#which of my 'short stories' aren't

[shady-tavern]

Perfect Nemesis Part One

As usual with all my hero and villain stories, this one has a warning for blood and injury, though nothing too graphic will be described.

***

You tasted sweat and dust on your tongue, the ground beneath you cracked and half crumbled and your ears rang. You couldn’t make yourself move, your limbs too heavy and hurt radiated in a big, cresting wave through your body.

You couldn’t breathe as someone loomed over you, scuffed boots with white laces appearing in your vision. The hand that gripped you and dragged you to your feet, your costume torn and blood seeping past to stain the colorful material, was icy. The touch felt searing with how cold it was and you were terrified.

You were dragged up until you met burning red eyes and you tried to fight, but your body wouldn’t move. A second hand rose, magic winding around the villain’s fingers and their grin was mean and terrible and full of ugly, righteous glee.

You didn’t want them to touch you, you tried to pull away, but their fingers pressed against your chest and you were going to die it hurt so much -

You woke with a desperate gasp, as though you had held your breath in your sleep. You fought free of your blankets, arms trembling and you sat up, pressing a hand over your chest. Your heart was pounding.

Just a dream. Just a nightmare.

You sagged back against your pillows, wiping sweat from your brow with trembling fingers. Just a dream. You stared up at the ceiling, the slowly rising sun outside just barely casting it’s first light past your windows.

You managed to slow your breathing, going through your grounding techniques until you no longer felt the phantom press of pebbles, until your tongue stopped tasting like dust and sweat. Until you no longer felt that terrible, cold hand press against your chest, about to rip everything you were and held dear away from you.

As got out of bed, you still felt uneasy down to your bones, nervous in a way you knew would last for hours. A sort of anxiety that haunted your bones like ghosts haunted old, abandoned houses.

Today would not be a good day.

Your hand fell to the ring you always wore, gripping it and the surrounding fingers tightly. It was made of simple, plain iron, scratched up and a little dinged in one or two spots after years of accompanying you through battles.

People had called it ugly in the past. Your last boyfriend had even tried to convince you to take it off for good, offering you a prettier ring in exchange. You hadn’t been able to tell him that you needed this ring.

You would never forget the villain who had attacked you back when you had been a sidekick, while the Hero Society had approved of your rise in rank to become a full fledged hero soon. 

Your mentor had been so proud, had helped you with the paperwork to apply for the promotion. She had even made sure you’d get to live and work somewhere you wanted instead of getting a random, open position.

The villain, on your last day as a sidekick, had utterly wiped the floor with you. He had sneered down at you when you had lain on the ground before him in that half-finished parking lot, construction equipment everywhere. 

You’d never forget the dark look in his eyes. The hatred in his voice as he had cursed you, his magic so thick it had choked you nearly unconscious.

Your mentor had shown up back then before he had been able to complete the spell, so he had quickly adjusted, cursing you to lose something vital instead of leaving you crippled inside and out for life.

Your mentor had stopped you when you had gone unhinged after the curse had taken hold. Pain and a sudden lack, an absence inside of you had had you howling with something that would have been grief had you still been capable of feeling such things.

Your mentor had restrained you, had kept you safe and comfortable and contained as others had come in to help. No one had been able to break the curse, but they had been able to do something else instead.

The moment the ring had been slipped on it had felt like you had been whole again after having been split in two, wandering around with only one eye and one ear and one half of a working tongue and mouth. Without the ring, everything had been wrong, you had seen and perceived the world in a warped, half-alive at best manner.

Because it wasn’t just simply empathy that the villain had taken away from you. That was only what other people called it, what you even called it to make it easier for others to understand. The villain had taken away everything good, everything warm and soft and capable of kindness and care within you. Kindness towards others and yourself.

Only after empathy had gotten ripped out of you had you understood just how intricately it had been tied to who you were as a person. How much it had driven you and your desire to do good, even if you didn’t always like people or felt up to the task.

Your empathy had made you hand-craft gifts for loved ones, had made sure you gave pep-talks to yourself and went to therapy. It made sure you got bubble baths and bought your favorite chocolate and took the time to make a good meal on your days off. It made sunrises bright and hopeful and made you dance and sing to music, no matter how silly you might otherwise feel.

Your empathy had made you feel alive.

You had never once taken the ring off after receiving it, vividly remembering the days without it. You had spent all that time not caring for other lives or for big and small wonders and pleasures.

How the people you loved and cared about had been less than strangers. They had felt like dust, like something you could and would carelessly wipe aside. Wipe out even should you consider it necessary. Everything within you had been dead and barren, salted earth after a war had left everything razed to the ground.

The moment the ring was considered a success and you had returned home safely, your mentor had gone on a hunt, capturing the villain who had done this to you. He had gotten dragged in front of a jury and sentenced to prison for life.

He had refused to remove the curse, no matter the threats and bargains people offered. He had said that the Society was welcome to torture and kill him, he would never let go of this final victory over them all.

'Besides, even if I wanted to, I could not remove it,' he had said with a haughty, victorious tilt of his head. 'It would take something quite awful indeed to even get a hold of the curse and something else entirely to remove it. I won’t say more on the matter.'

And he hadn’t.

'Why?' your mentor had snarled, standing half in front of you. And while she had always been on the slim and short side, right now she was bristling and tense like a lion in front of her cub and you had felt unexpectedly safe.

The villain had looked at you and all those sparks of safety had died as surely as stars in the night sky.

'Because you are good,’ he had told you, dark and bitter. 'Because you save people and no one saved me when I needed a hero.'

Even after six years and a lot of therapy you still remembered that moment vividly. You still had nightmares. You had never stopped being terrified of losing the ring one day. It was a constant fear that lived under your skin and made you paranoid. You checked if the ring was there multiple times throughout the day, making sure it hadn’t come lose or started to slip.

So no, today would not be a good day, but the world didn’t care about that. You dragged yourself out of bed to get ready, staring at your hero costume as you brushed your teeth. After getting cursed you had bothered the Society to get you a new costume, your mentor supporting you every step of the way.

It had felt wrong to go with the bright colors and a metallic H on your back you had chosen previously. You had wanted to call yourself Hopeful as a hero. Corny, yes and absolutely a little bit kitschy, but you had liked the idea of giving people hope.

You hadn’t been able to go through with it after the words the villain had spat at you, after knowing how close you now were to losing everything that made you you. A small band of iron was all that stood between you and walking through the world torn apart inside.

Imagination you called yourself these days, after your powers. It was, ironically, rather unimaginative, but when you had to re-do your paperwork, you hadn’t been able to come up with something better. You still weren’t able to think of a better hero name and by now you didn’t care to. People knew you as Imagination and that worked just fine.

You bagged your costume and gear in a nondescript sport’s bag and went to a hidden office of the Society. This one masqueraded as a travel agency and you got dressed in your separate dressing room, before you set foot into the backroom. 

You weren’t the only one ready to clock in to work and you exchanged a friendly greeting with your colleague and friend, your partner in this part of the city.

Peony was a hero capable of growing all kinds of plants and flowers at will and he had an innate kindness to him that made him very pleasant company indeed. 

He always decorated his hair with a crown of peonies and his costume with whatever flower he liked that day. He gave flowers to anyone sad or upset when he worked in order to cheer them up. Alongside with you he had a high track record of turning villains around and ending fights peacefully.

Or rather, you turned new villains around, for the older or well established ones would have only laughed and spat at your efforts before trying to tear you to shreds. Not everyone wanted to change. Not everyone wanted to be saved.

It had been hard at first to make yourself soft towards young, inexperienced villains, but you hadn’t wanted to become bitter and cynic after getting hurt. After getting cursed forever.

Countless hours of therapy and hard training had ensured you could take the chance of talking villains down if they seemed receptive. Of course some had tried to backstab you, but there were enough people who were just desperate or hurt and often enough they just needed someone to offer a helping hand. They just needed a little bit of kindness.

'No one saved me when I needed a hero'. Sometimes that accusation bounced around your head restlessly, no matter how much good you did. Those hate filled eyes followed you into your dreams.

"Are you alright?" Peony asked, carefully feeling along his glued down mask, making sure it had dried well. The last thing any of you wanted was to have your masks torn off by villains or overly invasive paparazzi. Those existed too, irritatingly enough. "You look tired."

"I’m fine," you lied. Today was a bad day and it would pass, you reminded yourself. You’d be more careful and you’d truck through your work hours and tonight you’d go and call your therapist and try to get back on track in time for work tomorrow.

"Hm." Peony hummed softly and a moment later he held out his hands, a flower crown woven out of small, magenta lilacs and dark blue cornflowers rested on his palms. Like the colors of your suit, only less muted. "For a little bit of good luck," he said with a warm, kind smile.

You felt yourself soften, smiling back at him and bowing forward a bit so he could put it on your head. "Thank you."

"Of course, I know we don’t get to hang out outside of work, because of secret identities and all, but you’re my friend," he said with a warm smile. "And we have each other’s back, always. Radio me in if you need some company or assistance today, alright?"

"Alright," you said and you knew that Peony would never judge you for needing a bit of help. You had helped him out a couple of times when he had had bad days and he understood what it felt like to have the past snap at your heels like hungry hounds.

There was hardly a hero who didn’t carry around some shadow, some memory of terror and defeat. Some had it worse than others, but sooner or later everyone met a villain that crushed them under their heel.

Some heroes had managed to rise to the occasion and had defeated the villain at long last, others had needed help and backup to take down the one who had tried to break them. Some never again returned to active duty.

You made sure your gloves were secure so your ring could never, ever slip off during a fight. It was, at this point, the single most important thing about your outfit, aside from it’s protective properties.

Your sleeves were even designed to make sure your gloves stayed in place by you pulling the cuffs over the gloves, keeping the hem in place with thumb holes. You could not risk losing the ring. You would not ever risk it. Besides, gloves were almost expected in your field of work, no matter if one was a villain or hero.

Your work day started out quietly enough. People waved at you, you posed for a few pictures, making sure to paste your signature smile onto your face. Just because you wanted to go crawl under a blanket and watch TV the rest of the day didn’t mean you had to let others know.

You helped a lost girl find her fathers and carried the groceries of an elderly couple up the stairs to their front door. Simple, little things that actually made you happy. This was what you wished being a hero could be all about more often. Just walking through the streets, helping anyone who needed a hand.

Right before your lunch break - because of course villains had to have awful timing - you heard the sound of something splintering. It didn’t quite sound like the sharp, high-pitched sound of glass, nor the gravelly crack of asphalt and stone or the screech and snap of metal.

Jolting around, you stilled when you saw cracks spidering through the air itself, as though part of the world had turned into a mirror someone had punched. You had just half a second to recognize those powers, before you saw him.

Endless.

A villain with reality manipulating and altering powers who should not be here. This was not his city. You hadn’t heard of him losing a territory battle or handing his territory over to someone else either.

You had just a moment to feel utter confusion mingled in alarm, before those eyes found you. Ones that held an intense glow of magic and a grin curled across his face. It wasn’t hard for you two to recognize each other as enemies, not with the masks and armored costumes.

Your muted magenta and dark blue, his black with gleaming, metallic blue accents, mirroring the shine of his eyes easily visible through his half-face mask. He shifted to face you, his body tensing up the only warning you got before he lunged into action.

Showtime.

You had heard about Endless’s powers, of how he cracked the world around himself open like an egg, as though he was pulling the stitches of reality apart at the seams to poke his fingers between. To pull forth whatever laid beyond.

You had heard, but not understood what it meant. How it felt to meet that star speckled void that he pulled forth from the cracks, easily manipulating the matter as he saw fit. Something primal in your hindbrain was alarmed and then swiftly terrified when you felt that void skim past your skin, just barely missing your face.

The very foundation of your existence wanted to run and suddenly you understood why Endless was so feared even though he had never killed or crippled anyone, be they hero or civilian. Anyone would want to run from the thing that could unmake them.

But for the first time in your life, your own powers were the perfect counter. You had been born with the ability to summon things you could create within your own mind. Your own version of manipulating reality.

You watched Endless’s eyes widen as the air around you shimmered in a crystalline manner and you pulled forth two sleek panthers. Your favorite weapon fell into the hand you kept hidden at your side by shifting your stance, waiting for your moment to strike.

"Oh my," Endless breathed and you only heard him because he had come close enough that he could almost touch you if he stretched out his hand. "How very lovely."

The beasts leaped forward to distract him, while you ducked beneath another swipe of his void-wrapped fist, striking at his unguarded flank.

The blow struck, but Endless hadn’t climbed the ranks without being able to tank a few hits.

The fight was fast and harsh and, in a way, exhilarating. You hadn’t ever fought like this before, where it took every ounce of your concentration, pulling creations into existence while dodging the very power that made the feral part of your hindbrain gibber in fear.

You almost thought it would end in a true draw, the two of you getting tired, movements slower, blows and dodges getting sloppier. The world around you was a mixture of splintered cracks and that crystalline shimmer of your powers.

Right up until you managed to conjure a snake in Endless’s blind spot and when the summoned animal wrapped around his foot, just as he wanted to kick out at you, it ended in him getting yanked back instead.

Your hit connected with his shoulder and he fell to the ground, breathing hard, sweat dripping down his chin, but as he stared up at you, a grin was on his face. It had something wild around the edges and was so delighted it gave you pause.

"Beautiful," he said, his eyes glowing brighter. The tone of his voice caught you off guard, impressed and delighted and something else. Something that was just slightly breathless, just slightly…almost soft with reverence. "I’m so sorry to cut this short, I wish we could have finished this."

Before you could do more than feel bewildered, the ground beneath him cracked apart, that void surging up to swallow him. You jerked forward, only to immediately flinch back. You knew you could not reach into that void, could not follow him without being unmade.

As the void smoothed back over like waves calming after a big splash, the cracks around you faded away, returning the world to how it was meant to be. The sound of distant traffic and shouting civilians filtered through and it was only then that you realized how quiet it had been previously.

How far away the world had been, how nothing had been able to reach you with so much shattered reality everywhere around you.

"Imagination!" Peony’s voice made you jolt and a moment later he landed beside you, clapping you on the shoulder. His press smile was on his face, while his eyes were impressed. "Good fight, my friend!"

It…had been. You realized that you had been the first person in nearly five years to make Endless back out of a fight. You hadn’t won the battle, but when you glanced up at the clapping and cheering crowd, you realized that you had won in the eyes of the public.

Peony swiftly whisked you away to avoid the excited crowd and paparazzi that had been rushing towards you, cameras and microphones at the ready.

"Are you alright?" Peony asked as the two of you sat high up on a skyscraper, wedged in behind an old, big gargoyle. Your shoulders pressed together and you tipped your head back to stare up at the sky.

"Yeah, you said with a smile, then you frowned. "I thought Endless called Imperia home, not our city."

Imperia, the capital city, was a veritable cesspit of villains and underground crime. That Endless had made a name for himself in a place that ruthlessly chewed up and spat out anyone who faltered, who misstepped only the slightest bit, meant something.

You doubted that anyone but you truly had a good defense against him and these void powers. Powers that could destroy anything that was real near immediately - but your creations were only half real. They existed because you wanted them to, not because they were actually a part of reality. That made them harder to break.

"I don’t know," Peony answered after a moment of silence. "Maybe the Society knows what’s up."

*.*.*

The Society, in fact, had no idea why Endless had given up his bitterly fought for territory in Imperia. In fact, no one was able to find out anything as the weeks turned to months and instead of answers, you only got more questions.

And you gained a nemesis. 

You had never had one before and you could have entirely done without ever getting one. Endless however had decided that you were ’the shit’ as an impressed teen had once said and he just had to take you down.

Endless didn’t always seek you out when you were on patrol, especially since he had plenty of things to do himself, but whenever you spotted him, you knew he had come for you. After that first fight, you had never again managed to get the upper hand against him. Until now, everything had ended in a draw where the two of you had been forced to retreat.

He was dangerous and cunning and you really had no idea why he bothered fighting with you as much as he did. There was no need for Endless to go up against you or to seek you out for battles.

He was powerful enough that he could have just slipped past you to cause destruction elsewhere. To go pick off the younger or weaker heroes and sidekicks, the ones he could kick around like squeaky toys. 

He could have even gone straight for the official Society headquarters, since he had once let slip that he knew where it was. You didn’t know for sure if he actually did know, but the threat had been big enough that the Society was currently busy relocating, having closed down the headquarters for the time being.

He could have…well, he could have done a lot more damage, was what you were trying to say. You were glad that he didn’t though, that he didn’t kill people and never involved civilians if it could be avoided.

Endless had even stopped attacking a fellow hero the time your colleague had gotten knocked out in a fight against him, just as you had arrived. Rather than hit your fellow hero again to kill him or to inflict career ending injuries, Endless had just stepped aside.

He had allowed you to carry the woman to safety, though he had done so with running commentary. Everything had been said, from compliments to teasing remarks until you couldn’t help but snap back. And then he had grinned, achieving what he had wanted: that you spoke with him.

That you looked at him, bantering back before you knew it.

It was simultaneously the most fun and the most intense time whenever you fought him.

And recently he had gotten into the very distracting, very flustering habit of murmuring those compliments and teasing remarks at you whenever your fight caused the two of you to end up close to each other.

It was so easy to forget the world when he made the noise disappear, when everything was so far away with the way he cracked the world apart.

And yet, he never locked you in, he never put you into a cage you couldn’t escape, for wherever those cracks were, it was impossible to reach past them. But there were always spots to slip through for you and you just knew that was on purpose.

It was unexpected to look at a villain and realize that a part of you trusted him. Trusted him to not hit below the belt, to pull his punches before something truly awful happened. When you fought him, you could forget about the ring on your finger and how you could never, ever allow those gloves to come off.

"Why me?" you found yourself asking at your next clash, the fight between you no longer a harsh meeting of two blunt forces, but something refined and sharp. Almost like a fierce dance.

"Pardon?" Endless asked, elegantly ducking beneath your weapon and kicking the two-headed hound out of the way that you had summoned today. "Your beautiful lethality distracted me for a moment."

"Why fight me?" you asked, ignoring his compliments. He was just trying to make you trip up, you were certain he’d stop once he realized it wasn’t going to work, no matter what he said.

Endless blinked, looking taken aback for just a split second, before he stepped in close with a quick maneuver, close enough to almost touch you.

His voice was quiet and almost soft as he said, "If it’s not obvious, I am doing a worse job than I thought."

When you looked as confused as you felt, he made a low noise and the next second you smoothly slid back a step, head jerking to the side to avoid getting touched by the void he drew forth.

"I’ll figure out how to make my intent clear," he said in that tone that never failed to send a small shiver down your spine in the best of ways. His gaze flickered past you and his smile got a regretful little quirk. "For now, I fear our time is almost up."

To your surprise, he leaned in again, close enough that your noses were almost touching. You realized that you had stopped moving a second later, that the hounds stood still, waiting for your next command. 

"I don’t believe you find me quite so despicable," he murmured, his fingertips brushing your hand.

The one with the ring. Cold reality crashed over you, a sudden stab of alarmed fear that had nothing to do with Endless himself and his powers and you found yourself flinching back, hand tucked against your chest before you could stop yourself.

No other villain would have gotten that reaction, would have seen that moment of vulnerability. Plenty of villains had grabbed your wrist or hand before, especially if they had matter or mind manipulating powers. It was hardly the first time.

But something about Endless made it feel as though your barriers were paper thin. You had gotten careless.

His eyes widened at your reaction. "Apologies," he said, gaze flicking between you and your hand. Then his gaze snapped past you and he muttered an unflattering curse at the people you knew were about to join you.

With a last, thoughtful and apologetic glance your way, he folded into the cracks, disappearing into the void.

The world smoothed out, but your heart kept racing and you forced yourself to lower your hand back to your side and look normal and unaffected.

You were deeply relieved that Peony showed up moments later, whisking you away with an excuse to save you from the people. When you sat crouched behind the same gargoyle as last time, he said nothing when you curled up tight, hand clutched against your chest and forehead pressed against your knees.

He knew about the ring, about what had happened to you. It wasn’t hard to find out, not with how public both the fight and trial had been. Peony had slowly, over time, asked you more questions about it. Always carefully and gently and you had recently told him the rest of the story. How you didn’t remember what curse you had been afflicted with, only how it had felt to receive it.

And what happened if you ever took your ring off.

Peony was a solid line of warmth against your side and sometimes you felt a light tickling against your shoulder or head. By the time you looked up, uncurling a little, you blinked when you realized he had almost entirely covered you in flowers.

"Why is Endless bothering with me?" you found yourself asking as he carefully set down a handful of daisies in your now revealed lap.

"I think he’s flirting with you," Peony said and when you stared at him, wide eyed, he laughed. "Oh, he is. Couldn’t you tell?"

You grumbled beneath your breath, looking away and feeling embarrassed. Embarrassed and…aw, shit. You also felt flattered and touched and gooey warm. You liked Endless's attention and his words and how he fought you and how close the two of you could get to each other.

"I think you should ask yourself why you indulge him so," Peony continued, creating some tiny roses he put in your palm when he motioned for your hand. They were a pretty pink. 

"But he’s a villain," you found yourself saying and he snorted and started to tick off his fingers.

"Thunder and Goldstar, Justice and the Furious Two, Deadend and Dawn and of course, we can’t forget the most iconic and notorious romance between Dragon and Nightmare," he said. "They are villains and heroes who are more than enemies, if you catch my drift."

"Nothing was ever confirmed," you muttered and he shot you a look.

His voice was softer as he said, "Not officially, no. But I know you saw at least some of their fights. In all honesty, it even looked like Nightmare recently proposed to Dragon in the middle of their battle."

"Wait, what?" You sat up straight at that, sending a shower of flowers to tumble off of you. Peony just simply made a few more and tossed them straight at your face, petals silk-soft and sweet smelling.

"Endless isn’t awful," he said. "Arrogant, yes. Highly dangerous? Oh abso-fucking-lutely, but he’s no killer. He fucks with the government and some institutions and companies over for fun. No one knows what he really wants most of the time. His moral compass is probably so firmly in the gray zone he might as well rename himself into Raincloud, but you have my blessings."

"Thanks, Mom," you joked back and he smiled, nudging your shoulders together.

"I’m glad you’re doing better," he said, which made all the sarcastic mirth smooth out into something softer and genuine. "Want me to patrol with you the rest of the day?"

You were quiet for a long moment, staring down at the flowers littered all around you. All your favorite flowers and some of his.

"Yeah," you said at last. "Thanks."

"That’s what friends are for." He made a flower crown and gently set it upon your head. "Now come on, before someone yells at us for slacking off."

*.*.*.*

If you had expected Endless to back up, you were sorely mistaken. Not that you…not that you wanted him to. Still, you had no idea if you should reciprocate, if he really was flirting with you like Peony said, or how to go about it.

Endless certainly had stepped up his game after last time. Now every fight it seemed less and less like he wanted to get close to you in order to trade blows, quick strikes and just as quick parries, but to slip around your defenses like water and say more and more things in a low voice only you could hear.

If your battles had looked like dancing before, now your fights really were just a steady back and forth, a push and pull that had left all attempts at actual hitting behind ages ago.

Endless never again touched your hand, but now his fingertips brushed your elbow, your shoulders, your lower arm. He tugged at your utility belt instead of destroying it like another villain would have and you found yourself reaching back.

But he did glance down at your hand every time the two of you fought. The outline of the ring wasn’t easily visible beneath the gloves, but it felt like he had figured out exactly where the ring was.

You ignored it, you much rather focused on the bantering, on the way the words he said in that utterly pleasant and very flustering voice made you feel. You much rather bantered back, the world with all its troubles and realities locked away beyond those cracks he formed around you without ever locking you in.

You should not have ignored it.

It was Peony who called you just as you were about to finish patrol a couple of days later. It was getting quite late and you had volunteered for an evening shift to clear your head after you kept thinking about Endless. 

You had even found yourself watching some of his old fights online. It was…pleasant, possibly even alluringly impressive, to see him in action. His competence, his skills, his cunning and adaptability.

"Can you meet me at the old warehouse district?" Peony asked, voice tense and lowered over the phone in a way that told you something was wrong and he didn’t want to be spotted. "At the barrel intersection? There is a group of villains and far too fucking many explosives."

"On my way," you said, already changing tracks and hurrying towards the district. "Wait until I’m there."

"Hurry," he hissed and ended the call.

You arrived in record time, finding Peony hiding behind the barrels that lined the intersection on one side. It wasn't officially named Barrel Intersection, but that was what the two of you called it.

The old warehouse district was a quiet neighborhood, a mixture of storefronts and still used warehouses and industrial apartments on the more expensive side.

It also offered a lot of backrooms for villains to meet in and plot. Weirdly enough, you couldn’t see anything. The windows of the apartments were all dark and the storefronts lit, showing that no one was inside.

Actually, it was impossible to see much at all from the spot where Peony crouched.

"Where are they?" you asked in a whisper, as you ducked down beside him. "Did they leave already?"

"Alley," he whispered back and slipped into the shadows, face and shoulders tense in a way you hadn’t seen in quite a while. Or ever, possibly. It must be worse than you had thought.

You followed, only to notice that the flowers he usually decorated his outfit with were different. 

That wasn’t too strange in and of itself, Peony picked a new flower for his outfit every week, but it was always something cute and sweet, something that delighted the kids he saved and made crying people smile when he offered them a sunflower or cherry blossoms or tulips. And he always wore peonies around his head.

You weren’t well versed in flowers, but even you recognized the ones you could see now. Belladonna and nettles and a crawling of moss down his shoulders.

"Peony?" you whispered, confused. A low warning tingle spread through your limbs. You warily glanced around. Something was off.

"This is going to be horrible," Peony said so softly you barely heard him and something in his voice was different. It took you a second to realize it was sadness, laced with pain and grim determination.

A second you shouldn't have wasted with puzzling over his tone.

Vines stronger than anything Peony had created before snapped forward to wrap around your limbs, dragging you to the ground with a power and strength you hadn’t been able to fight.

In a split second, your mind ran through all the things an enemy could have done to Peony. Possession, mind control, mind manipulation, blackmail and a plethora of spells. Right up until cracks spidered along the wall and Endless oozed out of the void.

Both of their faces were solemn and grim, something you weren’t used to seeing. You fought the vines, shifting your hands and focusing on your powers when Peony took a step forward, a very familiar item in his hand, gas filling the alley with a sharp hiss.

The hero society had gas canisters that allowed heroes to nullify the powers of their partners in case of aforementioned mind control and other trouble. Those measures worked only short-term, a few moments at most, just long enough for either the afflicted hero or the responsible villain to be taken out.

You felt your powers hit a block, the shimmer around you vanishing in an instant. That was when a first creeping of fear and betrayal set in.

"What do you want?" you hissed as Endless stepped forward and Peony kept you pinned to the ground, the vines keeping your limbs still no matter how hard you fought.

"I’m very sorry about this," Endless murmured and reached for your hand. The one with the ring.

Panic immediately slammed into you and you found yourself saying, "No." even as he forced your fist open to pull your thumb through the hole in the sleeve and push the sleeve back. 

The moment he pulled your glove off, betrayal hit you fully like a hit to the gut, like a vile stench that threatened to make you gag and dizzy.

"Don’t," it came out like a pleading croak and you were only distantly aware of the fact that panicked tears were starting to gather in your eyes. You had thought he’d cared about you. You had been…had been fool enough to start to fall in love with him.

Endless said nothing, wrestling with your hand until more vines appeared, pinning your fingers into place. All but one. You looked at Peony, who stood back, silent and watching.

"I thought you were my friend," you rasped out just as Endless slipped the ring off your finger.

Your world shattered into something cold and warped, your breaths feeling crisp and clear in your lungs. Tears stopped gathering and your hammering heart slowed immediately, all those conflicting and painful feelings dying away, leaving only a yawning absence. A gnarly, ripped open wound across your soul that could easily be torn wider.

Your fingers twitched as you felt the effects of the gas wear off and you gathered your powers close, your mind already conjuring up something. Something unexpected that would give you the wriggle room to get free.

"Gloves off, huh?" you said, your voice coming out flat and cool. "Very well."

People thought that a lack of empathy meant that only rage and violence were left behind. That only something vile existed now, as if everything about human emotions could be neatly divided into 'good' and 'bad' at all times.

A lack of empathy meant there was also a lack of rage, of betrayed hurt, of the desolate realization that you had gotten played by two people you had grown to trust so very much. That you cared for so very much.

It felt different compared to when you had first gotten cursed. Back then the cosmos-bright wrongness within you had utterly consumed your mind. But now that wasn't the case.

You knew this curse. Your body knew it. Had lived years like this, even if the ring had been a neat little temporary loophole.

You had known you’d always end up like this again. The absence was still there, the torn open wound where something had been ripped away from you, but it did not consume your mind.

Your gaze snapped to the two threats in front of you as Endless dropped the ring and reached out again.

The advantage of having pulled your punches previously, of having had morals, was that they did not expect what you would do. They would not count on you summoning creatures that resembled nightmares.

Startling them was the advantage you needed and the monsters that tore out of the shimmering air moved fast like spiders, leapt like predators and had a maw of teeth like sharks.

The vines around you slackened and you ripped free, smoothly rolling to your feet and backing away behind the protective press of nightmare bodies. Two of the creatures had skittered up and along the wall, dropping down from above.

You took the moment of distraction, of hurried fighting, to focus on your biggest creation yet.

You hadn’t made things too big before, always aware of the civilians and the buildings around you as well as your own health. The damage you could cause not only to human life but also to people’s livelihood and possessions.

That didn’t matter anymore. Other people and their problems did no longer concern you. It felt as though the air behind you grew solid for a moment, no longer just wavering and shimmering, but a hard crystal surface, flat and shiny like a mirror, stretching to cover the space behind you from wall to wall.

The ground trembled faintly as the hydra stepped out, three heads swiveling to pin on the two men who had just defeated your skittering critters. One maw dripped acid, the other had smoke curling up and the last snapped its teeth, lightning arching.

"Please tell me you have another canister," Endless said, body tense and ready, as Peony stepped up to his side with a nod. "Cover my back?"

"Always," Peony answered, hands lifting and vines, thick and thorny, breaking out of the walls of the alley, writhing and destructive.

The hydra lunged with a screech, only for the lightning head to suddenly turn into chopped up, bleeding pieces, courtesy of Endless cracking it apart. You had always wondered if he could break flesh as easily as air. Your answer, evidently, was yes.

What a good thing that Hydra heads grew back in double their number. Acid sizzled, fire caught on wood and scorched stone and lightning from the new head lit up the area with quick flashes, while the fourth head lunged forward in a poison filled bite.

With the hydra blocking their path and obscuring their view of you, you had a comparatively easy time avoiding the vines, even as head after head got decimated. You took a second to create your usual weapon, only instead of the blunt hammer, it came out more deadly. Sharper.

That moment, your hydra got wrapped in vines, the heads getting pinned together, mouths forced shut. You watched the broken cobblestone and bricks, vines crawling from below and a new idea found you.

You hadn’t attempted to mix your imagination with the world around you before. You had only just summoned. You closed your eyes for a moment, heart beat steady and calm. You were not harried or frenzied or afraid, all you felt was…hollowed out. Empty. Like a yawning abyss had opened inside you that kept it’s frayed, torn mouth wide open at all times.

It took a second, the hydra growling and writhing, the smell of blood and smoke and something sharp and stinging thick in the air. Some of the heads must have fought free, for you saw a chain of lightning bursts flicker past even with your eyes closed and the golden, bright flare of fire.

When you opened your eyes, the crystalline matter of your summoning was woven into the alley around you, shimmering between walls and ground, layered over and sunk into stone and glass and metal.

You tugged, then realized it would take far, far more power than that. So you yanked and pulled, sweat starting to drip down your face and your heart beating faster with effort and just as your hydra got hacked into so many pieces all at once that it disintegrated, the alley around you heaved like it had come alive.

Because it had. You heard an alarmed shout as the entire alley reassembled itself, your stance shifting to keep your balance on the dragon head that raised itself out of earth and stone, built out of the material around you and held together by the matter of your imagination. 

It was easily the most powerful thing you had ever made and it made your legs tremble with how thoroughly it had drained you. Now you no longer only felt empty but exhausted down to your bones as well. You just barely kept your grip on the dragon, realizing that you had to finish this fast before your powers failed you.

It seemed you had overdone it. It would be worth it, if you won.

You met Endless’s eyes, the man who was your perfect nemesis, your perfect opponent. Peony was nowhere to be seen, aside from a splatter of blood on the ground and there were no hiding spots he could have been in without betting crushed when you had torn the alley apart. He had gotten eaten by the hydra.

Almost distantly, as though detached, you wondered what Endless was capable off if he, too, stopped pulling his punches.

You weighed the weapon in your hands as the dragon roared, wings sweeping out like giant sails, crushing the top of a nearby building to rubble. You weighted your powers against Endless’s. His intent and willingness to harm you against your ability to avoid being sliced apart like your hydra. 

Your legs trembled again, nearly buckling. You did not have the strength to draw this fight out any longer, nor would you be able to negotiate properly like this should it become necessary. You’d need to rest before making a decision, unless you managed to kill him.

It was worth a try.

"I knew you were holding back on me," Endless shouted up at you, but his usual smile was nowhere to be seen and he was out of breath. "I think it’s only fair if I do the same, isn’t it?"

You had seen the world crack like a mirror before and you expected to see much of the same again. And you did, for just a moment.

Before the cracks that spidered from his touch met in the air and then the world broke away in big pieces, the void devouring the edges of your dragon, forcing you to make it curl in tighter as it swiped and stomped and spat fire at Endless, who dipped in and out of the void too quickly to be caught.

You were about to take flight to gain the upper hand when Endless did smile, grim and triumphant. That was the only warning you got, as a crack appeared above you and Peony came tumbling out of the void, looking vaguely ill. His mask and half his outfit were gone, the void slipping off the edges where it had started to devour him.

For just a second you met his eyes, then you saw the canister he held in his hands and when you tried to dodge, your legs buckled at last, sending you tumbling onto the dragon’s hard head.

Peony landed at your side just as the canister hissed and you felt that wall slam up against your powers once more. The dragon collapsed in an avalanche of hard material and the only reason you didn’t get buried in a massive pile of rubble was Peony. He grabbed you and hauled the two of you away with vines.

Vines that tied you to the ground the second he landed and Endless took one big step forward to stand over you. They were both bleeding, Peony wrapping an arm around ribs that were most likely broken, while a gash down Endless’s shoulder made blood soak into his outfit and drip to the ground from his fingertips.

You stared up at them, fingers flexing and exhaustion making them tremble faintly. It seemed you had miscalculated. Not that it would matter for long, they’d finish taking you out any moment now.

"Careful," Peony whispered, looking tense and worried.

"I know," Endless said and it made no sense to you. They had blocked your powers for now and they could finish you off without worry. And even if you did manage to survive and wriggle free, you were too tired to summon anything else. Probably even too tired to run.

You distantly remembered your mentor saying that a lack of empathy made you reckless and careless with yourself to a frightening degree, that any sort of worry and concerns got wiped away.

Endless moved to kneel over you, knees bracketing your ribs.

He took a deep breath and held out his hands without touching you. "Here goes nothing. If you have some prayers left to say, say them now."

You had never felt his powers used on you. You had felt the void, had known it would try to pull you apart like bad stitching, but he had never cracked you.

There was a split second of something wrong registering, before everything just went utterly numb and detached. You stared up at Endless as he reached into the cracks that had just pulled apart cloth and skin and tissue, bone and organs to reach something else.

You would have called it your soul had you cared to and he reached right for the ripped open wound where everything that made you human, that made you feel like a person, had gotten torn out in a sloppy, brutal manner.

Peony hovered close by worriedly and you found yourself looking at him, his face turning into an apologetic grimace. Why? Had he not intended for you to die when he had betrayed you?

Endless’s fingertips touched the edges of the wound the curse had ripped into you, took a deep breath and exhaled slow. The glow of his eyes brightened and you felt a second crack, a shattering within the shattering.

For a moment the world around you seemed to exist only in bits and pieces that came and went without feeling connected to each other. Cracked stone beneath you, one hand gloved the other not, the smell of ozone and fire, the dark, smog filled sky above, your inhale, a heart beat.

A soul-bound wound shattering.

The second Endless pulled back, you saw that he held something writhing and vile between his fingers, tendrils of void wrapped around it. Then he curled his fingers around the curse, letting it be swallowed by the void.

You felt the second the curse was unmade, the world rushing back in all the details it had lacked as it vanished. The taste of exhaustion on your tongue, the heavy pain in your limbs from overextending yourself so brutally, the ache of your heart and your great confusion.

The last thing you noticed before blacking out was Endless carefully smoothing away the cracks he had made on your chest, still without touching you, looking exhausted and grimly victorious.

.

Part Two

#my writing #part one #perfect nemesis #villains and heroes #this used to have a slightly worse cliffhanger #until I realized just how long part 2 had become #and I did not want to make a part three #I hope this is fun to read! #can't remember of any additional warnings #please let me know if anything should be tagged or mentioned #I was so torn between making this a poly relationship or not #just saying #the potential is there #short story #superpowers #I hope someone has as much fun reading this as I had writing it #I'm serious this one is long #but then again #which of my 'short stories' aren't

[ronanlynchbf]

#less sun and skeletal trees and mostly gray drabby weather is getting 2 me guys.........SAD! #anyway i looked at my reading stats for trc (which aren't the most accurate bc there's a lot of rereads that i didn't track bc i forgot to) #and late autumn/early winter is one of the spans of time that occurs the most where i reread trc as in i usually reread trc around that tim #every year i think it's actually so funny. the seasonal depression rlly elevates the urge to reread i guess 😎👍 #r.txt #trc #also this does not include the dreamer trilogy bc those are different vibes than trc although it does include opal short story my beloved #and sometimes also includes call down the hawk #<- call down the hawk is actually my most reread trc-and-extended book after the dream thieves which is kinda surprising i don't remember #reading it that many times but it is my fave book after the dream thieves and bllb so maybe not that surprising after all nvm. #anyways. SAVE ME THE RAVEN CYCLE 🙏🙏🙏

[skrunksthatwunk]

why the fuck did i write about birds this fucking sucks. i just found out birds only sleep for a few minutes at a time, hundreds of times a day. do you know what this is going to do to my structure? the logistics of their road trip? this is already like three days late and i've been fighting for my life to get A Plot Like Any Plot That Makes Sense out and now the birds fucking sleep for 5 minutes at a time.

#i should've just bailed and written another story when i had the chance #i'm not joking i've never fought a fiction piece this hard before. usually because i'm not writing for specific deadlines #and not a piece so big. and not one that's gonna be workshopped. i wanna blow them away but if things keep going the way they are everyone' #gonna tell me the pacing sucks and it feels pointless and the characters feel really confused. I KNOW. I KNOW THAT. FUCKK #i'm the type to do about 15 passes before i let someone see my 'first draft' and i'm just not gonna be able to do that if i want to get it #in time for a workshop. every day i delay is making things harder for my classmates y'know?? but i've been writing like 1k words a day #and it's still not done. GUHH #I DON'T LIKE WRITING THESE CHARACTERS THAT MUCH THEY'RE NOT FUNNY OR ENDEARING AND THAT'S MY LIKE. #MAIN SKILL AND VIBE WITH SHORT STORY DUOS. BUT NOOOO I HAD TO MAKE THEM DIFFERENT CUZ I WAS SICK OF DOING #THE SAME DYNAMIC OVER AND OVER. BITCH THIS IS YOUR FINAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! TRIED AND TRUE GETS THE BLUE (RIBBON)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! #head in my hands head in my hands head in my hands head in my hands head #going to work on it some more. fuckk #the voices aren't consistent and i'm trying to make it clear that this is toxic bird yuri and not a mother/daughter thing but the maternal #themes are kind of fucking with that but they're important and i don't wanna get rid of them but it feels forced cuz im forcing it #sigh. i'm gonna have to cut the yuri. these two don't work romantically at all. what a waste of time. #i watched the entirety of mnthly girls' nozaki-kun in the past two days while avoiding writing. did you know that? the lengths to which i'l #go? anyway it was fun i appreciate fellow creative agony and i uh never knew how they did screen tones and wasn't expecting that somehow #so i learned something new (hooray). anyway back to. fucking. bird story stuff #i'm so mad i hate these two (<- lying. just pissy) i hate this story (<- mostly exaggerating. throwing a tantrum) #eughhhhhh i just wanna lie on the floor and cryyyyyyyyyy (<- completely deadpan irl. not That upset just kind of sick of shit) #i'm so burnt out and it's only gonna get worse. ughh #why can't someone just come in and write it for meeeeeeeeeeheheuhhh (<- would hate that)

[mechieonu]

FROM THE START self-love and acceptance has been one of the major themes of the series and if ANYONE could benefit from that tigress is RIGHT THERE

#will we ever get closure over her and shifu. will we ever get to see her confront her fear of BEING feared #WILL WE EVER GET TO SEE HER LOVE HERSELF OR CONFRONT HER ABANDONMENT ISSUES #like. she's not just hardcore and untouchable. she loves just as much as everyone else and wants to BE loved #i will die so mad that they left her so unexplored #WHAT IS THE POINT OF SETTING HER UP AS TAI LUNG'S ANTITHESIS #AND AS THE YIN TO PO'S YANG IF ITS NEVER EXAMINED #like. it's SHOWN. we see how their development has affected the other but it's never focused on for more than a scene #they make me curl up all dead and janky like a spider they make me so sick and ill #and from a writer's perspective THAT'S INTENTIONAL. SO WHY AREN'T WE MAKING IT HAPPENING #kfp #im just disappointed and miss her soooo much #i knew it'd be a long shot to hope for a tigress-centered movie considering we got a short (which I love w all my heart) #but like. i feel like that will-smith-displaying-wife meme #you set up all that gorgeous heartache and we're NOT gonna go into it?? #tigress #ok but if you are in need of smth like that i cannot recommend KFP: One Thousand Years of Peace enough #its on ao3 it's a tigress self-love story it focuses so wonderfully on each of the five and it's tipo and it's POETIC CINEMA

[zincbot]

i gotta say, 13 hours into omori, i don't get why people call it a horror game

#omori #like there's been occasional creepy scenes but they're usually quite short especially compared to the broader tone of the game #it does have a serious story. about like. trauma and failing friendships? that i'm really intrigued by as it slowly uncovers #like maybe it leans further into horror elements as the game goes on but i gotta say the elements that do exist aren't enough for me #to explicitly call it 'horror' #don't get me wrong i love this game and i love the spooky moments they're really fun! #i just went thru the train ride bit which was pretty fun i liked how the shadow at the end says the name of ur real-world character #even though ur playing as omori in the dream world #also no spoilers but it's unclear to me as of now if omori is just haunted by the memory of his sister's death #or if her spirit is Actually haunting him #also i had flowers and i thought maybe i cld put them on her grave but it didn't give me the option #also i loved the moment where kel talks about hero's depression and the way he himself was overlooked by h #their parents #man. i love all these characters so much #god the scene where aubrey fights you in the church and the whole time all the churchgoers are whispering about how terrible she is #i felt so bad for her man #also her design in the real world is cool as hell #also i actually lost to aubrey during the church scene but i didn't get a game over she just let me be and left #omori spoilers #i know the game is old-ish but my wording may have implied i wasn't going to spoil and i totally did #what i meant was don't tell me abt the future story of the game i'm only on 'three days left'

[aeide-thea]

tfw you read a trans historical romance [eta specifically a lady for a duke by alexis hall] and come away feeling like, hm, this was probably a B+ for a few different reasons and definitely hasn't really resolved the extent to which it wants to accept various historical romance norms vs upend them (specifically: really wanted to have its cake and eat it too wrt the hero's dukedom conferring power and wealth and hauteur, but also knowing it's Not Done Anymore to romanticize that and so inserting a couple of token gestures of atonement, even as it continued to have him leverage said power and wealth and hauteur to aid his allies and humiliate his enemies; also one (1) aside abt the racism of the ton's beauty standards, which only came up wrt a bit character and was never addressed again), and frankly something abt the ways in which certain things are getting queered by the text makes the Marriage as an ending feel more than usually uninspired to me, even though it's technically more-than-usually revolutionary here, and even though i'm ordinarily willing enough to accept that as the conventional, definitional endpoint of stories in this genre...

but then on the other hand presumably trans ppl deserve the dubious privilege of seeing themselves reflected in historical romances of B+ quality, as much as cis ppl ever have, and i'm an ungrateful little snot for being unsatisfied with that!

#also i think i disagree with the author that the conflict didn't ultimately hinge on the heroine's transness #but it didn't hinge on her partner's *acceptance* of her transness‚ which maybe is all we can ask for #anyway i do think i'm more comfortable projecting in private onto texts that aren't actually open to me #than i am engaging with texts that *do* make an attempt and fall short in some way #which like. is not not also an indictment of my interpersonal approach generally #insecure attachment baby: a life #anyway this is nominally #bookblogging #but obviously just as much about #the psyche #but then‚ are the two really separable in the context of stories meant to spin out a romantic fantasy for you? #in conclusion sorry that entire first paragraph is one unreadably ciceronian sentence lmao #i gotta be true to myself what can i say

[andthebeanstalk]

As time goes by, I find I am less likely to wake up in the middle of the night to needlessly hate on myself for some random awkward harmless thing I did 10 years ago.

I'm still up in the middle of the night feeling a deep primal urge to needlessly hate on things from years ago, but now it's more just things like

MAN I SHOULD PROBABLY MAKE ANOTHER POST ABOUT HOW MUCH I HATED BLY MANOR HUH

#bly manor #the haunting of bly manor #listen. I'm sure if I were to carefully analyze some of junji ito's short stories I would find some of them to be thematically lacking #BUT THEY AREN'T 10 HOURS LONG ARE THEY #truly the worst kind of horror movie is the kind that lasts for over 9 hours and then makes you feel stupid for getting invested #I was tricked by the good acting and the good cinematography into believing that there would be a good story at the end of the day #the kind of ending that just makes you think surely I'm not understanding this correctly surely they didn't mean to say THAT #but then you think about it a little more and it's like oh no I have been bamboozled #I feel the same way about Kubo and the two strings which - like bly manor - really shits the bed in the last 10 minutes #But ultimately this is where it was going the whole time. #I've seen a lot of bad horror movies but none of them have wasted my time like this. I know it was a TV show but #if it had been a movie it at least would have been over relatively quickly and I could have moved on with my life jfc #anyway everyone should go watch Fear Street 2021 it's the only good horror franchise ever made good night #okay it's not the only one but if you want a lesbian horror series that fucking rules #that's the one #Netflix was like want to try The Haunting of Hill House and I was like only if this writer lives at Hill house and I get to do the haunting #original #I mean not having good theming in a movie is one fucking thing but in a cohesive horror series?????? #I feel like I went to a restaurant where they don't serve food but they only told me after I waited for the food for 13 fucking hours. #this is not filling this is not nourishment this is BULL

[glooomtownbrats]

currently having a crisis because it's ridiculous how mostly you don't even have to be good at something/whatever. you just have to be confident

#WHICH I LACK #long story short there's a person i know that became a tattoo artist but they suck #lmao wait no they don't but they aren't consistent in their work #and now they're on the big leagues being a guest artist in a big tattoo shop like?????? #how? #because they're confident like 100% even if their work sucks they're proud of it #not even ironically #they trust themselves therfore the universe that things will go right and they do go right #meanwhile i'm drowning in a glass on water thinking i suck i won't succeed and i even haven't tried yet #FUCK #and i am jealous because they suck and they're doing more than great living their dream #meanwhile i haven't even figured out what my dream is and giving myself a bunch of limitations and exhausting my brain #with a lot of negative thoughts and rage about the world and things i can't control #and these mfs just let it rip #AHHHHH #i try to see another perspective on this person and learn from it #it really makes me revaluate everything in my life right now #late night thoughts

[girlscience]

I just finished my first non-fiction book in probably years. It was 277 pages long. I can read a fiction book that short in about 2 and a half hours. This took me 3 months to complete. I do wish I was faster with non-fiction, I've got a huge list of science and political and historical books I want to read, but I have to remember these books require more brain power so it's not bad they take longer. The learning is important not the time.

#it was white fragility. which from my understanding is a pretty basic sort of baby's first foray into anti-racism #but it seemed like a good place to start? if I can't handle myself I'm not going to get anything out of the other books I want to read #I found a short paper on anti-colonialism/land back that I think I'm going to read next #I'm also in the middle of cobalt red but I had to return it to the library before I could finish so I placed another hold on it #idk I'm trying to educate myself #I have black and hispanic and indigenous friends and I am very aware that I'm white but haven't ever really done anything to learn #how that affects my relationships with them or to be aware of things I could do unknowingly/unintentionally or what biases I have #and I don't want to be another person that hurts them so I need to do things to be better #and I mean just generally in the world I'm around people of color all the time and I want to be aware and such there too you know #and then also everything about the history of the US and colonialism and such here and around the world #I benefit from that so I need to be learning about it and doing things to help fight back against it #idk. this is all stuff that's been on my mind for a few years #but I was struggling to actually act on it. hopefully I can keep doing better today and tomorrow #and reading and learning seems like a good place to start #I just have to keep reminding myself that these aren't fantasy stories and they require more thought and brain power than most books I read #so it's good thing it takes me longer. that means I'm considering and digesting what I'm reading #it is not a bad thing to read slowly

[montewave]

bestie fajitas are a mexican dish. how did you think it was pronounced

I KNOW IT'S A MEXICAN DISH

I MAY NOT ABLE TO PRONOUNCE SHIT BUT I KNOW SHIT.

But no, I am pronouncing it correctly, both fajita and Vegeta for once. Monte learned those word by sight and no one bothers to correct me...unless, it's my dad who likes to point that I say speficially like Pacifc.

#Monte's Mailbox #Kinda offended that you didn't have faith in me. I know what fajitas are. Love steak fajitas #But no I will say I don't take the time to look up the pronouncation of words especially words that aren't in English ( #Which is a habit that I'm working on. I already jumble my words in English and I got mocked by my peers in my 5 year long Turkish class #Long Story short: Monte doesn't sound shit out

[mostlysignssomeportents]

"Efficiency" left the Big Three vulnerable to smart UAW tactics

Tomorrow (September 22), I'm (virtually) presenting at the DIG Festival in Modena, Italy. Tomorrow night, I'll be in person at LA's Book Soup for the launch of Justin C Key's "The World Wasn’t Ready for You." On September 27, I'll be at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles with Brian Merchant for a joint launch for my new book The Internet Con and his new book, Blood in the Machine.

It's been 143 days since the WGA went on strike against the Hollywood studios. While early tactical leaks from the studios had studio execs chortling and twirling their mustaches about writers caving once they started losing their homes, the strikers aren't wavering – they're still out there, pounding the picket lines, every weekday:

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/09/how-hollywood-writers-make-ends-meet-100-days-into-the-writers-guild-strike.html

The studios obviously need writers. That gleeful, anonymous studio exec who got such an obvious erotic charge at the thought of workers being rendered homeless as punishment for challenging his corporate power completely misread the room, and his comments didn't demoralize the writers. Instead, they inspired the actors to go on strike, too.

But how have the writers stayed out since May Day? How have the actors stayed out for 69 days since their strike started on Bastille Day? We can thank the studios for that! As it turns out, the studios have devoted so much energy to rendering creative workers as precarious as possible, hiring as little as they can getting away with and using punishing overtime as a substitute for adequate staffing that they've eliminated all the workers who can't survive on side-hustles and savings for six or seven months at a time.

But even for those layoff-hardened workers, long strikes are brutal, and of course, all the affiliated trades, from costumers to grips, are feeling the pain. The strike fund only goes so far, and non-striking, affected workers don't even get that. That's why I've been donating regularly to the Entertainment Community Fund, which helps all affected workers out with cash transfers (I just gave them another $500):

https://secure2.convio.net/afa/site/Donation2?df_id=8117&8117.donation=form1&mfc_pref=T

As hot labor summer is revealed as a turning point – not just a season – long strikes will become the norm. Bosses still don't believe in worker power, and until they get their minds right, they're going to keep on trying to starve their workforces back inside. To get a sense of how long workers will have to hold out, just consider the Warrior Met strike, where Alabama coal-miners stayed out for 23 months:

https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/warrior-met-strike-union/

As Kim Kelly explained to Adam Conover in the latest Factually podcast, the Alabama coal strikers didn't get anywhere near the attention that the Hollywood strikers have enjoyed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvyMHf7Yg0Q

(To learn more about the untold story of worker organizing, from prison unions to the key role that people of color and women played in labor history, check out Kelly's book, "Fight Like Hell," now in paperback:)

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Fight-Like-Hell/Kim-Kelly/9781982171063

Which brings me to the UAW strike. This is an historic strike, the first time that the UAW has struck all of the Big Three automakers at once. Past autoworkers' strikes have marked turning points for all American workers. The 1945/46 GM strike established employers' duty to cover worker pensions, health care, and cost of living allowances. The GM strike created the American middle-class:

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-09-18-uaw-strikes-built-american-middle-class/

The Big Three are fighting for all the marbles here. They are refusing to allow unions to organize EV factories. Given that no more internal combustion cars will be in production in just a few short years, that's tantamount to eliminating auto unions altogether. The automakers are flush with cash, including billions in public subsidies from multiple bailouts, along with billions more from greedflation price-gouging. A long siege is inevitable, as the decimillionaires running these companies earn their pay by starving out their workers:

https://www.businessinsider.com/general-motors-ceo-mary-barra-salary-auto-workers-strike-uaw-2023-9

The UAW knows this, of course, and their new leadership – helmed by the union's radical president Shawn Fain – has a plan. UAW workers are engaged in tactical striking, shutting down key parts of the supply chain on a rolling basis, making the 90-day strike fund stretch much farther:

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2023-09-18-labors-militant-creativity/

In this project, they are greatly aided by Big Car's own relentless pursuit of profit. The automakers – like every monopolized, financialized sector – have stripped all the buffers and slack out of their operations. Inventory on hand is kept to a bare minimum. Inputs are sourced from the cheapest bidder, and they're brought to the factory by the lowest-cost option. Resiliency – spare parts, backup machinery – is forever at war with profits, and profits have won and won and won, leaving auto production in a brittle, and easily shattered state.

This is especially true for staffing. Automakers are violently allergic to hiring workers, because new workers get benefits and workplace protection. Instead, the car companies routinely offer "voluntary" overtime to their existing workforce. By refusing this overtime, workers can kneecap production, without striking.

Enter "Eight and Skate," a campaign among UAW workers to clock out after their eight hour shift. As Keith Brower Brown writes for Labor Notes, the UAW organizers are telling workers that "It’s crossing an unofficial picket line to work overtime. It’s helping out the company":

https://labornotes.org/2023/09/work-extra-during-strike-auto-workers-say-eight-and-skate

Eight and Skate has already started to work; the Buffalo Ford plant can no longer run its normal weekend shifts because workers are refusing to put in voluntary overtime. Of course, bosses will strike back: the next step will be forced overtime, which will lead to the unsafe conditions that unionized workers are contractually obliged to call paid work-stoppages over, shutting down operations without touching the strike fund.

What's more, car bosses can't just halt safety stoppages or change the rules on overtime; per the UAW's last contract, bosses are required to bargain on changes to overtime rules:

https://uaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Working-Without-Contract-FAQ-FINAL-2.pdf

Car bosses have become lazily dependent on overtime. At GM's "highly profitable" SUV factory in Arlington, TX, normal production runs a six-days, 24 hours per day. Workers typically work five eight-hour days and nine hours on Saturdays. That's been the status quo for 11 years, but when bosses circulated the usual overtime signup sheet last week, every worker wrote "a big fat NO" next to their names.

Writing for The American Prospect, David Dayen points out that this overtime addiction puts a new complexion on the much-hyped workerpocalypse that EVs will supposedly bring about. EVs are much simpler to build than conventional cars, the argument goes, so a US transition to EVs will throw many autoworkers out of work:

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-09-20-big-threes-labor-shortages-uaw/

But the reality is that most autoworkers are doing one and a half jobs already. Reducing the "workforce" by a third could leave all these workers with their existing jobs, and the 40-hour workweek that their forebears fought for at GM inn 1945/46. Add to that the additional workers needed to make batteries, build and maintain charging infrastructure, and so on, and there's no reason to think that EVs will weaken autoworker power.

And as Dayen points out, this overtime addiction isn't limited to cars. It's also endemic to the entertainment industry, where writers' "mini rooms" and other forms of chronic understaffing are used to keep workforces at a skeleton crew, even when the overtime costs more than hiring new workers.

Bosses call themselves job creators, but they have a relentless drive to destroy jobs. If there's one thing bosses hate, it's paying workers – hence all the hype about AI and automation. The stories about looming AI-driven mass unemployment are fairy tales, but they're tailor made for financiers who get alarming, life-threatening priapism at the though of firing us all and replacing us with shell-scripts:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

This is why Republican "workerism" rings so hollow. Trump's GOP talks a big game about protecting "workers" (by which they mean anglo men) from immigrants and "woke captialism," but they have nothing to say about protecting workers from bosses and bankers who see every dime a worker gets as misappropriated from their dividend.

Unsurprisingly, conservative message-discipline sucks. As Luke Savage writes in Jacobin, for every mealymouthed Josh Hawley mouthing talking points that "support workers" by blaming China and Joe Biden for the Big Three's greed, there's a Tim Scott, saying the quiet part aloud:

https://jacobin.com/2023/09/republicans-uaw-strike-hawley-trump-scott/

Quoth Senator Scott: "I think Ronald Reagan gave us a great example when federal employees decided they were going to strike. He said, you strike, you’re fired. Simple concept to me. To the extent that we can use that once again, absolutely":

https://twitter.com/American_Bridge/status/1704136706574741988

The GOP's workerism is a tissue-thin fake. They can never and will never support real worker power. That creates an opportunity for Biden and Democrats to seize:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/18/co-determination/#now-make-me-do-it

Reversing two generations of anti-worker politics is a marathon, not a sprint. The strikes are going to run for months, even years. Every worker will be called upon to support their striking siblings, every day. We can do it. Solidarity now. Solidarity forever.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/21/eight-and-skate/#strike-to-rule

#pluralistic #strikes #uaw #labor #automakers #big three #big car #eight and skate #work to rule #tactics

[petermorwood]

More on pre-electricity lighting.

Interesting to see this one pop up again after nearly two years - courtesy of @dduane, too! :->

*****

After experiencing a couple more storm-related power cuts since my original post, as well as a couple of after-dark garden BBQs, I've come to the conclusion that C.J. Cherryh puts far too much emphasis on "how dark things were pre-electric light".

For one thing eyes adjust, dilating in dim light to gather whatever illumination is available. Okay, if there's none, there's none - but if there's some, human eyes can make use of it, some better or just faster than others. They're the ones with "good night vision".

Think, for instance, of how little you can see of your unlit bedroom just after you've turned off the lights, and how much more of it you can see if you wake up a couple of hours later.

There's also that business of feeling your way around, risking breaking your neck etc. People get used to their surroundings and, after a while, can feel their way around a familiar location even in total darkness with a fair amount of confidence.

Problems arise when Things Aren't Where They Should Be (or when New Things Arrive) and is when most trips, stumbles, hacked shins and stubbed toes happen, but usually - Lego bricks and upturned UK plugs aside - non-light domestic navigation is incident-free.

*****

Here are a couple of pics from one of those BBQs: one candle and a firepit early on, then the candle, firepit and an oil lamp much later, all much more obvious than DD's iPad screen.

Though I remain surprised at how well my phonecam was handling this low light, my own unassisted eyes were doing far better. For instance, that area between the table and the firepit wasn't such an impenetrable pool of darkness as it appears in the photo.

I see (hah!) no reason why those same Accustomed Eyes would have any more difficulty with candles or oil lamps as interior lighting, even without the mirrors or reflectors in my previous post.

With those, and with white interior walls, things would be even brighter. There's a reason why so many reconstructed period buildings in Folk Museums etc. are (authentically) whitewashed not just outside but inside as well. It was cheap, had disinfectant qualities, and was a reflective surface. Win, win and win.

*****

All right, there were no switches to turn on a light. But there was no need for what C.J. describes as stumbling about to reach the fire, because there were tinderboxes and, for many centuries before them, flint and steel. Since "firesteels" have been heraldic charges since the 1100s, the actual tool must have been in use for even longer.

Tinderboxes were fire-starter sets with flint, steel and "tinder" all packed into (surprise!) a box. The tinder was easily lit ignition material, often "charcloth", fabric baked in an airtight jar or tin which would now start to glow just from a spark.

They're mentioned in both "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings". Oddly enough, "Hobbit" mentions matches in a couple of places, but I suspect that's a carry-over from when it was just a children's story, not part of the main Legendarium.

Tinderboxes could be simple, just a basic flint-and-steel kit with some tinder for the sparks to fall on...

...or elaborate like this one, with a fancy striker, charcloth, kindling material and even wooden "spills" (long splinters) to transfer flame to a candle or the kindling...

This tinderbox even doubles as a candlestick, complete with a snuffer which would have been inside along with everything else.

Here's a close-up of the striker box with its inner and outer lids open:

What looks like a short pencil with an eraser is actually the striker. A bit of tinder or charcloth would have been pulled through that small hole in the outer lid, which was then closed.

There was a rough steel surface on the lid, and the striker was scraped along it, like so:

This was done for a TV show or film, so the tinder was probably made more flammable with, possibly, lighter fuel. That would be thoroughly appropriate, since a Zippo or similar lighter works on exactly the same principle.

A real-life version of any tinderbox would usually just produce glowing embers needing blown on to make a flame, which is shown sometimes in movies - especially as a will-it-light-or-won't-it? tension build - but is usually a bit slow and non-visual for screen work.

*****

There were even flintlock tinderboxes which worked with the same mechanism as those on firearms. Here's a pocket version:

Here are a couple of bedside versions, once again complete with a candlestick:

And here are three (for home defence?) with a spotlight candle lantern on one side and a double-trigger pistol on the other.

Pull one trigger to light the candle, pull the other trigger to fire the gun.

What could possibly go wrong? :-P

*****

Those pistol lanterns, magnified by lenses, weren't just to let their owner see what they were shooting at: they would also have dazzled whatever miscreant was sneaking around in the dark, irises dilated to make best use of available glimmer.

Swordsmen both good and bad knew this trick too, and various fight manuals taught how to manage a thumb-shuttered lamp encountered suddenly in a dark alley.

There's a sword-and-lantern combat in the 1973 "Three Musketeers" between Michael York (D'Artagnan) and Christopher Lee (Rochefort), which was a great idea.

Unfortunately it failed in execution because the "Hollywood Darkness" which let viewers see the action, wasn't dark enough to emphasise the hazards / advantages of snapping the lamps open and shut.

This TV screencap (can't get a better one, the DVD won't run in a computer drive) shows what I mean.

In fact, like the photos of the BBQ, this image - and entire fight - looks even brighter through "real eyes" than with the phonecam. Just as there can be too much dark in a night scene, there can also be too much light.

*****

One last thing I found when assembling pics for the post were Folding Candle-lanterns.

They were used from about the mid-1700s to the later 20th century (Swiss Army ca. 1978) as travel accessories and emergency equipment, and IMO - I've Made A Note - they'd fit right into a fantasy world whose tech level was able to make them.

The first and last are reproductions: this one is real, from about 1830.

The clear part was mica - a transparent mineral which can be split into thin flexible sheets - while others use horn / parchment, though both of these are translucent rather than transparent. Regardless, all were far less likely to break than glass.

One or two inner surfaces were usually tin, giving the lantern its own built-in reflector, and tech-level-wise, tin as a shiny or decorative finish has been used since Roman times.

I'm pretty sure that top-of-the-line models could also have been finished with their own matching, maybe even built-in, tinderboxes.

And if real ones didn't, fictional ones certainly could. :->

*****

Yet more period lighting stuff here, including flintlock alarm clocks (!)

#period lighting #tinderbox #too light too dark #social history #writer notes #research #period tech #sword vs lantern #c. j. cherryh

[ohnoitstbskyen]

... y'all know Lae'zel is acting scared, right?

Video transcription: I've seen a lot of comments on my short about Lae'zel dismissing her entire character because she's mean and… I'm just checking in here… you guys know she's scared, right? She's terrified. She was kidnapped by the worst monster she knows, infected with the most horrifying death anyone in her culture can have, and then stranded on a hostile world, alone, with nothing to guide her except the dogmatic military cult indoctrination of a cruel lich demigod, telling her that her only hope of salvation is to follow Gith doctrine with total unyielding faith. And still she tries to save you. When she keeps insisting that you must get to the Githyanki crèche, it's our only hope, she's trying to guide you towards the only salvation she knows from the parasite, so she can share it with you. And Gith... aren't supposed to do that, saving an outsider is not part of the doctrine, she's breaking the rules trying to do right by you. None of that means she's not being an asshole, she's rude, dogmatic and unpleasant. But everything she does comes from a genuine, very misguided and abrasive, desire to do the right thing. It doesn't make her behaviour okay, but there is more to her character than just "being the mean one."

To expand on this a bit more than I can in a 60 second short, people acting from fear and from their damage is a major theme among the Baldur's Gate 3 companions.

Lae'zel is terrified and falling back on the only thing she believes will give her back some control over her situation, which is the dogma of the military cult she's in. Shadowheart is much the same, amnesiac and grasping on to the only solid thing she knows, which is her faith, which preaches deception, loss and duplicity as the only certain factors in life.

Gale is an inveterate people-pleaser desperately dependent on other people to help him feed his magic addiction, with his overtly affable exterior hiding a rolling boulder of guilt, ambition, greed, arrogance and legitimate hurt. Asterion is... well, no way to really lay out his deal without spoiling, but the boy has been through it and his self-destructive, hedonistic and selfish impulses are all coping mechanism and self-defense all the time.

None of that make their shitty behaviours okay, but in a fictional story, those kinds of flaws and toxic behaviours are what make for interesting stories and characters. I don't blame anyone for finding Lae'zel unpleasant and abrasive, but I do get a bit Old Man Yells At Cloud about people who casually brag about shoving her off a cliff-side, or murdering her because "she was a bitch" or whatever.

Like... being unable to face discomfort in your media is not a virtue, and lashing out reactively against fiction that doesn't validate your power fantasy isn't a flex.

Of course, I saw a lot of those reactions in YouTube comments and on social media, so my sample is biased by those algorithms, but still. A lot of people seem aggressively proud that they never engaged with her story because the terrified indoctrinated child-soldier wasn't immediately nice to them and I can't explain it but something about that reaction feels puritan to me.

#tbskyen #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #laezel #lae'zel #Youtube

[fioiswriting]

Reunion | oneshot

Summary : After the Battle Above the Gods Eye, Daemon returned victorious. Aemond was presumed dead, though his body was never found. Three years later, you've mourned your former husband and are ready to move on. But it seems that some ghosts from your past have come back to haunt you, and that the dead aren't really dead after all...

[Part 2]

Rating : Explicit 18+, MDNI

Pairing : Aemond x Velaryon/Strong!niece!Reader, implied Cregan Stark x Reader (you can interpret them as lovers or not). Reader is Rhaenyra and Harwin’s daughter so I imagined her with dark hair like Jace, Luke and Joffrey but feel free to imagine her as you want of course &lt;3

TW : unprotected sex, breeding kink, mention of characters death, angst, possessiveness, p in v sex, oral m receiving, praising kink, dom/sub undertones, mention of war, AU where the Blacks won the war, Alys Rivers (but no cheating), Reader has a child, grief, light choking, not proofread.

Words count : 7600

Author's notes : Hi everyone !! Sooo I’m posting my first ever fanfic on here, my first x reader and my first fanfic for Aemond. I’m very anxious haha But well, this fanfic is heavily inspired by a RP that has been going on for months with my wonderful gf <3 She writes Aemond so well I swear and now she’s making me fall in love with Cregan too haha oops whatever. Some of Aemond’s lines in this fanfic are hers so of course the credits go to her 💕 Long story short the reader’s backstory is inspired by my OC! The plot doesn't make any sense but whatever

Also English is not my first language, so sorry for the grammar mistakes !!

Enjoy 🖤

I don't know what I'm supposed to do Haunted by the ghost of you Oh, take me back to the night we met The night we met - Lord Huron

The snow had covered the landscape of Winterfell in a thin white layer so similar to ash, and the image tugged at your heart for a moment. Ashes. Fire. War. It was strange, the stillness that had followed the fury of screams and blood, of fire and ash, the constant anguish and pain of loss. It was like a long howl and then sudden silence. Life had resumed its course, the earth and the grass nurtured in red, as if nothing had happened, and that still irritated you sometimes, three years later.

For this peacefulness was a constant reminder of your life before. Before the war, before your own family ripped itself apart from within, before you lost him. There was something bitter in the thought that, in an alternate reality, you would have been happy with him by your side. The night brought its share of sweet dreams, lulled by the embrace of his arms, and you closed your eyes with ease, hoping to see his face again, which was fading day by day, desperately clinging to the details that made him.

It had been the best solution, you knew. 

For there was no reality in which he could live as much as you wished for. And you had accepted your duty by straightening your shoulders, silencing your heart, digging your thumbnail into the inside of your wrist. Your stepfather had said he was dead; he had seen Vhaegar fall from the sky, wounded.  He had seen the huge dragon crash into the water with all its weight. He had waited, and no silver hair had returned to the surface. He had searched and no body had been found.

So, he had returned, triumphant, with the conclusion that Aemond Targaryen was dead.

The room had swayed around you, but your fingers on the hard, rough wood of the table had kept you grounded. You had nodded, unsure, your ears ringing, your teeth sinking into the flesh of your tongue to hold back the tears that were beading at the edges of your eyes.

You knew it was inevitable, perhaps even fair. But it still hurt.  It sill fucking hurt.

Daemon had reassured you by pointing out that you were now released from your marital obligation.  A marriage to him that you had hoped for, waited for, dreamed of in your younger years. A marriage you had despised, once forced into, once made captive, a prisoner to be used against your own mother. And then a marriage that you had loved, cherished even, when he had opened up to you, when he had changed, when he had revealed that soft side despite his rough edges.  And you loved him, truly. The childhood love, the shy love that had blossomed between laughter muffled behind the curtains, hand-in-hand runs through the Red Keep and reading session hidden under the library table, had been rekindled.  Raw, devouring, bruised by war, but more powerful than ever.

Out of the corner of your eye you had caught a glimpse of the comforting gaze of your mother, the Queen, her gentle eyes searching for clues that would betray what you were feeling. It was she who had stroked your hair that evening, her presence welcome and soothing.

During the war, events had made you more uncertain than ever; blood and cheese had broken something in you. Suddenly shaken by the horrific actions of someone you hardly recognised, by the actions of your own family and the father figure who had raised you as his own daughter. You questioned your loyalties more than ever. Of course, you'd been devastated by Luke's death, your beloved little brother, so innocent, so sweet, and the despair you'd felt, the sadness, had gradually turned to anger. 

Your desire for revenge had fed on your rage, on your anger.

And in your quest for revenge, you had grabbed the dagger hidden in your bodice when you had kissed him, when you had poisoned him with your lips and your body pressed against his. Perhaps it was cowardice to do it on your wedding night, right after the pitiful ceremony in which you had been forced to exchange your vows of fidelity, the humiliation of the white, blue, red and green cloak around your shoulders.  Perhaps it was cowardice to wait for him to surrender to your touch, hard with desire, before plunging the blade straight into his heart.

But you didn't do it, in the end, the humiliation of your failure burning in your cheeks, and you had seen the horrible reality in the icy eye fixed on you: he was expecting it.  He knew. He had anticipated you, as usual, one step ahead of you, ahead of your plans. And the humiliation was all the more bitter.

First he had defied you, knowing full well that you couldn't do it, despite your momentary hesitation. Then he had wiped away your tears, the sound of metal echoing off the floor as he captured your lips with his own. 

And both you and he had sought to release the accumulated tension in the comfort of your naked bodies, in the rough, demanding thrusts.

You weren't quite sure when your relationship had changed. When he had become more forgiving. When he had trusted you. When he had become gentle. When you had felt him slipping away, subtly, almost imperceptibly. When you had begun to seek comfort in his arms, to seek the warmth of his body, to seek his love on his lips.

You loved him.

So you spent the nights lying awake in fear. Fearing the moment when you would have to make a choice. Fearing the moment when you would have to betray.

Which side would you choose when both armies were coming towards you, carrying the same flags, the same weapons, both calling your name?

Anxiety had spread its roots in the pit of your stomach, crescent moons in the palms of your hands. You felt as if you were losing your mind.

But the choice had been forced upon you without you having to make it. You had accepted it, as your duty demanded, as your loyalty to your family demanded.

Life at Winterfell wasn't so bad, quite the opposite in fact, despite the cold and snow you weren't used to. Cregan Stark was a good man. He had given you time and space to grieve, and had opened the castle gates to you with kindness. You had decided that you could get used to the cold and the snow, to the stone and the rustic wood, so different from the refineries of the capital, but infinitely warmer.

It was your choice, your departure for Winterfell.  Dragonstone was still haunted by the ghost of Luke, by the ghosts of Joffrey and little Aegon and Viserys and Rhaenys and all the family members you had lost.  King's Landing was haunted, too. By your sweet aunt and her cries of despair, by Aegon's descent into madness, by the humiliations you had so gracefully endured, by the recurring announcements of deaths, by the smell of the innocents’ blood, by the pitiful looks of Alicent, who had seen in you the image of herself a few years earlier, powerless and manipulated.

But above all, it was haunted by him.

The weight of the memories had become unbearable and you needed to leave.

You chose Winterfell, hoping the cold would help you forget. And Jace had come with you, his thumb caressing the back of your hand with affection, always the protective, reassuring big brother he was to you.  Probably glad to see his friend again, too. Your friend, to both of you.

But forgetting was something you'd never really been able to do, even less with the last memory he'd left you.

Now, just over three years later, you felt ready to return to King's Landing to visit your parents, to face the demons of your past and to mourn once and for all. It was inexplicable, perhaps a little strange, but you felt the need to go back.

On his first dragon ride, Rhaegar clapped his hands along the way, nestled into your arms in front of you, closing his eyes as the wind ruffled his dark curls. Midnight, your dragon, as pleasant as ever, as easy and gentle as ever, took care to be careful with the two of you on his back.

When you arrived, Rhaenyra hugged you as tightly as she'd ever hugged you, her nose buried in your thick hair, before bending down to take her grandson in her arms.

"I've missed you, sweet girl." she said to you. You smiled and reached for her arm, glancing at your son who'd grabbed one of your mother's long silver curls: "Daemon has missed you too. You know he doesn't show his feelings, but... he missed you." 

You smile, your eyes dropping to the floor.  You missed them, too, terribly, despite the frequent letters.

"And of course... we’ve missed you too, little one!" Rhaenyra added, catching the child's nose with her thumb and forefinger, causing him to burst into laughter.

It felt good to be back.  It was good to have regained some sort of routine in your daily life with your family. It was good to see the walls of the Red Keep return to their original familiarity, chasing away the ghosts you feared you might see again.

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

Perhaps you should have listened to your stepfather and not stray under any circumstances from the knight who has been following your every step with concern, afraid to lose sight of you. 

Five years earlier, it was Sir Erryk's vigilance that you had deceived when you had carelessly followed your eldest uncle into the dangerous streets of the capital.

The streets of King's Landing offered you a freedom you had missed. But now you almost regret sneaking through the crowds to escape the vigilance of the knight who had escorted you. You decide to take a shortcut, the hood of your cloak pulled down over your forehead.  It must have been your imagination.  You aren’t on the worst side of the city, not like five years ago, and the streets have become safe, much safer now that your parents are in power.

Your footsteps led you to some stone steps, which you climb at full speed, your heart pounding in your chest.  Glancing behind you, you disappear like a shadow around the corner of an alley, but the feeling is still there. You feel as if you are being followed.

At the Red Keep you already had the unpleasant feeling of being observed. In the gardens, with your son. Along the ramparts, enjoying the sea breeze on your face.

But you blamed it on your body's automatic response to the anxiety that had built up in all the years you'd spent within the walls of the Keep.

You slow your pace as you spot the dome and towers of the Great Sept at the end of the alley. From there you can easily find your way back to the Red Keep. All you had to do is keep moving, staring ahead, pressing your pace, wrapped in the thick wool of your cloak.

One step after the other. Breathing deeply. Half-moons in your palms.

The Great Sept growing closer give you a strange kind of reassurance.

And then suddenly, one hand closes over your mouth, the other around your waist. Your back bangs painfully against the cold stone wall of the winding alley into which you have been dragged. Fuck. Fuck.

You are too paralysed to struggle, too paralysed to bite the hand of the stranger holding you prisoner between the wall and his own body.

"You obviously learned nothing from my advice, Lady Strong," the icy voice whispers in the hollow of your ear. Your eyes widen. 

That voice. It couldn't be.

Lady Strong. Lady Strong. Lady Strong.

It can’t be.

That is your sick mind playing tricks on you again.

"As reckless as ever, hm, aren't you? You could easily get yourself killed."

The stranger releases you and you look up again, tears forming at the corners of your eyes, searching for that icy blue, tinged with lilac, that have read through you so many times before.

It is impossible.

He has died three years before, falling from Vhaegar's back into the deep waters of the lake at Harrenhal.

Is it a ghost? Is it a hallucination?

"You are dead. You were dead," you whisper, more to yourself than to him, still in shock from the feel of his body against yours. You feel the tears that have formed at the corners of your eyes roll down your cheek, and your little fists pound his chest.

You have so much to say to him. So many things to reproach him for.

His hand cups your cheek to turn your head and force you to look at him, his thumb wiping away your tears. 

The way he looks at you hasn’t changed; it still makes you shiver. You still feel that your uncle could read through you, that he could discover your deepest secrets.  And there is still that hint of desire, too, that gleam in his one seeing eye.

You want to kiss him. You want to slap him.

He clenches his jaw as he pulls you against him, burying your face in his chest, his arms around you. He rests his chin on your head. One of his hands strokes your dark hair as you stifle sobs into the wool of his cloak.

The situation takes you back to your wedding night, when he had comforted you in the same way after you had told him that you couldn't hate him, even if you had tried.

"I know," you hear him whisper, the vocal cords vibrating from his throat against the top of your head.

He is standing there, in front of you. You cling to the fabric of his clothes with all your might, as if you're afraid he'll slip away again.

"How?" you ask, eyes closed, head against him. If he is to be taken from you again, you intend to enjoy every moment in his company. 

He clenches again. You step back to look into his eyes, to search his enigmatic gaze for answers, for clues, for signs that would explain how. Why.

He doesn't answer you, but he is filled with desire as he grips your chin between his middle and index fingers, as he captures your lips with his own. You rediscover the possessiveness you've been missing. He pushes you a little harder against the wall behind you, as if to remind you who you belong to. Who you were married to.

A familiar warmth blossoms between your thighs, a warmth you haven't felt for too long. You're trapped, right there, your uncle towering over you, trapped between the wall and his body. His fingers close around your jaw and you kiss him back hungrily, wrapping your arms around his neck to pull him closer.

You're perfectly aware that the situation is surreal.  You're perfectly aware that you're making a mistake, that you shouldn't respond to the kiss of the man who used to be your husband, not when he's technically still your enemy, not when he's technically dead. 

But you shut out the voices in your head begging you to stop.

"I still want to hate you, you know," you breathe between his parted lips. He merely mutters hm in reply, trying to shut you up again, his hands wandering under your cape, tracing the ribs of the body he'd missed so much. He reaches for your waist, your hips, which he grabs meanly. 

There's no one in the alley around you, but the hood over his head hides his long silver hair anyway. 

"Three fucking years." Your lips leave his, a mixture of anger and desire bubbling up from your lower belly. Aemond stares at you, his jaw clenched. He knows you need to unleash your emotions when you don't read an ounce of regret in his gaze. "Three. Fucking. Years. And you've told me nothing. You never sought to -"

"I couldn't," he retorts harshly. He seems to be searching for words to explain something you could not possibly understand, but his gaze does not soften. You know he needs time, you've learned to know him.  You've waited three years, what's another moment? But you're tired, and your patience isn't as strong as it used to be.  You look away, a mocking laugh escaping your lips as you repeat his justification. "You couldn't." 

"And risk your mother executing me?" He forces you to look at him again, and you feel the lump form in your throat. You know you are perhaps being unfair, but you were alone for those three years while you mourned him, so alone, and in a way, you want to make him pay.

"You were dead to me, qybor." Uncle. You feel him twitch at the mention of your family tie, at the nickname he used to love to hear on your tongue. "I had to live with the idea that you would never come back."

The tears that had dried on your cheeks threaten to flow again, pooling at the corners of your eyes. Aemond sighs. 

"I thought I was dead too," he whispers. You can feel the tension in every one of his muscles. There's a moment of hesitation, a silence that hovers between you.  You have so many questions, but you don't know where to begin.  Not a sound leaves your lips.

"She tended to my wounds," he adds, and you frown in confusion. "Alys."

Alys. You try to wriggle out of his grip, but he keeps you pinned to the wall.  Alys, you remember the rumours whispered in your ear by that rat of Larys - those false rumours, you remind yourself -  but you can't help feeling your heart clench.  You don't trust your voice enough to speak, to say anything.

"There's no one left in Harrenhal but her," he adds, as if you need that clarification, as if you need to know where he's been all this time. 

You say nothing. Your throat is tight. If you speak, if you look at him, you'll cry again and betray your feelings all over again. You refuse to make a fool of yourself, not now.

"She's the one who saw you. In Winterfell." There's a hint of bitterness in his voice as he mentions the place where you've spent the last few years rebuilding yourself, trying to forget him.  A bit of anger, perhaps, too.

"Cregan Stark welcomed me indeed," you reply curtly.  Perhaps you want to hurt him as he hurt you, but you are deliberately vague in your answer. "I have mourned you, qybor."

Everything is so confused in your mind.  A paradoxical blend of desire, anger, sadness, jealousy.  Of love too.

You want to strangle him and melt on his lips at the same time, and you know that after all this time you should be used to feeling this paradox of emotions with Aemond. Your uncle was a set of contradictions all his own.

"I saw you. On Midnight. That's how I knew you were here."

You nod. Words don't work between you, you know that. It has always been like that; the habit of letting silence speak more than words. The habit of communicating through the carnal acts of your bodies against each other. *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

Aemond pushes you against the wooden door as soon as you enter the mediocre room of the inn. He is demanding, more than ever, as his hands run along your hips to your thighs to lift you up and press you against the door, your legs closing around him. He watches you with hungry eyes, like a predator ready to pounce on its prey. You can't stop a moan from escaping your lips. 

There's something feverish, passionate, urgent about the kiss. And when his tongue begs for an opening, your lips part to welcome him. There is only you in this room, an interlude where nothing else exists, where you don't have to worry about your duties and loyalties, where you are guided by nothing but passion.

His hand slams against the wall next to your head and with a movement of his hips he lifts you a little higher onto his waist, your legs locked tightly around him. He grunts into the crook of your neck at the friction of your crotch against his.

"Tell me to stop." His hand which isn't against the wall to support your weight slides up to your jaw. He lifts your chin, his gaze locked in yours, searching for clues, anything that would betray your desire to end whatever it is you're doing. "Tell me to stop now, or I won't be able to."

You don't want to stop. You should, you know you should, but you silence the little voice in your conscience that's begging you to pull yourself together, to end it all before you've even started, before you've even gone too far, and you kiss him with more vigour, with more fervour.

"I'm not going to tell you to stop, qybor," you whisper against his lips. "You know that."

His hardened member twitches beneath you at the mention of the High Valyrian, at the mention of that nickname he's so fond of. It's his weakness, you know, and despite the three years he's been away, he hasn't changed.

It's so good to feel him against you again, to feel his lips against yours, along your jawline to the junction with your neck. In one sharp movement, he rolls his hips to meet yours, pressing you a little harder against the wooden wall, and he catches your moan between his lips.

You know that tonight there will be no shy touches between you, no awkward explorations like in the early days of your love, when it wasn't tainted by war, blood, and death yet. You and he will both be consumed by the burning fire of passion.   You both need to release that tension and frustration, to make up for lost time, to drown, drunk with desire, in the most carnal of acts. All that matters now are his hands on your body to ease the pain pulsing between your thighs, the desperate need to feel him inside you. 

The barrier of your clothes frustrates you. You need to feel his skin against yours, to feel all of him, and your hand runs down his body to pull at the cord holding his breeches together. Immediately his fingers close around your wrist to hold you back. He wants to be in control, you know. But it has been three years and something about you just isn't the same.

"Let me worship you like I used to, qybor," you whisper against his lips, your forehead pressed against his, and you feel his jaw tighten. There's a moment of hesitation in his eyes, clouded by desire.

His thumb caresses your lips, pressing against your lower lip. You part them, just enough for the tip of your tongue to wet the top of his thumb. There are no further words exchanged between you, just silence, punctuated by your gasping breaths. His hand closes around your throat, not pressing too hard, just enough so you can feel the weight of his palm against your windpipe, just to remind you that he's in complete control of the situation.

Fuck, you've missed it; the adrenaline of his hand around your throat, the adrenaline of knowing he could do anything to you and you'd be defenceless.

"On your knees then."

The command echoes through the room and you feel the wetness seeping between your thighs as you slide to your knees in front of him. Your eyes shine with envy and you look up at him as you did years ago. You know he can't resist the angelic look on your face when you're between his thighs. You know he can't resist the dichotomy between the innocent look on your face and the sinful act you're about to commit.  He revels in your submission, and that's something you've learned to use against him.

Your uncle releases his cock from his breeches, his hand wrapped around the base, and the desire you feel between your thighs becomes more and more unbearable. The head is already glistening with anticipation, white pearls beading at the slit, and it takes all of Aemond's self-control not to grab you by the hair and force himself into your mouth entirely. 

Closing the distance, he rubs his member against your lips to spread the wetness before pushing into your mouth. Your lips close around him. He's warm and heavy on your tongue and the hand holding the base of his manhood is replaced by yours to cover what you can't take. Your tongue curls around the tip first, absorbing his salty taste, and you look up at him through your long lashes. He doesn't look away from you.

His hand cups your cheek, his thumb caresses your cheekbone before sliding to the corner of your lips, just where his length disappears between them. It's as if he's hypnotised by the spectacle, by the bobbing of your head, by your hollowed cheeks, by your application and devotion. 

His hands leave your jaw and sink into your thick curls, urging you to take him a little deeper, and he thrusts between your lips with more vigour. You close your eyes, concentrating on not choking as his member touches the back of your throat. You take it as diligently and assiduously as ever, ignoring the tears gathering at the corners of your eyes.

"That's it, just like that. Such a good girl, mandianna [niece], such a good wife," you hear him grunt, his movements more erratic, more jerky, and you revel in his praise, sending a new wave of heat between your thighs. "Only for me."

You feel him throb on your tongue. You know it won't be long now, and you prepare yourself to welcome him, to let the salty taste of his seed flood your tongue, but your uncle pulls back reluctantly. 

"I would rather not waste." he whispers, his eyes riveted on the thread of saliva that connects your lips, glistening with saliva and precum, to the tip of his cock. You shudder. Aemond definitely hasn't changed much, you realise.

His hand finds your cheek again and he caresses your lips to spread the mess you've made by sucking him. You know he isn't finished. This is just the beginning and you're both driven by the consuming hunger of passion. You know what's coming now, your core clenching around nothing, and you rub your thighs together, in an attempt to soothe the impatience. 

He urges you to stand. He has that predatory look in his eyes as he closes the distance between you with his determined steps. 

" Undress," he orders, and you do not take your eyes off him as you untie the linen dress you had put on to disguise yourself as a common girl.

The garment falls heavily to the floor, forming a grey puddle at your feet, and you take a step forward.

"Do you not like seeing me dressed in rags, qybor?" you ask in a playful tone, teasing, referring to the time, years ago, when he had rescued you during your adventurous walk along the grim Silk Road where your uncle Aegon had accidentally led you. 

The memory was so close and yet so far away.

Aemond takes a step towards you, his hand brushing aside the long hair that hides your breasts to tuck it behind your shoulder.

"Not when you are meant to be my Queen." His eye glow with desire. He studies your body in detail as his fingers slide down your collarbone to your breasts. His thumb traces their underside before moving up to your nipples, hardened by the cool evening air and desire. He plays with them, eliciting a moan that satisfies him.  He looks at you like one looking at a prize, a long-awaited gift.

"Three years away from my beautiful wife," he whispers, his good eye gleaming as he looks at your breasts.

"You did have pleasant company in Harrenhal though, didn't you?" you hiss through your teeth and Aemond's hand suddenly closes around your throat to make you swallow your insolence.  You're not afraid, not anymore, for you know he won't hurt you. You have this power over him and it's delicious. 

His face is so close to yours that your noses are touching. 

He doesn't let go of you. 

"It wasn't like that." He whispers. "With her." You know he's sincere because he's almost awkward with his words, his explanation. You can see in his eye that there are so many other things he would like to tell you, but you have learned not to rush him.  It has always been difficult for him to open up, to be vulnerable.

His fingers release you. Aemond is a good head taller than you, and as he puts a hand on your shoulder, moving forward to force you back until your knees hit the mattress, your eyes remain fixed on his. 

Your uncle lays you down on the mattress. It's not the comfort of the bed you once shared, but you don't care, you just need him inside you. 

You need him to make you feel whole again. Aemond was fire, and you were willing to burn for him.  You had always burned for him.

In the candlelight of the small bedroom where you spend the night, you see his thumbs slip under the waistband of his breeches. His clothes quickly join yours on the floor.

There's something soothing about the weight of his naked body on top of yours. Once under him, you know you can surrender completely to him and stop thinking, just stop thinking.

His lips on yours, his hands on your body, his broad torso eclipsing your smaller figure.

He places kisses down your neck to your collarbone, sucking your skin between his teeth to leave purple marks that will blossom tomorrow. 

He kisses your breast, his lips closing around an erect nipple which he sucks gently, then around the other.  Your hands are buried in his long silver hair.  You can feel how wet you are between your thighs. You need him desperately, right there.

The confidence with which his fingers slide down your waist, from your hips to your inner thighs, only emphasises his ravenous expression. His touch on your folds sends a wave of heat through your body, causing your hips to move against his hand. Softly tracing the curves of your crotch, his index and middle fingers finally part your folds to collect the wetness that has formed there.

"Is it sucking your husband's cock that has got you so wet? 

Yes, you want to answer, seeking more contact, but the words are stuck in your throat.

"Stay still," he orders in a hoarse voice as you move your hips, his hands gripping your hips to pin you back against the mattress. 

You comply, for once, because you know he won't give you what you want otherwise. And you can't wait any longer, not today, not when you thought you'd never feel his warmth against your body again, his hands on your hips, his cock inside you.

"You see, you can be a good girl." His voice is softer when you obey. And to reward you, his fingers slide to your entrance, where he applies a little pressure with the tip of his middle finger without actually penetrating you. "Now beg your husband to fill you."

"Please, qybor," you murmur, your hand taking his cheek to bring his face to yours. You want him to look at you. "Please, I need you inside."

Oh, the slowness and precision with which his finger plunges into you makes you throw your head back. He begins to move back and forth, his index finger joining his middle one, caressing your spongy walls, his thumb tracing circles around your bud. Curling his fingers, he strokes that spot inside you that makes your legs tremble and you clutch the sheets beneath you.

You feel your centre tighten around his fingers, the release you've been looking for so close, so very close. You shut your eyes, ready for the familiar wave of warmth to wash over your entire body, but your uncle pulls his fingers away. You grunt in frustration.

You open your eyes only to see Aemond bring his fingers to his lips indecently, spreading your wetness over his own lips. "You still taste so good," he purrs, and you feel the blush rise to your cheeks.

He leans over to kiss you and you taste yourself on his lips. It's indecent.

He pulls back and you see him wrap his hand around his hardened cock, the head angrily red and already drooling in anticipation. He guides himself to your core, rubbing his length between your folds, coating it with your glistening juices. 

The round tip of his member enters you, slowly at first, stretching your narrow entrance as if to give you time to adjust. Aemond pushes and he sinks easily into you until he's fully seated, your warm, wet walls feeling heavenly around him, squeezing him just right.

" You are so tight," he growls against you as your arms close around him, your legs bent and pressed to either side of his body. 

He gives you a moment to get used to having him inside you again, to feeling him so deeply. It's exactly what you need; he stretches you deliciously, with a perfect touch of controlled pain.

You feel whole again and you want to cry.  You never want to lose that feeling. You want to keep him, against you, inside you.

You close your eyes and bury your head in the hollow above his shoulder, clinging to him as if to feel him more deeply, more intimately.

"You can move," you reply, rolling your hips to support your words. Aemond's hand immediately presses down on your stomach to hold you against the mattress and you bite your lower lip, almost guilty of forgetting his earlier command. He always has that need to control. He's the one who decides, you should know it after all these years, and you should stop being so demanding, so desperate.

"I said stay still," he scolds you, and the waiting is unbearable. 

You need him. 

When he finally pulls out and thrusts into you again, you let out a whimper. Your nails dig into the pale skin of his back, leaving crescent marks that will probably still be there the next day.

Once under him, Aemond has the ability to make you vulnerable, and part of you hate him for it.

"You take me so well," he growls after a particularly brutal thrust. "You're such a good girl."

The praise is sweet music to your ears.  You have always needed it, to be praised, complimented.

You feel him hitting that special spot deep inside you, you feel him pressing in so deeply and your grip tightens around him.

"Did you miss me?" you whisper in a voice made weak by pleasure, but all you get in return are the hoarse grunts of his voice.

Aemond lowers his eyes to look at where you are joined, hypnotised by the sight of his cock disappearing inside you. The rhythm he imposes is powerful, deep, and his fingers find their way between your bodies, reaching your little bud at the top of your folds to trace circles on it. You won't last long and he knows it as he feels your walls tighten desperately around him. Your moans grow louder.

"Look at me." His voice barely brings you back to reality, even though your mind is already far away, even though you know you can't last much longer. Painfully, you open your eyes to meet your uncle's icy gaze. " I am going to fill you up." His pacing becomes more erratic, more sloppy, and you know he won't last much longer either. Leaning on his forearm, he continues to stroke your pearl in small circles. "I am going to fill you up and you're going to take it all."

The image of you, belly round with his child, haunts him.  It never stopped haunting him, even on the brink of death, even when he thought he'd exhaled his last breath as he fell into the icy waters of the lake, his heart clenched with regret and remorse. It still is a wonder that he has survived. Perhaps, just perhaps, the Gods still had plans for him.

I'm going to fill you up. Words like that shouldn't bring you to ecstasy, and yet they do. Aemond reaches deeper, and as he feels your whole body convulse with the spasms of your orgasm, he joins you in your release. He spills his seed deep inside you before remaining still, buried against your womb, enjoying your warmth, making sure he's pouring every last drop into you. 

He doesn't want to pull out, not yet, and you close your arms around his neck, your breast pressed against his chest as he softens inside you.

The weight of his body on yours is comforting.  For the first time in years, you feel alive. For the first time in years, the open wound he left seems to be healing.

When he pulls out, you wince at the sensation of his cock slipping between your still too sensitive folds. You immediately miss the feeling of fullness. 

You barely move, your whole body still sore from your lovemaking, but you can feel his cum leaking from your entrance onto the mattress below.

Again, Aemond's fingers are between your thighs that are glistening with the intimate essence of both of you, collecting his own seed and pushing it back into you.  You whimper, still too sensitive, your lips brushing against his, and he remains inside you for a brief moment. He wants to make sure nothing is wasted.

And when he withdraws his fingers, he presses them against your lips for you to clean them.

You snuggle up against him, your head against his chest. Your hand caresses his chest, the fine line of his muscles, and he rests his chin on the top of your head, wrapping an arm around your waist to hold you close. You enjoy the warmth of his body while you still can. Between your thighs you feel the sticky sensation of his seed mixing with your wetness as it still flows out of you, but you don't want to leave the embrace of his arms.

"I saw you in the gardens. With the child."

When you feel his throat vibrate, you look up at him, your eyebrows furrowed. "It was you, then?" You swallow. "It was you watching me." It's more of an observation than a question, and you suddenly understand that constant, uncomfortable feeling of being watched. At least you weren't crazy. 

He lets out a hm and pauses.

"Is he yours?"

You know where this question is leading. You fear the moment of truth.  You'd deluded yourself into thinking you could avoid it, but you were naive; did you really think you could hide the truth from him for much longer, now that he was back?

"Yes." You answer, looking away. You're nervous, and he can feel it.

"He's Cregan Stark's son, isn't he?"

Your heart clenches. You hesitate for a moment. You should lie.  You know you should lie.  To protect your son and your family, as you've protected them for the past three years.  You only need one word.

You hear him sighing beneath you, taking your silence as confirmation.

"No, he's not." 

The words leave your lips before you can even stop them. You hold your breath. Beneath you, Aemond tenses. He straightens, puzzled, silent.

"A bastard, then?" His voice is dry, almost mocking, revealing a form of irritation. "I did not expect this from you, dear niece." Disappointment.

You feel anger boiling inside you at the thought of him insulting your son, your sweet boy you love so much. You swallow the lump that has formed in your throat and rise on your forearms, your eyebrows furrowed as you turn your hard gaze on him.

You don't know how to express the words that are desperately trying to escape your lips. 

" He has blue eyes," you add, and you can see the confusion on his face. A lock of hair slips from your shoulder and falls around your face. "Your blue eyes."

You feel him tense up. He says nothing, just stares at you with his one seeing eye.  It's rare to see Aemond Targaryen so unsure of himself, so full of doubt. He stares at you as if he's afraid he's heard you wrong, as if he's afraid he's invented the words that have come out of your mouth.

"What did you say?"

You look away. You bite your lower lip, regretting your words.  You want to bury your face in his chest. You breath. 

"He is your son, Aemond." You finally admit it.

It's true that Rhaegar's brown curls could easily make him look like a Stark. Cregan had offered to raise him as his own, and you had smiled at his kindness.

Rhaegar is so much like you. Like you, and like Luke, and especially like Jace as a child, of whom he is the spitting image. He has the soft features of your face, but his eyes make him undeniably Aemond's son.

Your uncle holds you close, his arm wrapped around your waist, his long nose buried in the hollow of your neck, breathing in the scent of your hair.

"My son," he repeats in awe.  It's rare to see Aemond smile with sincerity.  Especially after the war has worn him down, made him more ruthless than ever.

"His name is Rhaegar," you say. "Just as we discussed." There's shyness in your voice.

He straightens, you on top, straddling him, and he seeks your lips to kiss you fiercely. His desire awakens beneath you; you feel him harden against your core again.

And this time, he makes love to you.

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** 

"I missed the best part." He purrs against you, his hand absently caressing your breast before sliding down your body to rest on your flat stomach, just above where your womb lies. He clenches his hand possessively over your flesh. His voice is almost tinged with regret. Your hand rests on his.

"You shouldn't have left me," you reply, bitter. Deep down, you're still angry with him. Your gaze falls on your stomach, where both your hands lie, yours on top of his, clasped together. "You shouldn't have let your anger dictate your actions," you add, looking away. "But you were blinded by your desire for revenge, by your desire to prove that you could be better than him.” You swallow.

It is his fault, after all, that he missed your son's birth, that he didn't see him grow through the tender years of his infancy.

Rhaegar needed a father, and it was Cregan who raised him.

"Does he even know who I am? Who his father is?"

The guilty look on your face betrays you, and you know immediately that you've hurt his feelings. It may be selfish of you, but he needs to understand.

"You were supposed to be dead. There's still a lot he doesn't know." 

He doesn't say anything. You don't have the courage to meet his hard, stern gaze, you don't have the courage to see the disappointment and pain on his face, because if you do, your heart will tighten and you will fall apart.

"He's still so young. Give him time." You add, your fingers tracing small circles on the back of his hand, in an attempt to soothe him. 

You know how much Aemond wanted a son, and you know it's cruel to take that from him.  You know he would have made a good father. You can picture him with Rhaegar on his knee, reading him stories, telling him about the adventures of Vhagar and Visenya, and you love the image that forms in your mind.

You told Rhaegar about Aemond, though he was still too young to understand. You told him that his father had once owned the greatest dragon in the world, that his father was a fearless man for it was true, and you saw his big eyes light up. 

Aemond pulls you closer to him. "I want to be there for him, you know."  Unlike Viserys, but he doesn't have to say it, you understand what he means in the undertone he leaves at the end of his sentence.  He has always suffered from his father's indifference.

You cuddle up to him and he runs his fingers through your long curls. For a moment, you imagine that everything is fine and you search for his touch. He plants a kiss on the top of your head.

"I've missed you," he admits, the words landing on the tips of his lips in the silence of the bedroom, but you're already dozing off.

You know that tomorrow will be made up of choices and decisions. 

But for now, you fall asleep in the embrace of his very real arms, for once, enjoying the illusion of the life you both could have had.

#aemond x reader #aemond targaryen #Aemond Targaryen x reader #aemond x you #aemond fanfiction #aemond targaryen fic #aemond x y/n #aemond x fem!reader #aemond targaryen x you #aemond x niece!reader #aemond targaryen fanfic

[vaspider]

I agree with you in principle about paying media creators, but the fact is that people who are spreading piracy stuff are often doing so because either 1) they don’t want to give money to the big corporations that control most mass media, or 2) they don’t have the money to give to creators of things they love. I agree that if you have the means to give proper support to things you love, you should, but not everyone has access to library resources (for example, not everyone is American/western and so not everyone has access to online pdfs through a library, or even libraries at all in some places) and it just feels very…. not extreme, but a bit harsh to equate reading a pdf with intentionally withholding money from creators. I’m sorry it this comes across rudely, that isn’t my intent, but it feels very unfair to generalise so harshly on a post about resources for when you can’t access certain things

You aren't entitled to someone else's labor just because it's art.

I'm going to repeat that, because people seem to be confused: you aren't entitled to someone else's labor just because it's art.

Just because you don't have money to pay a creator doesn't mean that you can take what you want and take money out of other people's pockets just because it's art.

I would love to have more art from @fofoart, but I don't have the money to pay them right now, so you know what that means? I don't have more art from them. I would love to read Thistlefoot right now, but I don't have the money to buy it at the moment, and so you know what that means? I wait until I can get it through my library or until I have the money to buy it, because I am not entitled to someone else's labor just because it's art.

There are plenty of books out there which can be read without pirating books. If you sign up to Tor's website you often get emails about free books and short stories. Project Guttenberg exists. Writers often post free stories on websites. There are more legitimate and free books out there right now, in the genres that you like and want to read, than you could ever read in ten lifetimes.

You are not entitled to someone else's labor just because it's art. You are not entitled to fuck up someone's sales numbers or make a publishing house go "your books are pirated too much so we're gonna pay you less" just because you want to read that specific book.

I mean, you can do that, I guess, but you can't do it and be morally correct about it. You can do it and be an asshole, or you can not do it, read one of the many many free books in this world, and not be an asshole.

There are no other choices. You don't get to just say "well I don't have money but I want this" and fucking steal it and then act like this is anything but theft. It's theft! It's not justified just because you really wanna read it!

This isn't "not supporting creators," this is stealing from artists because you feel entitled to do so because "I want it."

That's toddler logic. Grow up.

[ohcorny]

so! it's been a year since i put never satisfied on hiatus, and 9 years since i started posting it, and rather than make you read everything if all you want to know is "when's it coming back?" the answer is still: don't know! but the answer has also shifted closer to "it isn't" the longer i've spent on break, and i think it's worth being up front about that.

i talked about it a little here a few weeks ago, but the long and short of it is that between taking on better paying work, writing better stories, and looking back at what i'd already done for never satisfied... i just don't think i want to continue it? the year off has been incredibly good for my mental health, and i can't see myself wanting to go back after the two-three years still ahead of me on my current project. that's not to say i never want to return to the characters or the concept, but if i did, i imagine it would be with something completely new, in a different form. after all, i started this comic when i was 21 years old, a lesbian, and a sophomore in college. i am now just shy of 30, a bi man, and overall a completely different person than i was, back when i was writing without a plan and putting all of my insecurities into the comic--insecurities i don't identify with anymore. lord i'm closer to rothart's age than i am to lucy's. hate that

anyway. you have all been extraordinarily kind for following never satisfied for as long as you have, for supporting it as much as you have, and being as patient as you have. whatever form never satisfied takes in the future (god willing, with a more cohesive story structure and A PLAN FOR THE ENDING, WHICH BY THE WAY I NEVER, EVER HAD) i hope to see you there!

in the meantime, as an update on where i'm at with the thing that made me stop working on NS: i finished it! all the pages for Hunger's Bite (if you remember it with a different title: no you don't) have been turned in and now it's just revisions and covers and then........ waiting a year until it can come out. because that's how it is in traditionally published graphic novels! nothing releases for a full year after you finished it! and you're even getting it earlier than was originally planned, because i'm a creature and finished it like three months ahead of schedule. i've also already started thumbnailing the sequel book which i can't talk about whatsoever and will now be working on that for the next two years and then HOPEFULLY the first book will have done well enough that i can sell a third! so you better buy it when it comes out next february!!!!!!

to ease you all into it, i wanted to do a little crossover to introduce the main characters. we have emery, whose design is fully and unintentionally just Seiji Again down to his color palette (but seiji would bully him if they met. like so hard. he's a wimp). then we have neeta, a girl who dreams of travel and cares deeply about worker's rights, and wick, a vampire agent investigating the mysterious and sinister new owner of the 1910s ocean liner emery and neeta call home. he's also gay. but sorry lucy, you aren't his type. you're not mean enough.

the best place to keep up with me these days is probably here, as this first book gets closer to release, i will probably be posting about it a lot. and i will certainly post about it here when there's an official release date and cover reveal! i hope you'll go read it. i really think if you liked never satisfied and its themes, you'll like hunger's bite!

thank you again for reading!!

#corndraws #hunger's bite #never satisfied