see it as necessary, he even sees it as wrong, that the weak should NOT be supported. Monet, by contrast, as a sense of noblisse oblige, that people who are “better” like herself should help those who are not. Condescending but kind, is how I think Emma phrased it yet. Shaw and Monet would impart their views to Aliya, and Monet’s route, to Aliya’s credit, is the one she chose. Especially since Aliya feels she secretly ISN’T better, she’s one of these lesser people, so she feels compassion for others out of kinship in that sense. Special Talents: She has all of Monet’s major physical abilities---flight, super strength, durability---but none of her psychic abilities. She probably has some kind energy rechanneling abilities from Shaw though. Who they like better: She definitely looks up to Monet more, and thinks Monet is the far better person (which, she is) Who they take after more: Monet, even if she doesn’t realize it Personal Head canon: She likes power metal and Barn Courtney, and magnolia blossoms and these little yellow flowers that grow on the side of the road. Prefers to eat her tacos using the foil they’re wrapped in to hold them rather than touching the actual tortilla itself. Face Claim: N/A but I’m sure there are some BEAUTIFUL ones out there who would fit. It’s impossible to find Monet’s actual precise ethnicity (black/Algerian) in my experience, but I’m sure there are lots of gorgeous Black/White/MENA actresses and models out there for Aliya even if the MENA part isn’t specifically Algerian.

#kids #kid meme #aliya #idk I don't like the name Aliya for her but I can't think of one i prefer #shattered-catalyst

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bitletsanddrabbles · 3 years

Text

WIP Wednesday: Dash it, Jeeves, which way’s the bedroom?

Given that I was just complaining about my inability to find a blue print to Highclere’s upper reaches, it seemed appropriate that today’s snippet be from one of the spots where I most wish I had one. And so we see Bertie Wooster, guest of Lord Grantham, enacting one of his most brilliant schemes ever despite the fact that Jeeves, his brain clearly starting to go at last, did not see it’s genius and advised against it.

Also, I think every writer should do at least one short piece in the style of Wodehouse at some point. It’s terribly fun.

Cut text because it’s rather long.

As I predicted, Horatio took one look at me, standing in front of his beloved with a carving knife, and leapt to the most dire conclusion. As I predicted, he swiftly moved to protect the delicate object of his affection. As Jeeves had predicted, I seemed to have underestimated the vehemence of his reaction. His face turned a decided aubergine colour. His mustache bristled. I couldn’t swear but that a couple puffs of smoke didn’t go billowing out his nose.

I took a step backward.

He took a step forward. He slowly extended his hands in the general direction of my neck.

I took another step, with him following. It should never be said that Woosters are cowards, but on the third step, me retreating and this lumbering beast coming after, something broke inside me. I dropped the carving knife and bolted. There was a bellow like an irate hippopotamus and the sound of footsteps behind me and I knew, without looking over my shoulder, that the chase, as they say, was on. The halls of Downton Abbey quickly took on the semblance of the Valley of Death and I, without making reply or reasoning why, charged through them. Someone had blundered, and that someone was Bertram.

“Now Horatio, I know what you’re thinking,” I tried to reason as I hastened myself down the gallery. “That can’t have looked very well at all.”

“I’m going to break your spine in five places and then beat you to jelly!” was the well reasoned response.

I decided to save my breath for running. Downton Abbey is a very squareish sort of building. The gallery runs around the periphery so that Horatio and I could have been running in circles, or more to the point squares, all night. Given the floor we were on, that didn’t seem preux to the gently nurtured guests, so when we reached the stairs, I transferred floors as smoothly as possible with the goal of reaching my own room, sequestering myself inside, and locking the door. Perhaps the Girton-Brattle menace would be more inclined to conversation if the option was breaking down a piece of solid oak. It was a sound enough plan, but there were two hitches. The first was that I lost some speed on the stairs, putting my neck in closer proximity to those iron bending hands. The second was that while trying to make up the lost time, I inadvertently turned the wrong direction upon reaching the bachelor’s quarters, thus charging away from my room, rather than towards. It occurred to me to try and correct, but the time I realized my mistake, my pursuer had reached the top of the stairs, so reversing course would have been to deliver myself to the jelly pot.

The next step, it seemed obvious, was to cast around for a hiding place. The problem there was that Horatio was so hot on my heels that he’d see where I had stowed myself and be after me like a dog with a ferret gone to ground. Also, while there were doors aplenty, I had no idea which rooms were occupied and one does not like to simply charge in on a chap while he’s relaxing for the night. As a last resort, I started to cast about for some sort of weapon. I somewhat regretted not holding on to the carving knife. On the other hand, that was a rather short range weapon and would have involved putting myself within grabbing distance, something I was eager to avoid. If I could have gotten in one of the rooms, a fire poker or something of the sort might have been acquired which would have done the trick. As a bonus, I likely could have hidden behind a door, giving me enough cover to spring from behind. I finally spotted a niche in the wall ahead, one of those places where decorations are put to make a place look a bit dressier and, if I remembered correctly, this one housed a vase. Not the ideal means of defense, naturally, but at least something I could lob at the thick skull with enough force to do some useful damage. I could only hope that the vase was not some priceless heirloom, rife with sentimental whatnot. One really does not want to go about breaking his host’s sentimental doodads, but this was an emergency.

I had almost reached my goal when there was a sort of thudding noise behind me and the air was coloured with some less than polite sentiment. Under the oath I thought I heard a polite, “Terribly sorry, sir,” but I didn’t stop to investigate until I had reached the aforementioned niche and was hoisting the previously noted vase that resided there in. Only then did I turn around to see what had transpired. Of course, having missed the actual incident, I had to do some guess work, but what I surmised was as follows:

As Horatio Girton-Brattle had come plummeting down the hallway, intent on Bertram’s demise, Mr. Barrow had stepped from one of the side rooms. In doing so, he had impeded Horatio’s forward momentum, either with a door or his body, in full or in part. Horatio, not thinking clearly, had been so incensed by the interruption, that he had given up his pursuit of yours truly and now had Barrow pinned to the door by his neck. The room beyond that door must have been occupied, because I was aware in a dimmish sort of way of banging from the interior and an indecipherable sort of yelling.

The truly surprising thing was how unperturbed Barrow seemed to be by the whole thing.

“Watch where you’re going, you miserable little worm!” Horatio’s loving words were clearly audible, even at a bit of a distance.

“Terribly sorry, sir,” Barrow repeated. He sounded neither agitated nor particularly sorry.

Apparently Horatio picked up on the lack of true sorrow. I’m not certain, but I think I heard the gnashing of teeth. “I should beat you to a jelly, tripping me like that.”

Now, a mere mortal would have quailed at the thought. There would have been stammerings and possibly pleadings. But apparently this Barrow was made of sterner stuff than most men, because all he said was, “I wish you wouldn’t, sir. It would make a mess of the hall rug.”

It is said that the best of men lead by example. That their good deeds and gallantry will inspire the lesser men. So it was in this case. The words of this butler among butlers inspired me to gather my courage. If he could face down a raging Girton-Brattle, then why not I? It helped that the confrontation had put Horatio with his back to me. It seemed but the work of a moment to retrace my steps and, with one swift motion, bring my weapon down upon the head of this fearsome specimen, hopefully with enough force to incapacitate him. The only cause for hesitation was, as before, the inevitable demise of the vase and my uncertainty as to it’s value. I had no great desire to be thrown out on my ear at this late hour.

My decision was made for me when a noise emitted from Horatio much like I would imagine a pipe explosion in a mechanics factory would sound. That it is to say it was loud, sort of whistling, and seemed to spell doom for any and all near the blast area. Unable to simply let Barrow stand there and be jellied after he had, purposefully or not, saved me, I started forward, vase raised. Fortunately for the vase, and possibly for Bertram, if I’d not managed to connect with enough force, before I arrived a very authoritative, most vexed voice demanded, “What on earth is going on here?”

I came screeching to a halt, the vase being instinctively tucked into a safe place under one arm. I had not immediately recognized the voice. It was familiar, but something about the tone made it so I couldn’t put a finger on the speaker. I was therefore somewhat surprised when Lord Grantham strode into view, his face set with righteous anger. At tea and dinner he’d looked like a mostly mild mannered sort of old boy, perfectly happy sipping his port and playing with the dog. I wouldn’t have imagined him to look quite so much as a big game hunter advancing on an elephant that’s had the poor sense to trample the lion he was hunting, particularly as he was wearing a dressing robe. A short way behind him was a tall, broadish looking chap with an odd gate that I soon realized was due to his leaning on a walking stick. This, I surmised, was Mr. Bates. Behind Mr. Bates shimmered the familiar and trusted form of Jeeves.

If all I had to write in this piece was Bertie’s PoV, I’d probably have finished by now, novel or not. Unfortunately it also requires Jeeves’s PoV which Wodehouse only wrote once and which is really rather slippery to get a hold of. But you need that upstairs, downstairs feel for it to be properly Downton...

#downton abbey #downton abbey fanfiction #wip wednesday #p.g. wodehouse #bertie wooster #thomas barrow #lord grantham #mr. bates #reginald jeeves #crossover #fan novel

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zoryany · 4 years

Text

@kaitodetective1412 sent me 45 -- You may technically be an adult, but you’re still my child.

(an anon did as well and I do plan to answer both in different ways and I will tag kaito in the anon answer as well bc I feel like this isn’t what either of you wanted but it’s what you’re gonna get, for now)

Imperial Royal Skywalker Family AU Pt 1 || Pt 2

send me ficlet prompts – optionally include characters

Dessert passed in relative silence, the atmosphere in the dining room having grown decidedly tense. Luke had really been hoping he could have delayed Han meeting his father until after he’d spoken to his parents, but the Force seemed to be set on toying with him. At least Mother had been able to placate Father before he’d done anything rash, but Luke wasn’t sure that had been entirely preferable, either.

When they’d all finished, Luke moved to usher Han back to his suite, but his mother raised her hand before he had the chance to even rise from his chair. “Leia? Sweetheart, can you please escort Captain Solo to his rooms while your father and I talk to Luke?”

“Yes, Mother.” Leia looked as though she would rather swallow a bantha whole, but she knew better than to argue with their mother, especially when she was already in a dangerous enough mood. She was also probably hoping she’d get to be in on the whole conversation that was to come, which added to her disappointment. Not that it mattered, anyways, because one way or another, she would know exactly what was said, but her expression and presence in the Force soured significantly as she turned her gaze to Han. “Let’s go, Captain. I don’t have all night.”

Han threw a final, withering look over his shoulder as Leia led him from the room, leaving Luke alone with his mother at last. With a severe expression, she turned to face him, and Luke felt his stomach drop out from under him. Out of the eyes of company, it was entirely clear just how upset she really was. All of the guilt that had been eating at him for the past weeks rose back up in him all at once.

“Come, dear,” said his mother as she stood. “Let’s not keep your father waiting.”

Hanging his head, Luke followed his mother with heavy steps to his father’s study. Unlike the rooms of the Palace occupied largely by the Empress, Darth Vader’s spaces, both planetside and on his flagship, tended to be dim and spartan, possessing little in the way of embellishments. He claimed it as practicality -- and, on most occasions, Luke would agree with that -- but right about now, he was convinced that it was meant to make facing him all that more intimidating.

Luke had never been afraid of his father. He understood why people were, and why they should be, and he was all too aware of what someone as powerful as Darth Vader was capable of, but he’d never feared him. His father would never hurt him or Leia, especially not with Mother around to rein in his temper, but there was always a certain anxiety that overtook him whenever his father was angry. He hated the feeling, the sudden urge to cower in submission before a man he’d idolized all his life and who loved him deeply. Leia had always been better than Luke at standing strong in the face of his emotions, perhaps because she had never felt the same level of hero-worship towards him, but Luke was finding himself longing for some of her strength right about now.

His father had been pacing the length of the room when they’d arrived, but the moment they crossed the threshold, he stopped in his tracks and whirled around. The movement was so abrupt that most would assume that kind of speed impossible from a man as large as Vader, but he moved quick enough to send his cape billowing behind him. “Sit,” he commanded, pointing to a chair in the centre of the room.

As he complied, his mother walked to stand to the right of her husband, both parents folding their arms across their chests. His cheeks burned in shame as he avoided looking directly at them. How was it that they could so easily make him feel like he was five years old again?

“You know why you are here, son.” The modulated voice carried a tranquil rage, one that affected him far more than being shouted at ever would. “Explain.”

‘You can do this, Luke,’ he thought silently, sucking in a shuddering breath in an attempt to steady himself. ‘You’ve been practicing this speech in your head since you left.’

"I -- I can’t apologize enough for leaving without warning like that. I know I put you through needless worry, and I’m sure that nothing I can do will make up for that. I just... needed to get away.” Stars, it sounded even lamer saying it out loud than it did in his head. Neither parent looked pleased. He pressed on. “You know I’ve never really liked -- never really been comfortable with any of... well, our status.” Once again, he was jealous of Leia. She wouldn’t be stumbling over her words like this. “I’ve never liked being the Prince, never really liked making public appearances. Never been good at them, either. Leia’s always been better suited for it. And after twenty years of it, I was feeling... claustrophobic. I needed some freedom.”

“Freedom?” It had always been a touchy subject for his father, Luke knew, but he had to hope he could use that to his advantage. “As the Imperial Prince, you have been granted every want, every desire you could hope for. Your mother and I fought tirelessly, made endless sacrifices to create this life for you and your sister. There has never been more freedom in the galaxy, and you stand at the head of it all.”

Was his father being serious? “You... actually expect me to believe that being rich and powerful is the same as being free?” But then, of course his father did. “Maybe you just don’t realize this gilded cage you’ve put me in, Father. I can’t go anywhere beyond our private quarters without an excessive number of guards accompanying me. You and mother have to be aware of my location at every given moment. I’m not allowed to fly or talk to people or do anything without express permission! It’s suffocating! It’s -- ”

“For your safety,” his father growled, hands falling from his chest to form clenched fists at his sides. Next to him, his mother tensed slightly, pursing her lips, but she did nothing more than focus on watching him just a bit more closely. “Everything I have ever done has been to keep you and your mother and your sister safe. The life we live has come at a great cost, and I will not see you throw it all away out of some foolish rebellion. If something would have happened to you -- ”

“But it didn’t!” Luke cried, his voice pitching upward. Any fear or anxiety he’d been feeling had evaporated, and he was prepared to staunchly defend himself. He was not an idiot. He knew exactly how his parents would feel and how they would react to his departure. The decision he made was conscious and purposeful, and he had every intention of justifying it. “I can take care of myself, you know. All that training hasn’t been for nothing. I was careful. I took every precaution. And I’m twenty years old, now, I’m not a little kid anymore.”

While his mother’s face had relaxed a bit, his father did not appear to be convinced. “You may technically be an adult,” he said, slowly, “but you are still my child -- our child. I have torn down the galaxy once to protect you, and I would do it a thousand times over if it keeps you from harm.”

Letting out a noise of frustration, Luke leapt up from his seat. “But that’s just it! I know you have and I know that you were trying to do it again! Don’t think I didn’t notice the swath of destruction you left in your wake when you tried to track me down this time. It’s too much! I love you both so much, but I don’t want the galaxy to grind to a halt just because I ask for some time alone. I can’t stand all the attention, the pomp and circumstance that surrounds everything I do, the formality I’m forced to endure just to attend dinner! I just -- ” His voice broke, and he was embarrassed to find his eyes stinging as he looked imploringly at his parents. “All I wanted was a little bit of normalcy.”

Slumping back in his chair, Luke realized he may not have processed all of this quite as successfully as he’d initially thought. Running away, it turned out, had only served as a distraction from genuinely confronting what was really bothering him.

“Normalcy?” The vocoder’s tone was dull and flat, and his father seemed to have relaxed his stance, somewhat, almost in disbelief. “You wish to be ordinary? Like every other being in this galaxy?” Disbelief was evident, now. His father’s fists had uncurled, his shoulders slackened, and though he could not see his face, Luke got the impression of wide eyes and raised brows. “That... is unacceptable. You are the furthest thing from ordinary, son. You are above those lesser beings, and I would not see you receive anything less than you deserve. ”

"No,” Luke said, quietly but firmly, “I am not above them.” He’d spent countless hours in the Coruscant underground, on treks both known and unknown to his parents, and he’d spent several weeks touring the galaxy. He had interacted with their citizens on a regular basis, and he knew who they really were. They were people, beings with dreams and aspirations and ideals, and they were magnificent. “My abilities and my status don’t make me any better than anyone else. Aren’t we supposed to be ruling the galaxy for them?”

A stubborn set worked its way through his father’s frame, unyielding as ever. “We do. The galaxy has never fared better.” And he could not be certain if that was a truth or a lie, but his father certainly believed it. “But I cannot allow you to stoop to the level of those below your status. The future of our benevolent Empire rests upon you and your sister. You must maintain a particular image if you wish for your control over them to endure.”

“Are you not listening to me?” But Luke already knew the answer to that. Of course his father wasn’t listening to him. Anything that contradicted his very specific view of the universe rarely made it through. “I don’t want that power to rest on me! I’m not interested in having people grovel at my feet or flinch away from me in fear. I don’t want people to worship me or treat me like... like -- ”

“Royalty?” His father’s arms were folded across his chest again. “That is what you are.”

Luke was prepared to cut in, and his father looked like he had more to say, but before either of them could speak up again, his mother stepped up and placed a gentle hand on his father’s shoulder.

“Ani, wait.” Even after twenty years, Luke could still not believe just how quickly his father seemed to settle when his mother intervened. “I think I know what this is about.” His mother’s expression grew tender as she stepped towards him, crouching down before his chair and cupping his face in her hands. “Dearest,” she said with unparalleled tenderness, “was this because of your birthday?”

Reading the sympathy and understanding in his mother’s deep brown eyes, Luke found himself leaning into her touch. She was radiating compassion, searching for understanding, and Luke knew that this was the reason he’d always intended to return home when he’d left. His parents loved him. They cared for him. They wanted what was best for him, even if they didn’t know how to go about it. All he’d wanted was to do something on his own terms.

“Yes...”

Because his birthday had not been on his terms. It hadn’t been on Leia’s, either, but she could adapt to it much easier than her brother. He’d been overwhelmed, surrounded by sycophants who only wanted to know him because he was an heir, and his status meant that he could not enjoy even the smallest of pleasantries at a party that was meant to be for him and his twin. And then the scene during the speeches...

He’d never wanted to leave his family. Luke loved his mother, father and sister with his entire being. But their status had always weighed on him, and that night had been a breaking point.

“Oh, sweetheart...” His mother shifted her grip and pulled him close. Luke squeezed his eyes shut. Tears had been threatening to spring forth since he’d sat back down, and they ran freely down his cheeks when his mother’s arms enveloped him. “Why didn’t you say anything? We could have talked this out. You didn’t need to run away.”

At this point, his father had taken a single step forward, appearing somewhat hesitant but still refusing to relent. Luke chose to focus on his mother, and he found himself sinking in on himself even more. It felt nearly impossible to convey how he felt and what he wanted without hurting their feelings. His mother’s sympathetic gaze coupled with his father’s unyielding stance only served to elevate his guilt.

But there was this sneaking feeling within him that the conversation his mother suggested wouldn’t have gone well regardless.

“I didn’t think you would listen to me,” he said quietly. “You’re still not really listening to me. I had to do something drastic. It felt like the only option, at the time, and I still feel like it’s not enough. Han makes me happy in a way that all that spectacle just - doesn’t. So I just - I need you to understand why - and I mean actually understand. Because I didn’t want to run. And I don’t want to do it again. But I can’t keep going like this...”

For a long moment, his mother looked at him with large, sad eyes before finally withdrawing her hands and stepping away. “Alright,” she said, a quiet resignation working its way into her voice. “I... don’t think we’ll get much further tonight. Why don’t you go wash up for bed, and your father and I will discuss what you’ve told us.” She pressed her lips together and gave him a long, steady look. “We want what’s best for you, Luke. Please know this.”

And he did. The trouble was, their idea of what was best for him didn’t always match up to his own.

“Luke.” His father seemed uncharacteristically hesitant. “Please do not resort to this again.”

There was more his father wanted to say - more they all wanted to say - but Luke felt satisfied that they had, at the very least, made some manner of progress tonight.

“I won’t, Father. I promise.”

#imperial royal skywalker family au #luke skywalker #darth vader #padme naberrie #padme amidala #my writing #star wars fic #i THINK i'm happy with this #hope you folks enjoy!#any feedback is obviously appreciated #so let me know what you think!#and if you want more of this AU #either a continuation #or like other things that go down in it

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cinaja · 3 years

Text

Before the Wall part 42

Masterlist

----

Two months after Miryam and Drakon decided to attempt a relationship, they are sitting are sitting in Miryam’s drawing room together with Andromache and Zeku. Miryam and Drakon share a seat on the couch while Zeku and Andromache each took one of the armchairs. Between them, papers lie strewn out over a table. They are preparing for the meeting tomorrow, coordinating their opinions and making sure that they all agree on what to do any say.

The four of them are the usual group for meetings like this. Miryam is obviously there, although not in her function as de-facto leader of the Alliance, but as leader of their fraction. (Officially, there are no fractions in the Alliance, but in reality, they very much exist. Miryam’s is the biggest, consisting of all the humans – at least since she put her quarrel with Nakia aside – as well as those Fae who actually care about equality.) Andromache is there for the humans (not technically their leader, but while Scythia under Nakia is in charge of the military, Andromache spearheads politics) and Zeku for the Fae (not their leader at all, but closest to Miryam). Drakon isn’t there to represent anyone, but he wrote the proposal they are discussing, which means he has been invited to these meetings lately.

What they are discussing today is the sixth draft of Drakon’s original proposal, and somehow, he doubts that it will be the last one. They keep quarrelling over territory lines and new power positions, discussing the same points over and over again. By now, they have at least agreed that each of the Loyalist territories will be forced to yield part of their territory proportionally to the human population, allowing the humans to form independent territories. Other points remain less secure.

“Why are there no reparations specified in that contract?” Zeku asks.

“There are,” Drakon says, “Section three. Each freed slave is allowed to take as much they can carry from their owner’s household. And there will be trials for atrocities the enemies committed.”

Miryam shifts through her copy of the proposal. She is leaning against Drakon, he has an arm around her shoulders. In the beginning, they were hesitant about how much affection they could show in public, with only Andromache, Mor, Sinna and Nephelle knowing the truth, but by now, they are nearly certain that no one notices anything strange about their behaviour. (“What did you expect?” Nephelle asked, laughing, when he mentioned it to her. “You two were close enough already that the difference is near-impossible to notice.”)

“Yes, sure.” Zeku picks up a grape from the plate. “But what about reparations paid to the winner? It is common for the defeated party to somehow compensate the other side for the costs of war.”

Drakon sighs. He knew this would come, knew the Fae especially would likely disagree. “There hasn’t been a war of a comparable scale in millennia,” he says. “The entire Continent is in ruin. If we force the Loyalist countries to pay for this, we’ll bankrupt them for centuries.”

Neither Miryam nor Andromache look particularly disturbed at the thought. Andromache shrugs. “So what? Much as I appreciate your generosity, I don’t particularly care if the Loyalists have economic problems after this.”

“You will if you consider the long-term consequences,” Drakon says. He sincerely hopes he doesn’t sound like he’s defending the Loyalists. “I’m not saying this out of sympathy for the ither side, but because I don’t want us to get dragged into another war in a few decades or centuries.”

Zeku frowns at him. “Aren’t you exaggerating a little there? This has been common practice for millennia.”

“And every time the victor when too far, another war was the consequence . Take Akele and Merin,” he says, referring to two territories on the western Continent that have been locked in war for just over a thousand years. It all started when Akele defeated Merin in war and bled the country dry for compensation.

He looks around at the others. “The Loyalists’ economy is built around slavery – without it, it will struggle. If we add huge debts to that, it will collapse entirely.” He looks to Andromache and Miryam, who don’t seem upset at all. “I realize that this may not feel like a bad thing – even I would like to see them pay, and I have far less cause than you do. But any satisfaction this might bring won’t last, because if we do this, we’ll never have true peace. We will need constant military presence in the former Loyalist countries, we will have to keep them down for eternity. Because the moment we relax our guard, they will strike back.”

Miryam and Andromache exchange another look. Now, they do seem concerned. Zeku presses his lips together and looks down at his fingers.

“That won’t be easily sold to the Fae,” he warns.

“Or the humans,” Andromache adds.

Miryam frowns. “Are you sure about this?” She asks.

Drakon considers for a moment, then nods. “We can’t push the Loyalists completely to the ground,” he says. “If we abolish slavery and then let them all fall into poverty, they will always wish to go back to the times before this war. There will be no moving on.”

“It isn’t just the economy, though,” Andromache says. “It’s not like they enslave us out of necessity – “ Drakon flinches and she shakes her head. “Don’t look at me like that, I know that wasn’t what you were saying. But still. The problem is that they think us lesser. And that won’t change if we allow them to keep their economy.”

Yes, Drakon knows this. But finding a way to end bigotry that has been festering in Fae society for millennia seems nearly impossible. He’s just over thirty years old, and he’s expected to solve a millennia-old problem? All he can do is identify the biggest possible pitfalls and try to find solutions, but he has no way of knowing if those will actually work. It’s not ideal, but he doesn’t know another way to approach this than to work step by step.

“Humans will have their own countries,” he says. “If we manage to establish that as the status quo, it will be a solid first step. Then we work on establishing trade between the human and Fae countries. Trading partners rarely attack each other – it isn’t good for the economy. And trade always brings countries and people closer together.”

Many of the Loyalists, of course, wouldn’t be pleased by the idea of trading with the humans. But that’s another thing they agreed upon – the Loyalist countries would be put under Alliance administration for the time being. Rulers would need to be replaced with ones more open to the new course, and the Alliance would maintain a presence until things had stabilized.

Miryam flips through the pages of Drakon’s proposal. “There’s also the section about adding a clause to Continental law that allows full legal protection to all humans,” she says. “We’d just need to find a way to get that law put into action, but otherwise, it should help.”

Zeku nods. He has opened his copy and is studying the lines, frowning. Drakon pours himself a glass of water and takes a sip. These discussions are nerve-wracking. It’s entirely different from having to work out a text for university and then discussing it with the other students. Then, it was only about a grade, maybe his father’s approval. Now, it’s the entire continent at stake. Miryam takes his hand and squeezes, smiling at her.

“I know this isn’t entirely the subject,” Zeku says without looking up from the paper, “But would it be possible to include lesser faeries in that law?”

Drakon bites back a curse. Of course, how could he forget about that? When he was still in university, most of the essays he wrote were about the situation faeries face, especially in countries like Montesere. But now, his focus was entirely on the humans – enough that he forgot about the second group of people who aren’t treated as equal on the Continent.

“Don’t they have legal protection already?” Andromache asks.

Zeku shakes his head. “Not in general Continental law. It’s up to their countries to decide which rights they have, but outside of that, the situation is unclear.”

Andromache frowns. “But aren’t you and Drakon…” She pauses. “Can I say ‘lesser faeries’? It sounds disrespectful.”

“I believe that’s the point,” Zeku says drily. His blue skin darkens considerably. “But if you’d like to avoid that, you can simply say ‘faeries’.”

Andromache nods. “Okay. So, you’re both faeries, not High Fae. You’re still royalty.”

“We’re similar enough in power and looks that they don’t mind us as much,” Zeku says. Drakon nods in confirmation.

Privilege on the Continent has always been largely tied to power. Humans don’t have any, High Fae have the most. Most faeries lie somewhere in between, powerful in their own rights, but with abilities that are largely tied to the land and far more specific than those of the High Fae. Both Drakon’s and Zeku’s people have strong elemental powers, though – more High Fae-like – and most people simply pretend they are High Fae.

“I’ll include something,” Drakon says.

He can’t believe he didn’t think of it himself. He knows about the issues faeries face all over the Continent as well as Zeku does. Both Sangravah and Erithia have laws that grant faeries equal rights and, consequently, far larger faerie populations than most other countries.

“We can include that?” He asks, turning to Miryam and Andromache. “Right?”

“Sure,” Andromache says. “Wouldn’t do for us to win this war and abolish slavery only for these asshole High Fae to turn around and enslave a different species.”

Miryam looks down at the proposal and smiles. “If we get this to work,” she says, “we’re truly going to change the world.”

----

Mor runs a hand through her hair. She spent most of the day sitting in her tent in Andromache’s camp, looking through a book her uncle’s servants dug up from somewhere inside the Hewn City. Ever since the High Lord mentioned the possible uses of her gift to her, she tried to find out as much as possible about it.

Unfortunately, most of the texts regarding the Morrigan powers belong to the private collection of Mor’s family, meaning her father, and ancient contracts forbid even the High Lord from accessing those and the last Morrigan died over a century before Mor was born, and as far as mor knows, he didn’t have any special abilities either.

Truth is deadly, Mor reads, Truth is freedom. Truth can break and mend and bind. The author, Mor has decided, has an unfortunate flair for being dramatic and overly poetic instead of helpful. Pages upon pages and not a single solid explanation of what Mor’s powers do, much less how they are used.

“Stupid book,” Mor mutters and closes it.

“I don’t understand why you’re so fascinated by this,” Andromache says. She’s lying on her stomach on Mor’s bed, papers strewn out over the pillow before her.

“Wouldn’t you be fascinated if you found out you might be in possession of powers like these?”

Andromache purses her lips and shrugs. “No.”

“No?” Mor echoes. “Not even a little bit?”

“No.” Andromache picks up a letter and starts methodically ripping it apart. “Humans don’t have powers, and I, for my part, am perfectly content with it.”

Mor frowns. She heard this philosophy from quite a few humans already, but she never quite believed it. It always seemed more like the kind of thing people would say to console themselves over the fact that they don’t have any magic.

“Besides,” Andromache continues, “I have yet to meet a person who was overly powerful and happy with it. Discounting complete assholes like Artax, obviously.”

“Rhys isn’t unhappy,” Mor says, “And Miryam isn’t either.”

Andromache makes a noise that might be interpreted as agreement, but she remains silent. She turns her attention to the next letter and starts ripping it apart as well.

“And now you want to be like Miryam?” She asks. She still sounds sceptical, not at al like she’s pleased with Mor’s plans.

Mor shrugs. She obviously doesn’t want to be exactly like Miryam. But she genuinely cannot see what is so wrong with wanting to be similar, especially when it comes to power. Who wouldn’t want that? Miryam is untouchable. Everyone likes and respects her. She can walk into the Night Court and simply get a girl like Mor out of there without any consequences. That is what power gets you. If Mor had power, she would not only be safe, but also able to help others.

But maybe Andromache truly doesn’t see it. She’s a queen, after all. She never was as powerless as Mor.

“I simply don’t understand this,” Andromache pushes when Mor remains silent. At least she doesn’t say ´I don’t understand you`. “I’ve never known you to care about power.”

Mor crosses her arms. Somehow, Andromache makes her feel like she’s done something wrong when she really hasn’t. “Maybe I just want to know what I’m capable of.”

Andromache swings her legs over the edge of the bed and gets up. “Then do that,” she says. “Just make sure you don’t end up finding more than you wanted to. Or playing directly into what your uncle wants.” She walks over to Mor and kisses her briefly before making for the exit. “I need to deal with a few problems,” she says. “Good luck with your researches.”

“Thanks,” Mor mutters, looking after her as she walks out of the tent.

She presses her lips together. They didn’t argue, not exactly, but she still feels like Andromache is somehow upset with her. Mor doesn’t want her to be upset, but at the same time, she doesn’t see what she was doing wrong. When Miryam was looking into her powers, no one told her not to. Why is it different for Mor?

Scowling, she looks down at the book. This certainly isn’t going to help her. She had considered asking Miryam for advice, but after Andromache’s reaction, she doesn’t feel confident in that strategy anymore. This leaves her to figure out how to handle her powers on her own.

No books and no help to be had. That means all that’s left is trial-and-error.

----

“What are you so annoyed about?” Yanis asks as they walk together through the camp.

“I’m not annoyed,” Andromache mutters, even though she technically is.

“Sure you are,” Yanis says. “I’m your best friend – you think I don’t notice?”

Andromache smiles and swats at his arm. Unfortunately, Yanis really does know her well enough that he’s impossible to lie to. They’ve been friends since their childhood, both children of advisors to the last queen, who later picked Andromache to be her successor. Yanis joined the royal guard, which means that now, a few years down the line, he is one of her guards.

“I had an…” Not an argument, not quite. “A disagreement with Mor.”

She doesn’t even know why she is this angry with Mor. Maybe it’s because she keeps thinking of how much Miryam struggles with her powers and can’t fathom the sheer stupidity of anyone wanting that for themselves.

Or maybe it’s because Mor’s entire approach to the situation is so distinctly Fae, wanting power for power’s sake, only to further their own standing. If she at least said that she was trying to get more powerful so that she could help them win this war, Andromache might have accepted it, but Mor just seemed to want power, and maybe Andromache is simply too human to understand that.

“Oh.” Yanis makes a face. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Andromache quietly shakes her head. She usually tells Yanis everything that’s going on in her life. He even knows about her relationship with Mor, by virtue of being the one who is currently pretending to be her lover to cover for them. But this is not her secret alone, and she doesn’t even know if Mor is comfortable with other people hearing about it.

“So, do you want to do anything to take your mind off the matter?” Yanis asks. “We could go sparring.”

“I’d love to, but I need to visit Jurian.”

Ever since Jurian stopped talking to Miryam, Andromache made a point to visit him at least once a week. Miryam makes sure his camp keeps running smoothly, and Andromache does her best to keep Jurian company. These days, she seems to be the only one whose company he can stomach. It isn’t always easy with him, but there’s no way Andromache is going to abandon him entirely. (And really, who of them can claim to be easy to be around these days?)

“I’ll winnow us,” Yanis says.

Yanis is exactly one eighth Fae. Physically, there’s no hint of his ancestors except for ears that are perhaps a bit more pointed than normal, and except for the ability to winnow, he has inherited none of their magical powers. The ability to winnow comes in very handy, though. Now, he winnows both of them to the outskirts of Jurian’s camp.

“I’ll go talk to Xeni,” he says when they arrive, naming one of Jurian’s higher-ranking captains.

“Meet you back here in an hour?” Andromache asks and waves at one of soldiers whom she knows briefly from another visit.

Yanis nods and they both set off. Jurian isn’t in his tent, which Andromache takes as a good sign. The days when Jurian is sitting alone in his tent, staring at his maps or drinking, are usually the worst. When he’s out in his camp and doing things, it generally means that he’s having a good day. (Occasionally, it also means that he’s having a terrible day and everyone else is about to as well.)

She finds Jurian sitting at a table with his soldiers, which is definitely a good sign. He looks tired, bloodshot eyes sunken deep into his face, but he’s talking. When he sees Andromache, he smiles, which is a rare sight these days, and waves her over. One of his soldiers quickly moves aside to make place for her on the bench.

“How’s it going?” Jurian asks. He even sounds somewhat cheerful.

Andromache smiles back. “Can’t complain.”

One of the soldiers passes her a mug of ale and Andromache takes it, thanking him. She isn’t overly fond of ale, but she still takes a sip, wincing at the bitter taste.

“And you?” Andromache asks. “Things look pleasantly calm here.”

“Oh, but they aren’t,” Jurian says. He sounds satisfied with himself. “We only got back here a few hours ago. We spent the past two days chasing after Amarantha’s army. We finally caught on to them earlier today and managed quite the ambush. Four hundred of her soldiers dead, can you imagine?”

“That’s great,” Andromache says, but her smile soon fades.

She does her best to remember the assignments for the individual armies, but she can’t quite drag up the memory. Miryam always knows the exact orders for each commander by heart, but Andromache has been less involved in the matter lately. Still, she is sure that Jurian’s army had gotten orders that don’t align with running after Amarantha. (As a matter of fact, Jurian’s orders rarely ever give him free reign to do as he pleases when it comes to Amarantha anymore. Andromache never asked, but she strongly suspects that Miryam is behind it.)

“Hold on,” she says slowly. Now, she does remember what orders Jurian had. “Weren’t you meant to keep watch on Vallahan’s army? To make sure they don’t move east.”

Jurian’s slight frown confirms her suspicions. “We’ve been keeping an eye out for them for days,” he says, shrugging. “They haven’t moved.”

Andromache stares at him for a moment. She is about to yell at him, to tell him what he was thinking, going against orders like that, but then, she remembers the soldiers sitting around them. Jurian is their commander and a councilmember, they hold the same rank – she can’t lecture him in front of his soldiers like he’s a wilful child.

“Of course,” Andromache says with a forced smile. “Congratulations on your victory, that’s great news.” She takes another sip of her ale. “And you’re right about Vallahan’s army, too. I’m sure you sent scouts out to check on them, we’d know by now if they had moved.”

Jurian nods hastily, but from the frantic look in his eyes, he hasn’t heard back from his scouts yet. Andromache tries hard to conceal her ire. She knows Jurian is struggling and that his revenge against Amarantha is all that keeps him going these days. Being angry with him for that always seemed unfair, but it is very hard not to when he keeps putting his private revenge before the war effort.

They sit together for another couple of minutes, chatting idly with the soldiers. Their conversation gets interrupted by a panting man who stops next to Jurian and whispers something into his ear. His eyes widen.

“What is it?” Andromache asks. Now, she can’t quite keep the edge out of her voice.

“Vallahan’s army has been spotted,” Jurian says. “They…” He clears his throat. “They slipped past our defences and are now moving east. Towards your camp.”

Andromache stares at him for a moment, then jumps to her feet. She doesn’t even bother to yell at Jurian who is still staring at her wide-eyed before she rushes out of the camp.

----

Mor stares out at the army stretching out before her, panting. There is blood splattered all over her golden armour, blood in her hair, on her hands. A sword cut through a slit in the armour on her arm, but she barely feels the sting of the wound. She takes a swig out of a waterskin. Only a moment of pause, then she will need to head back into the fray where Andromache is still fighting.

They are losing. Reinforcements won’t be here for another few hours, and by then, Mor isn’t sure how many of them will be left. They need a miracle. Or a very, very powerful magic-wielder, but none of the ones they have on their side turned up yet.

It was said that she could see the truth about anything in this world, that she could make the proudest Fae beg for mercy in the blink of an eye, and destroy entire armies. The power to destroy an army would come in handy now. If only Mor knew how.

Truth. How does one wield truth in battle?

One attempt, that’s all Mor will spare before she returns to the battle. She closes her eyes and tries to feel the power inside her. She already used it, at least fractions of it, but there must be more and now, Mor goes looking for the core.

She is just about to give up when she finally finds it. The power feels strangely cold and a shiver runs through Mor’s body. The power slips her grasp, though. It keeps slipping away from her, remaining just outside of her reach.

“Come on,” Mor hisses through clenched teeth.

This power is hers. Hers. It doesn’t get to refuse her, certainly not in a moment like this. There are people relying on her. She reaches out, stretches her mind to the point where it strains. A cold spreads from her fingers and all over her body. It feels like she is drenched in cold water. Her power feels like ice, cold and unforgiving. Is scares Mor as it shoots through her, but there is still an army for her to contend with.

Mor grips her power tightly. It is there, filling her entirely, but she doesn’t know what to do with it. She never learned to use it against anyone, has no idea how to weaponize a power that seems entirely harmless.

Out, she orders, attack them. Her power trembles inside her body for a moment longer. Then, miraculously, it goes shooting towards the enemy soldiers. Mor can feel it, rushing out of her and towards the enemy army. Then, her vision turns grey. A crack echoes through her mind. She feels herself falling, falling and falling. She should have hit the ground by now, but still, she falls. Then, the voice starts speaking.

Morrigan, it whispers. No, it isn’t one voice but several, speaking all at once. Morrigan, you call for truth and you will receive it.

Mor tries to struggle, to fight her way out of the darkness she is caught in, but her power keeps a tight grip on her. This is all wrong. It was meant to attack the enemy, not her.

But you so love to lie to yourself, the voices continue. You lie when you tell yourself that your cousin is different from your uncle. You lie when you tell yourself that this little family you made for yourself is so close that nothing could tear it apart.

“No,” Mor whispers. Her head is throbbing and her heart beats far too quickly. “No, stop.”

Before her eyes, images rise. She sees Rhys, standing in his army’s camp, whip in hand. A soldier is bound to the flock below him and Rhys’s face is frozen in clod rage as he swings the whip. He’ll be no better than his father, the voice whispers.

And Azriel… His face appears before her eyes, always impassive. Deep down, you know he won’t be willing to move on. And if he ever finds out the truth… You know how he’ll react. He wants you, will always want you. You’re the symbol for the acceptance he always wanted, and he’ll never accept that he can’t have you.

Azriel’s face vanishes from before her and she is standing in a room with Andromache. They are kissing, embracing each other, but they aren’t alone. Shadows lurk in the corner, shadows like the ones that report to Azriel. Her skin crawls like there are thousands of ants running over her body. She’s being watched, always watched.

When he finds out, the voices continue, your secret will come out. He’ll tell Azriel and Rhysand, and eventually, everyone will know.

She’s standing opposite Azriel in a room. He is yelling and even though she doesn’t hear the words, she knows what he is saying. There are people standing around them, watching. Keir is there. Eris. Her uncle.

“Stop,” Mor sobs, “Please!”

But it doesn’t stop. And you lie to yourself when you tell yourself that you and Andromache will be together forever. She won’t want to be with you forever, not when your opinions differ so much. Eventually, she will realize that you are no less privileged than the other Fae. That you may care for humans and all the things she values, but not nearly as deeply as she does. She will realize that deep down, you don’t understand, and she will leave.

“This isn’t what it’s like, I’m not like that!”

But you are, the voice says. You joined the war as a way to get out of the Night Court. You genuinely think that many of the humans have it easier than you do. You like to split your world into good and bad, and everyone who isn’t actively horrible is bad, everyone else is good.

“No!” Mor screams. She tears at her hair, struggles against her power’s invisible hold on her.

I am truth, the power whispers, You cannot escape me.

Mor screams without words. She wants this to stop, wants the voice to go away. She claws at her head, but something stops her hands.

And just like this, it is all gone. Mor’s power snaps back into her. It quivers in her for a moment, then dissolves into nothing. Pain flares through her head.

“Mor!” Someone is shaking her. “Morrigan, look at me.”

Mor blinks. Slowly, the world comes into focus around her. Andromache’s face appears before her, blurry at first, then more clearly.

“Hey,” Mor mutters. She tries to push herself upright, but Andromache gently presses her back into the grass.

“Stay still,” Miryam says. She is kneeling next to Mor, still dressed in her council clothes, a long silk dress with silver embroidery that seems far too thin for the brisk night air. She must have raced here straight from a meeting if she didn’t even bother to change clothes. The air around her seems to shimmer, alight with power. “Are you in pain?”

Mor wants to say yes, but then, she realizes that she actually isn’t. She has a headache, but beyond that, she can detect no physical pain. Her mind is reeling and her chest feels painfully tight, but that hardly counts.

“No,” she says. “I’m…” She chokes on the word fine.

Words keep echoing through her mind, far too loudly, drowning out any thoughts. Her chest feels far too tight, she can barely breathe. Over her, Miryam and Andromache exchange a worried look. The air around Miryam glows with power. Mor doesn’t understand why her power is out, what is going on around them. Are they still fighting?

“The battle…” She stammers.

“We won,” Andromache says. She gently pushes a strand of hair out of Mor’s face, but her face is tense.

“Did you lose control over your powers?” Miryam asks. She glances over her shoulder, then returns her attention to Mor.

She shakes her head. “No, I…” She breaks off. Her tongue feels strangely heavy. “I meant to do this.” She doesn’t even know what this is. But now, she finally understands why her power feels so strange. “It’s fine,” she says to Miryam. “You can give it back.”

“Are you sure?” Miryam asks. “Control can be difficult, especially when you are already exhausted.”

“It’s fine,” Mor repeats. She doesn’t know how to explain to Miryam that she has no trouble at all with controlling her power. She never had. Truth seems to be pleasant in that regard, if in no other.

Still, Miryam only releases her grip on Mor’s power slowly. Bit by bit, it slithers back into Mor’s body. Controlling it is easy enough, though.

“See?” She says once all of her power is back in her body. “All fine.” If that isn’t the biggest lie she ever told.

Neither Miryam nor Andromache seem convinced and when Mor tries to sit up again, Miryam grabs her arm.

“Rest,” she says in a tone Mor likes to call her healer voice. It’s somehow both gentle and firm. “No matter how much control you might have over your power, using that much of it is still a strain and you should give your body time.”

Hearing that from Miryam, who only considers resting when she passes out from pain, is somewhat ridiculous. But getting her to change her mind would require a discussion and now that her head is beginning to clear again, Mor realizes that even though the battle might be over, both Andromache and Miryam likely have duties to deal with.

“Okay,” Mor says. “I’ll just lie down. You two can go, I’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure?” Andromache asks, but she’s already looking over her shoulder at the battlefield. She must have lost many soldiers today. Mor can already see the shadows on her face.

“Yes, just go.”

“I’ll bring her back to the camp and return to help you,” Miryam says.

Andromache nods and is off before Mor truly has time to process what is happening. Miryam looks over her shoulder.

“Don’t you dare get a stretcher,” Mor warns softly. “I can walk.”

Miryam sighs. “Alright.”

She holds out a hand to pull her to her feet. Mor sways a little and has to grip Miryam’s arm to stay upright, but otherwise, she manages just fine. Miryam pulls her arm around her shoulders and helps her walk back to the camp. In Mor’s tent, Miryam deposits her on the bed. Mor half-expected her to rush off back towards the battlefield immediately, but she sits down next to her.

“What happened out there?” Mor asks softly.

Miryam arches an eyebrow at her. “That’s what I was about to ask you.” When Mor remains silent, she says, “I only arrived at the very end. But Andromache says that the enemy soldiers suddenly fell to the ground, all at once. She thought they were dead at first, but then, some of them started screaming and clawing at their heads. Some allegedly died on the spot, although that may be a rumour. Andromache’s army had an easy game after that. Your power was all over the place, and you were on the ground as well. As soon as the enemy soldiers were taken care off, I turned your power off since you didn’t seem to be able to do it yourself.”

Mor nods. She doesn’t know if she could have pulled her own power back, how much control she had actually left. She doubts she would have been able to fight her way out of her own mind for long enough to call the power back, though.

“Do you know what you did?” Miryam asks softly.

“I showed them truth,” Mor says. Only now that she says it does she realize that’s exactly what she did. “The truths they hide from, the ones that scare them. The ones they hate.”

“And in return, you had to see your own truths,” Miryam says. Mor nods and Miryam walks over to put a hand on her arm. “That was a very brave thing to do,” she says. “Everyone has truths they’d rather not face; doing so anyways takes a lot of strength.”

Mor doesn’t feel brave or strong, though. She feels terrible. Like a pretender. I didn’t know this would happen, she thinks. If I had known, I’m not sure if I would have done what I did. And that isn’t bravery. It’s quite the opposite. She didn’t face anything. She just ran from it, and she can’t get herself to stop running.

“I need to go help Andromache,” Miryam says, rising. “But if you have any trouble with your powers, if you need help with anything, pleas tell me. We’ll figure something out.”

Mor nods and watches Miryam walk out of the tent. After that, she lies on her hard bed, staring up at the ceiling. She doesn’t know how much time passes. Her mind is empty, save for the voices that keep ringing in her ears. The pain she feels has nothing to do with physical wounds, but she feels it nonetheless. It’s nearly driving her insane.

Outside of the tent, the sun has already vanished behind the horizon when Mor gets up. She doesn’t know if she’s supposed to be running around, but she can’t take the confines of her tent anymore. She needs some fresh air. Carefully, she pushes the entrance to her tent open and slips out.

“Aren’t you on bedrest?” Yanis asks. Apparently, he’s been waiting outside of her tent.

“Consider me well-rested,” Mor says. “I’m going for a walk.”

Yanis doesn’t stop her as she walks past him and into the camp. All around her, soldiers stop their work to stare at her, whisper with each other. The Morrigan, they call her, voices hushed in awe. It seems the entire camp already knows about what she did.

Mor doesn’t want any of it. Her head is still pounding, the words she heard while she used her power echo through her mind. She can’t shake that voice. Is it now permanently etched into her mind? Will she be forced to hear those words over and over again for eternity?

She can’t stand the whispers. The noise of the camp hurts her ears, the lights of the pyres burn in her eyes. The only person whose company she cares for right now is Andromache, but she is a queen whose first duty will always be to her people, and she cannot abandon them in the aftermath of battle. Besides, she might not be all that interested in Mor either way. Just like the other Fae, a voice whispers in her mind. And so Mor is alone when she sneaks out of the camp, away from the eyes and the whispers, and sits down on a small stone.

“Hey,” Andromache says softly and sits down next to Mor.

She never knew truth could be so cruel. It’s the cruellest gift of all.

Mor gives her a tired smile. “Let me guess,” she says, “Yanis told you where I went.” When Andromache simply gives her an apologetic smile, she shakes her head. “You don’t need to worry about me,” she says, “I know you have duties to fulfil with your army.”

“Miryam is filling in for me, so I’ve got time,” Andromache says. “How are you feeling?”

“It didn’t hurt me,” Mor says. Which is not entirely true, but physically, she is fine.

Andromache puts an arm around her shoulders and pulls her close. “When I saw you lying on the ground there, I thought you might die,” she whispers. “I was so scared.”

Mor buries her face in Andromache’s shoulder. For all the horror she experienced today, it’s good that there was at least one person who genuinely cared about what happened to her. It is prove that she isn’t entirely alone. Maybe she can talk to Andromache about what she saw.

“It’s truth,” she says, “My power. And it’s…” She shakes her head. “It showed me things, told me things…” Her fingers tremble. The words repeat over and over in her head, but she can’t bring herself to say them out loud. “It was terrible.

How stupid was she to ever want this? If she thinks about how she spent her day pouring over a book, desperately trying to unlock her powers. What she would have given to be able to turn back time now. She should have listened to Andromache.

“You don’t have to use it,” Andromache says softly. “If you have been able to keep it locked away until now, you won’t ever need to use it again. No one would blame you.”

In a way, this is absolution. They are still at war and Mor’s gift might prove to be invaluable. But what Andromache offers is a free pass for not using it. She won’t be a coward. No one will be able to blame her. It will be fine.

“I won’t ever use it again,” she whispers. “Not in a million years.”

----

Miryam draws a few odd looks as she walks through Drakon’s camp. Her clothes are splattered in blood and mud, she only barely managed to get the dirt off her face and hands. She spent the past few hours alternating between organizing the post-battle work and helping the healers out.

Well over three hundred soldiers dead. The enemy lost their entire army, but their own losses are still high, the highest out of any battle this month. Miryam gives it an hour at most until the council starts demanding answers. Two hours until they find out what happened. Then, they’ll surely summon Miryam, demand an explanation for what Jurian did. As if she knows.

She stops one of Drakon’s soldiers, a woman she knows briefly from past visits. “Where’s Drakon?” She asks.

“I believe his Highness is in his tent, my Lady,” the soldier replies and hurries on.

Miryam sets off towards Drakon’s tent. She expects him to be stuck in some kind of meeting, but he is alone when Miryam enters, sitting at his desk. He’s drumming a quick rhythm on his leg and flinches when Miryam enters. She immediately knows that something is wrong and wants to ask, but Drakon beats her to it.

“What happened?” He asks, looking at her ruined clothes.

Miryam gives the briefest possible explanation. “Jurian went against orders to chase after Amarantha, which means that a few thousand Vallahan soldiers slipped past our defences. Andromache’s army lost a several hundred soldiers and the only reason it wasn’t more is that Mor used some very strange truth magic I’d never seen before to disable most of their soldiers.”

Drakon seems startled. “Is she okay?” He asks.

Miryam shrugs. “Physically, yes,” she says. Mentally, Miryam isn’t so sure. Mor wasn’t in pain, didn’t seem hurt, but Miryam has never seen her this distraught.

Miryam is far from an expert on Higher Arts – she only barely managed not to let hers kill her – but she knows that they are generally weird. Difficult to master and near-impossible to understand. In her private interpretation, they also tend to come with a price to match the gift, although she is sure most Fae would disagree.

“And you?” Miryam asks. Drakon still seems far too tense. “Is everything alright?”

Drakon shakes his head, shrugging lightly at the same time. He’s still drumming around on his leg, tapping his foot on top of it. Miryam walks over to him and puts an arm around his shoulders.

“What is it?” She asks softly.

Drakon picks up a letter from the table and passes it to Miryam, fingers shaking slightly. Thick paper, a seal pressed into red wax. A sun with a crown hovering over it. Ravenia’s seal.

----

Thanks @croissantcitysucks for helping with this chapter! And in general for being the best person to talk to about writing ❤

#miryam #jurian #drakon #andromache #before the wall

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