#nico helps will grieve and properly let go | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ladykailitha · 9 months

Text

All My Roads Lead Back to You Epilogue

Here it is, the final part. I’m sad that’s it over. It has been such a lovely story and such lovely people that have supported me through. Those that were there from the start. Those that joined at anytime during the ride. Even the ones joined in with the last chapter. Thank you. All of you. You are all amazing.

The wedding.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 17 Part 18

***

The Munson-Harrington wedding was the must have invite of the year. It didn’t even matter that their marriage would only be recognized in a handful of states. All that mattered was that they were getting the chance to tie the knot and throw a huge party for all their friends.

Dateline had done an hour long piece of the Hawkins Witch Hunt as they were calling what happened to Eddie. It opened a whole can of worms regarding the Hawkins Police Department and other things that they may have sanctioned.

That lovely little news piece also bagged Kenny a girlfriend. He took one look at Lily Byers when she arrived for school that autumn and fell head over heels in love with her.

She even joined the band as rhythm guitar to newly named Children of the Knights of Hell’s Fire. They had found their style at last. It was little bit metal and whole lot of rock.

While their kids were in their senior year, Jeff, Gareth, Eddie, and Steve were all in Eddie’s studio working on an album. Apparently not only could Steve play, but the man had the pipes of a god damned angel.

Eddie had been tempted to put him as lead vocalist, but Gareth wisely pointed out that fans are going to at least expect to hear Eddie at some point.

So Steve was harmonies and backup vocals as well as bassist. Eddie was writing away and coming up with new stuff, remixing old stuff and he was finally able to properly grieve Jay by writing the song “Two Loves: Not Better, Just Different”.

The original Corroded Coffin boys loved it, Children of the Knights of Hell’s Fire loved it, and of course Steve loved it. It was unanimously decided that it should be the first single.

Everyone came to the wedding. The other Byers/Wheeler clan arrived with twin baby girls that they recently adopted. Beautifully named Elinor and Jeanette.

Dustin and Suzie’s baby boy was named Percival or Percy after his other favorite literary hero when Suzie wouldn’t let him name their child D’Artangan. He was also spoiled rotten.

Max and Lucas were the next to arrive with three very tall red-headed, dark skinned boys. The eldest Anthony was sixteen, the middle boy, Reggie was twelve, and their youngest Sean was eight.

Erica and her husband, David brought their two boys, Nico and Nemo aged ten. When their firsts were twins that was enough for them.

The parents started arriving as well. Joyce and Jim came. Claudia, too. The Sinclairs were there of course. Wayne had showed up weeks ago to help with all the planning.

Jane came last. She never married, she became a children’s advocate for neglected and abused orphans. She was the one they brought in when things got bad because she always had a ‘knack’ for knowing what the child was thinking. She had thrown herself into the work and found it rewarding.

Steve’s house was teaming with children of all ages and he loved it. Eddie came up to him at the rehearsal dinner the night before the wedding.

“It’s not quite the six nuggets you were hoping for,” he murmured into Steve’s ear, his arm gently wrapping around his waist. “But I think you’ve got your wish about lots of kids, sweetheart.”

Steve blushed. “I didn’t know anyone had heard that.”

Eddie nibbled on his ear. “My only regret is pushing you toward Nancy. That wasn’t fair to any of the parties involved.”

Steve nodded. “I was so desperate to be loved by someone, I would have fallen for anyone. It’s not your fault.”

Eddie’s chuckle rumbled through Steve, they were that close. “Ah, but you see that’s my regret. Had I known that I would have pushed my case so fucking hard, babe.”

Steve burst out laughing. “I’ll bet you would have! Throwing that vest in my face so hard I had to take a step back just because Nancy and I had an in-joke.”

“Guilty as charged.”

Max came up to them and hit Steve with her crutches. “About time you two got your heads out of your collective asses.”

Eddie gave her a hug. “I missed you too, Red.”

“Just make one of the stops on your tour Boston and we’ll call it even,” she said.

“Deal,” Steve and Eddie said together.

She laughed. “God, how does Harri and Edie put up with you two? You’re such saps!”

“Auntie Max!” Edie called. “Come meet Mandy Lawrence, she skates, too!”

Max laughed. “I’m coming. Hold your horses.”

The backyard was beautifully decorated in blue and yellow flowers. Eddie’s groomsmen were in blue and Steve’s bridesmaids were in bright, sunny yellow. Dustin was Eddie’s best man and Robin was Steve’s maid of honor. On Steve’s side of the aisle was Nancy, Edie, Lily, and Max. On Eddie’s was Wayne, Harri, Jeff, and Gareth.

It was a quiet affair despite everyone who knew anyone wanted to be invited.

There was no procession. Steve and Eddie were already at the alter waiting for their guests to file in. They stood together, both hands clasped in the other’s.

Hopper was officiating, having become a justice of the peace after leaving the police force. They had already done the marriage part in a quiet courthouse in a small Massachusetts town. This was for their friends and family to witness.

“Today we bring together two people,” Hopper began, “who despite all appearances of being complete opposites couldn’t be more perfect for each other than if God himself had planned it.”

Steve and Eddie both blushed.

“Eddie,” Steve murmured, “You are the best part of me. I wandered lost and though I was never quite alone, having friends and beautiful daughter by my side, I looked for love in all the wrong places, because that place was always home, with you. I started us on the path by saying things I didn’t mean because I frightened of the change you have always brought to my life.” Steve released Eddie’s hand for a moment to wipe away a tear.

“But I should have realized that you brought me joy in those changes and not run away from you. So I promise to come to you when I’m feeling down or bad about myself. I promise to love you even if loving myself is hard. I promise to care for you always and cherish each moment of every day that I get with you. I never thought I’d get a single day, and getting a chance of a life time with you is a dream come true.”

He brought Eddie’s hands to lips to kiss his knuckles.

Eddie smiled. “Steve, I believed I used up my second chance when you rescued me all those years ago. Bleeding and broken, I thought my second chance at a new life was when me and my boys got our record deal, but now I see that my real second chance was here, with you. Jay made me happy for the time we had together, and I truly believe he prepared my heart to be receptive to yours.”

Steve mouthed, ‘I love you.’

“I promise to love on the days that are hard. To cherish on the days that are easy. And worship you all of my days. You had a life time of believing yourself to be unlovable, and I promise to spend the next forty years–”

“At least!” Dustin called out.

Eddie laughed. “At the very least. I promise to spend the rest of ours lives proving how wrong you are. That you are loved, adored, worshiped, and admired by me. I love you, sweetheart.”

Hopper cleared his throat and blinked back tears. “And now the rings.”

Eddie took the black box from Dustin. He pulled out a gold band that had a sun and a moon with a diamond in the sun setting and a grey garnet in the moon setting. “With this ring, I thee wed.” He slipped it on Steve’s ring finger.

Steve looked at it in wonder, eyes filling with joyous tears. He took the white box from Robin and pulled out a black wrought iron ring with the same setting, only in the sun spot was a red garnet and in the moon’s was the diamond. “With this ring, I thee wed.” He slid it onto Eddie’s finger.

“By the authority vested in me,” Hopper concluded, “I pronounce you both husbands in the eyes of this congregation and God, husbands as long as you both shall live. You may now kiss the groom.”

Eddie grabbed Steve’s face in his hands and kissed him fiercely as Steve held on.

They broke off to laughter and tears. They walked back down the aisle to everyone throwing white rose petals over them as they past. Eddie and Steve laughed, skipping and giggling like children as their bridesmaids and groomsmen followed close behind.

The reception was the grand affair. All of Steve’s friends were there and all of Eddie’s connections in the music industry was there. Harri was almost one hundred percent sure he saw James Hetfield talking to famed baseball player Derek Jetter, but then someone past in front of him and they were both gone by the time Harri could see around the person again.

Harri walked up to Edie and bumped their shoulders together. “Who would have thought that over a year ago when you told me that you needed a new guitarist for your band, that it would lead to the wedding of the decade, between our two dads.”

She looked over at her dad who was trying to catch marshmallows with his mouth thrown by Dustin, Jane, and Eddie. He had come so far now that he was with the right therapist. Edie had started listening to her own more now too and was forced to admit she didn’t need to look after her dad because he could look after himself just fine.

“Best decision ever,” she agreed.

“Just two small town boys from each from different worlds clawing their way to make their own place in the world,” a warm voice said behind them.

Edie and Harri turned to see Wayne Munson standing there in a nice grey suit having changed for the reception, hands in his pockets.

“Grandpa Wayne!” Harri cried and threw his arms around him. “It’s been so great having you around these last couple of weeks.”

Wayne reached out with one arm for Edie who promptly snuggled up too.

“Does this mean you’re my grandpa now, too?” she whispered.

Wayne kissed the top of her head. “Of course it does. Steve was always mine married to Eddie or not. Even if we hadn’t spoken in decades, Stevie was always mine.”

“You’re going to make me cry for the tenth time,” Steve said coming up to them, hand in hand with Eddie, “if you keep saying things like that.”

Wayne waved his hands. “Come on, I still arms enough for you two.”

Steve and Eddie joined the Wayne hug and sighed happily.

“Hey!” Jonathan said, “Picture?”

They all lined up, Wayne in the middle flanked by Eddie and Steve his side while Edie and Harri stood next to their dads.

Jonathan snapped the photo.

Steve came up and gave him a hug. “Thanks for agreeing to do the photos for us.”

Jonathan hugged back fiercely. “Not a problem, man. Saves me from having to buy you a toaster.”

Steve laughed. “Where’s your beautiful wife?”

Jonathan looked around and pointed to the punch bowl. “There she is. Bitching out Barbara Walters.”

Eddie laughed. “Sounds about right.”

Harri looked over at her and cocked his head. “Hey, Dad. She looks a lot like you.”

Jonathan and Eddie shared a panicked expression.

“Well, you see...” Eddie said as Steve threw his head back and laughed.

***

Tag List: @spectrum-spectre @estrellami-1 @zerokrox-blog @artiststarme @swimmingbirdrunningrock @gregre369 @pyrohonk @trashpocket @goodolefashionedloverboi @chaoticlovingdreamer @maya-custodios-dionach @messrs-weasley @val-from-lawrence @plyerice27 @mightbeasleep @thedragonsaunt @chaoticlovingdreamer @trashpocket @sapphirecobalt-1 @a-little-unsteddie @i-must-potato @danili666 @carlyv @rozzieroos @wonderland-girl143-blog @itsall-taken @steddie-as-they-go @lillemilly @callas-shitshow @bisexualdisastersworld @renaissan-vvitch @immortal-iratze @bookbinderbitch @cardigangoth @lilacrobin @nightmareglitter @nerdsconquerall @stxrcrossed186

#My writing #stranger things #steddie #reconnecting years later AU #ladykailtiha writes

106 notes · View notes

regina-del-cielo · 3 years

Text

Immortal Siblings AU | Four, then three, then four again

I mentioned that the bulletpoint post describing how the Guard from the Immortal Siblings AU found Joe had totally run away from me. It has, in fact, become a study on them grieving over Lykon and then finding Yusuf.

I have, somehow, reached a sort of natural end to the amount of bullshit my mind can add to this list/fic draft. So, if you want to give it a read... grab a snack. It’s long. I’m sorry.

Warnings for Wikipedia levels of historical accuracy - I added links to the relevant pages when quoting historical events, but since I was just trying to work out a timeline (famous last words), the research wasn’t extensive. There’s a lot of hand-waving.

By the end of the 11th Century, I think Andy, Quynh and Nico haven’t been in Europe for a while, not really. They moved south, and then east, after the sack of Rome of 410 CE. Seeing the great cities fall has become hard for them, especially for Nico, who is a nomad at heart but has a soft spot for cities, together with Lykon, the true city boy in the group. He’d seen it happen to Athens, he wasn’t sure he could deal with seeing Rome wilt.

For reasons I cannot fathom, my mind is settled on them having been in India when Lykon dies (possibly sometime around the middle of the 6th century, in the mess that was the crumbling of the Gupta Empire???)

Seeing him die destroys them, and they take a break from any battlefield to grieve their friend and brother. They wander, occasionally helping but almost never raising their weapons, too leery of injuries and of losing each other.

(Quynh, who was the first to notice Lykon’s wounds, has nightmares that make her cry in her sleep. Andromache holds her so tight Nico can feel the tension on her muscles against his back. He and his sister barely sleep, scared of the open spaces of Asia as they’d never been before. Lykon was the youngest of them and he died, what if they stop healing too?)

(If Nico stands guard over his sisters and feels an ache in his chest seeing how they hold onto each other, he’s never going to say it out loud. His Mache deserves the love she shares with Quynh. But sometimes he wishes he had someone to hold him like that, one he can call his heart.)

The first time they go to battle again like in the old days it’s almost the end of the 10th century, and they’re helping Quynh’s lands gain independence from China. They have a reason and a specific side to root for, and it’s the kind of cause Lykon would have approved of. They find purpose again.

They are distantly aware of how things are holding up in the west – they know Constantinople has crowned itself capital of the Roman Empire (what is left of it anyway); they know of the new religion, Islam, and how it was brought further east with the armies conquering Persia. They met the Varangians on the Northern Plains of the Rus’, when Andy insisted on going back to their steppes for a while.

They acquire new swords, repair the old weapons, make improvements on their bows. They travel, and help, and listen. They learn new languages. They heal.

They’ve just spent the winter in Samarkand when they hear merchants newly come from Constantinople talk about the Frankish armies that took Antioch and making their way further into Palestine.

The words ‘freeing Jerusalem from the infidels’ make Andy sigh in exasperation and twist Nico’s guts. The three of them don’t really understand the point of going to war for a god, but Jerusalem is old, and she’s been coveted by many throughout their long lives. Things like this never end well, they know it intimately.

But they’ve been away for a long time, centuries at this point. Things are very different from when the Romans had the power. They are less eager to throw themselves into the battlefield now, and there’s much they don’t know about the dynamics of Europe and the Levant. Still they’re worried, and decide that they’ll move west to see if something can be done, for the civilians at least.

At first they travel slowly, keeping an ear out for gossip spoken by the caravans coming from the west. Things radically change, however, when they dream of a new immortal (a man, with a curly black beard and shining dark eyes) dying on the walls of Jerusalem and reviving to an unprecedented slaughter – said man is, obviously, absolutely terrified and they feel it.

He’s also woken up surrounded by living enemies, with high risk of being killed or injured multiple times, and of being seen.

They are still too far away to do anything more than hope that the new guy is clever enough to keep himself alive until they can reach him, but now Nico is all for moving west at full speed to get him out.

“What the everloving FUCK is happening over there?!” is the common theme in their thoughts; nothing about this war they’re walking towards is making any sense.

Yusuf al-Kaysani is, in fact, clever enough to keep himself (and a few other civilians to boot) alive and get out of Jerusalem when it becomes clear than no matter how many Franks he kills he can do nothing to stop them alone. (It’s a fucking carnage, and he’s so tired). He walks away from the battle and tries to reach some sort of safety in the desert.

When he’d decided to stay in Jerusalem and fight instead of escaping the siege, Yusuf had considered the possibility of dying. He had not accounted for waking up from a fatal wound with no sign of having been hit in the first place.

And then there are the visions. Or dreams, he’s not sure. They don’t seem to make any sense? Who are those people?! Is his mind so addled by the war that he’s conjuring scary warrior women and a stupidly handsome man, armed to the teeth and camping in the desert?

(fantasizing about handsome men in his sleep isn’t exactly news for him, but there were never women in those. And none of his usual dreams involved weapons. Something is definitely off)

For the following days, Yusuf makes sure to stay away from human settlements while putting as much space as possible between Jerusalem and himself – the last thing he needs is to become a potential target for any invader that may cross his path.

But he’s alone, having nightmares, constantly on edge, and in a body that suddenly doesn’t feel like his own anymore, since he doesn’t even have the scars to prove that the injuries he sustained were real to begin with.

After a couple of weeks, the appearance of the strangers in his dreams starts feeling safe and comforting; they seem to operate like a little family, and God knows how much he misses his own.

(should he try to go back home? Would news of the siege reach his family before he does? Would he be able to go back to his previous life in the state he’s in? Could he keep this secret from them? Would they still love him or think him a monster?)

Despite their impressive warrior appearance, they feel... kind. And gentle. Sometimes, it feels like they’re trying to reassure him, even. Especially when he dreams from the perspective of the man.

The sensation those dreams leave on his skin is like a cape. You’re not alone, it whispers. Wait for us.

Andy, Quynh and Nico have just left Baghdad when the dreams change, and not for the better - Yusuf was passing through a village when a band of marauding Franks started harassing the locals. He moved to defend the villagers, but was overwhelmed and what’s worse, the Franks saw his wounds close too fast. Their reaction was vehement: they called him a demon, incapacitated him and then brought him back to their garrison, with every intention of ‘properly getting rid of him’.

Nico wakes up screaming and Andy has to sit on him so he doesn’t just sprint ahead without actually knowing where the fuck he’s going.

“We can’t just raid every single Frankish encampment in a twenty mile radius around Jerusalem, Nico!” “TRY ME” *Aggressive Sibling Bickering follows* *Quynh doesn’t bat an eye and just rolls out a map of the area she purchased and starts mapping out the fastest routes*

Yusuf is having a Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week at the hands of his captors, who are getting disturbingly creative in their tortures, but whenever they let him fall unconscious he sees the people of his dreams travelling much faster than before, looking Royally Pissed Off, and the surroundings are... starting to look familiar too?

If he tries to pay more attention to the conversations his torturers are having with each other outside of the tent he’s in and hoping the dreams go both ways, so the maybe-real trio can find him easier, now that’s nobody’s business but his own.

(spoiler: it works)

When they are in sight of Jerusalem, the immortals find a drunk “pilgrim” boasting about his band capturing a ‘pagan demon’ while coming back from their victory at Ascalon, follow him back to his camp, and as soon as it’s feasible they attack.

(Andy will later gripe that Nico didn’t leave her anything to do because he just paved his way through the Franks like he was harvesting wheat.)

seeing the Stupidly Handsome Man of his dreams standing in front of him covered head to toe in blood, with a double-bladed axe in one hand and a sword in the other, staring intensely at him as if to peer directly into his soul is... an experience for Yusuf.

(he may have composed a lot of poems about that first vision of Nico through the centuries. The words ‘avenging angel’ have been used quite profusely, too)

The protective instinct that Nico has felt for the newest immortal since the first dream clutches at his throat when he finally sees him, chained to a pole and so thin his clothes barely cling to his body, but with the softest dark eyes staring back with a glint of recognition when he comes closer.

(he could cry with relief at the knowledge that he’s not scared of him. Nico has seen the faces of the men that were keeping him captive, he knows he looks a lot like they did, and that he paints a gruesome picture.)

“Are you alright?” Nico asks first, in Greek. (He knows, from the dreams, that his captors prayed in Latin. He wants to make sure that the other knows that he’s not like them.)

“You were in my dreams. You came.” Yusuf answers back in the same language, although his sounds much newer than Nico’s.

“Of course. We’re not meant to be alone… and no one deserves to be in a cage”.

Nico uses the axe to break the chains, and by the time he’s done Andy and Quynh have reached them and his sister throws the keys at him to open the shackles.

“Couldn’t take a moment to get them yourself, little eagle? You wanted to show off your skills to the new one?” Quynh teases, just to see Nico blush. Andy stares at her brother and their new companion for a few beats, before finally asking his name.

“Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad Al-Kaysani, known as al-Tayyib” he answers, letting out the first smile in weeks at the raising eyebrows of his saviours. “Just Yusuf is fine.”

“You have a sense of humour, brother. I like you!” Andy snorts, before cutting her palm with the edge of her axe, and showing him her fast healing.

“We are like you, Yusuf. That’s why you dreamt of us, and we of you” Nico adds gently, while Quynh offers her waterskin to Yusuf. They also offer their own names.

“We need to clean up this mess and move away from here” Andy says, while Nico helps Yusuf up. “One of those fuckers was boasting about an undying demon with others in a tavern, the last thing we need is to fight our way out against their whole army because someone else decided to come check if he was saying the truth.”

“It’s been a long time since we were in Kush” Quynh whispers, and Yusuf sees their faces open in a look of affectionate grief he remembers seeing on his Baba’s eyes when he talked about his own mother.

“We can talk about it more when we’re somewhere safer” Andromache suggests, before moving to set up the stage of an ‘accidental’ fire.

As they’re riding away, Yusuf turns slightly to watch the camp burn, leaving no trace of the invaders that hurt him. Jerusalem looms in the distance - lost, and wounded. If he were a little less exhausted, he could easily work out a metaphor about his own situation.

But then he looks at the three people of his dreams – Quynh, Andromache, Nikolaos – that came for him. Who are the same as him, immortal.

His world has turned upside down, and there are so many questions to ask, and he could sleep for a month straight – but one thing is certain.

He’s not alone anymore.

75 notes · View notes

vvitcheshq · 5 years

Photo

below the cut, you will find a complete list of all of the accepted characters! we had an incredible time reading all of the amazing applications you all sent in, and of course, we wish we could have accepted every single one of them! you are all so creative, and such talented writers, these applications really were incredible to read, and we can’t wait to see the amazing things you all bring to this group.

you may notice, beyond the cut, that there are more accepted characters than there were skeletons applied for -- some of the decisions we had to make were so difficult that, where characters were different enough to allow, we accepted a few extra characters under two new skeletons: IVY ( endurance ) and POPPY ( dreams ). If we could have done this for every skeleton with multiple apps, we would have, but our decisions were based on faceclaims, general personalities and backstory similarity, and adherence to the original skeleton to ensure that we didn’t end up with any characters too similar to one another.

for those of you who weren’t accepted there are still a few open skeletons -- ANEMONE, ELDERFLOWER, and LARKSPUR -- and we’re considering the possibility of opening up a few new skeletons once things settle down on the main and the group is properly open, so we would absolutely love to have you reapply, if you’re interested. we’ll set a second acceptance date soon, so let us know how long you’ll need to write a new application if you’re planning to reapply!

for those of you who were accepted, at the bottom of the post you’ll find a link to the accepted page, which will give you a checklist of what to do now! we can’t wait to write with you!

ASPEN -- congratulations, Kay! you have been accepted as Reina Takahashi ( Asami Zdrenka FC ). What struck me first, in reading your all, was the way the style of your prose so perfectly echoed Reina’s uncertainty and anxiety, the questions and the what-ifs. I was also so taken in by your metaphor of Reina approaching magic like a game of Minecraft, “All you’re doing is rendering an enormous amount of land— but what are you doing with it?” -- I can feel and understand the way Reina sees the world so clearly from your application, and I think she’s absolutely perfect for Aspen!

But how many times had she gone sleepless, awake at night while the rest of the coven was fast asleep as dusk turned to dawn? How many times had she spent so much time fretting that she decided to drop a decision altogether? Action was better than inaction, they say, but the what-ifs always ate away at her, until sometimes all she could do was let the idea rest.

FOXGLOVE -- congratulations, V! you have been accepted as Claudia Nguyen ( Lana Condor FC ). The decision for Foxglove was one of the hardest we made, but it came down to the specificity of detail in your app -- her ice skating, her connection to the world of witches through her friend, the way she attempts to feel content with the idea of never having magic... I just kept loving Claudia more and more as the app went on. I think she’s absolutely wonderful, and I can’t wait to write with her!

Her powers were weak, underdeveloped, hard to understand, and almost vague. Claudia heard someone whispering in the halls in her first weeks, wondering if she was a mistake, if her patron regretted their choice yet. Claudia kept her chin up, telling herself to just work harder. But she wasn’t a part of this world, she’d been raised with money and rules and snowflakes, not spells and incantations and rituals.

HEATHER -- congratulations, Emm! you have been accepted as Dera Helene Whelan ( Josefine Frida Pettersen FC ). Emm, both your apps were absolutely fantastic, and picking between the two was agony, but ultimately we felt more passion in your app for Dera, which tipped the scales her way. Dera’s family connection to the coven that raised her, her troubling and fascinating relationship with her patron, and the way her loss informs her coldness to the world were absolutely incredible and we can’t wait to see where you take Dera in the group!

Knowing this made the grieving process easier for Dera - she was comforted in knowing that her mother and father could be visited in a summer breeze, the crash of waves, the rustling of leaves. Yet, she still felt like a large part of her was tangled up in a locked treasure chest somewhere, an emptiness that she learned to fill with a growing thirst for knowledge, for protection, for distance. She didn’t want to feel anymore, at least not in the way that she was now so used to feeling.

HOLLYHOCK -- congratulations, Shannon! you have been accepted as Felix Dumont ( Chance Perdomo FC ). Maybe I’m biased because Hollyhock was my favorite of the skeletons, but I am absolutely head over heels in love with Felix. Their reluctant acceptances of a patron who was so much different from what they expected, and their subsequent whole-hearted acceptance of her and of fortune magic is so incredible, and I absolutely love Zoraida as well. I can’t wait to see Felix butting heads with some of the other witches we have in play, and I can’t wait to see what you do with them!

Like other witches Felix hadn’t thought much of the ancient discipline, that was until they saw the true power that lay within its workings. Magic had given Felix something they’d never had before- a future, a way to gain control of the life that was finally becoming their own. Now with the magic of foretelling the future in their hands, they are determined to use it to their full advantage, and to help carve out a new age for the discipline that has become so wholly their own.

HYACINTH-- congratulations, Kal! you have been accepted as Aria Hadley ( Stella Maeve FC ). This app... Kal, I am shook. You apologized for length in your bio but there was absolutely no need, because by the end you absolutely still had me wanting more. When I thought about possibilities for Hyacinth’s mistake, I summoned a demon by accident and got my best friend killed was not what I had anticipated and yet, it was the exact right thing to pick. It’s so clear from your decisions that you’re really engaged with the worldbuilding work that we have done as admins, and I can’t wait to see that translate to your threads in the group! I also loved Aria’s family background so much, and I’m fascinated to see where her plots go and how she’ll relate to some of the other characters!

Magic ruins people. The words rang in her head as the investigation continued, everyone in the school eyeing her suspiciously and wanting her to leave. When she closed her eyes, she swore she saw glimpses of the attack and she could hear her friend’s screams, but they were blurs, nothing substantial and definitely not enough to put together what happened that night. After a while, she thought it best that she couldn’t remember.

HYSSOP -- congratulations, Emily! you have been accepted as Abigail Sparrow ( Jessica Henwick FC ). Every single word of your bio for Abigail was stunning, it literally brought me to tears. Abigail’s loss is so haunting, and her determination to replace her sister is so heartbreaking... it left me absolutely speechless. I loved her unexpected choice in discipline, the way she envies the chaos students and wants so desperately to fill the hole inside of her. And her patron is so fabulous, too! I can’t wait to see who she becomes in the absence of her sister’s ghost, and what might happen if she sees her again!

One night, in half-delirium, she turned to you with a vacant smile. Will the spirits be kind to me when I go? You didn’t tell her you gave up on them. You didn’t tell her that their haunting had begun to haunt you, that you couldn’t bear to watch her become one of them. Instead, you lied. A small sin for a greater comfort. Yes. You whispered, tears spilling down your cheek.

You fiddled with the dates on the calendar, persuaded Gabrielle you were fourteen a day early. You just wanted one more birthday together.

IVY-- congratulations, Yara! you have been accepted as River Quinn ( Emma Dumont/Ezra Miller FC ). Yara, we loved your application so much we just couldn’t possibly reject it. River is the entire reason we decided to add more skeletons, she’s just that good. I found myself aching for his as I read his backstory, and on top of that, you know I adore both the idea of using two fcs to play a genderfluid character and both of the fantastic fcs you chose. I can’t wait to see her humor in play, as well as her vindictiveness -- and, of course, as is clear from the new skeleton we chose to represent him -- the endurance that has gotten him through this much in life and will take him so much farther!

river quinn was born again at 15 years old. life as an uphill battle, temptation in the desert. they struggle and they grow into something more, they learn how to hide. be seen, not heard, be admirable and lovely and easy to ignore. they were raised with love, but they were raised to be something cruel as well, and they win their approval in any way they can. but every manipulative golden god falls in the end, don’t they? it isn’t river’s parents who decide enough is enough with their new messiah, but river knows the decision is made because soft hearted people can only watch children go through so much.

LAVENDER -- congratulations, Roz! you have been accepted as Nico di Salvatore ( Luke Pasqualino FC ). Nico was the first app we received, and we’ve been longing to accept him every single day since. He’s stunning, I love the way you really wrapped him up in his obsession with magic so fully, from the way he treats his own body -- wanting to escape it when it limits him -- to the way he relies on it for everything. I love his fasciation with technical magic, his big goals in terms of the kinds of magic he wants to do, and I love, love, love his “familiar” Sparrow and his fantastic patron. I’m so excited to see where he goes!

Between his major and minor, Nico didn’t pay enough attention to the traditional routes of summoning a familiar to properly conjure one. He has, however, cobbled together what he calls a sort of familiar: a computer program, binary and magic folded together, housed in the casing of a little mechanical bird. Sparrow, as he named it, acts as his eyes (and ears, if he wants to eavesdrop on juicy gossip). And though she might not be a true spirit familiar, capable of real intelligence, Nico is nonetheless as attached to her as other witches are to their proper familiars.

LOBELIA -- congratulations, Em! you have been accepted as Theodora Summerfield ( Anya Taylor-Joy FC ). Firstly, I am in awe of the beauty of your writing. Every part of your bio ( a five act play through which a girl is written & a witch is made) was absolutely stunning. And on top of that, Theodora is thoroughly fascinating -- her decision to run away from the family that couldn’t stop hurting her, and the feeling of violation and despair at understanding what social magic is and what Violet has done, the way she decides on protection magic to keep her safe from all the ways she’s been hurt and manipulated throughout her life... I love the way her cruelty is born out of pain and fear and the need to protect herself. I can’t wait to see how she grows and changes in the group!

She finds you, again and again as fall fades into winter and winter snaps cold, offers you little pieces of help that you know better than to decline. You don’t understand why you trust her, really you don’t, but you can’t shake the feeling. It’s like magic, the way she’s wormed her way where you’ve allowed no one and it sets you on edge.

MARIGOLD -- congratulations, Zack! you have been accepted as Lucien Yates ( Keith Powers FC ). We’re so glad you got the time to finish your application, because Lucien is so wonderful. His closeness with his coven, his found family, and the way that closeness and their care for him makes his loss so much worse was so heartbreaking, and the way he was so light and so steadfast before it happened makes it even worse. That being said, I know you want to explore his darkness, and I can’t wait to see what you do with it and how loss and grief are going to shape him, and I know that my co-admin is so excited for your wanted plot with Dahlia as well!

Her death was a wave of a darkness that engulfed your light, causing every inch of you to be drained of what made you special. A drought choked at your senses for months afterwards, your spells became erratic, your grades slipped, while your tongue sharpened with new words that were painted with anger. Your father lied about the greatest witches pulling from pain, as if grief was a conductor of power. Perhaps your sorrow was suppose to add grace to your magic, twisting pain that forced tears from your eyes ever night were fuel to a greater strength. Bullshit! Since if that was true, there should be a hurricane revolting in your bones, a maelstrom of power, however you are a drizzle of a boy.

NARCISSUS -- congratulations, Charlie! you have been accepted as Leila Katerina Alvarez-Finch ( Melissa Barrera FC ). We were so glad to see that Leila was your first choice, because she was absolutely ours! I love the fire you’ve captured within them, but also their connection to the human world, and the difficult decision they made in choosing one over the other, in sacrificing what they’d worked so hard for to pick Aradia instead. I think she’s absolutely lovely, and with all the characters in the group who have experienced loss of a loved one, and who have dabbled with necromancy, I can’t wait to see what you make of their necromancer patron!

She had been alone when time had seemed to stop, the chatter around her dying down into a quiet murmur. Everything thing had seemed to slow down to nothing…except for the man who had sat down beside her at the pool. His feet didn’t cause even a ripple when they entered the water. The liquid growing cold around her own feet as a icy breeze radiated from the man.

“I like you.” He had said, sparking an eye roll from Laila even as she sat confused at everything happening around her. “Your confidence.” He continued, “I must be brief. We don’t have a great deal of time.”

POPPY -- congratulations, Nat! you have been accepted as Luna Vaughn ( Courtney Eaton FC ). Nat, we loved both of your applications, but ultimately Luna was the one we loved enough to create a new skeleton for her. You took her insecurity from Foxglove’s skeleton in such a different way that she really seemed to work as a new skeleton -- and we took her experiences with spirits and her longing to find her birth mother again as inspiration in creating this one. I loved the way that forgiveness was such a major part of her personality, with how many times she’s been left behind ( you forgive and forget and start all over again ), and I love the way you used spells to frame your plots for her. I can’t wait to see them in action!

Your thirst for more has become quite dangerous. The dead beings by your side scream out warnings but they fall on deaf ears now, you think you’ve gathered enough strength within the academy walls to practice the forbidden. Oh, you are sorely mistaken; way in over your head as you gather spells and herbs, you know this is not allowed, it is one of the rules they warned you about since starting school but you’re tired, aren’t you? Tired of feeling empty inside and having no one around for support. You want to see the one person that showered you with love, she’s long gone — buried and dead, how can you even dare to try such a thing? You, out of all people, should know that the dead should stay dead.

VALERIAN -- congratulations, Meg! you have been accepted as Aurelia Ashcroft ( Brittany O’Grady FC ). Oh my gosh! We were on the edge of our seats waiting for someone to apply for Valerian, so we were so glad that you sent in an app. Your app was simply lovely! I think the spirit of Valerian was really there, and how they’re always ready to leap into action. I’m so excited to see how the character grows and what direction you take her in!

She had no hesitation upon cutting ties with the mortal world, her family at all. All she’d known with them was secrecy and a normalcy that she had never quite been able to stomach or adapt to. Aradia was a place for her to feel free and she doesn’t know what the future holds but she is ready to become. There’s this little voice in her mind constantly telling her to be alert, to be open to anything.

CLICK THROUGH TO THE ACCEPTED PAGE. Please submit your character blog within 24 hours, or message the main if you need more time. CONGRATULATIONS, AND WELCOME TO ARADIA!

#accepted

4 notes · View notes

bokatankryse · 6 years

Text

i haven’t done this before, but i love these 2 so i though i’d give it a shot.

here are some gert x chase first time head canons to help you through your day.

(also, its not said what their ages are in the show, but since the 5 were all in the same class i’ve rounded them to 16)

the first time gert remembered meeting chase, they were 4 and they were best friends. the pride knew how much their children loved each other (much to their confusion) and made sure to have regular play dates between the 7 of them. nico, amy and alex always wanted to play hide and seek, but gert and chase thought that playing pirates was much more fun, so every time the future runaways were together they split into 2 groups, with karo swapping each time and molly following after karolina.

this time they were at molly’s house and gert had arrived before chase. she hated waiting, so when he arrived (10 minutes late), the moment she heard the car pulling up in the drive way she sprinted to the door. when molly’s parents let chase inside, gert gave him a quick hug before dragging him to the back yard, already telling him what today’s adventure would be about. (looking back at 16, gert knows that this wasn’t the first time they’d met, but it was her oldest full formed memory of him and she cherished it much more than she ever let on)

the first time chase remembered missing gert was when they were 6 and put into a different class in school. he and gert usually sat next to each other and helped the other with their work. on the first day, he turned to tell gert something funny he saw out the window and was surprised to see alex sitting there instead. this kept happening all day, so when he got home he told his dad who immediately rung gert’s parents to see of she felt the same way. when her parents confirmed that she did, his dad rung the school and used all his influence to have them put in the same class. (after that no school dared to separate them, lest they invoke the wrath of victor stein)

the first time gert got in trouble for chase, they were 11 and some idiot boys had been trying to bully him. gert knew that chase’s dad had been unhappy with his grades recently, and had been making chase feel terrible. somehow, 3 idiot boys had also found out. they approached chase (and gert) at lunch and started making fun of him, telling chase that he was pathetic, that there was no way he could ever be as good as his dad and that his dad would never be able to love someone as dumb as him. gert had gotten so angry she couldn’t see properly. when she turned to chase to see if she should handle them, she saw that instead of getting angry like she had, he had seemed to have shrunken in on himself. this made gert somehow even angrier. she turned to the boys, got right up in their faces and gave them a speech they would never forget (all about human decency and how they were no better than garbage), then punched each of them in the face. when she was finished, she turned to chase to see him already looking at her, smiling.

unluckily for gert, a teacher walked by just in time to catch the tail end of the fight. even though both her and chase insisted that the boys started it and that gert was just defending chase, she still got 2 weeks of lunch time detention. when chase had run out of ways to try and get gert out of it, he told the teacher that he had punched the boys too. before gert could say anything, chase had also gotten 2 weeks detention and the teacher had walked away. when gert told him that he shouldn’t have done it, chase just laughed and said that he couldn’t have let his best friend suffer 2 weeks of detention alone just for defending him.

the first time chase called molly his sister she was 10 and he and gert were 12. chase spent most afternoons at their house, as well as spending all weekend with either just gert or the rest of the runaways. he was at their house one thursday after school and was helping molly bake biscuits while gert did her homework on the kitchen counter. he had rolled out the dough and molly was taking forever to pick her favourite biscuit cutters when he said “i never thought having a little sister would mean that i had to be so patient” and then the room went quiet. he realized what he said a few seconds later and cringed. when he looked up at gert, she was staring at him like he was the most amazing thing she had ever seen. when he tried to talk himself out of the hole he’d dug, molly interrupted him to say “i never thought having an older brother would mean he got to nag at me when he got bored”. chase laughed in relief, thinking that maybe he hadn’t made a mistake after all.

they’d known each other for years, but when gert first realized she might like like chase, they were 14 and they were at amy’s funeral. even though he was a boy and gert knew that people thought boys shouldn’t cry, he didn’t seem to care. he was just standing by his parents and silently letting the tears roll down his face.

at the wake, when the runaways (minus alex) gathered in a corner to grieve together, he made sure to tell nico how sorry he was and asked if there was anything he could do to help. when she said no, he started helping gert distract molly from thinking about how the last funeral she had attended was her parents, making jokes and telling stories until molly told him that all she wanted was to hold someone’s hand. he didn’t let go of her hand once til his parents made him get in the car to leave.

the first time chase thought gert was beautiful (but not the last) was when they were 15 and he saw her with purple hair for the first time. by then, they had stopped being friends, so the first time he saw her after was from across the hall and he had been shocked, because gert, the girl who had never let anyone else touch her hair, gert, the girl who always wore brightly coloured hippy clothes, gert, the girl who always got to class on time and handed her homework in was wearing an over sized graffiti-ed jacket, ripped stocking and purple hair. he had just stared at her until his new lacrosse friends asked him what he was looking at. when they turned to see, he quickly herded them in the direction of their class room, saying that he thought he had seen a spider.

(I have now cleaned this up a bit and posted it on AO3, if you want to read a more polished version)

#gertrude yorkes #chase stein #gert x chase #gertchase #gert yorkes #marvel #marvels runaways #runaways #molly hernandez #alex wilder #nico minoru #karolina dean #amy minoru #head canons #elizabeth writes things

109 notes · View notes

love-live-imagines · 7 years

Note

Sooo~ Is requesting muse and aquors too much? if not then Can I get a muse and aquors reacting their s/o dying? Ok now that i look at this i know this is gonna be angsty.

lol yes it is too much, in my rules my character limit is 9. Don’t worry about it though, I’ll just do u’s for now and if you want aquors just send in another request ^.^

Honoka: She all but dies too. She stops all her idol activities, stops going to school, basically shuts herself off from the rest of the world for awhile. Her family keeps reaching out to her, but she shoves them away. Her grieving process is very slow, for a long time the only thing she feels is a mixture of loneliness, confusion, and anger at the world for taking away such a beautiful person before their time. You know how procrastination occurs because two dominant urges are competing for your attention, but none of them can win, so the third one kicks in? Her mind can’t process such deep grief and anger at once, so she all but shuts down, and confusion is where she gets stuck for months before she works it out and sadness takes over for good. She never really gets over you, and she’s never the same carefree, passionate person ever again.

Kotori: She cries. She cries for days. She does her best to live her life, and keep up with her work, but she cries while doing it. She’s not angry, she knows it’s no one in particular’s fault, but she has so many regrets. She wishes she had treasured her time with you more, she wishes she had met you years earlier, so she could have only spent more time with you and been happy with you for longer. After a long time, she’s able to rise out of grief and eventually be happy again, but she learns to cherish every moment with her loved ones, and somehow becomes even more caring and loving than she was before.

Umi: She leaves. She doesn’t react emotionally when she first hears the news, but she calmly packs up a few days worth of supplies, and leaves. She initially goes to the mountains, hiking through them alone for days, trying to come to terms with what has happened. She cries quite a bit, often setting up her tent way earlier in the day than she needs to so that she can sit down and just cry, her body unable to contain the grief. The cool mountain air helps her to think, and she spends every waking minute trying to comprehend how she knows that there was no reason it had to be you to die, but it was just a tragedy of the universe. She doesn’t go back to her life until about a week has passed, and she’s sure she won’t cry in front of anyone else. It takes her a long, long time to ever open up to anyone the way she did to you. She’s afraid that whenever she does, they’ll be taken away from her too, and she’ll be alone again.

Rin: It’s her fault. She can’t help but think that it’s all her fault, that there must have been something more she could do, that if she had only been with you there wouldn’t have been such a terrible accident. If only she hadn’t forgotten her bag at school and left you to walk home alone the timing wouldn’t have worked out the way it did, you would still be here…

Hanayo: She’s very mature about it. She cries and grieves, of course, but she returns to school after a few days, still terribly sad and upset, but able to make it through the day. She misses you so bad, all she can think about is touching your face, holding your hand, telling you she loves you just one more time. She feels so bad for your family, offering them all her condolences. She becomes a lot closer with them after you die, talking about you and remembering how kind, funny, and beautiful you were. She never closes herself off, instead opening up more and embracing all the people around her, wanting only to spread happiness and do all she can to help anyone else who knew grief like she now does.

Maki: Out of everyone, she’s the most angry. When she first hears the news, she explodes in rage at the person who tells her, demanding to know where you were, what had happened, who was responsible. She calls every hospital in the area until she finds the doctor who was stupid enough to not be able to save you, the idiot who let you die, and nearly gets arrested giving them hell. She lashes out at anyone who tries to talk to her, crying tears of desperation and fury. She stops her musical career, throwing herself entirely back into medicine out of spite, determined to save lives like yours couldn’t be saved. She becomes very depressed, not able to find happiness in anything, little or big, for a long, long time. She feels tired and hollow, and she’s never quite able to admit it, even to herself, but she misses you, and she never really grieves properly.

Nico: She’s angry too, but she’s also surprised, and confused, and upset. She becomes very self-destructive, no longer caring about herself or anyone around her. She gets defensive, her temper is beyond control. She drinks, goes to parties, but never messes around with anyone. She always says she will, but in the end, when someone approaches her, she pushes them away, not able to bear the thought of cheating on your memory.

Eli: She’s in shock. She doesn’t feel much of anything, for awhile, and isolates herself. When she returns to normal life, she becomes cold again, pushing everyone away, even Nozomi. She’s sorry, she wishes she could be friendly, but something in her has broken beyond repair. She never wants to get close to anyone again, when she graduates she moves back to Russia, separating herself from the life she led in Japan where she met you, blocking it all out of her mind.

Nozomi: Why? Why did it have to be you? She spends a lot of time alone, at the shrine, trying to think about it and regain her spirituality. She cries a lot, letting her emotions out, but always making sure no one can see. She misses you a lot, and out of everyone, she’s probably the closest to considering suicide. She thinks a lot about the afterlife, wondering if you still exist in some form, hoping more than anything that you’re happy, wherever you are.

39 notes · View notes

purplerakath · 6 years

Text

Runaways - The First Five Eps (Part 2)

So this one has a read more because I’ll be going into detail, I’ve got this segmented into parts, and overall hitting a lot more detail into the show vs. comic than my part 1 had. We good?

And away we go!

Characters

So comic books aren’t actually a lot of space to tell a short story. Therefore a lot of the choices made are made for shock and impact than for actual narrative flow. Which is why basically everything happens all at once and really quickly at the start, and in a TV show you can’t always do that.

Part of the reason why Ep 2 had to be “Rewind” was the changed count of investigated characters. In the comics the Pride were basically one character, there was no separation between what each parent did. They all did it for the same reason and they all explained it with the same line.

“We did it for you.”

Now in place of a single entity cabal we have... nine individuals who interact with each other in different ways, this means each one of the Pride members has a mix of good and bad to them. The Yorkes are, by and large, harmless looking. While Victor Stein, Tina Minoru, and both Wilder parents are various levels of terrifying. This makes them more interesting, and also put the six kids into new and different lights.

Speaking of the kids, other than Chase and Molly, being modernized hasn’t really done any of them much harm. Molly feels a little weird being closer in age to the rest, she’s outside the range of ‘peer’ still but making her high school age (at the younger end, for sure) isn’t working completely? But since that’s a practical change not a personal change I let it slide.

Chase is a different animal, his edits thus far were because he had nothing to add in the comics, making him more self-realized and self-created is just an overall good call for a character that needed a little more.

Dynamics

So all of these changes I can’t really label as ‘better’ or ‘worse’ for the story as a whole. A seventh kid whose death fragmented the group. All of them still connected to someone even if they are all too messed up to really do much about it when the show opens. As mentioned above their parents being reshaped helps flesh out and reshape the kids. Moreso with Tina and Nico (both grieving over Amy but in different ways), but the other kids have shades of this too.

The parents having dynamics is good, but not really where the main effort should be placed (and it’s mostly there in the background).

The slower build to ‘plot’ (which as of Ep5 still hasn’t properly started) means we get to really know how each pair works even if Ep 1 pretty clearly painted who is connected to whom out of the gate. Alex and Karolina both have some connection to Nico, but Nico wants nothing to do with anyone. Chase wants ‘lina while Gert wants Chase. Molly is kinda there and not as attached other than to Gert, but everyone still likes her cause she’s cute.

Plot

So while I said the ‘plot’ hasn’t started yet we know enough to know that if you were expecting anything that honored the source plot is not happening. We have the same characters: Cute one, pretty one, nerd one, goth one, jock one, and anti-authority one. But it’s safe to say that the Pride aren’t beholden to an ancient race of Gods who promised them power and a new paradise of Eden on Earth at the low low price of one teenager a year for 20 years.

Whatever deal brought the Pride together it isn’t that.

And I’m honestly fine with that, that plot was silly even when it happened. Nobody cared because the point was ‘what if your parents are supervillains.’ How they got there is not where the weight is, the weight is on what they did, why they did it, and how their kids will handle it.

The parental backstories seem to have changed a bit. I don’t think anything is better or worse here because we still haven’t seen how it goes. We know that Nico’s staff is different (and a key part of that is ‘teenage cutting self regularly on TV is bad’), Molly can’t be a mutant, the Yorkes don’t seem to be time travelers... but it isn’t really a problem for me.

I’m hoping the ‘one of the kids is secretly spying for their parents’ angle seems to not be here. Which honestly I’m fine with having not be a thing, it means we get to keep all the kids. I mean it might still happen, but if it doesn’t happen I won’t miss it.

Overall...

I guess what I’m saying is this is a good example of adaption being in the spirit of the original without being handicapped trying to emulate the original. No change feels like a real detriment, they are either a lateral move, or in the case of the parents having real personalities purely improvements.

Also ignoring Chase and Molly, wardrobe and make-up did a great job on the kids making them look like their comic book versions (Chase is mostly a problem of Gregg Sulkin looks too much like Gregg Sulkin, and Molly being about a foot too tall and far too old.)

#marvel runaways #runaways hulu

4 notes · View notes

fleetwoodmoth · 7 years

Text

Angler

“You’re lurking.”

“Am not.”

Nema sighed, attempting to gather the maps she had sprawled over the library table. She hadn’t heard when Nico came in or when he stopped to lean up against a bookcase beside her, but when he sighed heavily she had attempted to keep herself from jumping.

“Is there something you need?” She asked, rolling the papers only to have them slip and scatter from her hands and onto the floor. Nema watched with dejected, slumped shoulders as they fluttered across the room, some slipping under a nearby bookcase. Only when they had all settled did she slowly start picking them up, a hand coming into view holding a neatly folded tidal map. Nema took it with a quiet ‘thank you’ before tucking it under her arm.

“Going on a trip?” Nico asked, sounding only halfway interested in his own question.

“Maybe…” Nema said, not meeting his eye even as he moved to follow her out into the hallway.

“Maybe? You’re not sure?” He snorted at that, Nema’s temper flaring for a moment.

“Why do you care?” She snapped turning to him, deflating after she did.

Nico put his hands up in defense, Nema letting go of a heavy sigh before looking down at the notes she had taken.

“I’m going home,” she said softly.

“Aren’t we… at home?”

“No, not here. I mean like, back to my home. Back to Linmell.”

“Really? The ghost town?”

“It’s my hometown.” Nema’s voice had dropped to something almost inaudible.

“Oh… sorry.” Nico said.

“Why would you want to go back?” Nico asked after a brief silence.

Nema gave him a wary look and he noticed the circles under her eyes.

“Aren’t Arryn and Ailith going with you then?”

Nema bit back the urge to snap at him again, pain beginning to thrum in her temples.

“No.”

“The last time we were there we almost died in a pit under a house and now we know about the Clan and… I’m not putting them in that kind of danger for something so…” she couldn’t find the right words, trivial? Unimportant? No, it was important to her. Selfish maybe.

“Well, those woods you had marked on your map-“ Nico plucked one of the pieces of paper from her arms.

“Is infested with undead. I wouldn’t recommend going there, at least not alone.”

Nema squinted at the red circled on the map that he held out in front of her.

“No, that’s not right. Our woods were warded, just like anywhere else. And we’re by the sea, the undead don’t venture all that close.”

“Things have changed, I wouldn’t venture out there if I were you.”

Nema’s shoulders drooped, her brow creasing as she halfheartedly took the map from him.

“But… I need to.”

“What’s so important out there?”

Nema went quiet again, chewing at her lip.

“Look, all I’m saying is that’s a suicide run,” Nico sighed and folded his arms over his chest, watching Nema as she seemed to mull over his words.

“Fine. Come with me then,” she said.

Nico quirked an eyebrow, but something about his expression, maybe it was the way he tried to suppress a smirk that made Nema think that was what he had wanted.

“Am I going to have to pay you for this?” She asked, continuing on her path to the stairs.

“I’ll give you the friends and family rate,” Nico said, stopping at the bottom as Nema began to ascend, pausing for a moment to throw him a look.

“And how much is that going to cost me?”

“Dibs on any loot we find along the way. And I get second watch during then night.” He turned to leave, heading for the courtyard.

“You know you could have just said you were going stir crazy.” Nema called after him only to receive a middle finger in response.

+++

“Are you sure you don’t need me to come along?” Arryn kept pace with Nema as she headed down the dock, dressed in casual clothing, a book tucked under her arm, Ailith stood balancing on the railing, talking with Nico as he moved about the deck.

“I always need you beside me Arryn but for now… It’s just a short trip. It won’t be dangerous, Nico will help guide me and we’ll be back within the week.”

“Why are you leaving so suddenly?”

Nema paused, watching the two on the boat before turning to Arryn. She reached into her pack and pulled out a small bundle of objects tied with twine.

“In my village we have a memorial for those who have passed. We cremate their remains, we always have, even before the plague. But to honor their memory and comfort the grieving there was a private spring in the woods, only about a day’s journey out. There you could set up a plot to leave things, and since—since my mother died during the siege of the village I’ve never really had closure. So I’m going to set something up for her, I know it might seem silly but—I just—“ Arryn took her hand, Nema meeting her eye as she did.

“It’s not silly, if it’s important for you to do this then I respect that. Be safe, okay?”

Nema smiled, nodding as she placed the bundle back into her bag.

“Okay, stay out of trouble while I’m gone then,” Nema said as she pulled Arryn into a hug.

“We’ll try.”

“Ailith, c’mon, they need to go!” Arryn called as she released Nema from the hug.

Ailith leap skillfully from the railing of the boat to the dock, barely making any noise as she did.

“Be safe.” She said as she enveloped Nema in her arms, Nema squeezing her lightly before taking a step back.

“I always am.”

“You’re not a good liar.” Ailith punched her lightly on the arm, Nema grinning at her as she headed towards the gangplank.

“Don’t burn the keep down while we’re gone!” Nema called over her shoulder.

“No promises!”

Nico pulled the plank on board as Nema waved to them, watching as they slowly began to fade into the distance. It was odd having another person onboard, she had completely expected to go it alone, but she wasn’t completely adverse to the idea of not being on her own for the long two week journey back to her village. She hoped Nico was wrong, she hoped that when they got there, when they reached the edge of the forest and delved into the trees that it would be peaceful. She knew however that Nico was a ranger, he knew the woods, and as much as Nema wanted to believe that she knew her home better than anyone she acknowledged it had been much too long since she had properly spent anything longer than a few hours there. Either way, even if there were undead in the forest she was sure the two of them could handle it.

“The skies are looking clear, maybe we’ll get lucky and we’ll get there sooner than we thought,” Nico called from the bow, Nema humming a reply she knew he couldn’t hear. Nema made her way to the upper deck, letting the wind blow over her face and through her hair, for a moment she imagined she was back home, back on her father’s boat, her mother and Darya standing on the dock waving them off. But this was her reality now, being seen off by her new family, and while it wasn’t like it used to be, it was still good. Still home.

+++

Although the seas weren’t as friendly as the first day they set off it was by no means unmanageable, the winter was only just beginning to thaw up North and the seas were still restless from the storms. Nema found herself being nudged awake at midnight by Nico who told her that the docks were in sight. Rolling off of the bunk, body still exhausted from being pelted with ice cold rain, she made her way to the now surprisingly quiet deck. The sky had cleared, the moon and stars shining brightly down on the craft, the only sound was the distant crashing of the waves on the rocks.

“We should dock and tie off for the night. We can sleep fully for now, get our strength up before we head out.” Nico said, Nema still quiet as she watched the walls of her village come into view in the moonlight.

“That sounds good.” She said, her voice raspy from yelling over the sound of rain. Silence hung between them, the creaking of the boat beneath their feet filling it for a moment before Nico spoke again.

“You still up for it?”

Nema nodded.

“Okay. Get rest then, we’ll need it.” Nico nudged her with his elbow, Nema only swaying slightly before heading back to her bunk, pausing in the doorway.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Eh, shut up,” he replied shaking his head, Nema smiling at him before heading off to sleep.

Nema found herself lying awake, the bundle of shells, pearls and driftwood hanging from the bed pole nearby. She watched it sway, gently and quietly clinking against the wood. Around the top of it was the blanket pin her mother used to wear, lovely brown and blue beads strung together and tied at the top of the small net of items. It was all she had left, and while she wanted to cling to it, to keep it as a reminder, she knew she wanted to do better than that in remembrance. Her mother would have wanted to be at the spring. Nema wasn’t sure when she drifted off, or if she had just closed her eyes for a moment before Nico was shaking her awake again.

“Suns up, we should probably head out,” he said, gathering his things from where he had been storing them beneath an adjacent bunk.

Nema sat up, bleary eyed as she stretched out her stiff arms.

“How’s the weather looking?” She asked.

“Clear, for now at least. There are clouds on the horizon, moving this way, but if we head out now we might beat it out there.”

Nema nodded, pulling the blanket Darya had given her around her shoulders and setting the memorial bundle in her bag before slinging it over her shoulder.

“Then let’s head out.”

Linmell was like it had been when she last saw it, nearly every building looking like a forgotten shack, left for the elements to eat at. It was strange, like seeing the skeletal remains of a person, you know they used to contain life, they lived and breathed but now they were just rubble left to decay. Nema could hear her heart beating in her chest, a loud thrumming which was the only thing that made her feel like she was still in her body, the only thing that made this all seem real and not like some nightmare she kept reliving. Beyond the village she could see the forest, before it used to call to her to explore it, to run through the trees with Darya playing pretend when they should have been helping their parents at home. Everything was ghost like, only memories lived there now.

“According to your map it shouldn’t take more than a day to get out there. Should be simple enough if the undead aren’t too much.”

Nema jumped slightly, forgetting once again that Nico had come with her.

“Before I left, before… all this, the trails out there were well protected, well warded.”

“No one has been around to maintain those wards though. Rangers don’t tend to venture that close to the village either so the trails might be overgrown.”

Everything seemed to be a reminder of how the village of Linmell seemingly ceased to exist overnight. Did anyone but the survivors and herself even care? She tried to remember her return, tried to remember what it felt like to hear that Linmell was no longer a suitable place to dock. Was she angry? Was she sad? Was she guilty? She wasn’t sure. There was a lot of drinking involved, a lot of waking up in a strangers arms and trying to figure out how she got there. That was all before she finally got herself together, before Arryn and Ailith and Nico and Kol. Before Si and Lenna. Before she found home again. Nema shuttered at the memories, remembering why she always tried to forget them.

Nema led Nico through where the fishing families used to live, the town square, by the meeting hall and rich district where she, Arryn and Ailith discovered the knife, making sure to give a wide birth to the house they had ventured under. The forest was beyond that, up a slight incline that overlooked the village. She could see the trailhead, a small sign that now sat lopsided against a tree. Nico had been right, the trail itself was overgrown with two years of underbrush and weeds.

“You know you still haven’t told me why we’re going into the forest in the first place.” Nico said.

“If you’re unsure you can stay back at the boat. Probably too personal for your tastes anyways.” Nema shrugged.

Nico brought his hand to his chest in mock hurt “And I thought we were getting along.”

“Shut it,” Nema shoved him slightly, the ranger barely stumbling an inch as they waded through the forest.

“I mean if you don’t want to tell me that’s fine, just know if we’re in the process of getting eaten I will want to know what was so important before I die.”

Nema sighed “Fine. You want to know so badly?” She stopped walking, folding her arms across her chest.

“Not really.” He said continuing on ahead of her.

Nema rolled her eyes at him, sticking her tongue out at his back.

“We’re going to the remembrance spring.” Nema said, Nico pausing to look back at her.

“For my mother,” she continued.

“That wasn’t so hard was it?”

“Why are you such an asshole sometimes?”

“Because, otherwise people get too touchy feely. Arm’s length is a good distance.”

“You know what I think?” Nema asked, trotting up beside him as they walked.

“I don’t really want to know.”

“I think you’re scared of getting attached to people. But—“ “-There’s always a but.”

Nema punched him lightly in the arm.

“But, I think you want companionship.”

Nico snorted.

“The forest is my companion, doesn’t whine, doesn’t prod, doesn’t—“

“Doesn’t die?”

Nico opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but instead he looked away. Silence fell between the two of them. She felt somewhat bad for the comment.

“You know, I understand the appeal of the forest to you.”

Nico didn’t reply, his expression exceedingly neutral.

“I feel the same way about the ocean and the sky. It’s always there. It was there before you it’ll be there after you’re gone. You won’t be the one to have to say goodbye.”

“Shh.” Nico stopped suddenly.

“You know it’s okay to admit you have feelings. You’re only hum—“

Nico seized Nema’s arm, a hand going over her mouth as he nearly threw the two of them into the brush beside the trail. Nema wanted to react, to elbow him in the ribs, but then she heard something. It was a humming, low and soft, something like a child’s voice, it was comforting really the more Nema listened to it. Nema wrenched Nico’s hand from her face, trying to turn and look at him.

“What is that?” She whispered.

“It’s bad.”

“Thank you for that, now, what is it?”

Nico didn’t answer and Nema’s jaw clenched, there was something about his silence that made her blood run cold. The humming was getting louder, the sound no longer coming from one point but multiple. Panic was rising in Nema’s gut, she wasn’t exactly sure why however, she felt a moderate amount of safety, they were beside the trail, Nico was with her, it was daylight. The only disconcerting thing about the whole situation was the humming. By the time it felt close enough to just be on the other side of the bank they had hidden themselves behind Nema’s palms were sweating, her heart was racing and there was a strange ringing in her ears. Run. Nema blinked a few times, unsure as to who had said that. Run or you will certainly die. Nema pulled away from Nico who had been peering out over the embankment, his hand on her shoulder. Run, run now, before it’s too late. There was the sound of something crashing beside them, big and heavy, Nema’s vision was swimming and her head was throbbing but she needed to get out of there. She took off at a full sprint into the woods, adrenaline fresh in her blood, the feeling of something only inches off her back reaching for her spurring her on. It felt like when she was a kid and she and Darya would chase each other, that feeling of someone behind you ready to pounce on you. But then it had been a game, now it was so very real. She heard her name being called behind her, nearly drowned out by the ringing in her ears. She took a right, bounding over a fallen tree and across a creek. Was it getting darker out? Was the storm moving in? Or was it just her vision.

Nema dared a glance over her shoulder, finding only twisting woods as far as she could see. Suddenly the ground wasn’t there anymore, her foot instead slipping on an incline. She fell forward, attempting to catch herself on the dirt in front of her only to start to roll off. She let out a sharp cry, squeezing her eyes shut before something caught her, a hand with a fist full of her shawl.

“What the fuck are you doing?!” Nico hauled her up.

Nema swaying slightly only for Nico to steady her by her shoulders. Nema’s head whipped around as she scanned their surroundings. To her left was a hill, while it wasn’t too steep to begin with it dropped off after a few feet and ended in a shallow stream where various boulders, rocks and fallen trees were piled. To her right was the rest of the forest, completely empty and quiet, no darkness, no whistling.

“I thought… I thought I was going to die.” She said, figuring she should be honest at this point.

“I mean it would have hurt but it’s not that big of a drop.”

“No no,” Nema swatted him away from her, pacing back towards where she had come from.

“I thought something was coming for us, I thought… I swore…”

“That why you up and bolted into the forest?”

“The whistling, what was it?” Nema asked, turning to him.

“What whistling?” Nico cocked and eyebrow, true concern beginning to cloud his somewhat annoyed expression.

“The whistling, the reason you threw us into a bush.”

Nico stared at her for a moment before closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose.

“I pulled us off the trail because a bear cub had wandered onto the path, I didn’t want the mother to rip our heads off because we got too close.”

It was Nema’s turn to stare at him, eyes wide and brow creased. How could he have not heard it? It was all she could hear and it was coming from everywhere.

“The crashing beside us? You didn’t hear that?”

Nico took a step towards her, squinting at her and taking her in like he was looking for something.

“Did you hit your head on something?” He reached out to touch her, Nema flinching away from him, irritability from his disbelief rising in her gut.

“No, I didn’t. Just forget about it. It doesn’t matter. Let’s go, we’re losing daylight.”

Nema pushed past him, finding her footprints easily enough, Nico quietly watching her as she made her way back to the trail. The trip back was longer than Nema expected, she hadn’t realize how far she had ran until she was following her own footsteps. Nico kept quiet, letting her lead them, the desire to talk to him having left Nema completely. Before stepping out onto the trail Nico motioned for her to wait, peering out to make sure the coast was clear.

“Look, there,” Nico climbed out over the bushes before squatting in the road.

“See? Bear tracks.”

Nema stared at them, still unwilling to believe that that was what he had them hiding from.

“Okay.” She said simply before trudging ahead, Nico rolling his eyes at her back.

The trip was silent, the sound of birds and other wildlife their only company which was fine with Nico. Nema pulled off her shawl as she began to get too warm, picking the burrs out of the bottom of it. It wasn’t long before the sun began to set.

“I thought you said there would be more undead here.” Nema finally said, breaking the silence that had hung between the two of them for so long.

“From what I heard we should have seen some by now.” Nico sounded genuinely confused almost to the point of sounding disappointed.

“Maybe your intel was wrong,” Nema said.

“Maybe we’re not deep enough yet.”

“You want to see undead?” Nema asked.

“No.” Nico’s tone was flat, completely unjoking.

“We should be almost there, the last time I walked this trail we were there by now.”

Nema hadn’t been sure if it was the fact she hadn’t been home in two years or the overgrowth but something about the trail had seemed wrong but she could never put her finger on it. The forest sounded like a regular forest, the trees, brush and bushes were all normal looking and native to the area, the sun shone through the trees and every now and then she could hear a stream nearby. Everything was just normal. Maybe that was it, maybe it was too normal, but that just seemed silly.

“Well if it gets any darker I think we should camp for the night,” Nico suggested.

“We’re almost there, I promise.”

Nema was starting to feel desperate, like she had something to prove. This was her home, she had to know it better than he did right? Nema huffed, picking up her pace despite her aching feet. But even as they seemed to make some kind of headway by the time the sun dipped behind the horizon and the forest had become bathed in darkness there was no sign of the spring.

“There’s supposed to be markers, even if the wards didn’t hold there should be some sign, some indication that we’re close.”

“Nema, please. Let’s just rest, if we really are close we’ll get there in the morning.”

Nico had already started to clear out a small area beside the road for them to set up a fire and camp for the night. Nema sighed before moving to help him. She was still upset about him not believing her, but the more she thought about it the more muddled her memory of the whistling and the voice and the fear became. It was starting to feel more like a dream than anything else. Nema set out her bedroll, pulling out a bundle of dried meat to snack on while she and Nico gathered wood. When the fire was set night had settled in proper, the stars could barely be seen through the thick branches of the trees.

“Hey, if you really did hear something… just let me know next time okay?” Nico said as he prodded at the fire.

“I did Nico, I heard it.”

“Okay okay, I believe you. Just don’t take off running without me next time.”

“Yeah, okay.” Nema said nodding.

“You okay with first watch?” He asked.

“Yeah, that’s part of your pay right?” Nema said with a smirk.

Nico laughed lightly before laying back, propping himself up in the roots of a tree.

“Yeah, yeah I said that didn’t I?”

“Shut up and go to sleep already.” Nema said, tossing a pebble at him.

“Fine fine jeez, moody.”

Nico rolled over and Nema was alone. She had never been afraid of the dark, not really, but there was something about the way it felt so heavy at that moment. Maybe it was the thought that undead really were nearby they had just been lucky enough not to see any, or maybe it was the thought that their luck might run out soon. Nema pulled her shawl in close, deciding to work on a woven bracelet she had brought with her, busying her hands and mind in order to pass the time. The problem was the more she focused the more she wanted to close her eyes, her head feeling fuzzy, almost like it had when she had heard the whistling before.

“Nico?” she called quietly, sure he hadn’t already passed out, only to have no response.

“Hey, numbskull,” she said a little bit louder.

Her eyelids were beginning to droop, her muscles feeling exhausted and immoveable. She was starting to slump forward and despite the unnatural feeling of it all she couldn’t help but feel extremely calm and relaxed. By the time she had fully laid over she had passed out.

+++

Nema shot up, eyes wide as she heard a deafening scream. She blinked away the sleep, adrenaline rushing back into her veins as she searched the darkness around her. Nico was gone, the campfire nearly burnt out. How had she let herself fall asleep? She was supposed to be watching, she never fell asleep on watch. Nema pushed herself up, moving to where Nico had been asleep the last time she saw him.

“Nico?” She called, voice raspy and throat dry.

Panic began to set in, who had screamed? Her question was answered as another scream bit through the night air. Nema took off running, this time with a destination in mind.

“Nico!”

She could hear him, he was shouting, he sounded like he was in pain.

“Nico!” Her voice broke harshly, fear seizing her.

Had he been right? Had she let undead drag him away when she was supposed to be watching? Another shout, this one was scared, no, terrified. She had never heard him like that before, sick, angry, cocky, whatever, but never like this, not this desperate. Tears stung her eyes as she searched the darkness, still following where the voice had last come from. Ahead of her was a clearing, the trees parting way until finally Nema burst into the moonlight. It was the spring, but it was nothing like she remembered. It was a large formation of stone and rock with a pool of water beneath it, a small trickle coming from the cracks of the rocks; around it were old stone markers where people who had left remembrances, but they were decimated, knocked over, old offerings smashed and scattered. The most distinct change however was even as the silvery blue moon reflected in the spring, the water was clearly a deep dark red. Nema tore her eyes away from it, searching what once was a sacred place for Nico. She saw him, shoved up against the rocky wall, hands over the back of his head, he was hunched over cowering, shouting and screaming like he was being attacked. Nema rushed to his side, pulling him back by his shoulder. He swiped at her, shoving her back, fighting her off but Nema kept a strong hold on him.

“Run, you need to run!” He was nearly begging her.

“Nico, Nico open your eyes, look at me.” Nema tried to steady him, a flickering of faerie fire lighting up the spring around them.

Nico calmed slightly, at least he had stopped thrashing, he still muttered, still insistent that she needed to run.

“Nico, you’re safe,” Nema finally said, shaking him slightly.

Nico’s eyes snapped open, his entire body rigid and in the light Nema swore she saw something like tears on his cheeks although she couldn’t be certain.

“Are you okay?” Nema asked.

Nico sat up before pushing past her, looking around the clearing.

“The undead.” He said quietly.

“What?”

“You didn’t see them when you came?”

“Nico, what is going on?” Nema asked.

“The hoards… they… they’re gone.”

“What are you talking about?”

Nico strode up to her, his entire demeanor changed.

“This isn’t a fucking joke Nema.” He said, his jaw set tight.

“I’m not joking Nico, there are no undead.”

He seemed irritated, almost as if he were angry at her, he paced away, looking around where they were. He was searching for something, tracks by the look of it.

“I swore—I know—“ Nico held his head, eyes pinched shut in a painful manner.

Nema wandered the perimeter, looking for any signs that he had in fact been attacked. Even as she had woken him she found no signs of damage on his body or his clothing. Nema stopped, scanning their surroundings when something caught her eye. It was bright white and small, a dress laying in the brush not far from them just off to the right of the spring. The sound of humming from earlier began to fill her ears again.

“Nico.” She called to him.

As she grew closer she realized it wasn’t just a dress, it was a body. Small, childlike, laying face down.

“Nico a child.” She said rushing to its side.

Nico turned to her, squinting through the faerie fire and moonlight at what she was crouched over. Something about it wasn’t right, the more he stared the more wrong it looked.

“Nema don’t-!” Before he could get to her Nema reached out, her hand grabbing ahold of the child’s shoulder.

Before she could even blink the body in front of her was yanked away, almost as if it were dragged into the forest. She fell backwards onto her hands, watching the darkness it had just disappeared into. Her stomach churned, the smell of rotting flesh suddenly burst through the air as something roared. It was undead. Nema scrambled backwards, looking for any sign of what had just made the noise, Nico grabbed her arm making her jump. He hauled her to her feet and by the time she returned to searching the darkness a huge lumbering figure appeared. It was grotesque in nature, nearly the size of Nema’s boat. What looked like a withering corpse headed it while various parts and pieces of undead clung to its sides and torso, below it, where the corpse’s legs should be was some kind of appendage which attached to the body of a child, the one Nema had mistaken for a living person. Its body stretched out behind it, made from various muscles, skeletons and organs of long dead creatures it had seemed to collect. It was like some kind of undead angler fish, luring in unsuspecting passersby with its decoy.

Nema let out a scream as she staggered backwards, Nico yanking her away as a sinewy arm came crashing down, an amalgamation of screams and groans emanating from the creature. Its claws caught her shoulder, digging into her flesh as Nico tore her away from it. They stumbled forward, Nema cradling her arm as they raced for the trail.

“What is it?” Nema screamed as they burst out onto the trail.

“Whatever it is it’s too big to fight.” Nico had an arm around Nema as they arm, hot blood pooling in her hand as she clutched her arm. Her vision was blurring, the humming was louder than before.

Suddenly she was jerked sideways, Nico had fallen beside her, something wrapped around his ankle. He made it to his hands and knees before turning to fire an arrow back behind them. Nema couldn’t see the strange tentacle that had grabbed him in great detail and she was somewhat grateful for that feeling as if it would have probably churned her stomach. Nema fired off lightning back in its direction, the crackling bolts lighting up the trail. It was then she saw that it was attempting to chase them, dragging itself along the dirt and wailing at them. Nema brought the spear down on the appendage, Nico hissing in pain as he unwrapped it from his leg, what looked like acid burns melting through his pants and into his skin.

“Can you walk?” Nema asked pulling him up beside her.

“I can do more than that.” He said.

They took off at a run, the humming in Nema’s ears getting further and further off only to have pain begin to bloom in her temples.

“Something’s wrong,” Nico said through clenched teeth.

“I can feel it too.” Nema said, holding her head as she tried to keep track of the trail in front of them.

What felt like a bolt of electricity surged through her head making her stumble and stop. She shoved her hands into her eyes, feeling the cooling blood smear across her forehead as she did.

“It burns,” Nico said beside her, hissing in pain as he too faltered.

When Nema opened her eyes again she stumbled backward, a scream caught in her throat as what looked like a massacre unfolded in front of her. Bodies, all in various forms of decay were sprawled out on the trail. Dismembered, bloated, half eaten, every inch made her want to vomit.

“What happened?” She said, her voice breaking harshly.

She blinked, the vision seemed to shift and shimmer, like a mirage would, but every time she tried to make it go away it wouldn’t stay gone for long.

“We need to push through, ignore it. It’s not real.” Nico said, taking her by the arm and dragging her forward.

Every sense in Nema’s body was reinforcing that what she was seeing was true. The sight, the smell, the sound, it all felt too real.

“C’mon Nema, keep walking.” Nico said.

Nema didn’t even see him anymore and for a moment she wondered if he was seeing what she was. Whatever the case his hand on her arm was all that was keeping her grounded. She didn’t remember how far she walked or how many times she retched. It seemed the creature they had encountered couldn’t move very far from its nest or whatever it called home, but its attack had some kind of lasting effect.

The next time Nema opened her eyes she wasn’t sure where she was, she smelt meat cooking which was a welcome change to the last thing that had filled her nose. She was propped up in a corner, wrapped in her shawl, arm bandaged tightly. An ocean breeze blew through the drafty structure cooling her clammy skin. Nema attempted to move, her whole body aching horribly as she did.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Nico said.

He was sitting by a fire not far from her, the smoke billowing out of the fallen in roof above them. His leg was bandaged, several empty bottles of something sitting by his side and a medical kit lay open there as well. He was cooking some kind of meat and he looked pale.

“Where… are we?” Nema asked, surprised at how wrecked her voice sounded.

“Linmell. Had to drag you the last half mile. I think you threw up the last three day’s worth of food.”

Nema let herself relax back into the corner of the room. The house around them was mostly framing, the wood that would have made solid walls mostly rotted out and weather worn. She stretched her legs out in front of her, flexing her toes and listening to her hips pop.

“Did you not see them?” she asked quietly.

Nico was quiet for a moment before responding.

“I’ve seen a lot of death. It wasn’t something new.”

Nema watched him as he worked at the fire, a jolt of empathy running through her. She really didn’t know all that much about him, but from what she did, he must have gone through hell.

“Are we leaving?” Nema asked.

“What, you don’t wanna stay?” Nico asked, lighthearted once again.

Nema flipped him off, her hand barely coming out of the blanket before returning to its warmth.

“We can leave once you’ve eaten.”

Nema nodded, turning her attention elsewhere.

“Are you okay?” she asked after a moment.

“You know that thing nearly tore your arm off right? You shouldn’t be asking if I’m the one that’s okay.” Nico said.

“In the clearing, you were screaming like you were being torn apart.”

Nico’s lazy smile seemed to waver slightly as he turned back to the fire.

“It was nothing.” He said “Just a nightmare.”

#I wrote something for D&D....#bringers of misfortune #my writing #Nema

8 notes · View notes

therealsymmetra · 7 years