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dutchdread · 3 years

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Hi again, I'm the same anon from your last ask. So my next question then is why would you consider it to be a bad story if Cloud ends up with Aerith in the end? You also say Cloud and Tifa supposedly have something going on, but even if they did, Aerith doesn't know that. Neither Cloud nor Tifa tell anyone, or even show that there's anything going on between them throughout the whole story. Did you see that in Remake that Aerith even asks Cloud if Tifa is someone special and he says no?

Thanks for the question. Your question is comprised of two parts, why Cloud ending up with Aerith would be a bad story, and then the secondary part about Aerith not knowing about the history between Tifa and Cloud. I think understanding the later will be helpful to understand the former so I'll start with that. This goes back to what I said in my last reply concerning the difference between thinking someone is a bad person, and thinking they're a bad character. First off, let me just make clear that I don't judge Aerith too much concerning her behavior in the OG, since as you rightly state, she didn't really know that there was anything going on between Tifa and Cloud, she probably knew there was some attraction there, but nothing about the extent or the history. And if in the remake it turns out she's actually blissfully ignorant I'll be more lenient there as well. However, in my opinion the remake heavily implies she does realize there is a thing between Tifa and Cloud. You mentioned Aerith asking if Tifa was Clouds girlfriend, and him replying "no". However, as always, there is context here, for starters, the scene doesn't end there and then. Aerith replies knowingly "but she's someone special". Moreover the scene is also only one scene in a series of relevant scenes concerning Clouds relationship with Tifa, which starts with Jessie asking about who Tifa is too Cloud, this plotpoint then continues through Aeriths flower. When Aerith gives Cloud the flower she mentions that his girlfriend will love it, then later when Aerith asks him who he gave the flower to Cloud says he doesn't remember, and Aerith calls him out on the lie. The question is then answered when Aerith goes to the 7th heaven and discovers Cloud gave it to Tifa, prompting a smile from Aerith. She figured it out, actually, she probably figured it much earlier, but now it was confirmed. She had a hunch about Tifa, just like Jessie, Cloud was defensive at first, then evasive, but ultimately, Aeriths hunch was correct, Cloud gave the flower to Tifa. He can pretend all he wants, Aerith knows. Personally, I think she smiled because it reminds her of the future. Throughout remake Aerith is hinted to know more than she lets on, and that's especially true concerning Tifa and Cloud. When Tifa is kidnapped she pushes Cloud to go after Tifa, calling Tifa Clouds special person. If I recall correctly she even uses the same terminology that she used to describe Elmyras husband. She actively tries to make Tifa jealous by calling Cloud her bodyguard, and then she straight up tells Tifa to follow her heart. She gives me the distinct impression that she knows perfectly well where Cloud and Tifas hearts lie, and is trying to push them into action. This is borderline confirmed during the Aerith resolution where she basically straight up admits to knowing more about Clouds feelings than she actually should, assuming you think that this apparition is at least somewhat related to the current Aerith in some manner. The thing that really clenches this in my opinion is a trace of two pasts, where Tifa straight up tells Aerith about her and Clouds history. If Aerith doesn't get it by then, then she's being willfully ignorant. But lets say she does indeed not know, that would to some degree absolve her as a person. But it would still make her a bad character, because WE, the audience, know. We know that Cloud is supposed to end up with Tifa, we know that's how the story goes. And when you rewrite old stories in such a way that you take things away from one character, just to give more to another character, you run the giant risk of insulting the characters involved. You see this in things like the star wars sequels, where they effectively character assassinated Luke Skywalker in order to artificially make Rey seem better. But there are two reasons why this doesn't work, for one, it tends to create Mary-Sue like characters who just get given everything, and two, it inherently causes the fans of the other characters and stories to resent the character that's taking it away.

People don't like people who are simply handed everything, even fictional ones.

In a sense, this is also why Cleriths so often seem to hate Tifa, because they feel like Tifa took their story away from them. The difference, of course, is that Cloud ending with Tifa is a part of the original game itself, while Aerith coming back to life and ending up with Cloud would be a 25 year retcon which would blatantly disadvantage one character in favor of another, this in turn would reek of favoritism, which in turn would generate bad blood in the player. A character who needs to take away from other characters in order to be put forward is not a good character. Good characters add to the characters around them, not take away, that's what Aerith in the OG does, that's what Aerith ending up with Cloud, would not do. This effect would then be magnified by Aeriths already over importance to the plot. Having the universe revolve around one character generally isn't good writing. One of the things that makes Lord of the rings so timeless and beloved is that Frodo is just a small hobbit in the grand scheme of things. Likewise, one of the key elements that makes FFVII so appealing to human nature is Clouds humanity and lack of importance. The fact that Cloud turns out to not be a soldier 1st class, but just a grunt who wasn't good enough, who still ends up being the one who saves the world, speak to the human spirit. Aerith living and ending up with Cloud wouldn't be just a small difference where the overall story would stay the same with only the love interest switched, no, it would inherently ripple effect into all other aspects of the story. From the smallest details to the overall themes of the story, from directing to the personalities of characters, everything would be effected and all of it would fall apart. I could go over a hundred examples but I'll limit myself to some of the smallest and largest. Stories have a flow, where what is happening follows logically from what came before. It's not that it's impossible to write a story where two characters that are roughly similar to Cloud and Aerith fall in love, get separated by death, and where the Cloud character mourns and pines for her after she's gone. The problem comes when you add in Tifa, Zack, and all the other context and details of the story. Consider Zack, if we take the concept of Zack as it relates to Cloud and Aeriths relationship and boil it down to the essentials we could see it as a story about a girl falling in love with a boy because he's channeling the spirit of her dead ex, the main internal conflict the characters need to overcome could then be the question of whether these feelings are true, or whether they are just the shadow of her feelings for the old boyfriend. On the surface, this premise works as the basis of a story. The problem lies in the execution. If you write such a story there are a few things you can and cannot do. For one, you have to make this love exceptionally obvious, you can't tell a story about whether or not feelings are true if you never even get to establishing the feelings in the first place. One of the key things you need to do for this is establish the two characters central importance to the others internal emotional arcs. The first thing you DON'T do is establish a second female character and have Clouds emotional arc revolve mainly around her. If you want to tell a story where Tifa and Clouds relationship turns out to just be friendship, while Aerith and Cloud turns out to be love, then you show the scenes establishing that. However, whenever Cleriths argue for a story like this they have to assert that Cloud no longer loving Tifa is just something that happened off-screen and is never mentioned. But if this were true, this would be extremely important to show. So again, if this is the story, then this is bad direction, aka, storytelling. Scene choices matter, if your story requires you to assume that the scenes you're shown aren't important, and that the crucial bits have to be imagined to happen of screen, then that's bad writing. And the reason you can't suddenly do it now, 25 years later, is

because of a thing called "set-up". Even if they were to change to story to suddenly direct it as such now, it would constitute a drastic change of direction, which means the larger 2-decade long story we've been told is no longer a single coherent whole. If the story in remake is that Cloud always loved Aerith, then why wasn't the ground work for that lain 25 years ago? If you want to say that the story is about Cloud loving Aerith, and ending up with her eventually, then you can't have Cloud not speak her name for the second half of the original game, and devote that time completely to establishing port-mortem that Cloud wasn't himself while with Aerith, and that his true self has deeply ingrained feelings towards another woman. And not some minor character who exists only as a plot-device, some fake hurdle designed to try to raise some fake tension, but Tifa, a character who is routinely established to be the "heroine" of the game, someone of equal importance to Aerith who cared for Cloud while he was in a coma, whose history with Cloud started his internal character arc, whose history with Cloud resolved his internal character arc, and who lives with Cloud 2 years later.

And the same thing goes for Zack, it was possible to write him as negligible when it was just FFVII, if you ignored the addition of Tifa and JUST focused on the Zack element as a side character. But the addition of Tifa and the existence of Crisis Core cause the narrative to become disjointed when trying to view it as a single story. This is why people so often want you to ignore Crisis Core, because they understand that if a conclusion of a story is that Zacks role isn't that important, then why did your story spend an entire game cementing the importance of Zack? One of the things I hear most from Cleriths is "why couldn't Cloud just get over his childhood crush on Tifa and fall in love with Aerith? It happens in real life" , or some other variation of "why couldn't this happen?" But this shows the problem with how they want the story to go, because stories aren't real life. Anything CAN happen in a story, but not anything should. Stories have a concept called " checkovs gun", if a gun is introduced into a story in the first act, it has to be fired somewhere down the line. If the gun turns out to not have a role in the story, why was it there? But the same thing doesn't apply in real life, in real life, chekovs guns almost never fire, with few exceptions, real life is a bad guide to how to write stories. Stories written like real life, generally suck. If characters in stories behaved like characters in real life, half their lines would be "uhhhhh", and half the scenes would be them sitting on the couch having meaningless unrelated events happen.

The entire flow, pacing, and sequence of events is wrong in a Clerith version of this story. In order to sell the idea that FFVII is a story about Aerith and Cloud getting together you first have to sell the idea that all these plot threats concerning Tifa essentially don't matter. But if they don't matter, then why are they there? What purpose do they serve? What purpose does Tifa serve? Or Zack? In order to "fix" their preferred interpretation, Cleriths need to get around this problem, which causes them to have to re-interpret everything that happens and twist it in order to create the appearance of a coherent story. This requires them to resort to minimizing characters, character assassinating characters, and generally misrepresenting everything that happens. I think there is no bigger indication of why Cloud and Aerith getting together would suck as a story than looking at how the people who propose this version of the story look at Cloud and Tifa as characters. What follows are some excerpts from the dumbest person I've ever debated.

This went on for over 200 replies, this is not a mentally sound interpretation of the story, but this is what you need to believe in order to get the Aerith/Cloud love story to work. You're forced to minimize Tifa and her importance to the story, and you need to demonize Cloud. So basically you have two options here, you either have to say "all this stuff with Tifa and Zack, doesn't matter", all their scenes, all those plot threats, they all aren't a part of the larger story being told and ultimately amount to nothing. Or two, you remove all those scenes or rewrite them to instead focus on Cloud and Aerith. And both those approaches suffer from the same basic problem, they're both effectively going "screw everything, all that matters is Cloud and Aerith". Which brings me back to my earlier point. If your story is pushing everything aside in order to hype up the main character, you're not writing a good ensemble story, you're writing a bad fan-fiction. This is the writing people HATE. Cloud is no longer a sad but likable character with complex motivations and feelings who wasn't as important as he thought he was, no, he's cliche self-insert main character that the world revolves around, who every girl genuinely loves regardless of whether or not it makes sense, even though he's a complete asshole who abandons children and takes advantage of women just because he's "lovesick". No other man could ever compare, a week with him braindamaged and you forget all about the man you pined after for 5 years. Aerith is not compassionate to a man who blames himself for his failings and thinks he'd do more harm than good, she's compassionate to a piece of human filth who refuses to go save children because he doesn't care about them. She's not just a girl with a big destiny and a tragic fate, no, the universe itself resets to make sure she gets laid. Tifa isn't a powerful woman who devotedly supports the man she loves through his darkest hours, instead she's a weak unimportant doormat without self-respect who even in 2 decades could not measure up to a week with Aerith. Zacks connection with Cloud doesn't come with complex implications about Aeriths feelings, Zack never really mattered, his entire story of getting back to her? Doesn't matter, it only exists to show how much Aerith must love Cloud to choose him over Zack. The entire lifestream reveal concerning Cloud? Doesn't matter, nothing matters, it's in the past. The central reveal of the story isn't important because Clouds true self suddenly likes Aerith now.....good writing. etc, etc, etc. Where Aerith was once a part of an ensemble cast, the heroine of the external plot, tasked with saving the world through her powers as an ancient, while Tifa as the equally important heroine of the internal plot saves Clouds through their shared feelings, now everything instead revolves around Aerith, and the other characters only exist in service to her, not as characters in their own right, but only to make sure she and Cloud gets together, like every hated mary-sue in history. The pain of her death? Gone, the impact and nuance of the story? Gone. Literally everything that made FFVII special? Gone. And concerning the small, even the little details would no longer be coherent, Cetras thematically guide people to the promised land, note: "GUIDE", but now Aerith would suddenly be the promised land herself. The through-line of Cetras "returning to the planet"? Gone, if Aerith doesn't die that doesn't link to the story anymore at all. Tifa's bar being the 7th heaven, aka, the final heaven, aka, the promised land where Aerith guides Cloud to? Suddenly a meaningless name. Tifa's last name "lockhart" being a direct hint towards the "tender feelings locked up inside Clouds hart"? Completely trivial, the feelings weren't that important to the story. And I could go on for hours, every aspect of FFVII, from small to large, would be fundamentally poisoned if Cloud ends up with Aerith.

I could rewrite the story to make it work, but that's the point, then you'd be rewriting the story in order to diminish every other character and story in favor of Cloud and Aerith. Which brings us back to it becoming a horrible fan-fiction where no one and nothing matters except Cloud and Aerith. It's ok to write unimportant characters, it's not ok to make your important characters unimportant in retrospect in order to wank off another character. Thanks for asking.

#cloti #FFVII #ffvii remake #cloud strife #aerith gainsborough

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postmodernmulticoloredcloak · 3 years

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So I watched 10.09 recently, and it has that part where Dean tells a story about him basically being almost roofied as a teen, but somehow it ends up framed as the funny joke and yet another proof that John "did what he could", and I kind of hate this? And it's the same episode in which MoC!Dean killed guys that kidnapped and tried to rape Claire, and you'd think writers would've addressed the parallels and acknowledge that Dean could've been triggered by this situation. 1/2

2/2 But in the end, it's never addressed, and the whole situation is framed as the proof that Dean is evil now. And I'm not even sure what I am trying to say, but with that being the show's approach back in s10, I'm not surprised about the finale anymore. Guess we should've known?

That’s an excellent angle to look at the issue because the Mark of Cain arc is a clear example of how people with different experiences will see the same thing in wildly different ways. There’s this phase of season 10 where everyone is like “oh no Dean is Getting Worse” and when you look at what Dean is doing... you actually go “...good for him”.

Let’s give Caesar what belongs to Caesar. It’s not “the writers” in this case, it’s Dabb. Plenty of other writers don’t fall into this John apologism thing. Just look at how the episode before Lebanon, written by Buckner and Ross Leming, says that sometimes John would temporarily kick Dean out because he was “pissed at him” despite Dean always taking his side to mantain the peace. It almost seems like a statement to sprinkle some salt given what Dabb does in Lebanon, you know? Maybe not, but there is a tension between “John was shitty” writers and “John did his best” writers.

In hindsight, we gave Dabb too much of the benefit of the doubt. We were like, weeell, that’s supposed to be way the characters perceive the truth, which is distorted by the trauma... But now it’s obvious that he truly believed in the John-did-his-best version. He brought him back and got Mary back with him. No matter what happened to the finale, the network didn’t print those pictures of John and Mary to hang on Sam’s wall. He never took Dean’s abuse seriously and it shows.

The “anedocte” of Dean getting drugged and “saved” by John from being raped is obviously there to parallel him with Claire. Which works! It’s so weird because it’s like. You are soooo close to getting the point. Younger Dean was assaulted just like this teenage girl is assaulted and Dean saves her... but apparently John yelling at those people is a good way of dealing with the issue, while murdering child traffickers is an overraction thus bad.

That’s the problem, isn’t it? That Dean’s murder spree is framed as an overreaction. Sam is like “tell me you had to do this! tell me it was you or them!” - the answer to which (by the narrative) is obviously no, it wasn’t self defense, he just killed them because he could. He just murdered those men for no reason except he felt like being murdery. And the audience is supposed to be like “oh no! Dean is murdery for no reason except for murderiness! That’s bad!”.

But it’s a power fantasy, isn’t it? Going on a murder spree on rapists and traffickers. I bet any people who’s been violated like that has fantasized of doing the exact thing Dean does here. Killing them all.

Dean had the physical strength and skill to kill them all, why shouldn’t he kill them? (I mean, in real life I’m against private justice because I’m a fan of the state of law, but the Supernatural universe obviously works on different principles than the state of law. Again, it’s a fictional narrative that plays out as a fantasy for the audience, so.)

So what was Dabb’s intention? I’m afraid it’s the worst one. “John Winchester’s not going to win any Number One Dad awards, you know? But, you know, damn if he wasn’t there when we needed him”. What the fuck, Dabb? It’s been established since season 1 that John WASN’T there when they needed him. Which... I’m afraid... leads us to the Cas-Claire plot in the episode. Cas has fucked off with Jimmy’s body leaving Claire on her own. Parallels how John wasn’t going to win wny Number One Dad awards. But! Cas is there when Claire Really Needs Him i.e. when she’s about to be raped by older men. Parallels how John was there when Dean Really Needed Him i.e. when he was about to be raped by older men.

I think the point is to say, Cas kinda sucked because he took Claire’s dad away but hey! He’s actually a good figure for Claire because he gets there in time to prevent her from being raped. Just like (ew) John kinda sucked as a father because hunting and stuff, but hey! He’s actually a good figure for Dean because he got there in time to prevent him from being raped.

It’s pretty yucky. Literally NOBODY wanted a parallel between Cas and John. But he made one. And he made one to absolve Cas from the guilt he carried for what he did to Claire (Claire’s mother is a mother so who fucking cares about her. She’s basically a Blurry Wife(TM), she’s only a tool for Claire’s arc, Cas apparently only cares about the harm he did the child, not the wife, for some reason.) and to absolve Cas from his guilt it absolves John too. Don’t worry, being a parent is hard. You often screw up. But you can *looks at smudged writing on hand* prevent the kid from being raped by predatory adults and everything’s fine now.

It’s not really important if the child suffered hunger or whatever, the only important thing is that they don’t get raped, because that’s bad, everything else is just a little detail.

All Dabb got with that scene was to paint Sam as extremely unsympathetic because he’s no longer a child, he’s a full adult now and still thinks of that episode at the CBGB as a funny story. That’s not a good look. It almost makes you think that the writer himself saw it as a funny story. Lol teenage boy biting more than he can chew. But then why the Claire parallel? The Claire scene onviously is not supposed to be anything but horrific. I'll give Dabb the benefit of the doubt on this specific thing.

It’s weird, yes, because Dabb wrote Dark Side of the Moon where he establishes that John was a bad husband/father even before tragedy hit the family. But apparently that’s the “not going to win any Number One Dad awards” part, I suppose? I guess he intended to write John as this flawed, ~complex~ figure who was imperfect but still brave and whatever blah blah did his best blah blah. I’m all for flawed complicated characters but a horrible father is a horrible father. A rose by any other name... parental abuse is still parental abuse even if the poor guy was complicated and traumatized and did what he thought he had to do to prepare his sons for a violent world.

Also, the story frames Dean’s escapade as a teenager being stupid. “You know what he got for that? Me whining about how much he embarrassed me. Me telling him that I hated him. But then he stopped and turned around looked at me and said, Son, you don’t like me? That’s fine. It’s not my job to be liked.” “It’s my job to raise you right.” This seems straight from a novel about teenagers doing something stupid that they’re too young to realize that their parents are right to be against them doing. But this isn’t just... a parent walking into a bar to stop their child to drink alcohol. Dean literally describes feeling sick from something that was inside the alcohol.

Sure, it makes sense that he’d lash out to John because of the shame and shock. But the scene is... off. Are we supposed to see this as a typical teenage mistake? Are we supposed to read it as something as horrific as what happened to Claire, literally sold into rape? Or, worse, are we supposed to see what happened to Claire as a teenage mistake, ah silly teenager, blindly trusting shady people, no wonder you end up in a situation where you’d get raped if a father figure didn’t sweep in and save you. I hope that wasn’t the intent.

To get back to Dean’s Mark-of-Cain violence, the writers clearly didn’t intend it to come from the Darkness up to a certain point. It was supposed to an arc about your own inner darkness (consider the Charlie episode, a couple episodes later). Then they came up with the idea of The(TM) Darkness, the suppressed cosmic feminine. While it caused a bit of dissonance in the subtext, it doesn’t really change Dean’s narrative, because his inner darkness is the trauma, and his trauma is inherebtly tied to the “feminine” i.e. the parts of him that don’t fit seamlessly into the scheme of toxic masculinity values. That the violence that comes from the Mark of Cain comes from Dean himself and that’s it, or is connected to the Darkness, it doesn’t change what it means for Dean. Dean and Amara have parallel histories, the feminine principle locked away, the trauma the anger stems from.

In 10x09 we’re still in the Before The (TM) Darkness era, before the suppressed cosmic feminine. The Mark of Cain arc is still about... well, Cain. But the shift is the signal that someone looked at Dean’s arc and said... you know what? “Lucifer gave me this curse so now I’m demonic and murdery” is meh. “Toxic masculinity suppresses the feminine and it creates trauma which rage and violence comes from” is more interesting. I don’t know whose idea it was, but it was a good idea, and surely the idea came from seeing how Dean’s MoC narrative was unfolding.

Dean’s MoC narrative was unfolding in a certain way, in fact, because of a pretty simple reason. There’s a fundamental tension in Dean’s MoC arc. We want him to go murdery, but it’s also our main character, so we don’t want him to do really horrible things because he still needs to be relatable. The audience cannot hate him, so he must NOT do something entirely unforgivable. He still needs to be somewhat relatable, even when demonic or demonic-adjacent.

So he goes on a murder spree... but it’s rapists and child traffickers. He’s demon, but he kills a misogynistic dude that wanted his wife dead for cheating on him. He’s a demon, but beats up dudes that harass women. He does a slaughter, but they’re nazi. He’s off the deep end, but works a case of kidnapped and abused young women...

Speaking of which. 10x23, written by Jeremy Carver. Dean works a case where a girl was killed while dressed scantily and Dean makes some slut-shaming remarks, and we’re supposed to think “whoa Dean, that’s bad”. But later he confronts the girl’s father and what does he say?

I’m just doing my job, Mr. McKinley.

By suggesting my daughter was a slut?

I’ll admit that thought crossed my mind. Then I came here, and I smelled the deceit and the beatings and the shame that pervade this home.

You shut your face right now.

And you know what? I don’t blame Rose anymore. No wonder she put on that skank outfit and went out there looking for validation, right into the arms of the monster that killed her.

Back then the episode was super controversial and everyone hated the case because of the apparent slut-shaming but I loved it! Because it’s not about the girl. It’s about Dean. Dean doesn’t think that a girl gets killed because she dresses in a miniskirt so it’s her fault. Dean is projecting on himself and he’s not actually victim blaming the girl, he’s victim blaming himself. And when he absolves the girl by putting the blame on the father... well, subtextually he’s absolving himself by putting the blame on his father. On the deceit and the beatings and the shame that pervaded his own home. He’s textually not ready to absolve himself, of course, he summons Death to ask him to kill him later, but subtextually he’s on the right path.

Rose McKinley basically did the same mistake Dean did at the CBGB when he trusted some older people who offered him drinks and the same mistake Claire did when she trusted a man who sold her for money because he offered him a place and stability. She trusted the wrong people (in this case, vampires, which adds the whole subtext of vampires and sexuality) who took advantage of her. Except Rose had no one to save her. (Her friend, Crystal, gets rescued by Dean, even if he causes the other hunter Rudy to die in the process.)

Carver’s writing is pretty brutal. The girl made that mistake because was abused at home, so she was desperate for validation and that desperation drove her into the wrong hands. (Rose even has a brother who blames himself for bringing her sister to her future murderers, destructive sibling relationship check.) It doesn’t actually even matter if Dean guessed right about Rose’s family situation, because what matters is what it tells us about Dean. He basically relates to a dead abused girl. Actually all through the season Dean is paralleled to “skanks” “sluts” and sex workers. Obviously this happens kinda all through the show, the whole “the business is based on absent fathers” thing happened much earlier in the story, so it’s not new. But s10 draws a picture of female suffering - abuse, manipulation and death. Season 10 was difficult to go through. In hindsight, it was probably on purpose because it was supposed to be darkest hour of the feminine. Summed with some good old fashioned misogyny, but hey.

The Carver era was wonky but Carver wanted to free the feminine. (I believe that Mary’s comeback, while written by Dabb because of the showrunner shift, was planned before the showrunner shift.) We thought the Dabb era wanted the same, with Mary choosing life and Amara being independent and so on, but it evidently wasn’t the case. Not a single woman arrives at end of the story. It’s hardly ~Bucklemming or ~the network or ~covid because it starts before the very end.

I’m not saying that dead sluts are more feminist than living women, but if the women die or disappear anyway (and they did) I’d rather have an exploration of trauma than nothing. And I definitely prefer a dead slut narrative that calls out parental abuse than a narrative where women live but abuse gets the you-did-your-best treatment.

Whoops! I digressed! But feel free to ask for any clarification or send me any observation or thought.

#anon #my spn thoughts #season 10 #spn 10x09 #spn 10x23 #dean and john #parental abuse #john winchester's a+ parenting #mark of cain #demon dean #spn #i love talking about season 10 uh

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omgrachwrites · 3 years

Text

The Princess and The Duke - Chapter Twenty

Pairing: Sirius Black x Reader

Summary: As the Princess of Spain, you were always supposed to marry King James of England to make an alliance between Spain and England. When he marries a woman at his court for love, you are married off to his best friend, Sirius Black the Duke of Bedford to keep the alliance. However, the court is riddled with secrets and a rebel in the North starts to rise against the Throne. Royal AU.

Warnings: angst, mentions of death, character death, tiny bit of fluff.

Words: 2671

Disclaimer: This gif doesn’t belong to me, and I’m sorry for the gif I used!

A/N: So here we are at the end! Thank you so much for supporting me with this fic and I'm sorry for this chapter, I kept James and Lily alive to make this part even more sad! This was actually going to end in such an angst filled way but I didn’t want to do that to you guys, though I might write the alternate ending at some point! Hope you guys all enjoy and please let me know what you think! I love you all! xxx

Chapter Twenty - Wherever You Are

Dread coiled in your stomach that fateful morning as you got yourself dressed and pinned your hair. Reggie was sleeping soundly, letting out little snuffles but still, you picked him up and nuzzled your nose into his fine dark hair as you felt the tears build up behind your eyes. You weren’t aware that you could possibly cry as much as you had done, there were little red rashes beneath your eyes where the salt from your tears had irritated your skin. Your heart seemed to be in a constant state of pain as your husband awaited his trial.

This trial should not be even happening, you were appalled at how James had arrested Sirius for treason, “we’ll be alright, little one,” you whispered to your baby boy, “papa isn’t a traitor, he’s a good man,” you pressed a kiss to Reggie’s little forehead.

James was originally going to hold Sirius’ trial the day after Halloween, but Lily had convinced him otherwise, Lily knew that you wanted nothing more than to be at Sirius’ side. So, the King relented and allowed a few days for you to recover after giving birth to Reggie. Unfortunately, it meant that Sirius would have to spend more time locked in the tower but you knew that Sirius understood.

“Y/N?” a soft warm voice came from the doorway and you looked over with blurred vision to see Andromeda who was smiling at you kindly, “I think the King and Queen are ready to start, I’ll look after the children, because they shouldn’t have to be subjected to such an event.”

You nodded with a sniffle as you placed Reggie into her open, waiting arms, “thank you so much. Are you not coming to the trial?” you muttered, feeling like a shell of yourself.

Andromeda shook her head with a sad smile, “I can’t watch that happen to him, I can’t. He’s not just my cousin, he’s my best friend. I’m so sorry that I can’t be there for you both; I know that he’s not the traitor, he would never betray us. Never. I don’t know what James is thinking having him arrested.”

“You are so amazing, Andromeda, we are so blessed to have you in our lives and we appreciate you so much,” you tried to smile but you feared that it came out as more of a grimace.

Andromeda leaned forward to kiss your cheek with a sweet sad smile, “whatever happens today, it’s been an honour to serve two people who are completely made for each other, two people who are soulmates. Good luck.”

You felt tears sliding down your cheeks, stinging at your sensitive skin, you adored Andromeda, you couldn’t have got by without her, “let’s just hope that the King sees sense and does the right thing. He must know that his best friend could never do this to him, he just wants someone to blame, he sees enemies where there are friends, and it’ll be his undoing,” you mumbled with a tight smile as you departed from your chambers.

You would never admit it out loud but you had a strange sense of foreboding, a horrible feeling of dread in the pit of your stomach. You couldn’t help but feel that something was going to go dreadfully wrong.

As you made your way to the Throne Room where the trial was being held, you just couldn’t understand why on Earth James would believe that Sirius was a traitor. What had happened to make him believe that? Snape was already in the dungeons for committing treason. Under coercion, he had admitted that he had been working for Voldemort but apparently he had told him nothing of the prophecy. You supposed that he had to be lying, he just had to be. According to Lily, the evidence they had against Sirius was damning but it was a lie or a set up, it just had to be.

The atmosphere was heavy and full of dread as you walked into the Throne Room and Lily gave you a brave smile from where she stood at James’ side. James had a grim tight look on his face; the King that you had first met a few springs ago was kind and benevolent. That King was no more, it seemed like his heart had hardened.

Your heart broke when the guards roughly dragged Sirius into the room, showing him no mercy. The past few days that he’d spent in the Tower had seemed to age him considerably, his eyes were starting to take on a haunted look but they softened when he looked at you. You tried to offer him a small smile.

As Sirius was pushed to his knees before the King, James glared at him as he produced a letter, “you’ll remember writing this, I bet,” he snarled and began to read the letter out loud “’Lord Voldemort, in regards to my last letter, you will now know how to break Dumbledore’s enchantments. There are underground caverns and a secret entrance on the West side of the castle. They will lead you into the royal chambers and you can complete your work. Your faithful servant, Sirius Black, Duke of Bedford.”

James tossed the chilling letter at Sirius’ feet, “if it hadn’t been for Peter telling us of the conversation he overhead you having then we would be dead. We managed to prepare and we managed to defeat Voldemort when he came after us. We were supposed to be your friends, your sovereigns. How could you do this to us? How could you plot to kill our son?”

“But, I didn’t!” Sirius shouted, “I didn’t have a conversation of this nature with anybody! I didn’t write that letter, I wouldn’t!”

“Then how do you explain the fact that your seal is on the letter?!” James demanded.

You saw Sirius’ face falter for just a moment and you almost winced, hoping that James didn’t catch it, “my seal was stolen.”

“A likely story,” Remus spoke up, his voice breaking and he looked like he was on the verge of tears.

“Where is Peter? He’s lying to you! I saw him sneaking around the castle with a hooded figure!”

“Of course,” James mockingly slapped a hand to his forehead, “blaming the victim is the right thing to do, you’re just trying to save your own skin. Peter was found dead in the hallways, shortly after he came to warn us of your plan.”

You barely managed to conceal a gasp, Peter was dead? “I didn’t kill him,” Sirius whispered, “I was with my wife who was giving birth to our third child!” he glanced at you and you gave him an encouraging nod.

James looked at you before looking back at Sirius, narrowing his eyes, “the midwife says that you left a couple of hours after the birth, around the time that Peter was murdered, he was killed with your ruby encrusted dagger.”

Sirius swallowed nervously, “I lost that dagger shortly after coming back from our last battle with Voldemort,” that was the truth, you remembered Sirius lamenting after its loss. It was clear that someone was setting him up. Why didn’t James see that? “And the reason for my leaving? It was because I went to see if my twins were awake so they could meet their baby brother!”

“And on the way back, you saw an opportunity to kill Peter!” it was clear that James was hitting Sirius hard with the accusations in the hope that Sirius would confess.

“No!” Sirius took a deep breath, “you’re my best friend, you always have been and I would never do anything to hurt you or your family because you’re my family too, please, you have to believe me,” the tone of Sirius’ voice was pleading but James looked unmoved, which annoyed you.

“The evidence is damning, Sirius. It was your seal, your letter and your dagger, you had the means to kill Peter and betray us. What did you think would happen? Did you think Voldemort would put you on the Throne when he killed us?” James hissed but Sirius said nothing but you could see that he was crying you just wanted to hold him. James glanced over to you, “we found no evidence that Y/N was involved,” cold dread shot through your body and your vision blurred.

“She had nothing to do with any of this,” Sirius glanced at you with tear soaked cheeks and the small smile that he gave you broke your heart.

James nodded, offering you a sympathetic look, “then I’m sorry that you’re married to a traitor,” anger boiled in your veins at James’ words and it was an effort to keep your face straight. He glanced back at Sirius, “Sirius Black, I absolve you of your lands and titles; you are no longer the Duke of Bedford. I charge you with treason and I sentence you to hang by the neck until dead,” Lily gasped in surprise as she looked at her husband.

You felt like you were going to be sick and you rushed forwards to kneel at James’ feet, taking Sirius’ hand in yours, “please, Your Majesty, I beg you, don’t kill him! Think of the children, please,” tears streamed down your cheeks and Lily shot James a meaningful look.

James sighed and bowed his head, glaring at Sirius, “very well, you have an amazing wife who begs for your life even though you’re a traitor,” Sirius just looked at the floor and in that moment you hated James for hurting him. You couldn’t imagine how hard it was to endure this from his best friend, “you’re going to spend the rest of your life in a cell. Take him away,” he nodded to the guards.

You cried out in anguish as the guards began to drag your beautiful husband away. How were you going to live without him? “I love you, Sirius.”

Sirius choked on his tears, “I love you too, and please remember me!”

“Of course!” you sobbed.

You didn’t even get to kiss him one last time; you would never forgive James for breaking up your family. Sirius was innocent; you would bet your life on it.

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

Over the next couple of years that Sirius spent in the Tower, he was full of despair and anger, he couldn’t quite believe that James had locked him away; he couldn’t understand why James hadn’t believed him. How could James think that Sirius could ever hurt his friends? What hurt the most was the fact that he couldn’t see the love of his life or his children, the pain was almost unbearable. He couldn’t even see the grounds from the tiny window in his cell so he couldn’t even catch the slightest glance of Y/N.

In that dank, dark cell Sirius was all alone, he was practically withering away. He wanted his wife and he wanted his children. Reggie had only been a couple of days old when Sirius had been thrown into the Tower, Reggie wouldn’t even remember him.

The guards were particularly cruel; they told Sirius everything that was happening at court. They had told him that the King was forcing Y/N to remarry so she wouldn’t bring shame upon England because she was the wife of a traitor. Sirius had been close to throwing up at this news and he died inside, the knowledge that someone else was going to love his wife killed him inside. A few weeks later, the guards grumbled as they told Sirius that the man that Y/N was supposed to marry had died in a hunting accident. It sounded awful but at the sound of that news, Sirius could breathe again.

10 Years Later

Sirius was rudely awakened by the guards pounding on the bars of his cell, their voices filled with glee, “oi! Wake up, you have some visitors,” Sirius groaned and walked over to the bars to see the guards leering faces, “best make it a good goodbye, you’ll never see your family again after today. Your pretty little wife is going to marry the Austrian Prince.”

The pain that shot through Sirius’ chest almost made his knees buckle and tears stung at his eyes, he backed away from the bars so his family could enter. The breath was stolen from his lungs when his family walked into the cell and the door was closed behind them. Y/N was so beautiful and his children were growing up, and he’d missed it all.

“Sirius!” Y/N cried out as she ran to him and Sirius gathered her up in his arms, after 12 years, she was in his arms again. Once more, she was breathing life back into him, “I’ve missed you so much I love you,” she sobbed into his chest before she cupped his face and drew him into a passionate kiss, her tears running over his lips.

“I missed you too, I missed all of you, I love you,” he pressed his forehead against hers, grinning for the first time in 12 years, it was a wonder that he still remembered how to, he looked at his beautiful children with a smile as Elena and Johnathan ran into his arms, their faces bright with recognition. Reggie smiled at him with a blank look on his face but there was love in his eyes, “look at you three, all grown up.”

“We wish you could have been there, father,” Reggie smiled before hesitantly walking towards him and pulling him into a hug. Sirius smiled as he hugged his son tightly, “it’s good to meet you,” Reggie whispered.

Sirius’ smile dropped a second later when he remembered why they were there, “you’re marrying a Prince? Congratulations.”

Y/N rolled her eyes with a giggle and she lowered her voice so the guards wouldn’t hear, “I am never going to marry another, Lily and James just thinks that I am. The Prince doesn’t want to marry me either, he prefers the company of men,” she blushed, “but he believes you’re innocent, he’s a good man.”

“He believes I’m innocent?” Sirius asked, feeling gobsmacked, he was also elated that Y/N wasn’t going to remarry.

“Yes, and he wants to help, we’re getting you out of here tonight, we’ve got a ship leaving the docks at midnight, the Prince will give us sanctuary in Austria.”

Sirius was excited to get out of here, to feel the sun on his skin again, breaking him out of his cell would be dangerous but he glad that Y/N had an ally, but there was something that bothered him, “you’re coming with me? I don’t want to ruin your lives.”

Johnathan sighed as he rolled his eyes, “come on father, we’re going wherever you do. We’re not letting you go alone.”

“But you’ll always be having to hide, that’s no life for you, any of you,” Sirius bit his lip; he wanted to believe that it was possible but it just wasn’t.

Elena took his hand, “papa,” she whispered, “we love you and we’re a family. We’ve been apart for 12 years; you’re insane if you think we’re not going with you. We want to know you and for you to know us.”

Sirius teared up and sniffled as he looked over at his wife who grinned and cupped his cheeks, “we’ll be here an hour before midnight, the guards won’t be a problem. Leave them to us, I love you.”

“I love you too,” he grinned and kissed Y/N deeply before hugging all of his children in turn, excited to be in the world again. The plan was set and at midnight, he was successfully on a ship with his family by his side and a strong ally at his back. This wasn’t how he thought his life was going to be, he never thought he would be running from James’ court but here he was. They were going to be okay. Sirius was free, they were all free, and most importantly, they were together.

-Fin-

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

@smiithys @elayneblack @amelie-black @siriuslyjanhvi @pregnant-piggy @lindatreb @mabelle-cherie @hxrgreeves @britishspidey @mads-bri @classicrocketqueen @sxtansqueen @hufflepuffzutara @potters-heart @bruxa0007 @ourstarsailor @fific7 @galwithbluethoughts @2410slb @sunles @krismeunicornbaobei @theincredibledeadlyviper @deathkat657 @lonegryffindor2005 @writing-your-heart-out

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facialteeth · 3 years

Text

A Wedded Union | Ao3.

In which Alec and Magnus got married when Alec marched down the aisle and kissed Magnus, unbeknown to them both.

This is my ‘Accidental Marriage’ square for @shadowhunterbingo.

When Magnus stormed into Alec’s wedding, he had nothing on his mind except getting there. Truthfully, he didn't know what he expected would happen after he arrived. Perhaps, Alec would yell at him to leave. Perhaps, he’d end up awkwardly watching as Alec married a woman he could never love. Perhaps… something else would happen but even contained within that last unlikely perhaps, Magnus hadn’t ever expected Alec to do what he did.

He didn’t expect Alec to call off his wedding on the spot. He didn’t expect Alec to walk down the aisle, dismiss his mother and pull Magnus into a breathtaking kiss but that’s exactly what happened. It seemed that Alexander was always taking him by surprise, even when Magnus expected him to do the opposite of what he ended up doing.

That day at his wedding was no different and Magnus was never more taken back and pleased by the outcome. It was selfish, Magnus knew but if he was being honest, it felt nice for someone to choose him. It felt nice for his efforts to pay off and for him to have helped Alec not make what would have been in Magnus’ opinion, a horrendous life lasting mistake. It felt good that whatever he’d done had helped Alec be true to himself.

It was the perfect start for something wonderful, if Magnus was not immediately scared that Alec would come to regret it. Magnus knew that he was a lot to deal with. Magnus knew that Alec’s family and his peers were going to be less than accepting of the public display that Alec had just made. If Alec didn’t come to resent him for what he’d chosen to do, this could be something wonderful but Magnus was fearful that this wonderful would turn worrisome fast.

That’s what Magnus had been thinking about following Alec's wedding and their kiss. He had not been thinking about shadowhunter custom of kissing at weddings or anything more serious than the fact that Alec had just kissed the breath right out of him. He’d been thinking about that and the fact that Maryse Lightwood had looked angry enough to bite Alec’s head off, though she showed an immense amount of strength in not doing so.

When Alec was inevitably called away for his shadowhunter duties, Magnus went home with a bit of enthusiasm in his step. He walked home smiling and trying not to check his phone every few minutes like a school girl waiting for a message from a crush. He’d walked home wondering when Alec would call him again and when they’d see each other next.

He had not been thinking about the fact that he and Alec had just gotten married, in the eyes of the shadowhunters at least, because he had not known that to be the case and Alec hadn’t either but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t true.

They found out nearly three days later. Magnus and Alec had been walking through the Institute together, intent on finally having their first date when Maryse Lightwood had barreled around the corner, clutching a paper tight in her grasp and looking furious enough that Magnus worried she might catch fire any moment.

Maryse looked to Magnus once and then promptly looked to her son and refused to acknowledge Magnus’ presence again. He might as well be a fly on the wall. Magnus was pretty sure Maryse would much prefer he be that way.

“Call and tell them to fix it,” Maryse demanded as she thrust the now crumbled piece of paper at Alec’s chest.

Alec’s eyes widened. He took a half step back before he reached for the paper his mother held out. Confusion was written across his face and it was obvious to Magnus that Alec was just as in the dark as he was.

“What are you talking about?” Alec asked as his eyes started to skim the paper quickly.

“Fix it,” Maryse ground out furiously, offering no immediate explanation. Her eyes snapped to Magnus before looking back to her son. “I will not have the Clave thinking you intended to marry a warlock with your embarrassing little stunt.”

Alec’s face twisted at her words, as did Magnus’. The thought was almost laughable. Even if he and Alec had wanted to get married, and it was far too soon for that, the Clave would never have let them. Warlocks did not marry Shadowhunters. Shadowhunters married Shadowhunters and that’s all the Clave allowed.

Magnus leaned forward to peer over Alec’s shoulder, skimming the letter that was addressed to Alec himself from Jia Penhallow, the current Consul. Most of it was the word fluff that Magnus was used to having to read through in every formal interaction he had with the shadowhunters. They could never cut to the chase and say what they wanted but right at the bottom, Magnus found a paragraph that explained pretty well what Magnus needed to know.

‘In lieu of recent events, the Clave has decided to honor your dedication to one Magnus Bane and certify your marriage as official. It is the Clave’s hope that you and your husband will help strengthen our ties to the downworld and that the officiation of your union will show as a good faith attempt to bridge the gaps between our people. I look forward to speaking with you in more depth about this shortly.’

Alec shifted and Magnus could see suddenly that there was another crumpled paper under the letter. It held the official seal of the Consul, along with the elegant decorative letterhead that announced the paper as an official declaration of marriage between one Magnus Bane and Alexander Lightwood.

Alec seemed just as shocked as Magnus was and when neither of them said a word, Maryse snapped again. “Fix it, Alec,” she hissed, before she was turning to storm away, leaving Alec holding the evidence of their marriage in his loose, blindsided hands.

Alec finally turned to Magnus. “I didn’t mean to marry you,” he rushed out.

In normal circumstances, Magnus might have pretended to be offended at that but he sensed that it wasn’t quite an appropriate time. They hadn't even had a first date. They hadn’t even kissed, besides their very public kiss at Alec’s, their, wedding. Despite all of that, they were married.

Magnus was a lot to deal with even without considering the fact that they’d accidentally declared themselves for each other. “I didn’t either,” Magnus said finally. He wanted to be clear that he hadn’t walked into Alec’s wedding and intended to trick him into marrying him but Alec didn’t seem to need the assurance.

“I can’t believe they’d let that happen.” Alec met Magnus’ eyes, as if Magnus might possibly have some kind of explanation but Magnus was just as shocked as Alec was. For the Clave to certify a wedding not only between a warlock and a shadowhunter but between a male shadowhunter and a male warlock - well, Magnus would have thought he’d die before he’d see the day and that was saying something, considering his very large lifespan.

“I find it hard to believe too. I’ve heard Jia is… progressive but I didn’t expect her to be that progressive.” Magnus laughed nervously but Alec seemed too frazzled to realize how carefully Magnus was watching Alec, waiting for a reaction that would tell him if Alec was terribly upset at everyone thinking he’d married not only a warlock but Magnus.

“She’s not,” Alec said quickly. “They think the downworld is going to revolt. They’re doing anything they can to try and keep the peace, surprisingly enough. I suppose I can see how a marriage between a shadowhunter and a downworlder, especially the High Warlock, would make them look good.”

Slowly, Magnus nodded. Alec was right. There wasn’t a single downworlder who wouldn’t be entirely caught off guard by the news but it did signify a change in the Clave, one that just might be enough to make people complacent. Magnus opened his mouth to respond but Alec looked up suddenly and his expression was intense enough that Magnus fell silent, waiting for him to speak.

“We can’t tell them we didn’t want to get married,” Alec said, assured enough that it took Magnus a moment to even respond.

Slowly, Magnus raised an eyebrow, “You want them to think we’re married?” Magnus asked. “We don’t know each other that well and… Well, marriage is a big deal and I don’t think either of us thinks we’re ready for that.”

“But you don’t care what the Clave thinks,” Alec insisted. “It doesn’t matter to you if they think we’re married.”

At that, Magnus paused. He wasn’t wrong. Magnus didn’t particularly care what the Clave thought of he and Alec’s relationship. “You care,” Magnus said softly. “You want them to think you married me?” Magnus asked in disbelief. He expected Alec to realize all at once that he did not want that at all but that didn’t appear to be what happened.

Instead, Alec looked confused. “Why would I care? If I was worried about any backlash, I wouldn’t have kissed you. If anything, them deciding we're married is a relief.” Alec laughed softly but Magnus wasn’t quite following what was so funny. “I thought they might derune me. Deciding to accept our partnership is a far cry from that, even if it isn’t really what we intended.”

Alec’s brows furrowed as something seemed to occur to him. “I just don’t think we can correct them. They’re doing it for their own gain but Jia is right. It is good for the downworld and for the Clave. If we corrected them, they might decide that it was a mistake all together and never allow it to happen again.”

Alec’s eyes flickered up to Magnus hesitantly. “Unless, you don’t want them to think we’re married,” he said anxiously. “Then, I can let them know to absolve it.”

Magnus blinked and said nothing for far too long. The Clave had caught Magnus off guard but Alec had too. What shadowhunter would want his people to think he’d married a warlock? What shadowhunter would be thinking of future relationships between their people at a time like this? What shadowhunter would be worried that Magnus might not want to be publicly married to a shadowhunter and not the reverse?

Alexander, apparently. His sweet endlessly surprising shadowhunter.

“I don’t mind if your government thinks we’re married,” Magnus said carefully. “I just thought you might,” he insisted. Magnus had been worried Alec might regret kissing him. This was so much bigger than that and he needed to know that Alec was sure.

Alec’s face crumpled in confusion again. “Why would I care?” He asked earnestly.

A soft disbelieving laugh came to Magnus’ lips. “Because you married a dastardly warlock by the name of Magnus Bane?” Magnus posed. “And your mother didn’t seem too pleased and this is far more than you signed up for when you kissed me and-”

Magnus fell silent suddenly because Alec reached out and clasped Magnus’ hand with his own. “Magnus,” Alec said, a soft amused smile coming across his face. “I’d have been honored to marry you someday. I don’t mind if everyone thinks we already are.”

Magnus felt his tongue still in his mouth. No words came out even though Magnus felt like he should find something to say. Finally, Magnus simply nodded and Alec grinned a little wider.

Alec let go of his arm and suddenly looked a touch nervous, which Magnus didn’t understand until Alec opened his mouth again. “Could I uh, kiss you?” Alec asked softly.

This time, it was Magnus who couldn’t help but grin. Alexander, his pseudo husband, was nervous to ask if they could kiss. It was adorable and that’s all that Magnus could think. Magnus nodded and when Alec leaned in to press their lips together, Magnus realized that it was their second kiss ever and that they’d done it, in the eyes of the Clave at least, as husbands.

At least Magnus knew that his relationship with Alec was never going to be boring, if the first three days of it were anything to go by.

#shadowhunters #malec #fluff #humor #my writing #sh bingo

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failbaby · 3 years

Note

Hayley’s dad- he’s the only man that ever made Hotchner fucking squirm (as he should) and knocked him down a peg or two by not pretending to like or even be cordial with him as anything but the father of his grandson. Yeah it’s sad that everything happened the way it did but he isn’t owed the man’s forgiveness and the blatant honesty that he would really never get it was a moment for sure. King shit, honestly.

Absolutely. I can’t even imagine being in his position.

I’m gonna say something that some people aren’t going to like (but it is tagged for your needs)

I can’t stand the way the series tries to absolve Hotch of responsibility and guilt wrt everything that happened to Haley and Jack. We’re supposed to feel badly for him throughout the divorce (as if that wasn’t completely his fault) and the custody struggle (also his fault) and everything he did in the aftermath of Haley’s death.

And it’s not that I don’t feel bad for him post-100, because I totally do (I wouldn’t say Haley’s death was his fault, and he had every right to grieve), but it was objectively selfish of him to just go back to traveling for work almost immediately and to pawn his traumatized, newly-motherless child off on the closet thing to Haley he could find for weeks at a time. It’s not right.

The fact that we’re supposed to be siding with Aaron through all of this despite his repeated obvious shortcomings is a sign of misogynistic writing, imo.

Like, it’s Haley’s job to raise Jack and support her husband unconditionally, and if Haley’s not around, it’s not Jack’s father’s job, it’s Haley’s sister’s? And then when we see Hotch calling Jack to say goodnight, or hear about him reading Jack bedtime stories “every night he’s home” or coaching a soccer game, we’re obviously supposed to be like aww, dad Hotch, so wholesome, what a fantastic guy, as if that’s not literally his job as Jack’s parent? Like, congratulations, I guess, on doing some of what you’re supposed to be doing?

I’m convinced that the CM writers don’t think men have any obligation to their families at all tbh. The lack of present fathers in that show is telling.

And I’m not saying Hotch shouldn’t be sympathetic, because he absolutely is and could continue to be, but I genuinely think they did his character a disservice by not offering the nuance we’d get by exploring the ways he let his family down, his motivations for that behavior, how he feels about it, whether he’s even aware of it etc.

Like, what was his childhood like? Was his dad absent, too? In that case, is he worried about becoming his father? Is he trying to stay away from Jack because he’s worried about his temper and irrationally afraid of becoming his father??

I’d like to know!!! I want to explore what’s going on!!! I want the hard-hitting questions!!!! I want to see him be selfish and scared and guilty!!!! I want to see him!!!! Be something other than just!!!! “Scary Fearless Leader Who Is Always Right”?!!!!!!?!

#ask #hotch critical #characters #tw abuse

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skellebonez · 3 years

Text

Monkie Kid Headcanons Part 2: Red Son and Demon Bull Family Backstory

Follow up to this post, with a lot more heavy thinking needed this time. Since these characters technically had backstories in Journey to the West, I wanted to really think over how to work those into what we have in the show (even though it kinda doesn’t 100% work and is really messy if you overthink it since the show throws some stuff to the wayside). This took me multiple days to work out so I hope it at least makes sense.

Warning: This one actually gets very VERY dark with emotional and psychological abuse detailed in the later half, so I am putting all of these under a read more. Seriously. I want you to be aware of this before you click that button. Do not ignore this warning please.

I PROMISE that part 3 will be a lot less heavy. I just wanted to get this out so I could finally move on from it.

First, gonna preface this with the fact we all know Monkie Kid is not 100% accurate to Journey to the West. Characters that are supposed to be dead are alive after all, and Red Son’s existence in the show itself in particular kinda makes no sense when I overthink about him. Red Boy is evil in his first appearance, but comes back redeemed way later in the novel (and with his name changed to that of an actual deity who had already existed outside of JTTW with a completely different backstory).

In reality, JTTW is fiction based on historical events and Monkie Kid is made to be a kid’s show and was never going to be accurate to the novel. Not even adaptations of JTTW are. So basically, I headcanon this: in the show, JTTW the novel exists as a highly accurate and very important piece of historical novelization (a non-fiction novel). But like most examples of real non-fiction novels (like Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood), it is not entirely accurate and there are bits and pieces that do not line up. It is, however, incredibly close to 98% accuracy and anyone in it who reads it is impressed.

That being said, Red Son did study with Guanyin for quite a few years (though he was not entirely redeemed like his book counterpart, he was getting there). He actually did learn a lot and was pretty darn happy to be under her teaching at the time. Mostly because he didn’t know what was going on outside...

Unfortunately, later portions of JTTW confirm that Red Son being taken... completely ruined Monkey King and Demon Bull King’s friendly relationship. So that, combined with other events in the Fiery Mountains, it is incredibly likely that is why DBK was so bent on ruling and taking out Wukong for good. He wanted revenge for a lot of stuff Monkey King did.

Before we get into the depressing stuff, I personally headcanon that DBK was actually just. Dead. Completely dead. That is why he went from being covered in floof to being big buff body builder man. Hair does not grow back when you are dead. Removing the staff completely revived him. I needed a silly weird headcanon in here ok?

Since Princess Iron Fan calls him her husband, not her ex-husband as he had divorced her to be with Princess Jade Face in JTTW, I think they either reconciled at some point or PJF... didn’t exist? Since LMK is a kid’s show the later is more likely... but this is my headcanon. Given her personality in the show and book I think it is possible that they mutually divorced due to losing Red Son, DBK remarried, then realized he still loved PIF and wanted to go back to her and she took him back.

We don’t actually know much about PJF so... uh... I like to think she was shockingly chill about it and is just living comfortably somewhere else now. And never wants to see Monkey King again. I hope she is living her best fox spirit life.

Also unfortunately, DBK did not stand a chance and when he was sealed it took a major toll on PIF. She was left alone, her renewed husband either trapped or dead under a mountain and her son kinda sorta still arrested by a deity. This made her more distant to everyone and a lot more cold.

When news of what happened to his father reached Red Son, he pleaded with Guanyin to be allowed to leave her teaching to stay with his mother. He knew what isolation felt like and did not wish for her to feel the same any longer. Guanyin trusted her disciple and allowed him to return to his mother permanently, if he desired. Alone.

This was a mistake. Oh boy was this a mistake. Heaven should have either sent someone else completely or had someone accompany Red Son to PIF to help her because this one decision is why everything in show happens.

At first things go pretty well. PIF is definitely in need of support, but she is ecstatic to see her son again. And that lasts. For a while. Until she starts to project onto Red. She starts to blame him for being captured, for not being strong enough to take out Wukong when he had the True Samadhi Fire, for not being there to keep DBK from leaving her, for not being there to help his father fight Wukong a second time. Everything is Red Son’s fault now.

This simmers for a while before it starts to come forth to the surface. She starts being colder and more distant and giving Red little jabs in their conversations. She says them so sweetly it always takes Red a second to register what she says.

“Oh Red Son, if only your father were here to see this. Too bad you weren’t there to save him.” “I love you my son, even if you can be useless at times.” “Princess Jade Face would have loved you I bet, but you were far too busy with the celestials to visit. I understand.”

This starts to wear Red down after a while, until he starts to believe his mother. He WASN’T there when he father was defeated, he COULD have taken care of Wukong, he WAS the reason his father left his mother. She was as warm and loving to him as she was when he was a small child when he came back but now? Now she’s as cold to him as anyone else.

She is never outright physically abusive, that is below her in her mind. But other things? Like not having his meals prepared along side hers? Insulting him as casually as saying the sky is blue? Pointing out every mistake he makes when writing or working on a project? Taking his things and “losing” them, only to “find” them days later in a place she told him to look and telling him he needs to be more careful? “Mistakenly” locking Red Son in his room and ignoring his yells and pleas to be let out? Those are on the table.

And this is when he becomes obsessed with getting back in her good graces and starts to push aside his teachings from Guanyin. He just wants his mother back.

His mother does not come back... but his old self does.

Guanyin does not learn of this until long after it is impossible to convince Red Son to leave his mother. She has the kneejerk reaction to just take him back by force but... for some reason she does not. She lets him stay. Perhaps she does not want to make the wrong decision again. Perhaps she feels she taught him everything she could. No one really knows. She does not discuss this.

After a while PIF does lessen her emotional and psychological abuse, once she is certain Red Son will never leave her. She even starts to treat him nicely, like her son who she always loved, like a mother again, even praises and defends him from others again (and Red Son eats it up because this is exactly what he wanted and just fuels his determination to prove himself and stay in her good graces). And at the time the show begins she has come to terms with the fact Red Son was not, in fact, at fault for anything and even regrets this portion of her life.

Make no mistake, however, her treating him less bad, even well at times, now does NOT in any way absolve her of how she treated him in the past. She is still abusive and she has done nothing that could truly set anything right. She still calls him things like “her sweet useless boy” and pulls shit like the racing episode. It’s not really any better. It’s just not actively as bad as it used to be at the moment.

DBK in show did not notice how PIF had changed because in the pilot he was too distracted with being revived and as the show went on he was too distracted with the power of the White Bone Spirit calling to him.

Upon a rewatch he actually seems to be under WBS’s thrall multiple times before episode 10, such as the racing episode where we can clearly see his eyes glowing with possession blue, and I think this affected his personality a bit. Not much, I think he was still neglectful and cold to Red Son from the get go, but WBS probably exacerbated the worst parts of his personality long before taking over completely.

But I think he sure does notice NOW that the thrall no longer has him. Whether or not he does anything about this is up in the air, however. It is entirely possible he falls fully into neglect and does nothing to stop anything.

Red Son knows, very deep down, that his father is neglectful and his mother is abusive. He knows. He just won’t admit that not even demons are like this to their children. Won’t admit that he doesn’t deserve it, that he never deserved it. Because he loved his mother deeply before he left. He loved her when she convinced him he did. And he still loves her, and his father. He’s stubborn. He doesn’t want to give up on that.

It is going to take a LOT for someone to show him that he deserves better. But having his father back has not been everything he had hoped it would be and now... now it may be possible for someone to reach him. At least convince him that SOMETHING needs to change.

#I am warning you now #if you read tags before clicking read more #there is a lot of depressing shit and angst in here #monkie kid #lego monkie kid #red son #demon bull king #dbk #princess iron fan #pif #white bone spirit #wbs #headcanons #seriously #everything from 10 down is heavy #DBK and PIF are bad parents #that is going to be a recurring tag on this blog #get this family into therapy they need it #I'm going to be transparent here in the tags #i don't write this kind of stuff without either a lot of time and research #or personal experience #in this case it is both #I am basing how red son feels on how I used to feel in my own family relationship #I actually use my personal experiences #good and bad #for a lot of my writing #so I know exactly how messed up this dynamic is and that he needs outside help #i also know that if he does get outside help? He'll be ok #I promise he at least ends up ok in rainy talks #queued

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mst3kproject · 3 years

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The Astral Factor

This movie has a great deal to offer the MSTie. It was written by Arthur C. Pierce, who did the same job on The Human Duplicators, and it can boast the presences of Leslie Parrish of The Giant Spider Invasion, Frank Ashmore of Parts: the Clonus Horror, and Rayford Barnes from Mitchell. The premise is ludicrous but presented with a perfectly straight face, and the whole thing just oozes 70’s-ness.

Roger Sands is a man of many talents, the most important of which for our purposes is his ability to become invisible in a shower of disco sparkles. This allows him to escape from prison, argue with his mother’s ghost (who apparently throws bangin’ parties in the afterlife) and go on a killing spree. The cops know who they’re hunting because he’s left fingerprints all over the place, but they have no idea how he’s moving around unseen. Fortunately, the prison psychologist knows some psychics who might be able to help them out… but will they be in time to save the various celebrities Sands is stalking, women who remind him of his own neglectful mother?

The main impression one gets from The Astral Factor is that it’s a parade of clichés. The first victim is killed in a bubble bath. Chuck the detective gets dragged out of bed to come investigate the case, which makes his girlfriend pout because she was hoping for sex. The killer is obsessed with his mother. Dogs and birds can sense Sands’ presence when he’s invisible. Chuck’s girlfriend is a terrible cook. That sort of thing. None of this needs to kill a movie, of course… clichés become clichés because they work.

Much worse for the movie is that it isn’t very interested in its characters. Sands’ backstory is that his mother was a movie star who thought it would ruin her career if it came out that she’d been briefly married and pregnant at the age of seventeen. She therefore distanced herself from him, leaving him feeling unwanted and invisible (insert giant blinking neon sign that says METAPHOR) until he finally got fed up and strangled her. This isn’t a bad setup for a movie’s serial killer, but the narrative doesn’t do much with it. Sands has a list of women he wants to murder, but we never find out what makes them good potential victims beyond simply being famous blondes. Surely there should be some moment of recognition, some sin they’ve each committed against their own families, but apparently ‘famous and blonde’ should be enough.

Opposed to Sands is, of course, Chuck the detective. He comes across as kind of a jerk but he does seem to love his empty-headed girlfriend Candy. I think his arc is meant to be that he starts off skeptical of the paranormal but is eventually forced to believe, but this is pretty badly mishandled – when the prison psychiatrist talks about Sands’ interest in psychic phenomena, Chuck seems bored rather than disbelieving, and when a man demonstrates telekinesis in front of him, he accepts it but looks entirely unimpressed. He never seems to be really affected by the phenomena he encounters. Instead of a man whose worldview is shaken to the core, Chuck appears to be merely annoyed that this is yet another thing he has to deal with.

The other possible arc Chuck has is that Candy suggests he get a job with ‘normal hours’ so that she no longer has to make coffee for his co-workers when they come to tell him about a murder in the middle of the night. He says he’ll think about it, but there’s no follow-up.

Finally, there’s Christine, the potential victim that we’re supposed to get attached to and worry about. She’s a spoiled trophy wife who hangs around in her mansion drinking while her husband, who lost all interest in her once she turned thirty, is out of town. The problem with her is that she doesn’t have much by way of a personality. In one scene she’s grateful for the cops protecting her, in the next she’s telling them to piss off and let her go shopping in peace, and then suddenly she’s sobbing in her room. Are these supposed to be mood swings? It feels more like neither the writers nor the actress cared enough to figure out who she is.

I guess that brings us to the movie’s misogyny, which is as rich and gooey as the inside of a lava cake but does not taste like chocolate. First of all, Sands’ problems are said to be his mother’s fault – she abandoned him, leaving him no choice but to murder women who remind him of her! The prison psychologist specifically absolves Sands of responsibility for his own crimes. He cannot be reformed, he cannot be helped, he must be locked up because his mother’s selfishness (more interested in her own career than in raising her son) destroyed his mind. Never mind that there are people with neglectful or even abusive parents who don’t grow up to be serial killers.

The women Sands kills are celebrities – models, dancers, actresses, socialites – because they remind him of his fame-obsessed mother. But as I previously mentioned, they’re not really all that like her. We don’t see any signs of any of them having families they neglect. The only one who even seems to have a husband is Christine and it’s him who neglects her. Perhaps the point is supposed to be that Sands has misjudged them, but we don’t see any signs of them being better than his mother in this respect, either. Most of them seem to have avoided children in order to focus on their careers. Perhaps in the mind of a male writer in the 70’s, this is itself a sin.

Certainly the movie is not interested in these women as characters. I’ve already discussed Christine, but there are others. The first one comes home, takes a bath, and dies. The second one is working on a painting when her dog runs off – she chases it, and she and the dog both die. The third is the dancer at her rehearsal. She has the creeps for no reason, does her rehearsal, and dies. The emphasis is always on their bodies: they’re sexy, then they’re dead. The sequence with the dancer is particularly weird, with her male partner representing the devil dressed in some kind of bondage getup.

The most frustrating thing about The Astral Factor, though, is that it really doesn’t know what to do with its premise. It keeps bringing up interesting ideas about what a psychic murderer might be able to do, and then just drops them.

The opening scene, in which Sands escapes from jail after telekinetically beating up his cellmate with furniture, seems to promise us a much more exciting movie than we get. After escaping, Sands visits the cemetery and his heart-to-heart with ghost mom is interrupted by a security guard. Sands uses his powers to push the guy into an open grave and bury him alive! I wanted to see more of this kind of thing, but after that Sands seems to forget he can do anything besides the ‘becoming invisible’ thing. Later victims are either beaten or strangled, as if they were killed by some loser who doesn’t have any psychic powers. Perhaps he has to strangle the women because that’s how he killed his mother, but he does the same thing to bodyguards and boyfriends when we know he has more creative means at his disposal.

The rest of the movie is also at odds with the title, which suggested this would be a movie in which Sands sits in jail the whole time, astral-projecting himself into his victims’ homes to strangle them. This idea is discussed, but it is in no way what happens so I’m not sure why they brought it up. There are a couple of reasonably effective scenes, as when it’s implied that Sands is invisible inside his first victim’s apartment but we can’t be absolutely sure until he starts interacting with objects. The bit where the dancer is strangled onstage and people don’t intervene because they think it’s part of the show… that’s another cliché but it works all right.

The Astral Factor also has no interest in how psychic powers work. They’re shown to require great concentration for the guy demonstrating them at the institute, but Sands seems to throw things around effortlessly. Why is that? Where did he get these powers? Just by reading about them? Can anybody learn to do this or just certain people? If the latter, what makes Sands special?

In trying to catch his invisible killer, Chuck shows very little creativity. I can think of a bunch of ways to try to thwart an invisible man. What about filling a room with mist or smoke? What about scattering flour on the floor to show his footprints? What about physical tripwires? None of these are ever suggested. Nor does anybody ever come up with the idea of fighting back psychically. If anybody can learn these powers, that could have been a cool thing for Chuck to have to do – not only come to terms with the fact that this exists, but having to figure out how to do it himself! Or if only special people can do it, why not hire one of those psychics the scientists were working with? If a parrot knows there’s an invisible man there, surely another psychic could figure it out!

The way they do eventually catch Sands is by having Christine speak to him as if she is his mother, which prompts him to reply, and the sound of his voice tells the cops where to aim their guns. This works, but it’s not nearly as interesting as some of the other possibilities and does not reveal anything new about Sands himself.

Watching people get ‘strangled’ by something invisible is always fun, and The Astral Factor has a couple of really funny special effects (I especially like the cellmate pretending to be in a fight with his mattress), but mostly the movie is a disappointment. It had potential to be way scarier and way more fun if it were willing to explore its premise a little more deeply, but all it really wants to show us is blonde women getting killed.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #the astral factor #70s

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autumnslance · 4 years

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FFXIV Write 2020 #29: Paternal

Alberic entered the tavern, the room only a little warmer than the blustery snowy night outside. Patrons glanced up, most going back to their cups when recognizing the dragoon. A few let their gazes linger, trying to catch his eye.

They didn’t need to; he was already looking for, and had found, the man that had so many in the camp out of sorts.

“You’re an easy fellow to pick out of a crowd,” Alberic said as he approached the miqo’te’s table. The stranger was alone in a corner, the few other patrons and even the serving staff giving him a wide berth.

The red-clad man looked up with an easy smile. Despite the ostentatious nature of his outfit, there was a steady calm to the middle-aged Seeker, the eyes under his craggy brow friendly. “I’m not the type to try and hide,” he answered. “Care to join me for a drink?” He gestured to the empty chair across the table.

Alberic’s eyes narrowed as he sat. “Why do I feel as if I were expected?”

“You’re Alberic Bale, former Azure Dragoon of Ishgard, aren’t you?” The Seeker said, casually pouring a second glass of wine--top shelf, not that that meant much here outside the city--and passing it over.

“I am, though I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage, ser.”

The Seeker grinned and made a gesture as if tipping the fancy hat that currently hung on the back of a third chair at the table. “X’rhun Tia,” he replied. "Crimson Duelist, Ala Mhigan patriot, mentor to new red mages--including one Aeryn Striker.”

Alberic smiled and took up the wine glass. “Ah, the one that turned my pupil from the lance to the rapier,” he said, only half-joking.

X’rhun shrugged. “I would say I’m sorry, but you deserve better than a lie. She’s an excellent student.”

“I know it,” Alberic answered. “She’s also not currently in Coerthas, last I knew.” If anything, the last Alberic had heard still seemed far too fantastical and confusing. Such was the life of a Warrior of Light, he supposed, offering a quiet prayer to Halone for his errant pupil in the meantime.

“No, she is off on whatever adventure fate has drawn her into now,” X’rhun replied, his tone laced with the same worry Alberic felt. “But it is on her behalf that I come to speak with you.”

“She doesn’t usually send messengers.”

X’rhun shook his head. “She doesn’t know I’m here, or what I’ve found--yet. I thought it best to get the perspective of someone with more knowledge before I presented my possible findings to her.”

“Findings?”

X’rhun slowly swirled his wine. “I’ve been aiding some of the Lord Speaker’s efforts to make peace with those you and yours have called heretics. They generally respond to overtures from outsiders a tad easier than Ishgardian knights, funny story.”

Alberic huffed, taking another sip of the wine. He rarely indulged in this manner, and wasn’t going to look a gift chocobo in the mouth regardless of his sudden discomfort. “It will be a long road I fear,” he said. “Many are slow to forget and slower to forgive, no matter the attempts of young Lord Francel and his experiments in the Firmament.”

“Indeed. But the attempt must be made, if this nation is to heal. Believe me; we have our own troubles with that in Ala Mhigo with Garlean collaborators, though our occupation was not as long as the Dragonsong War.”

“I trust there is a point?” Alberic asked abruptly.

X’rhun smiled. “Of course.” The smile remained, if faded. “In the course of my aid to those considering responding to Ishgard’s overtures, I was lucky enough to stumble upon a rather old cache of information, memorials to those who had suffered and died for the sake of their scaly allies in the long years of the war. One name...stood out, in the hidden records I was made privy to.”

An icy chill ran down Alberic’s spine. He forced himself to stop squeezing the glass in his hand. “Dead heretics,” he said, when he could trust his voice again. “Are not a concern of the Holy See. Reclaiming the living is the current goal.”

“Seems to me that acknowledging the past, and absolving those sins, would be just as important,” X’rhun said. His eyes were sharp now, watching Alberic.

“It should be, yes,” Alberic agreed. “But we’ve long learned to live by putting off certain luxuries in favor of the greater need.” He swirled his own glass now, slowly, eyes on the red liquid rather than the man across from him.

Were it a bit thicker, it would nearly resemble blood. Alberic recalled why he stuck to ale.

X’rhun’s tail lashed, though he did not respond right away. More patrons left, the cold wind rattling the room whenever the door opened. It was soon only the two of them and the barkeep, who glanced at their table and then found an excuse to step into the kitchen.

“I must confess that though we’ve traveled together quite a bit, there are many details of Aeryn’s life that I do not yet know,” X’rhun said in a low voice despite their solitude. “Not surprising, as she’s a quiet woman. But my understanding is she was quite young when she first left this land.”

Alberic closed his eyes, trying not to remember those days. The rage and grief had dulled over the years--more so since Nidhogg’s final death. The guilt remained the same. The memory of a little dark haired girl with big grey eyes, half-hidden behind her mother’s skirt, filled his mind’s eye. The sound of Emelia Striker’s sobs echoed in his ears. “Aeryn was no more than five winters,” Alberic said hoarsely. “Her mother gathered what little she could and left, and I cannot blame her. She was never terribly welcome, being a foreigner. Without her husband to tie her here, she sought a better life for her children elsewhere.”

“Lucky for us, I suppose, given how those children turned out,” X’rhun mused. He paused for a long moment. “What was Aeryn’s father’s name?” He finally asked.

Alberic drank the rest of the wine in his glass. “I don’t remember,” he lied as he stood. X’rhun deserved better, he thought, but it couldn’t be helped.

X’rhun’s eyes narrowed. “Was it—”

“You care about our girl?” Alberic interrupted.

X’rhun leaned on the table, gloved hands clasped lightly, gaze unwavering. “Of course.”

“Then leave it,” Alberic said, firmly. He glowered down at the miqo’te. “There’s naught to gain.”

“I’m not sure I can--burying the past was what led to Ishgard’s troubles after all. And this will nag at me unless I understand why I should not pursue this truth.”

Alberic drummed his fingers on the tabletop in thought, still standing, trying not to sway as memories, sharpened by the wine, crowded at him. “As much as I wish she were just another student, she isn’t,” he eventually said. “She’s the Warrior of Light. She ended the Dragonsong War. She is a symbol, much as I hate that she can’t just be Aeryn.” He let out a deep breath. “And too many are too slow to forget or forgive.” He looked at X’rthun again. “For all there are in Ishgard that love her, she’s made more than a few enemies who’d like nothing more than a reason.”

X’rhun frowned as he considered that. Alberic turned to leave.

“Ser Alberic,” X’rhun’s quiet voice halted him. “Aren’t you afraid her extraordinary gifts will someday reveal what you know regardless?”

Alberic laughed bitterly. “Every time she visits,” he replied. “She already knows I’m an old fool who doesn’t enjoy divulging painful truths--so I suppose we shall cross that chasm when we must, and I shall pray she is still as understanding and forgiving as she has always been thus far.” He half-turned back to X’rhun. “If those were old records...well, many family names and lines overlapped, but were then wiped out in the Calamity. I wouldn’t pay them much mind.”

“You think this is better for her?” X’rhun asked, tail bristling and ears nearly flattened against his head.

“Here and now, I do,” Alberic said. “You’re free to disagree, but I know the situation in Ishgard. Were we in Ala Mhigo, I’d defer to you. For her sake.”

X’rhun ground his teeth. “Very well,” he finally acceded. “But!” He continued, holding up a finger before Alberic could attempt to relax. “This isn’t the end of the conversation,” X’rhun said. He gave Alberic a tight smile. “Not if we’re to keep her safe from political machinations.”

Alberic harrumphed and nodded in response, then tromped out. He had the distinct impression he was, in fact, going to see more of X’rhun Tia, like it or not. Such was the price, when they both felt a responsibility for the young woman who was the realm’s champion.

He did not return to his quarters in the small camp barracks. He walked out along the wall, found a spot clear of outbuildings or trees, and Jumped.

Alberic landed on the top of the Observation Tower, a bit of the old thrill racing in his heart even as his knees protested; since the end of the War and his old enemy’s death, he’d been practicing now and again, but it wasn’t so easy anymore these days as it had been in the years when he wore the Azure mantle. He stood on the crenelations and let the wind sting his face.

Twenty-odd years ago, he had hunted down a suspected heretic feeding intelligence to the Horde, aiding them in finding targets for their rage. Corran Striker had been alone when Alberic had found him, the man’s wife and children out on a day trip by the grace of Halone. Corran had been no slouch with a sword, but not a match for the Azure Dragoon. The Striker house, and two of their neighbors’ homes, had been destroyed when Corran transformed and his allied aevis arrived.

Alberic had done what he had to; there was no time to waste, when Nidogg was on the way to Ferndale already. There was no reasoning with a heretic who had gone so far, endangered too many people.

The Inquisition said that the immediate family members of heretics were as culpable as the sinners themselves. But with the arrival of the other aevis, no one in the village realized the truth of what had happened. Emelia and her children were innocents ignorant of Corran’s crimes, who didn’t deserve further punishment--not when all Emelia wanted was to take her children and leave for her own homeland.

So Alberic had lied. For their own sakes, he had lied to them and to the village and to the Inquisition. He was the Azure Dragoon, after all; his word was a steel-woven bond.

He counted it a miracle Aeryn’s gift hadn’t shown her the truth yet. Perhaps the Crystal took pity on him. Perhaps She wished to protect the girl, too. He didn’t know much about gods who lived at the heart of the world and chose quiet young women to be Their Champion.

What he did know was he owed Aeryn more than he dared say, and he would do all in his power to pay that debt and watch over her, in place of the father he had taken.

#FFXIVWrite2020 #Final Fantasy XIV #Lyn Writing #Alberic Bale #X'rhun Tia #backstory #Corran Striker #Aeryn Striker

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phoebehalliwell · 4 years

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What do you think about Wyatt or the Elders somehow bequeathing Excalibur to Henry? Like I know Wyatt’s the Chosen OneTM but like (he very op) and I think it would be cool for Henry to be able to be like ‘Yeah I’m not magical but at least I’ve got this sword’ and think of the meme potential… Paige: what do you have? Henry Jr: Excalibur! >:D Paige: Noooooo

lmao read this as henry mitchell sr instead of jr the first time around but still included henry jr inheriting the sword from his dad so just consider this a very long backstory : )

honestly this would be soo good in canon bc like At Some Point in i think comics canon the elders do absolve wyatt of all destinies Meaning he is no longer tied to excalibur Meaning someone’s gonna have to go down there and tell piper she’s the lady of the lake again. and piper’s like So Not Game and she’s like no. absogoddamnlutely not. and the elders are just like i don’t know how to tell you this but it’s gotta be absogoddamnlutely yes. and so piper like barters with them and they’re like you’re not allowed to barter with destiny and she’s just like yes i am i’ve done it before and i’ll do it again if king arthur wants to come get this goddamn sword he’s gonna have to do it himself I Will Not Host Another Line full of everyone and their goddamn cousin in my attic this stays our secret. and the elders are like but- and piper’s like no if it’s fate the sword will find it’s rightful owner then it’s fate the sword will find it’s rightful owner. and the elders are like b- and piper’s like and if the word gets out excalibur is up for grabs in the halliwell manor i Will orb that thing into the nearest volcano and the elders definitely know she’s not bluffing so they’re just gonna have to let fate run it’s course.

and let’s say one day henry’s taking care of the twins and paige is out power of three-ing but then idk something happens the twins are hungry or kat bonked her head or something some reason henry might need paige and he’s like honey!!! hey can you come over here for like a couple seconds- and then is orbed into the attic where the sisters are working on some potion and paige is like yeah what’s up and henry’s like here’s a baby i don’t know like tamora’s really hungry or please heal kat’s head and so like paige takes a quick break and henry’s looking around the attic because well he hadn’t really been in there before. (with phoebe moved out i think paige would definitely also have that on her mind i think she probably moved in with henry after the wedding but like i would say like you know maybe two weeks before he even proposed paige was still spending a lot of nights there so much so that when she officially moved in with him a third of her stuff was already there. and then you know they started house hunter blah blah blah i have a Very specific vision of the layout of paige and henry’s apartment but the point i’m getting at is paige would go to the manor for witch stuff and henry would stay at home or be at work he’d never actually Seen the manor.) and he’s looking around like huh wow what’s this what’s that oh there’s the book paige’s paintings are in there and phoebe’s like paige. and paige just holds out one hand and phoebe pricks it with an athame and collects the blood drop to throw it in the potion and henry’s like what the fuck and he’s looking around and he’s like woah you guys have a sword in the stone? and piper’s like we have The sword in the stone. and phoebe’s like yeah piper’s the lady in the lake : ) and piper’s like yeah the world’s shittiest job don’t touch that! and henry’s like whoops sorry yeah but his finger still brushes the hilt and there’s a small breeze and a flash of sunlight through the window and henry’s looking at piper and phoebe like did i just fuck up and piper and phoebe are looking at paige like did you marry king arthur and and paige looks up like woah the vibe just changed did i miss something? and piper’s like henry? will you touch the sword again? and paige is like I Missed Something and so like henry lightly places a finger on the hilt and sunlight starts streaming in and a wind kicks up out of nowhere and henry’s like is it supposed to be doing this?? and phoebe’s like i thought the wielder had to be magical and piper’s like don’t ask me they didn’t leave me a frickin instruction manual on it and paige is like arthur doesn’t have magic in the legend and henry’s like woah wait Arthur???? and paige just sorta looks at him and flicks up her eyebrows and henry tries to pulls the sword out of the stone and bam baby that’s the once and future king and piper’s like god it’s about time i’ve been waiting to get that damn thing out of this attic and henry’s like what. does this mean? and piper’s like if a smooth talking brunet show up don’t trust him and uhh good luck! and henry’s looking at paige like what do i do and paige is like idk bro and piper finishes the potion like okay let’s rock n roll and paige is like sorry babe i have to go i love you uhh here’s the baby and she hands henry a twin and waves her hand and the sword orbs out of it and she’s like i put that on the dresser in our bedroom and i love you and we’ll talking about this later and henry’s like .. uh yeah cool love you too and paige sends him and the twins home and the first thing henry does when he gets home is google sword fighting lessons.

so henry starts training in sword fighting i think coop and leo definitely think this whole thing is like sick as fuck and henry’s like yeah lmao any idea what i’m supposed to do with this and leo’s like no that’s way before my time and they look at coop and coop’s like how old do you think i am?? and leo knows there are some books on arthurian mythology so he gives them to henry but also he’s a little intrigued so he starts reading them too but then coop also wants in so now the trophy husbands have a little book club going and they all meet at the manor and eat piper’s cooking and talk about henry and the sword and then it always devolves into them just shootin the shit but like (and henry would never say this out loud) it really means So Much to henry because he’s always felt just a little bit like the odd man out because he’s not magical and he knows that he’s a lot weaker than everyone else in the family but with the whole sword fighting and the king arthur stuff he can sorta shed those doubts because he feels like he’s no longer viewed as the soft weak spot (which to be fair no one ever viewed him like that but uhh a man’s got his insecurities y’know) and then everything Really comes to a head when they’re putting the twins to sleep and paige gets a sudden distress call from her charge and orbs out and then henry’s spider sense tingles and her turns around to find some masked demon about to hit him with an energy ball and he just instinctively moves for a block and finds excalibur somehow already in his hand and the demon’s super caught off guard by that that it doesn’t even have time to react before henry stabs it. and then paige immediately orbs home like henry it’s a trap we have to why are you holding excalibur and henry’s like i think i just vanquished my first demon and paige follows his eyes to the still smoking scorch marks on the carpet and she’s like !!!!

oh and henry definitely uses this like a party trick at the next charmed husbands book club meeting like guys guys check it out and excalibur appears in his hand and piper’s like no weaponry it the kitchen! and they’e like sorry!!! but those dudes are definitely geeking out about it and then later in the timeline i think henry would most definitely teach henry jr how to sword fight and maybe pass down the sword to him so henry jr can get sorta that same “fitting in” feeling around all his magical relatives like you know maybe the real confidence we gained was the sick sword fighting moves we learned along the way type of mood.

#hey did you know that i uhh love henry mitchell #and like!! father son bonding! mortals sticking together! the vibes man!#and then henry jr being able to call to excalibur just like his dad could #and then that could be like a thing that continues down the mortal line #and their fates are always intertwined with witches but at least they's got a fuckin Sick Ass Sword #and uhh i really don't know enough about arthurian legend to come of with some destiny or prophecy idk what he could really be king of #well that's a lie i can think of one thing for henry jr but i'm not saying that one yet bc i'm writing it into my fic #and it was supposed to be in this episode but it got postpones to the ep after that #henry mitchell #henry mitchell jr #💌#margaretsminiessays

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thatsparrow · 4 years

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(read on ao3)

The tears are still sticky on Caramelinda's cheeks when Amethar proposes.

"Look, I know this isn't what you wanted," he says, knelt down before her in his bloodstained armor, a messy spray of green sap drying across his breastplate. "It's not what I—" he exhales, heavy. "Fuck. I thought I'd be walking Laz down the aisle, not taking her place at the altar."

Taking her place. Caramelinda blinks her eyes closed, feeling fresh tears stinging hot against her lashes as she hides in the black behind her eyelids. Maybe if she keeps them closed long enough, she can imagine a new world where Lazuli is still alive.

"I'm sorry." Amethar's voice has gone tight and quiet. Fragile, almost. "I didn't mean it like that. I know I'm not—replacing her, or anything. No one could."

"No," Caramelinda says, opening her eyes. She's surprised at how rough the word sounds, how grief has turned her throat sandpaper-raw. "No one will ever come close."

"I know."

"I love—I loved her. I don't—" she cuts herself off, leaves him to fill in the rest. I don't love you. I don't want to marry you. I don't even know you.

"I understand." He tries out a smile, but it doesn't quite land. Falls crooked like a deflating balloon. "Believe it or not, I do have some idea of what you're going through." His expression shifts a little as he gives her a steady look, and Caramelinda sees some of the soldier in him, the steel-sharp resolve. "She may not have been my partner, but I did love her, too."

Guilt rises fast in her chest. It's so easy to linger in the shadow of her own grief that Caramelinda forgets she's not alone in her loss. "I didn't mean—"

"It's okay. You're hurting—I don't blame you for that. Hell, Laz isn't even in the ground yet and we're—" Amethar cuts off and laughs a little, harsh and humorless. "Fucking politics, you know? 'Heavens forbid we lose the alliance, too,' like that's the most important thing here." He rubs at his jaw, his hands restless. "I am sorry, though, that this is being asked of you. Bulb knows you deserve better."

Of you, he says. Not, of us. Pain aplenty weighing heavy on his own shoulders, but he won't shy away from his new role as crown prince, however chafing it might be. For all the stories she'd heard from Lazuli, the rumors that flurried through Candia like spun sugar—Amethar the reckless, Amethar the stubborn, Amethar the foolhardy—Caramelinda finds that they don't entirely square up with the man kneeling in front of her. His sister stolen from him in battle and any notions of love or romance stripped away by the obligation of an arranged marriage, and yet his main concern remains for her.

Amethar the noble, she thinks. Amethar the strong.

"It's okay," she says, settling a hand on his shoulder and gesturing for him to stand. "It'll be okay. I always knew my marriage would likely be a political one. Falling in love with Lazuli—" she pauses, swallowing around the thorny shape of Lazuli's name in her throat, "—that was luck, more than expectation. A fluke, albeit a very beautiful one." She's still wearing Lazuli's ring, a simple silver-stone band around her finger. "Maybe I should have known better than to trust in such good fortune."

Amethar hesitates for a moment, then reaches out a hand to take hers. His palm is warm and callused against her skin, his fingers broad and blunt where Lazuli's had been sure and slender. Still, there's a reassurance to his touch.

"I don't know how to be a husband," he says, slow. "Let alone how to be a good one, but I do promise that I'll always be loyal to you and faithful to our marriage. Whatever might happen, so long as I live, I pledge myself to you as your partner and ally." He gives her that bashful, sideways smile that she'll come to know well. "And as your friend, for whatever that's worth."

Amethar the honorable.

"I thought we were meant to exchange vows at the wedding," Caramelinda says, teasing a little if only to hide her surprise at his earnestness. "I appreciate it, but you don't have to say all that for my sake. It's a political marriage; I know what that entails."

"I said it because I meant it, Caramelinda." It's the first time he's said her name, low and warm in a way that brings a slight flush to her cheeks. "I'll say it all again up at the altar, too, but it's important to me that you know where I stand, if we're going to do this. Politics or no, I'm not going to be your husband in name only while the rest of Calorum thinks you're being played for a fool. I know I could never fill Laz's shoes, but that doesn't mean I won't try."

He runs a thumb over the back of her knuckles, pausing briefly before brushing across the ring she'd been given by Lazuli. What does he think when he sees it? There's no mistaking the sincerity of his words, but neither can Caramelinda ignore the bruising weight of Lazuli's absence between them. Him missing a sister and her missing a fiancée and what are either of them supposed to do when their very relationship is a reminder that she's gone? When she looks up from their joined hands, she sees that Amethar's cheeks are wet with tears.

"It should have been me," Amethar says when he notices her watching him. "Bulb, I wish it had been me. I don't know how to do this—any of it—without her."

"Me neither." Promise me that you'll come back, Caramelinda had said to Lazuli the last time they were together, Lazuli's armor buckled over her robes as she'd readied to leave for the front. Promise me that you'll come back, but Lazuli had just kissed her, sure and steady, and Caramelinda had taken that as its own sort of vow. She should have known better, though; Lazuli was always so careful with her words that her silence was its own answer.

Promise me that you'll come back—but she hadn't. And so now here Caramelinda is, alone for all that Amethar is with her, both of them silent in their mourning. She would offer him comfort if she had the words, but she doesn't even know what balm to apply to her own wounds. Still, if they can't absolve each other of their grief, perhaps they can lighten the burden by carrying it together.

"We don't have to decide or plan or do anything at the moment, right?" Caramelinda says. "I'm sure there will be plenty of that in the days ahead, enough so that there's no use worrying about it now. But we do have some time—maybe to talk, if you'd like?"

"Yeah," Amethar says, his voice rough and raw-edged. "That sounds alright."

It's then that Caramelinda realizes they're still holding hands. She lets go, feeling a little sheepish before reminding herself that it's nothing to feel guilty over. He is to be her husband, after all. Her tent isn't particularly large, but she leads him over to two floor cushions before pouring each of them glasses of sugared fruit wine.

"To Lazuli," she says, raising her glass in a toast.

"To Laz," Amethar echoes. They drink, Amethar nearly to the bottom of his cup. He wipes his mouth and gives her a curious look. "Is that what you wanted to talk about? Lazuli?"

Caramelinda nods and takes another careful sip. "I thought it might help, but if you don't want to—"

"No, no, it's okay. I'd like that, actually. It'd be nice to remember her, not just—what happened at the end."

The wine goes a little sour on her tongue. They hadn't wanted to let Caramelinda see her body, wouldn't even let her through into Lazuli's tent until she'd shouted and swore and vowed to call forth the power of the Bulb to blast them all into the heavens if they wouldn't let her go. Inside, Lazuli had been laid out on her bed, still as stone. They'd pulled the arrows free and done their best to patch the wounds, but lapis-blue blood had come away on Caramelinda's skin as she'd reached for Lazuli's hands, as she'd pressed her lips to Lazuli's cheeks. She doesn't remember how long she'd stayed kneeling on the floor, but she does remember that her legs were numb by the time she was helped to her feet and carried from the tent.

No, she doesn't want that moment to be all she remembers of Lazuli, either.

"What was she like when you were younger?" Caramelinda asks, taking a long pull from the glass to swallow down her pain. "I can't picture her as any age other than when we met."

Amethar smiles wide and his whole face seems to shift, turning on a coin from stoic to something easy and boyish, unreserved and sunshine-bright. "Man, she was such a big sister. You know that serious expression she used to have, but picture it on the face of a teenager. We used to joke that she was a grown-up stuck in the body of a kid, but then she'd pull some devious fucking prank out of nowhere. But that was her, you know? So fucking smart and sure of herself, and then this hidden streak of chaos running underneath. She'd tell you to learn your Candian history and meanwhile you don't notice that she'd cast an illusion switching the doors and the windows, or enchanting pieces of chalk to explode if you get the wrong answer. More of a wild card than I think she let on with most folks, but I loved that about her. A one-woman force of nature for as long as I can remember."

Caramelinda laughs a little, both at the memory and the look of nostalgia on Amethar's face. "I wish I'd known her, then. Not that she didn't have moments of levity, but I think her sense of responsibility had worn most of it out of her by the time we met."

"Well, hey, I've got plenty of stories," Amethar says. "You know, if you want."

She nods, and together, they spend the rest of the evening spinning Lazuli back to life with their words and memories, a shadow blurred a little hazy by wine, but built of too much joy and laughter for either of them to mourn.

#dimension 20 #a crown of candy #acoc spoilers #caramelinda rocks #amethar rocks #this is a little au-ish in terms of the timeline (re: lazuli dying and amethar and caramelinda's betrothal)#but I really like the idea of the two of them brought together from political need #and then building a relationship based on helping each other work through their grief #my fic

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wistfulcynic · 5 years

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Their Way By Moonlight: The Curse (Chapter 12)

In which the morning brings some surprising revelations, we see a bit more of Snowing and Henry has a theory about the curse.

a/n: Just to say again that although I am rubbish at replying to comments and reviews I cherish every one and all of you reading this story. Thank you.

Summary: A new curse has fallen on Storybrooke and this time the Saviour is trapped inside it, deliberately separated from her son and anyone else who might help her break it. But what no one knows –including her own cursed self– is that she and Hook are soulmates, working together within their shared dreams to find a way to break the curse and free everyone from the clutches of evil yet again. (Alternate 3B, set in the What Dreams May Come universe)

Rating: A hard M

Tagging: @teamhook @kmomof @resident-of-storybrooke @thejollyroger-writer @jennjenn615 @tiganasummertree @lfh1962 @laschatzi @katie-dub @ultraluckycatnd @stahlop @winterbaby89 @thisonesatellite

Anyone wishing to be added to or dropped from this tag list, please do say so.

Read it on AO3

The Curse:

Mary Margaret Nolan had her routine, and she liked it. The steady progression of one day following on from another in exactly the same manner reassured her, gave her a sense control that was all the more crucial for being wholly illusory.

Of course Mary Margaret knew it was illusory. She knew all too well how little choice she had in her life, how little choice she had ever had. For as long as she could remember people had been making choices for her, starting with her father, on to her husband, and then finally to her boss. She’d had no say in the person she married, the place she lived, or the work she did, but there were still some things she could choose, and Mary Margaret clung to those things as a lifeline of her identity.

She chose to rise early each day and have a few peaceful hours to herself in the office before Zelena arrived trailing chaos in her wake and grinding Mary Margaret’s confidence to a nub. She chose to enjoy a healthy breakfast every morning, fresh vegetables and protein to refuel her body and keep it strong. She chose to ignore the husband who had no aims in life save to squander her inheritance on cars and booze, and whenever the emptiness became too much to bear she chose to seek refuge in alcohol herself.

That happened more often than she cared to admit.

She wished she could hate David for it, for the ruination of all the sweet and shining hopes she’d had before she married him, hopes of love and family and true partnership with her spouse. But that would require feeling something for him and she simply… didn’t. He left her cold, and she had no more interest in trying to change him than she did in getting to know him. He was what he was; a weak and shallow man whose failings weren’t his fault any more than her discontent was hers. They had the life that fate had dealt them and there was nothing either could do to change it.

Change was not a thing that happened in Storybrooke.

Until, one morning, it did.

Mary Margaret awoke as she always did, alone in her overlarge bed. The expensive sheets were smooth and silky around her, the pillows and mattress soft, but they did not tempt her to linger. She arose and showered briskly, not idling beneath the warm spray any more than she had between the warm sheets. She was eager to be on her way, preferring to spend her morning in the quiet solitude of her office where she could think.

She dressed in the outfit she had set out the night before, another of her crisply professional suits in the retro style she favoured. The suits were another part of her routine; pre-packaged outfits with shoes and accessories already perfectly paired, absolving her of the need to put any thought into how she adorned her body.

It didn’t matter what she wore, there was no one in her life who cared enough to notice.

A swipe of the mascara brush and a dab of the lipstick tube and she was ready for the day. With the briefest glance in the mirror to ensure that her hair was tidy and all her ends tucked in, she headed to the kitchen for breakfast.

Halfway down the stairs she became aware of something… something she couldn’t quite put her finger on, only that it was Not Right. Just a tickle in the back of her mind, of the sort that makes you doubt you’ve turned off the stove or locked the front door, once it’s too late to do anything about it. Something wasn’t as it should be, and Mary Margaret’s pace slowed as she tried to figure out what was off. A few more hesitant steps and she’d identified it.

She couldn’t smell coffee.

Mary Margaret stopped, her feet on different stairs as her hand gripped the bannister. She didn’t drink coffee herself but the smell of it was part of her routine. Every morning Regina made a pot, freshly brewed for David. Every morning, without fail.

Her brow crinkled with a frown and she hurried down the rest of the stairs, bursting through the kitchen door to find the room empty, cold and austere in the early morning light.

Mary Margaret reeled. Every day, for as long as she could remember, she’d come downstairs at six thirty to find Regina preparing her breakfast, the coffee already brewed and waiting for David to arrive and drink his single cup. Every. Day. Yet somehow it seemed that every day was not this day, and Mary Margaret leaned heavily against the countertop as she struggled to process this turn of events, groping for the proper reaction, for any kind of emotional response. Should she be angry? Indignant? Concerned for Regina? None of those reactions seemed quite right.

“Regina!” she called, and the word echoed through the bright and immaculate emptiness of the room. Of the house.

There was no response.

Mary Margaret turned and ran back up the stairs, all the way up to the attic where Regina slept. She knew the other woman wasn’t there, as people always know when a normally occupied house is empty, but she had to check anyway, to see for herself.

The room was indeed unoccupied, and though the bed was unmade it didn’t look as though it had been properly slept in. Mary Margaret looked around but nothing else in the small, plain room seemed at all amiss. Regina kept it admirably tidy.

Mary Margaret walked slowly back downstairs, trying to remember the last time she’d seen Regina. The housemaid was also a part of her routine, someone who existed to keep her life ordered and tidy and give her some small satisfaction in knowing that at least one person in Storybrooke was more miserable than she. But she paid little attention to Regina’s comings and goings unless there was a problem, and she had to rack her brains to recall their last interaction. Mary Margaret had come home from work yesterday afternoon feeling awful; Zelena had been in a terrible mood and had shouted at her before storming out of the office. She hadn’t returned, Mary Margaret recalled, but the damage had been done and upon returning home Mary Margaret had gone straight for the drinks trolley, numbing herself until none of it mattered anymore. She’d rung for Regina but the maid hadn’t appeared, and eventually she had forgotten what she’d even wanted as the cloud of alcohol had settled over her.

She returned to the kitchen and sat down at the table, rubbing her temples as she tried to think. The sound of the front door opening startled her, and she looked up just as David appeared in the doorway, dishevelled and stinking of booze but with a brightness in his eyes she couldn’t recall ever seeing in them before.

“Hey,” he said, looking around the room. “Is everything okay?”

Mary Margaret bit back a sharp retort. Did he think everything looked okay? “No,” she said. “It isn’t. Regina’s not here. I can’t find her anywhere.”

“Huh,” David frowned. “That’s not like her.”

“No. No it definitely is not. Considering it’s her job to be here.”

“Um,” David rubbed his own temples, clearly trying to think through his hangover. “Do you think we should, I don’t know. Contact the authorities or something?”

Mary Margaret shrugged. “I guess. I don’t know how long she’s been missing though, do we need to wait twenty-four hours?”

“I don’t know.” He gave a pained chuckle. “Maybe we should go see the sheriff.”

Mary Margaret nodded. “I can go before work. It’s on my way.”

“No.” David went to the sink and poured himself a large glass of water, gulping it down in one go as his wife gaped at him.

“What?” she hissed.

“I want to go too. To the station.” He turned to look at her and she noticed that the brightness in his eyes seemed to have spread to the rest of his features. He looked younger, somehow eager. Interested. Engaged. After years of blank apathy, enthusiasm stood out on his face like a flare in a dark night.

“Um,” said Mary Margaret, unsure of how to respond. “Okay. I guess. Er, do you want to go now? It’s already later than I usually leave.”

David looked down at himself, his mouth twisting wryly at his appearance. “Can you give me twenty minutes to shower and change?”

“I suppose.” There was no real reason she had to be in the office so early, she just liked to have the time to herself. And something in David’s eyes wouldn’t let her say no.

He grinned, and she gasped as something fluttered in her belly. “Great. I’ll be as quick as I can.” He strode from the room, leaving her staring after him wondering just what the hell was going on.

To distract herself Mary Margaret made coffee. And toast. With real bread, not the gluten free. She spread it thickly with butter and jam then poured two cups of coffee, leaving David’s black but adding cream and sugar to hers.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had coffee, or butter on her toast. Had she ever?

David returned, fresh and still slightly damp from his shower and Mary Margaret’s chest became oddly tight, the flutter in her belly growing stronger.

“I made breakfast,” she told him, gesturing at the plates. “Such as it is.”

He smiled. “Looks great.”

His smile made his eyes twinkle and Mary Margaret felt a very unexpected jolt of something low in her belly; something hot and twisty that caught at her breath and made her heart beat faster and her head spin with confusion. How was it possible that they had been married all these years and she’d never noticed how beautiful his eyes were? The sharp cut of his jaw? The lopsided grin that made those crystalline eyes glow with warmth and humour?

How had she failed to notice that her husband was gorgeous?

She stared at him as he took a drink of coffee, watching his throat work as he swallowed, watching his hand clasp the piece of toast and his arm flex as he lifted it to his mouth. He had nice arms, she thought, and broad shoulders, and how had she never noticed any of this before? It felt like she was seeing him for the first time.

He made a small noise in the back of his throat as he chewed his toast, and the twisty feeling in her belly became a tight clench. Mary Margaret gulped her coffee in an attempt to hide her turmoil, looking away from him. She picked up her own toast, taking a large bite, and when she looked up again David was watching her.

“Good?” he asked, indicating her toast with a nod of his head. His voice had a rasp that hadn’t been there earlier.

She nodded, her mouth to full for speech. “Mmmmm,” she said.

“So’s mine,” he replied, his eyes on her mouth as she swallowed. “Thanks for making it.”

“It’s just toast and jam.”

“I know. But thanks.”

Their gazes met and held and tension thickened the air between them, drawing out unbearably over minutes that seemed endless until Mary Margaret began to wish for a lightning strike or a meteor to hit just so something would happen. Then David leaned forward, just slightly, his eyes dropping to her mouth again, and the spell was broken. Mary Margaret stepped back far enough that she could breathe and downed her coffee quickly, setting the rest of her toast aside. She’d lost her appetite.

“You ready to go?” she asked, not looking at David.

“Yeah.” His voice held disappointment, and relief.

He finished his own coffee and set his cup in the sink next to hers. She kept her eyes down and her breathing steady, ignoring the heat of his body behind her and the smell of his soap in her nostrils until he moved away, grabbing his jacket and keys and heading for the door. With a pounding heart and shaking hands she picked up her purse and followed him.

---

Regina sat at Emma’s desk watching Henry as he slept, curled up on the small sofa in the corner of the office, his face pressed into the armrest and his mouth open. She hadn’t slept at all herself, not an unusual state of affairs for her under this curse, but at least this time it was her choice. She wished to keep an eye on Zelena —and feast her eyes on Henry— far more than she wished to rest.

Henry had spent most of the previous night filling her in on everything that had happened to him since he and Emma left Storybrooke, from his life in New York to getting his memories back, to Emma’s departure and the year he’d spent with Ho— with Killian, researching, gathering information, preparing to come to Storybrooke themselves.

“Dad wanted to go right away,” he said, but then Mom told him in a dream —did they tell you that they have the same dreams?”

“They did,” confirmed Regina.

She still hadn’t recovered from hearing it. If Killian and Emma really did share dreams then that meant they were soulmates of a sort she’d only read about —and she had read a lot about soulmates— and recalling how she had mocked Killian about their hasty-seeming marriage made her wish that it weren’t so undignified to squirm. This conscience she had apparently grown over the past year was extremely inconvenient.

“Cool,” said Henry, oblivious to the turmoil of her thoughts. “So anyway, Dad wanted to come to Storybrooke immediately, but Mom told him in a dream to wait. She said we needed to be better prepared than she had been, and Dad said that was for bloody sure because she always attacked first and thought later and she needed to learn to strategise—” Regina nodded in reluctant agreement at this, “— and so that’s what we did.”

Henry paused to take a sip of the soda she’d bought him from the vending machine before continuing. “Dad has this friend, he knew him in Neverland, he’s like some elf or fairy or something, Dad was always really vague about it, but anyway he has this amazing bookstore in Queens with sooo many books on magic, like everything you could ever want to know. He taught Mom how to use her magic, actually, before she came to Storybrooke, and then after she left he let us use his books to do research —we called it Operation Scorpion, cuz Mom was undercover and you know, the sting in the tail, like a secret weapon— and he gave Dad a job so he could go to night school and learn about things like running a business and just sort of general stuff about how our world works.” He took another drink, and crunched a potato chip.

“So Captain Hook was working at a bookstore,” Regina prompted, needy for details, and for the sound of his voice. Henry grinned.

“Yeah, seems weird right? Dad had, like, loads of doubloons hidden in his pirate coat and he found a dealer he could sell them to but he didn’t want to sell them all at once cuz he said it would attract unwelcome attention, so he needed a normal job to have an income, but you know, no one normal’s gonna hire a three hundred year old fictional pirate who doesn’t have any ID and can’t use a cell phone, so…”

Henry chattered for hours, leaving no detail unmentioned. Regina soaked them up eagerly, desperately, grateful for every last one, and yet she couldn’t help noticing how prominently Killian featured in Henry’s tales, the obvious hero worship and —she grimaced around an unpleasant twinge of that damned conscience— love he felt for the pirate.

For the man he called “Dad” so naturally that he didn’t even notice he was doing it.

Killian hadn’t had to look after Henry so well, she knew. All he’d really had to do was keep the boy alive, see that his basic needs were met until he could be unloaded back into Emma’s care. But Killian had actually parented Henry, made him do his homework and eat his vegetables and go to bed at a decent hour while also involving him in every stage of Operation Scorpion, listening to him and respecting his input, making him feel wanted and valued. He had been the father figure her son had never known, and far more than that. Regina could read a great deal between the lines of Henry’s innocently childish tales; she could see everything Killian had done to protect Henry, to keep him safe from Zelena’s lurking henchmen and too distracted by the excitement of research and rescue missions to even notice he was being protected.

Regina knew he’d not done it for her sake but for Emma’s, and for Henry’s, and possibly even for Neal’s. But that did nothing to alter the debt she owed him for her precious son’s life, and she did not like the idea of being in Killian Jones’s debt.

She scowled at that thought as Henry muttered in his sleep and the early morning silence was broken by the sound of the door opening, and a voice calling “Sheriff? Hello?”

It was Mary Margaret’s voice.

Curse it all, thought Regina, wishing she actually did have a curse to hand. Of course she had known she would have to reckon with Mary Margaret eventually, but she hadn’t thought it would be quite so soon. Could the woman not make her own breakfast just once?

Sighing, Regina got up from Emma’s chair, reaching out for magic, the traces of both Emma’s and Zelena’s that still lingered in the air, and glamoured herself some clean, unwrinkled clothes before stepping out of the sheriff’s office to face her erstwhile employer.

“Good morning, Mrs Nolan,” she said coolly.

Mary Margaret’s eyes bugged and her mouth dropped open, and behind her David frowned. “Uh— Regina,” said Mary Margaret. “What are you doing here?”

“That’s none of your concern,” replied Regina, in her mayor voice.

Mary Margaret heard the challenge in the tone and gasped. “How dare you—”

“I don’t dare anything, because I don’t work for you anymore,” spat Regina. “I quit.”

“You can’t quit!” snapped Mary Margaret.

“I can, and I just have.”

“But— but—” Mary Margaret’s mouth opened and closed helplessly as she groped for words. Before she could locate any, David spoke.

“Is that the mayor?” he asked incredulously. “In that jail cell?”

Regina turned to see Zelena awake and watching the exchange with bitter amusement. “It is,” she confirmed, and at that Mary Margaret found her voice.

“Regina what the hell is this?” she shrieked. “You weren’t at the house this morning, and your bed had not been slept in and now you’re here at the sheriff’s station with the mayor in a cell? What is going on?”

“It’s very simple,” said Regina calmly. “I quit, Zelena’s been arrested, and you are going to shut up and leave before I throw you out.”

“Now look here—” said David.

“Where is the sheriff?” snapped Mary Margaret.

“She’s taking the morning off.”

“I demand to see her!”

“I’m afraid I don’t have her number.”

“I’ll text Dad,” said Henry’s voice from behind Regina. They all turned to look at him standing in the office doorway, rubbing sleepy eyes, clearly awoken by the commotion.

“Who the hell is this?” bellowed David, and Henry winced.

“It’s my son.”

Mary Margaret was beginning to look like one more shock might do her in. “Don’t be ridiculous.” She frowned at Henry. “You don’t have a son.”

Regina’s fingers itched, reached out for the magic in the room. Just one tiny little memory spell, she thought, just so they forget I was ever their maid… She glanced at Henry, typing rapidly on his phone, his small brow wrinkled in distress and hurt at his grandparents’ words. Henry wouldn’t want her to manipulate them, even with something so small. Henry would want her to have hope, to trust that they could break the curse and return everything to normal.

Damn, but this redemption business was hard work.

She turned back to face the Charmings, breathing deeply to calm herself. “Sheriff Swan will be here soon,” she said. “She’ll explain everything. In the meantime, I think we should all sit down and stop shouting at each other. At least not in front of my son.”

Mary Margaret cast an apprehensive glance at Zelena who was still smirking from the far corner of her cot, who had still not spoken a word since Emma had locked her in the cell the night before, then nodded. She then glanced at David, who nodded as well.

“All right,” said Mary Margaret.

Well, thought Regina, watching unspoken communication flash between two people who the day before had barely been able to stand five minutes in each other’s company. Isn’t that interesting.

---

Killian drifted into consciousness slowly and somewhat warily, wondering at first if he could still be in a dream. An unusual dream, to be sure, one in which he found himself waking up with Emma there in bed with him, snuggled close to his side and drooling on his chest.

The drool seemed a touch too realistic, even for their particular brand of dreams.

He let his eyes flutter open as memories of the day before began to trickle back. The farmhouse, Walsh, Zelena, Emma’s memories returned, the battle. Their reunion. Emma waking him in the middle of the night to make love again because she needed reassurance that he was real, that this wasn’t just an especially elaborate dream.

He smiled at that memory and pulled her closer, feeling a bittersweet twinge in his heart at the snuffling noise she made in the puddle of drool on his chest. This was what he had missed more than anything, he thought, not the drool specifically but the intimacy that made it possible. The trust that allowed Emma to fall so soundly asleep in his arms.

Now that her memories were restored Killian could allow himself to feel how truly terrified he’d been that they never would be, that his efforts to get her back would be for naught and his love lost to him forever. That the fates would rip her away after showing him just enough of what life with her was like for him to fully understand the depth of that loss. They certainly did seem to enjoy taking away the people he loved.

Before he could sink too deeply into his melancholy thoughts, his phone buzzed from the nightstand. Careful not to disturb his slumbering wife he reached back and picked it up, swearing under his breath at the message on the screen.

Henry: Trouble at the station. Come quick.

Damn and blast it all, thought Killian. Of course there was trouble, there always was in Storybrooke. He sighed. As soon as all this was over, he promised himself, as soon as Zelena was fully dealt with and the curse broken he was taking Emma away somewhere, just the two of them, somewhere they could be completely alone and spend entire days in bed if they wished, no crises, no sheriff, no Saviour. Perhaps he could acquire a ship and take Emma sailing, explore this realm with her. Just for a week or two. Then they could return to their normal life of demons and curses and endless things conspiring to interrupt their private moments and keep them apart.

But until that time… he sighed and nudged Emma gently. “Swan,” he said. “Love, you need to wake up.” When she didn’t stir, he nudged her harder. “Swan!”

“Wha—” Emma jerked awake, blinking, and wiped her chin with the back of her hand. “What’s happening?”

“Text from Henry. We need to get to the station, posthaste.”

“Posthaste,” she repeated in a cringingly poor imitation of his accent, mischief brightening her sleepy eyes. “I’ve missed your ancient words.”

He kissed her. “I’ve missed your poking fun at them,” he said, and for a moment they lay curled together, foreheads touching, just enjoying each other. Finally Emma sighed.

“What’s going on at the station?” she asked.

“Henry doesn’t say. Just ‘come quick’.”

“Well, okay, but first I need a shower.”

“Aye, love, as do I.”

Her eyes lit and she nuzzled her lips along his jaw to his ear. “We could…” she whispered.

“I’d love to.” He squeezed her ass, breath quickening as she kissed down his neck. “But Henry did stress the need for urgency.”

“Yeah.” She pulled back but her hand remained cupping his face, stroking his cheek with her thumb. “Okay, if I get in first, can you make some coffee?”

“I can.”

They didn’t move. Killian’s phone buzzed again.

“All right, all right,” sighed Emma, “I’m going.” She untangled herself from Killian and with a final wistful glance at where he lay in the tangled bedsheets she headed for the shower. Killian looked at his phone.

Henry: Any year now.

Killian rolled his eyes. What’s happening, lad? he texted.

Henry: My grandparents just showed up. They’re shouting at Mom. I think we were right about the curse. What’s your ETA?

Killian smiled as he replied. Give us half an hour to shower and dress and we’ll be there. He rolled from the bed and made it quickly before going to the kitchen to put the coffee on. As he waited for it to brew he heard a familiar sound, one he’d feared he may never hear again. Emma in the shower, singing at the top of her lungs, her voice sweet and lilting and slightly off-key.

She sounded so happy.

The Prince and his wife shouting at the Queen couldn’t be that much of an emergency, he reflected, despite Hery’s dramatics. And Emma had an unfortunate tendency to appropriate all the hot water… hot water that turned her skin so soft and rosy pink… He grabbed his phone.

Killian: Make that forty-five minutes.

---

An hour later they arrived at the station, clean and caffeinated if still a bit flushed. Henry glared at them and raised an eyebrow in a perfect imitation of Killian. “Took you long enough,” he muttered.

“It’s been a whole year, lad,” Killian muttered back.

“Yeah, I really don’t want the details of that.”

“And I am more than happy to spare you them, if you tell me what’s been happening here instead.”

Henry grabbed his arm and pulled him aside, recounting the morning’s events in an excited whisper as Emma went to face down her parents.

“Mr Nolan, Deputy Mayor,” she said in her I’m-a-goddamn-professional tone and firmly tamping down on the urge to hug them. “Is there a problem?”

“Sheriff.” Mary Margaret came forward, her step confident but her eyes apprehensive. “Did you… arrest the mayor?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

Mary Margaret nodded, and the uncertainty in her expression grew stronger. She seemed to have been expecting Emma to cave. “Er… why?”

Emma thought fast. “I, uh, found out that she has been misappropriating, um, town resources,” she said. It wasn’t a lie, exactly. Magic was a sort of resource, and Zelena had definitely been misappropriating that.

“Oh.” Mary Margaret looked flummoxed.

“I’m going to hold her here until she’s ready to stand trial,” said Emma, scrabbling for whatever she could remember of the police procedurals they used to watch in New York. “Until then, Mrs Nolan, you’ll have to take over as mayor.” That should keep Mary Margaret busy for a while.

“Oh!” Mary Margaret turned and looked at David, who came to stand at her side. Emma could see Killian and Henry from the corner of her eye, watching the scene unfold and whispering frantically to each other. Mary Margaret reached for David’s hand without seeming to think about what she was doing and grasped it firmly. Henry pumped his fist in the air. “Um. I suppose I can do that.”

Emma smiled tightly. “It’s just for a few weeks until the trial, then once we know the verdict we’ll know if we need to hold an election.” She had no idea if that was the actual procedure, but she figured all she needed to do was sound confident and get her parents out of the station so Killian and Henry could tell her what was making them so giddy over in the corner.

“Okay.” Mary Margaret smiled, rather shakily. “I’ll— uh, be in my, er that is the mayor’s office. If you need me.” She began to move then stopped abruptly and looked down at her hand, clasped tightly in her husband’s. She flushed bright pink and her eyes flew to David’s. He was looking somewhat rosy as well, Emma noted. They let go of each other with incoherent embarrassed mutterings, David to shove his hands in his pockets and Mary Margaret to fiddle with the strap of her purse. Emma swallowed the urge to laugh.

“I’ll call you if I need anything,” she said, and ushered her flustered parents out of the room. When she returned, Killian and Henry were looking triumphant, Regina irate.

“Would anyone care to tell me what the hell that was all about?” Emma demanded.

Killian nudged Henry forward. “You should do the honours, lad,” he said. “It was your theory.”

Henry glowed with pride. “Okay,” he said. “So the thing is, I’ve had an idea this whole time about the Dark Curse and the relationships between the people held under it. Under the first curse, everyone was miserable. They were separated from the people they loved, and they didn’t even know they loved them so they couldn’t do anything about it. Then Mom —Emma— came to Storybrooke and all that started to change. The curse started to weaken and as a result people started to remember they were in love. Not just my grandparents but other people too, like Sean and Ashley and even Leroy and Sister Astrid. And Mom and me,” he said, smiling at Emma. “As the curse got weaker, the relationships got stronger, until Mom broke it with a True Love’s Kiss on me.”

Emma blinked her misty eyes. “But Zelena said True Love’s Kiss won’t work with this curse,” she said.

“Yeah, I thought about that,” said Henry. “After I saw what it had done to Grandma and Grandpa. It didn’t separate them like the first curse did, it just made them not care about each other. Like, at all. Like their love was just gone.”

“Which is something that puzzled me,” Killian chimed in. “Zelena told Regina that she had designed and cast the curse primarily to punish her, so I found it odd that she would devise so clever and vicious a punishment for the prince and princess as well, for no apparent reason. It was possible of course that she merely wished to be wicked, but it seemed like such an odd tack to take, not to mention a difficult one; actually removing the love from a True Love couple is no small feat. I did some research into True Love magic in some of the books I have in my shop, and the magic required to drain it away is both powerful and extremely dark. And for what? To make miserable two people she had never met before? The difficulty seemed excessive for the petty result it achieved, and particularly when it would hurt Regina far more to see Snow and Charming happy together.”

“That is true,” Regina conceded, looking intrigued despite herself.

“So I wondered,” Killian continued, “Why would she bother?”

“Because,” Henry took up the story again, “She didn’t want the curse to be broken. She intended to keep on torturing Mom indefinitely, so of course she couldn’t have people running around falling in love, and she knew from the first curse that trying to keep True Loves apart doesn’t work that well in the long run.”

“And the True Love magic wasn’t part of the original curse,” said Regina. “Rumple added a drop of a potion he distilled from Snow and Charming’s love to the scroll, to ensure that Miss Swan here could break it.”

“Exactly,” said Killian. “He needed the curse to be broken so he could have his memories restored and go in search of Baelfire. But Zelena had no such need and therefore no desire to include any True Love magic in her curse. Quite the opposite, actually, as True Love would only destroy what she had built.”

“So what did she do?” asked Emma.

“We’re not sure exactly,” said Henry, “Because we don’t know just how she cast the curse. But we think,” he looked at Killian, “Dad and I think that she just took all the love away. There’s no love in Storybrooke at all.”

Regina frowned. “But Miss Sw— er, Emma and Killian, they’re—” she grimaced “In love. Aren’t they?”

“Oh yeah,” said Henry. “Kinda grossly so, to be honest.” He smirked as Killian poked him in the back with his hook. “But they’re also not cursed. I don’t think Mom was ever fully under the curse, and of course Dad was never under it at all.”

“That’s why they needed that powder,” said Emma. “To keep blurring my memories. Walsh would— wait, where’s Walsh? Don’t we need to—”

“Ah, yes. That’s something I failed to mention.” Killian rubbed behind his ear. “Walsh isn’t here. It was Zelena the whole time, pretending to be him.”

“The whole time?”

“Well, since you left New York, anyway. I believe it was actually Walsh you dealt with there.”

“Wow,” said Emma, blinking as she processed this. “That… kinda makes sense, actually. It explains why a guy who tried so hard to fu— er,” she glanced sheepishly at Henry, “To get close to me in New York wanted nothing to do with me here.”

“Thank the gods for small mercies,” Killian snarled through gritted teeth, and Emma reached for his hand.

“Returning to the point,” said Regina, “True Love’s Kiss can’t break this curse because there’s no love here, so no one touched by the curse can ever have True Love.”

“Yep, basically,” said Henry.

“So how are we going to break it?”

“Well,” said Henry, grinning hugely, all but rubbing his hands together in delight. “You may have noticed that my grandparents just now were not exactly indifferent to each other.”

Regina snorted. “If Snow had blushed any harder she’d have burst a blood vessel.” She looked sharply at Henry. “But that means—”

“Yes!” Henry cried. “Mom remembering, us beating Zelena, Mom and Dad being together, I think all of that has started to weaken the curse. Grandma and Grandpa are seeing each other again. They didn’t seem to see each other before.”

“That is true,” Regina confirmed. “They hardly even looked at each other.”

“So we think,” said Killian, “That the way to shatter the curse for good is to bring love back to Storybrooke.”

“How romantic,” sneered Regina.

“We need to get my grandparents to fall in love again,” said Henry. “But just them isn’t gonna be enough. I think we need to get everyone to fall in love again. And that’s where I come in.”

#cs ff #CS fic #canon divergence #3b canon divergence #alternative 3b #captain swan #cursed captain swan #cursed snowing #cursed storybrooke #captain cobra plotting #Henry is clever #profdanglaisstuff #their way by moonlight

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leigh-kelly · 5 years

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If the Fates Allow: Part 6/13

Thirteen part Christmas fic loosely based on Life As We Know It. After Santana and Brittany’s best friends die, leaving their two kids behind, the ex-girlfriends are forced to move in together and raise their godchildren.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

May:

After the premiere, Santana made extra effort to keep her distance from Brittany. She still ate breakfast and dinner with the kids but after they were in bed, she watched TV in her room. Her feelings were way too complicated and she knew that Brittany no longer reciprocated them so she just didn’t want to put herself in an uncomfortable situation. She couldn’t imagine how she was going to survive this for another seventeen years and she wondered what would happen when one of them met someone and decided to get married. Would they have shared custody of the kids? Would she have to live with Brittany and her husband or wife? She started going back to her initial reaction to the new that John and Cassidy left the kids to them, that this was a terrible idea.

An argument between them came over Ava’s ballet recital. Santana had a meeting that she absolutely couldn’t miss at work and Brittany snapped at her that Ava’s recital was more important and it was absolutely something she couldn’t miss either. But Santana felt like her hands were tied and she told Brittany that she wouldn’t be able to make it. Brittany was chilly to her for two weeks and Santana couldn’t even be bothered to care. She felt terrible about doing that to Ava, but it was also easier for her to deal with Brittany when she wasn’t trying to be friends. She still kept her end of her promise to Brittany, taking the kids when she went to grief counseling, but other than that, they barely interacted.

“Aunt Santana, you really can’t come to my recital?” Ava pouted as she helped her get dressed for school.

“I’m sorry, kiddo. I have a meeting at work that I have to go to. But I’m sure Aunt Brittany will take lots of videos for me.”

“That’s not the same! You won’t get to see me all dressed up for reals.”

“I know, Aves. I really wish I could come, but I promise you, next year I’ll be there.”

“Next year’s not even the same! I hate your dumb work!”

“Ava, you know you’re not supposed to say hate.”

“I don’t care! I do hate it! You should be coming to my dance instead!”

“You know I want to be there more than anything.”

“That’s not true, if you did, you wouldn’t go to work.”

Because it was Brittany’s day to drop the kids off, Santana kissed Ava, who was still mad, and JJ and got in her car to go to work. The whole day, she felt absolutely awful about the fact that she wasn’t going to make it to the recital and she stewed in her office, wishing there was some way she didn’t have to disappoint everyone. Just as she was getting ready for her meeting that evening, she looked down at her phone and saw that she had a text message from Brittany. It was a picture of Ava in her tutu and ballet shoes and the message that followed said She asked me to send you this. She said she wishes you were here.

Santana looked at the time on her phone and she knew that she could make it there if she rushed. For all her protests about her work meeting, she was hit with the realization that none of it mattered if she disappointed Ava. So she went into her boss’ office and she lied. Never once in her life had she lied at work, but that time, she felt like there was no other option. She gave him the flash drive with her presentation and she told him that she wasn’t feeling well. She was surprised that he didn’t even argue with her, he just told her to go home and get some rest and she breathed a sigh of relief.

Sitting in traffic, Santana thought she was going to have a nervous breakdown. If she left work early and didn’t actually make it in time to see Ava, she would have felt more awful than she already did. But luckily, traffic lightened up and she made it with enough time to stop and pick out flowers for her little dancer. She felt like she had some making up to her to do, because she’d made her think she wasn’t going to come, and even if Brittany argued with her about it, she was going to take her out for ice cream when it was over.

When she got into the auditorium, she was surprised to see that there was an open seat next to where Brittany sat with JJ on her lap. Santana watched for a few moments as Brittany chattered away to JJ and it actually made her feel even more guilty, seeing how devoted Brittany was to these kids. Santana was trying, really, but she just didn’t think she was ever going to be as good of a parent as Brittany was. Quietly, she sank down into the seat and Brittany turned around to look at her. Several beats passed where they didn’t say anything, with Brittany just cocking her head to the side and looking at Santana.

“I knew you would come.” She said. “That’s why I saved you a seat.”

“How did you know?”

“Because I know you love that kid more than anything. I remember how over the moon you were when she was born, and I just had a sneaking suspicion that you wouldn’t let a meeting get in the way of you seeing her first dance recital.”

“I almost did.”

“She’s going to be really happy that you’re here.”

“So are you done being pissed at me?”

“I’m still a little pissed it took you this long to figure out that this was really important to her, but you did, so that’s what matters.”

“I honestly don’t know who was more mad, you or Ava.”

“It was probably me, but when Ava told me that she was mad, I told her she shouldn’t be mad at you.”

“You didn’t have to do that. I deserved it.”

“You did.” Brittany shook her head. “But she’s a kid, she needs to know about forgiveness.”

Santana watched with rapt attention as Ava danced on stage. At her age, it was nothing fancy, but she beamed up there, making Santana smile from ear to ear. She had no idea that Santana was in the audience and she wondered if it made her hurt inside thinking she didn’t show up, but she was there, it was okay. When the show was over, Santana took JJ from Brittany and they went back into the room where the kids were waiting. Ava saw Santana and she launched herself at her, almost making Santana drop the baby as she flew in her direction. Brittany stepped in and took JJ, then knelt down to hug Ava as well.

“Aunt Brittany! You and Aunt Santana both got me flowers! My room is going to be so beautiful! And Aunt Santana came! She really came!”

“She did, didn’t she?” Brittany smiled, looking at Santana out of the corner of her eye. “You did a great job!”

“I’m gonna keep dancing and be just like you.” Ava proclaimed, spinning in a circle. Santana knew that Brittany was surprised, that she usually said that she wanted to be like Santana, but Brittany’s reaction made her really happy. Despite everything, she really wanted Brittany to be happy, even if they couldn’t be happy together.

They took Ava out for ice cream and even Brittany didn’t argue about it. Santana shared her cone with JJ and Brittany maybe looked at her a little disapprovingly, but she didn’t say anything. Santana sort of felt like everything was forgiven and she felt a little better about herself. Maybe she didn’t totally deserve to be absolved after making everyone think she was a selfish asshole, but it still felt good that they had forgiven her.

It took a while to settle them down when they got home and Santana knew that the morning was going to be rough. Once she put Ava to bed, she walked down the hall to JJ’s room and she stood outside, hearing Brittany dance around the room with him like she did every night. When she peeked in, it sort of took her breath away, seeing Brittany there rocking a baby in her arms with tears in her eyes. Whenever she felt alone in her grief, she didn’t think about how Brittany was feeling it too, but like the night of Cass’ birthday, that was a moment where she saw it.

“I know it’s rough, little guy, but I’m really trying. You’re not going to remember your mom and dad and I want you to know that you’re going to have a good, happy life. Aunt Santana and I are going to make sure of it and I’m going to do everything in my power to be the best mom I can possibly be. I definitely didn’t plan for this, but we’re making it work, right?”

Feeling like she was intruding on something way too intimate, Santana stepped away from the door and went into her own room. She took a deep breath, went to her room to change into her pajamas and then she decided to go downstairs to watch TV. She’d just settled into the couch and turned on Food Network when she heard footsteps on the stairs but she tried not to turn her attention away from the television and onto Brittany.

“Are you in trouble at work?” Brittany asked, coming into the living room in a sweatshirt and yoga pants.

“I faked sick. I couldn’t handle the idea of disappointing her.”

“That’s why I was so concerned about you not coming. I know how you are. I know that you beat yourself up when you make a choice that hurts someone else.”

“Cass wouldn’t have had to think about it.”

“You’re not Cass, Santana.” Brittany sat down next to her, clearly conscious of keeping her distance from Santana. “But you’re really good with the kids.”

“Not as good as you. I think this comes much more naturally to you than it does to me.”

“Are you kidding me? I had to read all of those parenting books to even have a clue. I always figured…never mind.”

“What?” Santana raised an eyebrow, though she didn’t know that she wanted to hear what Brittany had to say.

“Nothing…never mind.”

“Okay. She was really good, by the way. Do you think you’re going to move her to your studio?”

“That’s not a decision I’m going to make on my own.”

“I give you full permission to make all dance related decisions for Ava. And for JJ too, if he decides to dance.” Santana grins, making Brittany smile. “I didn’t ask you, how is grief counseling going?”

“It’s helping.” Brittany shrugged. “I’m glad I’m going. If you wanted to—”

“I don’t. It’s just not for me, but it’s cool that it’s working for you.”

“I guess I should let you be. I just wanted to come down here and thank you for showing up.”

“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to. I’m just watching Chopped, I know you used to like it.”

“I still do.” Brittany sat down and Santana moved over to give her some space. “You’re sure you don’t mind?”

“I know you don’t like when I say it’s just, but it’s just a TV show.”

“I’m actually going to make some popcorn.” Brittany jumped up. “I’ll be right back.”

Brittany jumped up off the couch and Santana paused the show. She checked her messages on her phone, seeing one from Wendy that she quickly responded to. Because everything had been so hectic with work and the kids, she still hadn’t had time to make up that cut-short date to her, but they texted fairly regularly and still flirted at work. Santana was definitely into her, but she realized that when Brittany was close by, it was hard to think about that. With a sigh, she pulled her legs up under her on the couch and leaned back, staring at the frozen image of Ted Allen on the screen. When Brittany came back, she grabbed the blanket off the back of the couch and wrapped it around herself before setting the bowl of popcorn between them to offer some up to Santana. Everything was fine until their hands brushed over the bowl and Santana felt sparks shoot up her arm. It was just a normal static shock, but she felt like it was a weird kind of sign and she couldn’t figure out exactly what it was telling her.

“I think I should go to bed.” Brittany stood up not long after that.

“Even before the dessert round? How are you going to miss the dessert round?”

“Your stellar logic definitely convinced me.” She laughed, sitting back down. “So who do you think is going to win?”

#brittana #if the fates allow #itfa

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