#sorry Poland I may have gone overboard

[championsandheroes]

Back in the good old days, before Paradox took the assassination button away from me, I once made the mistake of sending my genius son off to lead an army. These days the promising heirs are stuck in a tower, rolled up in approximately eight blankets at all times. For everyone's safety.

Patreon, society6, and redbubble have never lost a genius heir to a random battle for a puny county you were only marginally invested in and it shows.

#champions and heroes #Crusader Kings 2 #Zevran Aranai #I needed an assassin ok #and it felt safe to assume that my usual audience would appreciate the cameo #anyway #sorry Poland I may have gone overboard #but like #he was a genius #with good stats #you have to understand the pain of having to rely on his sad excuse of a brother who then proceeded to not have genius sons either #genius gives you a +5 to your stats for the non-CK players #anything above 20 is good #so you know #those +5 make a real difference #and it's genetic #other games

[lovelylogans]

honey, you’re familiar (like my mirror)

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epilogue: polyphony

polyphony: the style of simultaneously combining a number of parts, each forming an individual melody and harmonizing with each other.

A YEAR AND A HALF LATER

EMILE

October nineteenth has dawned brisk, bright, and chilly; the closest to a picturesque fall day that Florida can get.

Emile hums to himself quietly as he puts the finishing touches on the icing; no one in his cluster is much of a baker, and as such, the cake looks a little bedraggled. It’s going to be delicious, definitely! But the chocolate cake with raspberry filling sure looks a bit pathetic.

He may have gone a bit overboard on the chocolate ganache. But considering that the cluster he’d birthed has a collective sweet tooth, he doesn’t think that’ll be a problem. Everyone should have something sweet on their birthday.

A cluster is birthed to the sensate world all at the same time, too, but they all draw their first breaths together too; Emile’s birthday is back in April, along with Remy’s, Linda’s, Andy’s, Missy’s, Toby’s, Nate’s, and Brian’s. When any cluster factors out the differences of time zones, every member of a cluster is born on the same day, at the same time.

It’s their birthday and he’s expecting visits any minute.

He puts the cake in the fridge and manages to get through most of the tidying up by the time he inhales the scent of good quality African coffee and jacaranda trees.

Emile beams at Virgil, where he’s studying the tree in the university greenhouse.

“Happy birthday!”

“Thank you,” Virgil says, ducking his head. Then he sniffs a few times.

“Is that…?”

“Chocolate cake, with raspberry filling,” Emile says, grinning. “Taste should transfer over the psycellium okay, I think.”

“Nice,” Virgil says, and he follows Emile to the fridge, where Emile uncovers the cake and begins setting out a plate and silverware.

When he turns back from his cabinet, Logan is pressing a quick kiss to Virgil’s mouth in greeting.

“Hello, Emile.”

“Hi, Logan, happy birthday!” 

Logan doesn’t mention the mix-up surrounding timezones; they’ve had that discussion enough times over the past few days, when they were setting this up.

It might also be because Logan, like Virgil, is cutting some time out of his research to attend this brief celebration; Logan is putting the finishing touches on what he came to Antarctica to study.

After that, well. Emile has popped in on Logan researching Pretoria’s universities and one-way airline tickets from Poland to South Africa enough times to know that some changes are coming for them.

“Hey, happy birthday!” Roman cheers, entering the room with Remus literally being dragged away from his latest manuscript under his arm.

“Happy birthday!” Emile rejoins. “How’s the latest story coming, Remus?”

“Awful and bloody,” Remus says, cheered up at the thought of the goriness in the latest book he’s been writing. 

“Bloody awful,” Janus corrects, which immediately induces jeering from the twins about British slang; Logan and Virgil share a fondly exasperated look.

Emile goes about hunting for candles—he knows he bought them on his last grocery trip, the question is where Missy put them—and by the time he finally unearths them (“Aha!” he’d declared at the sight of them sitting beside his cereal in his pantry) he’s passively wondering where—

“Sorry, I’m late!” Patton pants, skittering into the party.

“Nothing to worry about!” Emile reassures, gesturing with the candles. “I was just about to get this all set up.”

“Hey, Ro, I saw your movie earlier today!” Patton says excitedly.

“You’ve already seen it, Patton, you were all at the premiere with me,” Roman says, amused.

“Well, yeah,” Patton says, “but I got to rewatch it! Goodness, the scene where you get betrayed gets me every time—it’s no wonder you won the Ariel award!”

Roman beams, as he always does when that particular success is mentioned; he’s in the last few auditions for some big American blockbuster, now, which means that he’ll be seen on a worldwide stage. Roman’s been cautioning the entire cluster about thinking that he’s got it way too early and that casting could go any way, but Emile simply can’t wait to pack himself into a local theater to watch Roman on a big screen.

Janus falls into a conversation with Remus—ever since Remus’s big day at court, Janus has sort of become an in-built fact-check about the legal aspects of the murders in Remus’s novels—and Emile listens to Janus talk about the pro bono representation program he’s gotten involved in.

“Okay okay okay,” Emile says, igniting the candles. “Get in here, everybody!”

The cluster all huddles together, and Emile takes a moment to survey them, stepping back from the cake to give them all room, to look at them all.

To think of where they were a year and a half ago: alone, unconnected, unknowing of the future they’d have. 

And now: Remus free from police scrutiny and writing his latest novel, Roman on the cusp of a significant advancement in his acting career, Janus free from criminal hacking, Patton ensorcelled in the sensate community, Logan about to publish his research and devote more time to growing his Archipelago connections, Virgil employed at a university, about to become a professor like his parents before him.

Emile beams at them. He’s so, so proud.

“Okay, time to make a wish!” He declares. Emile has his own wishes for them; contentment, happiness, love. 

Emile thinks they’re well on their ways to achieving that.

They blow out the candles the way they do everything, now.

Together.

#my fic #my fanfic