#she's just so much more than like the Version of herself that she descended to and that was needed of her for the life that she's led

[halechief]

in case you guys forgot about claire playing beer pong in the white house residency

#sorry. #sorry guys. #i hate to do go against my own vibes w my dark claire aesthetic and the fact that i came back to this blog literally to do fucked up #moral ambiguity #and i will and i am and it does interest me but there are times where i am just So. Upset #about the fact that claire is fun . and cool. and so capable of #silliness and devotion and kindness and compassion. she's so god damned cute #she's good at beer pong .. like literally good at it.. its canon. she let the secretary of state win #she's just so much more than like the Version of herself that she descended to and that was needed of her for the life that she's led #and i just. am so fucking emo

[ijustliketoreadstuff]

Adrien was done with Chloe and Lila.

In "Protection", as Lila lies to Kagami, she makes up the lie about experiencing a tragic heartbreak in a previous romantic relationship she once had, saying that the boy she once loved had made the decision to no longer see her. Lila has lied about many things and although we know Lila is lying to Kagami about a past romantic relationship, it's not uncommon for some of her lies to end up being twisted versions of reality.

The "boy" Lila is talking about who left her in so much pain, is obviously Adrien since he is the only boy she has had eyes for since her first introduction in "Volpina". So, perhaps something did happened between her and Adrien, and that something might have occurred not long after Adrien made the decision to end his friendship with Chloe back in "Derision"

In "Derision", as Adrien silently walked away from Chloe, a lot of things must have been running through his mind as he thought about everything in his life and the life he had with Chloe (more here), but among those thoughts, he might have also begun questioning the one other thing that reminded him of his decision to end a friendship with someone, and that was his reasoning for staying friends with the only other person he knew would, and did, hurt the people he loved, Lila.

At the start of the series, Adrien had made attempts to be patient with Lila and her deceitful nature, why? Because no matter how much of a liar Adrien realized Lila was, after learning she was not a descendent of a superhero or saved by Ladybug, part of him could not help but hope that maybe Lila could eventually come around and realize her lies would not give her the life she wanted and would eventually turn others against her rather than give her the connections he thought she was searching for, to give her the love and attention he thought she needed. To Adrien, Lila had the potential to be good just as much as anyone, but she would never learn to be good so long as there were others who would attempt to expose her and humiliate her in front of others. 

(in "Chameleon", Adrien questions Marinette if her attempts to expose Lila in front of everyone was a good idea as doing so would only humiliate and hurt Lila more, pushing her away from following a better path for herself.)

Adrien remembered the way Lila reacted when Ladybug exposed her back in "Volpina", to see Lila cry the way she did after being humiliated made him feel a sense of sympathy as he determined Lila was nothing more than someone who craved attention. 

(Adrien explains his views of Lila in "Oni-chan", believing she was not dangerous and only craved attention)

At the start, Adrien genuinely believed Lila was not dangerous and just needed someone to trust and confide in, someone who would be willing to offer her a helping hand and be that person she could rely on, and he for one was more than willing to be up for the task so long as she was willing to be honest with him. However, over time, Adrien would learn just how dangerous Lila was, the more he saw the full extent of her lies, but more than anything, Adrien would also learn how his kindness for her fooled him into believing she was someone else entirely.

  In "Oni-chan", Adrien did not appreciate Lila deceiving Nathalie and his bodyguard as he knew they would suffer consequences from his father, but despite this, he would later feel hopeful in seeing Lila show a sense of (fake)vulnerability as she clung to Ladybug and expressed how she understood heroes like them were only trying to help her, but it was precisely this moment of potential good that led Adrien to build his understanding of Lila and further imagine the type of person she was, as well as what she could do for herself in the future.

To see Lila have a more positive attitude towards Ladybug amidst Oni-chan's relentless pursuit, was more than enough for him to believe that Lila was coming around and learning that she could rely on others if she was willing to set aside her ways and open up as a more truthful person, that she really was just a girl who needed a little kindness and guidance her way.

(In "Oni-chan", Cat Noir really thought Lila was coming around to accepting Ladybug, a sign that Lila had made steps to being a better person)

Unfortunately, through that one little moment of watching Lila express a sense of "good", Adrien formed a positive view of Lila which had blinded him to the reality of her deceit, all the while he was amidst a fight against Oni-chan. Ladybug knew what Lila was capable of, she knew how much Lila could deceive others because Lila told her in "Chameleon" just how far she was willing to go to ruin another person's life if they did not fall under the line she had set and let her continue to live out the life she had built around her lies.

(Marinette/Ladybug saw Lila for who she was, a bad person).

Adrien on the other hand, could not see the same truth Ladybug saw because it was in his nature to see the good in everyone, to love everyone just as much as they were willing to love him, but the good he believed he saw in Lila was something he wanted to believe Lila would prioritize for herself, however, Lila had no such plans to do so regardless of understanding the harm her lies could cause.

(Lila is perfectly aware of her actions and the lies she is telling other people )

Still, regardless of what Lila did during "Oni-chan" and "Ladybug", Adrien was still not willing to end their friendship, why? Because no matter how cruel Lila appeared to be, Adrien did not have the heart to leave someone, not when he still held out hope that things could change for the better, which is why he didn't officially end his friendship with Chloe back in "Queen Banana", even after he watched her continued cruel actions towards the others over the year.

(Despite their actions in "Ladybug" and "Queen Banana", Adrien could not bring himself to end his friendship with Lila and Chloe and only reminded them of the possibility of doing so if they did not fix what they caused and stopped their ways. Regardless if they did or didn’t, he held out hope they would listen to him and do as he asked, because they we’re friends)

And yet, in some ways, it was as if Adrien thought he understood Lila and her desperation for attention from others, because he too had experienced life where he was all alone and in desperate need of others' attention. Adrien grew up being isolated from the rest of the world, devoid of interacting with others his age. 

Sure, he had Chloe growing up, but it was precisely his experience in having just one person in his life to talk to that made him believe it would be all the difference in others like Lila who had no one. However, to Adrien, it would also be all the more painful if Lila ever lost someone like him who was willing to listen to her. After he became Cat Noir, Adrien even understood what it was like living a life surrounded by lies, lies he knew would hurt him and the good people around him, but was something he would not need to continue in the future if he found ways to improved things for himself, and so odds are, Adrien thought Lila felt the same way, but as we all know, she didn't.

Much like Chloe, Adrien believed Lila's toxic behavior was temporary, that somehow, he could help change her. Adrien never stopped trying to hold out hope that Lila would eventually realize the harm she was causing and learn to make positive changes, all things he had also thought of when it came to facing Chloe. But the more Adrien saw Chloe and Lila continue to fall back into their ways, the more he began to question Lila and Chloe, their actions and whether or not they actually wanted to hold true to their word, to their apologies, as well as their promises and commit to the hard work and sacrifice of bettering themselves, but more than that, Adrien had to question whether or not his kindness and loyalty actually meant anything to them. 

After learning the full extent to Chloe's bullying in "Derision" and knowing that Lila had already succeeded in ruining Marinette's life and reputation in "Ladybug", Adrien had to face the cruel reality of his friendship with Lila and Chloe, as well as his attempts to salvage his friendship with them, time and time again, and the reality of it all was that his friendship with the two of them was not like the friendships he had with the others, it had become toxic and one sided. 

Things he believed Lila and Chloe would never do, were things he would not do himself and only assumed others had the good sense to do the same, but Lila and Chloe had every intention to continue doing what they did, why? Because they did not see the world the same way Adrien did, and to them, they were entitled to more than others and felt justified for much of what they did. 

Adrien had tried to understand how Lila and Chloe felt and thought, but in many ways, those thoughts and feelings were his, not theirs. He tried to find the reason behind their actions, but in many ways, he believed their reasons would be the same as his if he was in their position, but they weren't, their reasons were their own and they took joy for much of what they did, even when they knew it was not morally right in the eyes of others like Adrien.

In the end, as Adrien faced Chloe in Derision and heard her talk about her views of the world (more here), he did not give the same approach he would always give, because for the first time in a long time, Adrien did not see Chloe through his eyes, he saw Chloe through her eyes and understood that no matter what his hopes and expectations were, no matter what opportunities he and others were willing to offer and no matter how much time and dedication he was willing to give, he could not expect another person to decide the path he believed was best for them, they had to decide for themselves if they would take it, and that is exactly what he had to think about when it came to Lila, he had to look at Lila through her own eyes and understand her for who she was, not who he had imagined she would become if he stayed with her long enough.

In one little moment with Chloe in "Derision", Adrien knew he had a choice to make, should he allow one sided friendships with people like Chloe and Lila to continue? To live a life where he would only have brief moments of hope over the possibility that maybe the two could one day give up their ways, as he continued to watch from the sidelines knowing they felt they were entitled to hurt Marinette and others the moment they did something again, OR set his boundaries and stick to them, say enough was enough.

Adrien told Chloe as far back as "Despair bear" that he could not be friends with someone who was cruel to others, he told Lila as far back as "Oni-chan" that she could always rely on him as a friend, but not if she hurt the people he loved.

The day Adrien ended his friendship with Chloe, was likely the day he also decided to end his friendship with Lila, he was done with both of them as he understood that although anyone can change, not everyone wanted to, some people are who they are, and not even he could change that.

#miraculous ladybug #miraculous tales of ladybug and chat noir #tales of ladybug and cat noir #adrien agreste #marinette dupain cheng #mlb ladybug #thomas astruc #cat noir #mlb s5 spoilers #mlb protection #mlb protection analysis #ml protection analysis #lila rossi #chloe bourgeois #ml volpina #ml queen bee #mlb derision analysis #ml s5 analysis #mlb s5 analysis

[dealwithadeer]

Thinking about Eve meet with Husk and Niffty and how uneasy Alastor felt when Eve said “can I borrow them for a sec for reasons you don’t need to know” because Alastor pet is Eve pet too and Alastor couldn’t refuse it

(Poor Husk because he’s in the middle of two possessive being lmao)

Okay, but I have a few headcanons regarding Eve that I am gong to have to explain before I write anything:

This woman was created after Lillith to be a better version of her. That alone would mess anyone up once they find that out.

Sh is the one who actually committed the original sin by biting in that Apple that in HH Lucifer tempted her to take. The ensuring punishment by God and being cursed at by everyone for simply biting into an apple once a long, long time ago also would mess anyone up.

I like to think that just like Alastor Eve has a preference for women after all according to the Bible she is the first woman that got cursed with painful childbirth, period and having to be 'subservient to her husband', etc. So I think she would blame herself for the struggles women face but after a few thousand years of that this blame became much more warped especially since apparently she and Adam did get to have a place in Heaven which would contradict their original punishment. But you cannot question any of this because God is the one who made both these contractory seeming decisions and she has already found out once what questioning God means

If Eve is the one who owns Alastors soul than her marriage with Adam must have been bad enough for Alastor to not fear that he will face any negative consequences if he kills/hurts Adam.

Eve is every human souls (except Adam and Lillith) mother. She is also very disappointed in her children, just like Adam, and thinks that God is right with Heaven and Hell and she would prefer for most of her unworthy/naughty ones to be gone so the worthy/good ones can thrive. But instead of Adam she is being a creep and not an a-hole about it.

Pet is perhaps the wrong word since they all are her children in a way. But if you have literally billions of trillions of souls in Heaven and Hell and Earth who are your descendants than it is impossible to care for all of them equally or at all.

If you are a soul in Heaven, she is actually a very caring and almost 'normal' mother figure to be around. After all, you are one of her good children and worthy enough of eternal Paradise.

It's with her 'naughty' children that she gets creepy with.

Anyway, here is the request:

Eve has 'requested' the company of Husk and Nifty. The last time she had 'requested' anyones company it had been Alastors and she had personally punished him for his 'naughty' deeds and disobedience for seven years.

So you can imagine that Alastor was not all that thrilled about that woman getting a hold of his two favorite souls without his supervision (that he was completely powerless to do anything if she wanted to punish either of them and that she would probably make him be the executioner of it because in her own eyes Husk and Nifty were his 'responsibility' was something his pride did not allowe him to consider).

But he could not do anything, even as he tried to .. lessen whatever punishment or other thing Eve had in store for Husk and NIfty.

But as he was, still, always and forever smiling thanks to stitches , trying to point out of indespenseble all of their presence and work at the Hotel was for Eves overall plan, he felt a .. paw on his shoulder.

And usually he would have reprimanded Husker for thinking that he could simply touch his Boss whenever he felt like it, but as he saw at the feline he realized that this was not meant to annoy Alastor but rather a strange unofficial 'thank you' as Husker seemed to understand what Alastor was trying to do.

But Husker did not really look at him, he looked at Eve.

"' 'Course we will go"

Husk did not bother to even try to go against someone that even Alastor was terrified of. Whatever would happen, Husk would try his best to keep the attention on him so that Nifty would hopefully be left ignored.

Eve laughed.

"You are a smart one, aren't you.", she came closer to Husk and pinched one of his cheeks in a condescending manner. "Don't you worry, momma is going to bring you and your little friend back in no time at all."

She did not bother to say anything to Alastor as all, except give him a smile that made Alastor feel very much like the deer he was.

And then, they were gone and Alastor was left alone.

Cursing under his breath, his smile still one but the shadow on the wall clearly showing a pained and worried expression.

Meanwhile, Nifty lived in utter ignorance of the potential danger they were in. Which would not be very hard to be since the three of them were in a brightly lit room with a rather pleasant and peaceful and, most importantly, incredibly clean surrounding

"So.. what do you want us to do, Boss?", Husk asked, clearly wanting to get this over with as quickly as possible. But the taller woman only smiled at him, clearly waiting for something more.. correct to be said. "Ma'am?" came out less confident and less sure than 'Boss' which seemed to please Eve.

"Why, Husker, I simply want to have a cup of tea with you and Nifty. After all, we are family, aren't we?"

Nifty liked, no, Nifty loved tea parties and it had been so long since she was able to have one that didn't include roaches or corpses. She told Eve as such.

A moment of tense silence followed, in which Husk prayed to a God he was sure stopped listening years ago that Eve liked the comment.

And sure, enough Eve started laughing which prompted Nifty to laugh which caused Husk to give a fake, poite but relieved laugh as well.

They both stopped the second Eve stopped.

"Now why don't we take a seat. I am sure, that this will be much more.. pleasant than your previous parties."

And, surprsingly, it was not as .. horrible as Husk feared it would be.

There was an underlying threat in everything Eve said and did, but she genuinly seemed to like Nifty if only because Nifty was the one who killed her ex-husband who it turned out had been rather rude and ungentlemanlike towards her, blaming her for the whole apple dea entirely and things had only gone downhill with the deat hof their son by their other son and Eve searching for comfort in .. another man, well demons, arms. She seemed to find a certain pleasure in Adam almost killing Alastor but she found an even greater one in knowing Adam had been killed by a woman, although that pleasure had been short lived and quickly replaced by repeantance and guilt.

Somewhere along the line, her hand had reached out towards Husk and she had started to pet him in a way that was clearly absentmindedly as she recalled her ..marriage. She even mentioned her relationship with her 'sister' whom she called a previous and 'lesser' version of herself.

Husk did not move an inch even though he really wanted to

#I want everyone to have a soft spot for Husk #So Eve is going to have a soft spoit for Husk and Nifty #which would be understandable since Nifty killed her ex-husband and #Husk is just a big grumpy and very fluffy cat #both qualities that someone who might or might not be a bit deranged #woudl appreciate

[zhongrin]

swirl & crystallize (and more)

(self-indulgent version | original post)

◇ characters ◇ romantic!zhongli, familial!xiao, platonic!kazuha, platonic!shinobu, romantic!al haitham, platonic!ayato, familial!yaoyao

◇ tags ◇ fluff, selfship, be respectful; don't like don't read!, soft yandere on some parts

◇ a/n ◇ since the people i tagged had a lot of fun with the selfship version, it made me want to write one for myself hahah

ps. i treat the two teams as if they exist in a separate universe, so they're totally unrelated to each other!

pps. feel free to join in if you see this!

𝑚𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡 ⬙ 𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡

team 1: xiao (🏠), kazuha (👥), zhongli (💞), shinobu (👥) + lumine (👥)

(dynamics with each other in the old post)

✧— zhongli

⚘ about mei: the primordial one ⚘

i’m not sure what you’re talking about, traveler-

hm? she… told you about it? …. i see.

well, as she had requested, i hope you keep this a secret from the others. if teyvat ever knows that the master of this world herself has descended, i fear many of her people would vie for her attention. and as you know, she dislikes being in the spotlight…

⚘ about mei: husband and wife ⚘

i daresay that no one walking upon teyvat holds as much love and devotion to her as i do. it certainly is pleasing to know that my affection is reciprocated, and to this day i am still unable to fathom how she can regard me as an equal - and at times, higher - than her.

while i can say that it feels… pleasant, to know that she adores me so to the point of worship, all my life i have lived believing that it should be the other way around… so it’s quite a dilemma that i’m facing here.

✧— xiao

⚘ about mei: the primordial one ⚘

i don’t know what you’re talking about, traveler.

... huh? you knew? and rex lapis responded the same way, you say? … hmph. i see.

don’t you hit me with that ‘parent and child’ nonsense that she always jokes about. i am unfit to be someone’s ‘beloved son’ or whatever, and certainly not rex lapis and teyvat’s impetus.

⚘ about mei: mother and child ⚘

honestly, she treats me like a child despite fully knowing i can take care of myself. worrying about me whenever we dive into battles, always fussing over me to drink the qingxin tea to help with karmic debt… i’ve told her several times that her presence alone is enough to ease the burden of-

a-anyway, she’s quite the mother hen, as i’m sure you also know.

✧— kazuha

⚘ about mei: a special existence ⚘

just as how zhongli-sensei may not be all that he claims to be, i believe the same applies to his wife.

…. haha, you’re quite easy to read, traveler. it was a mere shot in the dark, with only my intuition as its guide, yet it seems like i am right once again. well, no matter. perhaps i will gain their trust in due time. now, i only wish to enjoy the present times of this delightful company.

⚘ about mei: like a sister ⚘

while a geo vision suits her, i think she would have been just as happy with an anemo vision. the way she always asks for me to float her upwards so she can glide down like an excited child is quite endearing. and the way zhongli-sensei rigidly stands by whenever she does this… *chuckles*

oh, i’m sorry, i just think he worries a little too much for his wife sometimes… it’s really quite sweet. it… reminds me of my own father, before my mother…

… ah, apologies, i didn’t mean for the atmosphere to take a gloomy turn.

anyway, i’m just happy to see her so content whenever she’s interacting with zhongli-sensei. i just wish they can dial down the public displays of affection sometimes - i personally don’t mind, but i can see that a few people constantly get secondhand embarrassments, haha!

✧— shinobu

⚘ about mei: chaotic neutral ⚘

look, i’m not saying she’s at the same level as the boss. but you have to admit, for someone who was so shy and timid at first, she sure hid a whole lot of personality once you get to know her.

she’s also a little too spoiled. have you seen how mr. zhongli would just bend over backward to abide by her words? it’s as funny as it is endearing, but i worry she’ll get in trouble one day when she accidentally steps her foot onto the wrong territory... huh? the mom friend? me? ….. *sigh*

traveler.

when am i not the mom friend?

⚘ about mei: looking out for each other ⚘

fortunately, she could be responsible and serious when she has to. it still surprises me how grounded and stern she could be when times are dire; it almost reminds me of mr. zhongli. are all geo vision holders like that, i wonder?

…. wait. scratch that. that was a stupid thought.

bonus!

✧— lumine

⚘ about mei: the primordial one ⚘

the first time i realized that this world exists for her sake, i was shocked, of course. what made her so special that a world was born just to entertain her musings? sometimes i think that if not for her, perhaps we wouldn’t have been-

..... *sigh* what am i saying. i know it’s not her fault that things unfolded this way, since she didn’t have the power to influence the events happening in teyvat. in any case, she felt responsible enough to tag along on this journey, and it’s mostly thanks to her that an ex-archon and the demon conqueror himself agreed to travel together with us. so no, i don’t resent her or anything like that. in fact, i would say that we’re good friends.

⚘ about mei: little sisters ⚘

she told me that she had older brothers, once. and it just… clicked to me. the reason why i feel like we can understand each other really well. the reason why she was so adamant to accompany me on my adventure. why she’s so empathetic whenever it comes to matters involving… him.

it’s all because she understands the pain of being separated from her family.

perhaps after i reunite with my family, i can accompany her on her voyage to look for hers? but… well, looking at how she has found a family here too, i’m not sure what she wishes to do…

team 2: al haitham (💞), ayato (👥), zhongli (💞), yaoyao (🏠)

✧— al haitham

oh my god he’s already one of my most beloved dps because dendro element’s flexibility + his high damage. it also helps that he’s the only 5* whom i have the signature weapon for lol

since he came home at 1 pity, i imagine in this scenario we just dropped by the akademiya one day on a whim to invite him to the party… and the next day the acting grand sage just goes missing, with a letter on his desk saying: “the divine one invited me to a vacation."

cue people working at the akademiya being quite literally in shambles because who do they report to now??? hello???? first the grand sage gets dethroned now the acting grand sage goes missing???????

he respects ayato and barely interacts with him, but they surprisingly get along well, be it or outside the battlefield.

with zhongli… not to say that they don’t get along well, but they certainly aren't the bestest of friends. they don’t snap at each other or anything like that though! it's just that if you leave them alone in a room, al haitham would just default to reading his book and zhongli would probably find something to amuse himself instead of talking with the akademiya scribe.

seems indifferent to yaoyao but silently looks after her. he made her a flower crown using his vision at her birthday one time, but that’s a secret he’ll take to his grave. except yaoyao proudly presented it to the other members when they asked where she got the adorable flower crown. #exposed

⚘ about zhongli: cold ⚘

surely by now, you know that i dislike quite a number of people and will not bother to try and force myself to get along with them. he’s not special in this aspect.

i simply am not a fan of sharing my... personal interests.

⚘ about ayato: elusive ⚘

the man wields his words like he wields his blades; swift strikes precisely delivered onto vital points, and before you could even blink, he’s had his sword back sheathed. very efficient and yet inefficient at the same time, i'd say.

⚘ about yaoyao: why is a child here? ⚘

i’m not sure why a young child is traveling with us, but mei kept saying she’s tagging along because she’ll make me stronger. to this day, i am unable to understand her logic, but i value her opinion so i let her do whatever she wants. surprisingly, from the combat data i’ve collected, her claim seems to be true. perhaps her godly powers are at work here. i’ll have to study this phenomenon further.

⚘ about mei: the primordial one ⚘

rin is certainly interesting, isn’t she? doesn’t exactly act like a deity when she’s supposed to be this world’s reason for existence. neither does she ask us to worship or obey her commands. and she certainly doesn’t seem to mind being treated so… well. lightly put, beneath what was supposed to be her place. hah. it’s quite refreshing.

hm. it seems like the sharp-eared consultant is glaring at me yet again. i’ll go back to reading my book now. kindly do not bother me for the next hour.

⚘ about mei: similarities ⚘

sans her periodically outgoing outbursts of energy and her deep empathy, i think we’re quite alike in the minute details of our personalities and preferences. we believe in work-life balance and our wish to lead a comfortable life overall. we’re also both not morning people. dislikes sand getting in our shoes. thinks that going out in the rain isn’t preferable. both avid fans of a good cup of coffee. she even told me my soundproof earpiece is a marvelous invention and that she always uses it too, back in the previous world she lived in. naturally, this means we get along rather swimmingly.

ah, that reminds me, i should tell her that i’ve finished making her headphones. now, if you’ll excuse me-

hm? ….. yes, i’m aware that it’s already quite late. but is that not the point? you might not know because your room is never next to the consultant’s, but at times his snores are just far too loud. this way, she can use the headphones right away. i’m sure it’ll help her to fall asleep undisturbed by any external interventions.

and besides, she likes it when i visit her at night.

✧— ayato

gameplay wise, honestly, ayato is just there to take over while i’m waiting for al haitham’s skill to cool down lol

he’s the team’s wallet, aka childe 2.0

surprisingly, ayato gets along pretty well with all of them.

yes, including al haitham.

zhongli could be a tad gullible sometimes, so ayato actually is having a blast feeding him uh… questionable lies… plus, he’s a big tease and he finds it funny to poke and prod at the stoic man. someone save zhongli

yaoyao reminds him of young ayaka, so he naturally dotes on her. big brother behavior, very wholesome.... until you realize he’s teaching her where to stab people so they bleed out and die (or in his words: ‘so bad people will get an ouchie’).

⚘ about al haitham: bet ⚘

while i can’t say our work ethics match each others’, i suppose i can bet a million mora that he’ll win in consideration as his friend.

hmm? win in what, you ask? ahaha, don’t mind my silly musings…

⚘ about zhongli: milk tea ⚘

oh, mr. zhongli is such a pleasant individual to chat over tea. speaking of, i think it’ll be tea time soon. do you perhaps have a bottle of milk, traveler? ah, perfect.

why do i need it you ask? well, the expression on his face whenever i add them to my cup of tea is always a sight to behold, haha!

⚘ about yaoyao: child labor(?) ⚘

if it was up to me i would have arrested mei for child labor. but she was smart enough to borrow what seems to be a friend of hers’ counterargument: “but you also employ sayu in shuumatsuban?”

well, i can’t possibly dispute that, can i? *chuckle* i would love to get to know that friend of hers one day.

⚘ about mei: the primordial one ⚘

haha, it really doesn’t feel like she’s teyvat’s beloved raison d’etre, doesn’t it? the way we interact with each other is a very different dynamic than what i’m used to dealing with, back home. she's vastly different than the raiden shogun, both in personality and way of life.

if i had to liken her to someone… i’d say she reminds me of ayaka. well… a more… how do i say this without incurring mr. zhongli’s disapproving glares… unhinged version of her, once you know her truly.

come now, don’t look at me like that. you know it’s true. *chuckles*

⚘ about mei: mistreatment ⚘

in my opinion, she’s very biased toward the akademiya’s scribe and wangsheng’s consultant. have you seen the charms she bestowed on them? they’re clearly of a very different quality than ours. even a normal civilian with no vision would be able to tell that they’re special. i wonder how much effort it took her to enchant those artifacts.

as someone who thought of her like a little sister and willingly prioritized her invitation to travel together, it’s very saddening that she does not put the same care for me as she does for those two. oh, how heartbreaking. i am riddled with grief. *leisurely sips boba*

✧— zhongli

d-do i even need to explain? he’s in my every team composition because of his shield and burst lol

and he’s such an eye candy too

given his (currently) non confrontational nature, he gets along well with everyone…. well. he tries to get along with ayato and al haitham.

with ayato, it’s a constant battle of innuendos and implications and it causes major headaches to people listening.

with al haitham, he’s… well… honestly i’m not sure why they don’t 'get along'. perhaps the word i’m looking for is ‘distant’? there seems to be a hidden hostility here…

gets along most with yaoyao out of the three. so many precious grandpa-granddaughter moments. it’s him who reads/tells her bedtime stories at night and she loves it a lot. this routine is the reason why she would sometimes offer to other people to read them bedtime stories.

⚘ about al haitham: rivalry ⚘

rivalry, you say? hmm…

does it look so obvious from your point of view? ... this won’t do. i really shouldn’t be relapsing to my old self… *sigh*

⚘ about ayato: customs ⚘

though our taste in beverages doesn’t align, our chats are always eye-opening. i learn much intriguing knowledge every single time. for example, apparently, inazumans have this custom to add at least one unusual, exotic ingredient into every hotpot they have. is it not most amusing?

⚘ about yaoyao: glimpse of the future (?) ⚘

ah, the young disciple of streetward rambler. such a pure-minded and responsible child. i think it’s endearing whenever mei dotes on her and carry her around everywhere. she even let yaoyao sleep in her arms while we’re traveling. it makes me think of-

…. ahem. my mind wandered a little too far there, my apologies. what was i saying? yes, she’s a sweet little one, isn’t she?

⚘ about mei: the primordial one ⚘

personally, i think she should use more of her authority. especially to our front liners. most especially to a certain high-ranking personage from sumeru. i would normally never overlook such insolence, but since mei herself told me to not interfere… *sigh* there is, unfortunately, nothing i can do but reprimand them once in a blue moon.

⚘ about mei: tea ⚘

mei is the one who controls the finances in our traveling group, but while she could be quite frugal, she always gets me whatever tea leaves they have in the market whenever we visit any encampments or cities. i appreciate that very much.

she does enjoy her coffee every now and then, but at the end of the day, she always comes back for tea. i think she might not realize it herself, but she clearly has a preference for tea over anything else - that is, including coffee.

hmm? i’m speaking allegorically? why, i’m not sure what you’re referring to, traveler. i am simply stating my observations.

✧— yaoyao

it’s actually shinobu but recently i swapped her with the new dendro child bc i wanted more variety (and that companion exp hskdjskdj)

this sun child gets along with everyone!! good job yaoyao!! she’s like a precious baby niece i don’t have sobsob

she’ll follow either al haitham or ayato around like a duckling around the marketplace if i went with zhongli (she knows he has the worst spending habits so we take turns keeping an eye on him lol). got separated from al haitham one time and he almost had a heart attack. now he holds her hand whenever they walk around in crowded places.

ayato knows how to handle children because he literally raised ayaka, so yaoyao loves being around him! he’ll fulfill her more childish wants that she never voices out loud (out of consideration for others) with a snap of his finger.

zhongli is yet another expert at childcare (although he has his clumsy moments) and he’s on friendly terms with all the adepti so yaoyao considers him at the same level as her adepti friends. he’d take her into his arms if she ever falls asleep while we’re walking about.

i’m gonna cry these are all adorable as fuck help

⚘ about al haitham: protection ⚘

mister al haitham looks a little scary at first, but you know what? he’s super caring! whenever there are battles, he always, always makes sure that i’m out of harm’s way first! *huffs* i kept telling him i can handle monsters on my own, but he just crouched down and patted my head. he didn’t even refute it!!

*sigh* i suppose his manners are a little lacking, but he means well, so i’ll overlook it, hehe.

⚘ about ayato: kind ⚘

ayato gege sneaks me candies every now and then! they’re always sakura-flavored, and i can’t get them in liyue markets, so he told me he’ll get them especially exported from inazuma to liyue when we stop traveling together! isn’t he so kind?

oh, and he’s especially good at putting up my hair! i think he’s used to doing it… he mentioned having a little sister once. maybe he used to put her hair up?

⚘ about zhongli: warmth ⚘

mister zhongli reminds me of the adepti, because he’s very dignified and knowledgeable! but apparently, he’s just human like me... but i still like him! he’s very nice and mature, save for his impulsive purchase habits...

he also tells me bedtime stories, and it makes me fall asleep within five minutes… *yawn* oh dear, thinking about it makes me sleepy… i think i’ll ask mei jiejie if i can take a short nap…

⚘ about mei: the primordial one ⚘

oh, meirin jiejie is really kind! she always shares any sweets she buys, and whenever miss shenhe visits us we would ask her to help making these cold yummy treats called ice cream! now if only she would eat her veggies with the same vigor…

⚘ about mei: secrets ⚘

jiejie and i tell a lot of secrets to each other! she tells me it’s because i’m a special child… i’m really flattered that she would trust me that much! but anyway, she told me you’re a close friend of hers, miss lumine, so i can tell you one of her secrets!

okay, so, jiejie never really admitted it outright, but i think she’s very fond of mr. zhongli and mr. al haitham… she always talks about them and she’s always saying about how handsome and capable they are! i asked her who she would marry and she got all red, hehe. who do you think will get to marry her, miss lumine?

bonus because i adore yaoyao so much:

© zhongrin | 2023 ◆ no repost. reblogs much appreciated. feel free to reach out to submit suggestions, feedback, comments, or if you just want to talk!

#genshin impact #rin writes #rin selfships #zhongrin #zhongrinth #meitham #yandere #zhongli #al haitham #xiao #yaoyao #shinobu #kazuha #ayato #lumine

[scullysexual]

You're Never Just Anything To Me (10)

@today-in-fic | ao3 | Prev. Chapter

A look into Mulder and Scully’s relationship starting from Millennium going all the way up to Requiem.

X. First Person Shooter.

Scully forgets that The Lone Gunmen are Mulder’s friends, first and foremost, and that all three of them just happen to be equipped with some very useful skills that help them out every so often.

The Lone Gunmen seem to forget that she and Mulder are FBI agents. Or they don’t seem to care, Scully isn’t sure which. When she asked why they like them so much Langly at replied “Because you’re cool FBI”, with an adjunct from Frohike “And because you’re hot” meaning her specifically. Scully had liked that (Langly’s reason, not Frohike’s) Cool FBI.

She hopes she is being Cool FBI now as she ignores the way her stomach twists. She was being Bad FBI and there’s a sudden thought that she was about to get into trouble, that somebody was about to bust through the eight-locks system and adorns The Gunmen’s front door and shout at them all for smoking weed. It makes her terrified. It also makes her laugh out loud.

Mulder brushes up against her. Surprisingly, the cannabis relaxes him, it slows his ever racing mind, makes him slow and sluggish. She loves her Mulder just as he is but this version is a nice reprieve every now and then.

“Hi,” his says sleepily. He snuggles into her, a hand touching her thigh. She can feel the warmth of his hand even through the layers of clothing and it sends a buzz through her.

“Hi,” she greets back.

“You okay?” he asks.

Scully giggles. “Yeah.” Then she looks towards the front door again. “We’re gonna get in trouble.”

“We won’t. We’re in the safest place in the world right now.”

And they are. This little hole with its eight-lock security system, cameras everywhere outside, little intercom system. There’s a TV in the corner displaying the outside right now. It is void of people. There’s no one on the other side of that door and there never will be.

“Want another one?” Mulder asks and Scully shakes her head.

“I want a bath.”

…

This bath is the best thing ever. It’s full, it’s warm, she put too many bubbles in it but she doesn’t care because bubbles are the best thing invented. The leans back, shutting her eyes. She could fall asleep in here.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Mulder mumbles. His head is resting against his arm which rests against the rim of the tub. His other arm is submerged in the water, lazily pushing waves back and forth. Occasionally, his fingers will brush her thigh and she’ll feel that buzz from earlier.

“Get in the tub with me,” she tells him.

“I thought you didn’t want me in there?”

That’s what she had told him when he tried to take off his clothes and join her. “This is my bath, Mulder” she had said but then when he went to leave she wanted him to stay.

“I changed my mind.”

She watches him strip. When he is finally naked, he waits, looking at her expectantly. She isn’t happy about having to move, lifting herself up takes more effort than necessary and he has barely got himself comfortable before she is leaning her head against his chest.

“This water is boiling, Scully,” Mulder says. “How are you not burnt?”

She is. She imagines when she gets out in a hundred years she’ll be as red as a lobster.

“Don’t you dare put any cold water in!”

Mulder chuckles. “I know better than to do that.” So instead he’ll sit, slightly uncomfortable, in a bath too hot for him. All for her. She loves him. So much.

She feels his fingers on the insides of her thighs. They trail up ever so close to the space between her legs but just as they get within reach, they descend back down. Scully lets him do this a couple of times, it is nice after all, the slow teasing, she lets herself get riled up with it.

He touches her then, suddenly, unexpectedly. Scully jumps at the contact as his fingers slide through her folds, she sighs softly.

He is lazy with it. The word that comes to mind is sensual. He is sensually touching her. It’s nice, it’s pleasant but she needs more, she moves her hips and the water threatens to spill over.

“That’s what I was avoiding,” Mulder says into her ear but Scully can’t bring herself to care about wet floors.

The fingers of his other hand brush against her clit, the fingers inside her are more pronounced, they thrust in and out of her with more force. Her hips move in tandem and water sloshes over the edge. Mulder his hard against her lower back and her hand clench around his lower arm. She is close, she just needs a little longer.

Then it all stops.

He has pulled his hands away completely.

“Mulder…?” she asks, a little dazed, a little disappointed.

He pushes her up and off him and Scully has no idea what is going on, what has made him react in such a way. She is lost. She is on the verge of crying.

His cock is pushed inside her. Scully grips the edges of the tub, slippery where the water has been. She is full and he sheathed completely inside her.

They start to move and Scully keeps her hands on the rim as leverage, Mulder’s hands clutch at her hips. She can hear him, feel him- his hands on her, his legs beneath her, his cock inside her- but she can’t see him. She closes her eyes, imagines what it would be like to be blindfolded, for all her other senses to pick up the slack for her body’s missing sense. Then she wonders what it would be like if she couldn’t touch him either. She shivers thinking about it; pictures herself chained to her bed while Mulder fucks her hard.

The thought pushes her over, she clamps down hard on his cock, her orgasm ripping through her. Mulder follows not long after, her post-orgasmic spasms milking him into her.

The water is sullied, the bubbles all gone, the water growing cold and their skin pruning. Mulder pulls the plug and bundles her up into a towel. They fall onto her bed half wet and sleepy. Scully doesn’t tell him about her fantasy.

#the x-files #the x files #txf fic #xfiles fanfiction #soss #season 7 #scullysexualwrites

[kayawolfhorse]

Blood in the Cut | Read on Ao3

— ☾ —

The nightmares are back.

Soft laughter, growing louder as Pearl’s grip on wakefulness slips further, fills her ears all the same as it does her mind with dread. Her body grows heavy, her brain fills with fog. Desperately, she thrashes about, opening her mouth to scream herself awake.

Her limbs refuse to answer her demands, and her voice remains unyieldingly silent. The syrupy lull of sleep has Pearl trapped, and she is defenseless as it pulls her under.

— ☾ —

The little green cottage has snow on it today, frost creeping over every azalea leaf and tuft of moss that makes up the roof, collecting on the spruce beams of the walls. The sky above Pearl is obscured by thick, grey clouds, and her breath comes out in little puffs of steam. She hates to be back here again.

It doesn’t take long for Pearl’s gaze to land on Scott, busy putting the finishing touches on the cobblestone accents that line the roof. The muscles of her jaw twitch, as if she’s about to speak, and Pearl fights against the action. Don’t talk to him, he left you! He doesn’t deserve your companionship, least of all your pleasantries. All that comes out is a friendly greeting.

Scott responds by waving in kind, placing the last few blocks and sliding off the roof, landing in the snowbank piled below. Pearl flinches inwardly, prepared for the bite of cold. She hopes it hurts.

Scott gives his deep blue coat a firm shake to dislodge the settled snow and walks forward all the same.

Don’t come over here, don’t come over here. Scott stops in front of Pearl, sharing the grin Pearl can’t wipe free of her own face. “So, what do you think?”

Pearl wants to say how much she hates it, how much she hates how pretty it is. She hates that Scott has built them such a lovely house and calls Pearl an ally when he wants nothing more than to get rid of her entirely. How this version of herself gets all the love withheld from her.

Pearl hates how much she still yearns for such kindness.

She says none of that. Instead, through that same damn smile, Pearl exclaims, “It’s absolutely beautiful! I’m glad you were able to finish up before the storm hits.”

Scott shrugs, glancing up at the sky. “It wouldn’t matter too much. It’s just a prop, but it looks rather nice, doesn’t it?”

“I meant for your own sake, not the empty house’s!” Pearl shoves lightly at his shoulder, and it’s a terrible, terrible thing how Scott laughs and jostles Pearl back as if they were friends sharing a joke and the mountain of hurt between them didn’t exist.

Pearl’s learned by now that this Scott, and the version of Pearl that goes with him, is very different from what she’s used to.

They decide to head inside before what something Scott calls “the boogeyman” is chosen. Pearl had heard of it, in the previous dreams, but it had never been defined.

“We’ve got to continue the tradition!” Scott says over his shoulder as they descend down into their underground base. Pearl hopes whatever “tradition” he speaks of isn’t bad. Actually, maybe she does. Scott would deserve it.

As they reach the base of the stairs, Pearl lists everything she’s learned about this world so far.

It’s another death game, like Double Life, and Pearl and Scott are allies. Lives are not the same fixed things they are usually; here, they can be traded between players. In the last dream, Scott was yellow, and Pearl gave him a life. That bit was particularly hard to watch.

Pearl isn’t sure who all is in this game, but based on who she saw running around last time, she figures it’s the same group as Double Life. Though, at one point she could’ve sworn she heard Lizzie’s exclamation of surprise. Maybe they’d added new players to spice things up.

Swathes of red pulse around the edges of Pearl’s vision just as they reach the skeleton spawner, and Scott says, “almost time!” Dread coils at Pearl’s core. If she had any control over her body, her palms would be sweating. Is this the boogeyman thing…?

Not long after, the red flashes once more, and Scott pauses in his smelting to turn and stare at Pearl. Pearl’s disconcerted, unsure of what to do, but her head swivels to meet Scott’s eyes as the red pulses again.

They both make nervous oooh’s as the third bit of red comes and fades, and then…

Pearl is met with darkness. Her limbs are leaden, but the space around her is weightless, as if she were floating in the void. Pinwheeling her arms, Pearl tries to find hold on something, anything, but it’s no use. Pearl’s body is still stubbornly asleep, and her mind is thrown into another dream.

— ☾ —

Pearl’s inside the cottage this time, a sword in her hands and an explosion of items scattered at her feet. Joel, inexplicably sporting a long beard and dressed in green robes, thrusts his sword at Pearl, parrying her attacks from where she has him cornered, shouting, “I’m cured! I’m not the boogeyman anymore!”

Clearly, whatever being the boogeyman means doesn’t matter to the Pearl of this game, and it only takes a couple more swings until Joel’s dead, his inventory bursting from where he was standing moments ago. Pearl crouches down to sort through the mess, tossing away junk and gathering Joel’s gear in a neat pile, when Scott breaks through the blocked up door, saying, “Thank you, Pearl!”

“He’s on red now!” Pearl laughs in disbelief, still clutching her sword. The adrenaline buzzes in her ears, and her breaths come fast. This, at least, is familiar. Worry and triumph tug at Pearl’s gut. “Scott?”

“He is, but he also killed me!” Scott tugs on his armor. “I was getting worried, he was being weird.”

“Yeah, he got very forceful,” Pearl agrees. So this is what the boogeyman is, then. A player is chosen after the countdown, then they must kill? It’s an odd mechanic, but if Grian is behind this game as he is Double Life, Pearl wouldn’t put it past him. “And he had the audacity to blame Mumbo!”

“Yeah, Mumbo’s kill had to have been self defense, then.” Scott nods, looking toward the window.

“Oh, for sure.” Glancing back down, Pearl catches a glimpse of something red and black amongst the mess of items. With a gasp, she grabs it and holds it up to Scott. “Look what we have here!”

Scott’s eyes widen. “He was seriously carrying around the enchanter on him?”

“Guess so!” Pearl says, tucking it under her arm. To be honest, she’s not sure what’s so important about the table, but who is she to argue against perfectly good leverage? “There’s no way we’re giving this back.”

“Of course not.”

Soon enough, Joel returns for his stuff, a dangerous red gleam in his eyes. After he’s equipped his armor and tucked his sword into his belt, Joel stops in the doorway. “All I’m gonna say is, make sure you two stick together like glue, because if you’re ever alone with that thing, I’m coming back with my axe.”

“We won’t be keeping it on us, don’t worry. We’re not idiots,” Scott rebuts with a scoff. Joel smirks in return and gives the enchantment table in Pearl’s arms one last pointed stare before whirling on his heel and stalking off. Pearl and Scott both shout their goodbyes and, after waiting until Joel’s out of earshot, turn to each other.

“That was certainly something!” Pearl remarks, and Scott gives an incredulous chuckle in return.

“Yeah. Now the only thing I’m worried about is, obviously Joel was after you, but I died–” Scott starts.

“So now you’re yellow,” Pearl supplies, briefly meeting his eyes.

“That’s my worry.” Scott nods. “How many lives do you have? Because you had six.”

“I have five,” Pearl confirms. The amount isn’t news to her, having learnt it in a previous dream, but it still boggles her mind. It feels wrong to have more than three lives.

“Would you be willing to give me another? Put me to three and you on four?” Scott asks, to Pearl’s dismay. “We’ve got such a monopoly as a duo, if one of us goes out we lose it all.”

Pearl tries to stop the “you’re right, you’re right,” that leaves her mouth. It’s not enough for Scott to ruin Pearl’s life in one game, he wants to take it in another?

“I wouldn’t want people knowing I’m down a life, though,” Pearl points out. “Don’t want to make me a target.”

Scott nods. “I’m thinking if you give it now, before everyone sees me running around as yellow, we can just say that we scammed it out of somebody, and you can tell everyone you’re still on five.”

“Oh, that’s a good plan.” No! Pearl prepares the command, fingers dancing across her communicator. Try as she might, Pearl can’t even tremble her own hand. “Okay, for the alliance, I’m gonna do it.”

“For the alliance!” Scott cheers.

Command finished, Pearl asks, “You ready?”

As if Pearl herself is the life ripped from her body, she is yanked from the dream and plunged into darkness again.

— ☾ —

The void Pearl floats in is stagnant no longer, crackling with white veins of energy that remind her of shooting stars. The trails avoid Pearl, swerving around her form, but when Pearl holds her arm out and brushes her fingers against one, she flinches at the sound of her voice echoing around her, saying, “I have picked the most amazing partner in this season of Last Life, I’m telling you.” She knows who she’s saying it to. Pearl snatches her hand back.

Suddenly desperate for something solid, an escape, Pearl closes a fist around the next bit of light she can reach, and the image of Scott, standing in the underground base, handing Pearl a bucket of a brown axolotl with a goofy smile on his face, burns against the back of Pearl’s eyelids. All Pearl can see is his cruel, taunting smirk as he and Cleo rejected her.

“Why are you showing me this?” Pearl cries out, to no one that can hear her.

The moments turn frantic as Pearl’s despair grows and she reaches out again and again, fingers aching for a hold. Scott and Pearl, curing a zombie villager. Racing through a dark forest, hand in hand, after raiding the red lives’ secret base. Pearl, Scott, and Cleo, in a tower with a moss roof, looking down over the server as Scott says, “don’t worry ladies, I won’t betray you.”

Scott saying goodbye as his yellow eyes turn red, and he leaves Pearl standing atop a cobblestone wall, watching him go.

— ☾ —

At first, Pearl doesn’t register that she's been pulled into another dream. The endless void around her gives way to a midnight sky, the veins of light replaced with twinkling stars. Her vision spins as the Pearl of this game turns wildly about, and with a jolt Pearl realizes she’s flying, coasting just above the treeline below her. Had Pearl somehow managed to get wings? She catches a glimpse of her arm, a familiar red cloak turned transparent.

So that’s that, then. Pearl has died, and is now spectating whatever’s left of the game. It’s been a while since she’s died in a hardcore world, and the floaty feeling is hard to get used to. She doesn’t have time to adjust before her ghostly body moves against her will, eyes fixed on a tiny figure below.

Scott. Scott, with his cyan hair and crown of crystals is covered in blood that matches the red of his eyes. Following the line of his drawn bow, Pearl watches as Ren comes up over the crest of the hill and Scott lets the first arrow fly, sinking into Ren’s shoulder.

“Leave me alone! Go kill Martyn! Why are you coming for me?” Ren shouts as he fights off Scott’s blows, tripping over a dip in the terrain.

“I have to! You killed Pearl!”

Pearl, in both of her forms, freezes in shock. She’d never expect Scott to be fighting for her, least of all crying her name in a final battle. Her heart clenches in the tower of her ribcage. She begs herself to wake up. Her body refuses to move.

The final battle is brutal. Scott lands the final blow on Martyn before turning back to Ren, knocking him back with another arrow. With a sharp cry, Ren stumbles back, and a zombie emerges from the trees to finish him off. One last boom sounds, and Scott is alone in a silent world, surrounded by ghosts.

“Well, I guess there’s only one more thing I have to do,” he says slowly, after a moment of shock.

Whatever Scott has to do, he doesn’t get to, cut off by a searing bolt of lightning that kills him in a flash.

The game is over, and Scott has won.

— ☾ —

Pearl gasps awake to the crack of thunder. Heart pounding, she jolts upright, struggling to keep her ragged breathing in check.

Tower. Pearl is in her tower. A cool summer breeze wafts through the windows, gently rustling the vines that grow off the red ceiling above her, and moonlight casts a silver grow upon the spruce floorboards. At her owner’s distress, Tilly, curled up at the foot of the white duvet, picks her head up to look inquisitively at Pearl, yellow collar jingling with the movement.

“Oh, Tilly.” Pearl leans forward and gathers her beloved wolf in her arms, burying her face in Tilly’s side. Her hands shake where they clutch at Tilly’s fur.

Tilly, for her part, simply curls around Pearl and presses her nose against Pearl’s side. Pearl whimpers and hugs Tilly tighter.

They stay like that until Pearl’s breath steadies, and after one final sigh, Pearl pulls back enough to look out the window. The server below is quiet and still, and the horizon promises a sunrise to come.

Sliding off of her bed, Pearl directs Tilly to sit by the wheat farm, and pulls the blankets from the mattress. She arranges them in a heap on the floor and sits down with her knees pulled up to her chest, patting the space next to her when she’s satisfied with the nest. Tilly trots over and circles the spot, plonking down with a content sigh after a couple spins. Pearl pulls a blanket over her shoulders and casts it over them both, leaning back against the bed frame and watching out the window to her side.

She and Tilly remain sat side by side as the birds start their morning song and the sun creeps into view. Pearl knows Scott’s awake when she takes a slight tick of damage, tingling at her elbow. She smirks as she imagines him accidentally hitting his own against something stupid.

Pearl’s not ready to face him, or anyone, for that matter. Scratching Tilly between the ears, she closes her eyes, savoring the few moments of peace that’ll inevitably be disturbed soon enough.

Fighting for Pearl like she’s something valued, like she’s someone Scott calls a friend. What a dream.

(Reblogs do more than likes!)

#a while ago i had the idea that last life is dl!pearl’s nightmares #so i decided to expand on that and now we’ve got this where she’s remembering it through dreams #one could say. she was only ever meant to watch #my writing #kaya posts #last life smp #double life smp #pearlescentmoon #smajor

[ohbutwheresyourheart]

I have far too many half-written things in my google docs that have never seen the light of day, so I've decided to start buffing up the best ones and posting them unfinished. Maybe I'll come back to them later, or if not at least someone will hopefully enjoy reading them as they are.

First up: fragments from a WIP based on the concept that Eva did not actually die when the twins were children; instead, she got caught in the magic field of a Geryon and sling-shotted to the middle of Devil May Cry 5. What I wrote revolved more around the aftermath, and Eva trying to come to terms with the modern world, her losses, and not knowing what happened to her sons.

The building is echoing once the buffer of trash is removed. High ceilings dissipating into shadowy un-shapes. Dark corners shifting like predators turning and twisting. It’s too like the manor in those early days before she tamed it as Sparda had; made it respect her for all she was a mortal woman.

Made it respect her because she was a mortal woman.

She feels so tired, though; too tired to start a fresh war. So Eva lives with the shadows and whatever they may hide. At least it’s not outwardly hostile. Even if it was, by rights she shouldn’t be comfortable here.

This domain, this world, empty of her sons.

----

Swollen and fragile all at once, like a wine glass held too long in hot water - ripe for shattering with a single thoughtless move.

Midmorning is an inauspicious time for any demon to appear; Eva uses the reprieve to walk the city streets. Capulet is smaller than Red Grave but still a decent-sized city in its own right, checking off all the requirements: university, libraries, museums, churches, arts district, cheerful cafes dotting the sidewalk…

A few months ago -- no, thirty years ago -- she would have delighted in browsing the art supplies store, or checking the museum events for child-friendly exhibitions (but boys you must behave), or laughing into her coffee as two eight year olds descended into extensive debate on the merits of chocolate cake over strawberry tarts.

Now she buys peppermint tea in a to-go cup and takes it to the park.

Capulet is unexpectedly windswept in August, errant breezes stirring up the parched over-long grass around her ankles and pulling her hair, strand by strand, out of the confines of her ponytail.

The park is quietish; the younger children are out in force but a university city never really feels alive during the summer while the students are away. She follows the winding gravel path towards the duck pond at the centre and circles it once, twice. Watches other mothers with children tossing breadcrumbs to the ducks; running; playing.

“Why don’t you go and play, boys? Just--”

“Be careful, I know.” Vergil’s eyes, already so much older than they should be. “Why even try when we have to pretend?”

She’d never come up with a good enough answer for him.

Trish finds her on a bench. She sits down without ceremony or preamble, sunglasses her one concession to the summer day but otherwise as unaffected by the August sun as she no doubt will be by the coming autumn chill.

(Eva is rapidly coming to dislike Trish. Not because she is a demon, per se, but because it’s so fucking demoralising to constantly see the perfect version of herself; an Eva who will never succumb to sagging tits or a bloated stomach or even messy hair.)

“Are you all right? You’re sitting there like a ghost.”

Eva sips her tea to save herself from an immediate response. The cup is almost empty and the dregs are cold; she doesn’t remember drinking it.

“I’m fine.”

“Mm.” Trish doesn’t look as though she believes Eva in the slightest, but thankfully doesn’t push the issue. “Well, in that case, I have a favour to ask.”

“Oh?” Eva becomes instantly wary. Even as despondent as she feels, she knows better than to thoughtlessly promise a demon anything.

Something flashes in Trish’s eyes, gone too quickly for Eva to define it. The slow smile that curls the corners of her lips is equally inscrutable.

“Don’t worry, it’s not a favour for me, exactly,” she assures her, waving a perfectly manicured hand (again that familiar burst of jealousy towards a creature that could control their human physical appearance at will; Sparda had never had a bad hair day in his life--). “Lady heard you’re quite the dab hand with magic and she wanted to know if there were any goodies you could make for her, or teach her, or… whatever, really.”

“Last I saw, Lady has a tongue in her head,” Eva replies coolly.

Trish’s smile widens. “Oh, she does, but she’s out of town this week and when I saw you I thought I might as well ask now as later.”

“Mm.” Now it’s Eva’s turn to give Trish a searching look. She taps her nails (not perfectly manicured by any definition of the term) against her empty cup, wishing there was some left; she could make use of a timely pause to sip her tea and give herself a moment to think. “Well, I’m happy to talk to Lady about what she needs when she’s back in Capulet.”

“I’ll pass the message on.” With one flowing, elegant movement, Trish gets to her feet and stretches like a languid cat. “I’d better get going. See you around, Eva.”

“Yes, see you,” Eva mutters to her back; Trish is already going, sashaying through the park like she owns the place.

Something about this doesn’t smell right and Eva has sense enough to be cautious.

And yet… When she returns to Devil May Cry, she spends time going through the cupboards she’s restocked and checking her herbs. She uses the laptop Nero and Nico set her up with and finds websites that sell the supplies she needs -- whether advertised for witchcraft or otherwise -- and prepares lists of useful tricks; things that used to give her the edge she needed to survive another night.

It might not be useful for Lady -- if, indeed, Lady even asked the question -- but it’s useful for Eva. Practically, because she can’t be too careful even now, and in the abstract;  when she goes to bed that night, Eva sleeps better than she has in weeks. Her hands might be dry and her nails might be broken, but with her fingertips stained and smelling of herbs once again she almost begins to recognise herself.

----

To Eva’s palpable surprise, Lady does actually swing by Devil May Cry the following week.

“Trish told me she saw you,” Lady explains as she unholsters Kaline Ann and sets her down on the desk. “Did she tell you the kind of thing I was looking for?”

Because there is truth in this cover story that Lady and Trish have concocted between themselves. Yes, mainly they want to check on Eva, but it also never hurts for an old bitch to learn some new tricks.

And how does Eva look? Less like Trish than she used to; Eva has taken to shoving her hair up in a loose bun at the back of her head (the better, Lady assumes, to keep it out of her face now she was no longer playing lady of the manor) and has swapped her elegant black gown for a serviceable sweater and jeans. On her feet, Doc Martens. On her hands, broken nails and stained fingertips. In her eyes - fire.

“In passing.” Eva is - suspicious? Well, Lady can’t entirely blame her for still finding her feet with all of them, particularly Trish - though Trish herself had taken it as a compliment that Eva considered her enough potential trouble to be wary of.

“You’re welcome to anything I can teach you, although…” Eva’s gaze slides across and down to Kalina Ann. There is something distinctly hungry (covetous?) in her eyes. “You seem to have the offensive side pretty well covered.”

Lady grins, one firearms aficionado to another. “Give Nico a call if you want anything - you can’t beat the Goldsteins for guns and for you she’ll probably do it for free.”

That does it: the reserve cracks and Eva grins back. It is not the kind, motherly smile that Dante probably remembers. This is the smile that a tiger would give you if it could.

“Noted.” Eva pulls out a stack of books from one of the desk drawers. “Now, where do you want to start?”

It does not take long for Lady to be very, very glad she arranged this meeting. Eva is an absolute trove of knowledge. Much of it Lady already knows, and some of it is interesting but not strictly relevant -- Lady’s fighting style being much more full-on than Eva’s tactics lend themselves to -- but she still picks up plenty.

----

Nero is a dutiful, darling boy. He checks in with her, regular as clockwork, trying to disguise the anxiety in his voice. He doesn’t know how to be with her, but he tries nonetheless.

He asks her, often, to visit him in Fortuna; to meet his girlfriend and the children they have adopted. Eva demurs and lets him think she’s still putting off the inevitable label of grandmother. It’s not a total lie, but it’s far from the primary reason. Maybe, perceptive as he is (and he is; Sparda’s eyes staring at her, seeing straight through her despite the un-Sparda-ish mouthing off), he knows that, too, and is giving her time.

It’s just… what if they come back, and she isn’t here to greet them? What if they think she’s truly gone again? She can’t hurt her boys like that a second time. She can’t let them down again when they look for her, reach for her. God knows she was worth fuck-all to them then and even less now, as much protection as a paper cut-out, but if they know she’s willing to put herself between the two of them and danger, then… that’s something, isn’t it? However little, it’s something.

The latest attempt comes on a late autumn evening. October is slipping away, each dark evening bringing them a little closer to Halloween. The most enterprising of the local children have already ventured out trick-or-treating with the excuse that the 31st is a school night, and Eva watches troupes of ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties parade past the windows with a bittersweet smile. She bought a bag of candy but doesn’t really expect any trick-or-treaters; Dante, with good reason, didn’t take pains to encourage the local kids to come calling.

Nero and Nico pull up, a welcome interruption to her descent into melancholy, out of breath but radiant from their latest skirmish. They stop by Devil May Cry on the pretence of leaving word for Morrison that payment is due, but Nero could do that himself on the little computer phone he carries around with him. In reality, they’re checking on her.

Eva doesn’t mind, really. She likes the company, and the kids (God, she calls them kids, they’re not that much younger than she is) are energetic; it’s hard to be actively maudlin when refereeing a shouting match. Nico especially is nosy and almost impossible to brush off or offend. On every visit, she wheedles a few more secrets out of Eva’s recipe books. Lately, Eva has been amusing herself by giving her tidbits and letting Nico reverse-engineer either the process or the product. Usually, she gets it right. Occasionally, she comes up with something better.

Tonight, though, Eva feels even harder to cheer than normal. Nico is put off by a wad of cash to get takeout -- Sparda laid the bounty of the world at her feet, but Nero and Nico are giving her a world tour laden with grease -- leaving Eva and Nero alone for half an hour. Nero has unchecked notebook privileges, as long as he’s careful with them, and he flicks through the entries thoughtfully.

“How did you learn all this stuff in the first place?”

“It depends which stuff we’re talking about.” Eva leans over his shoulder, pointing to the pages. “Sparda gave me a lot of them; things he’d picked up over the years, I don’t even know where from. But this one -- here -- that was from a hunter I partnered up with a lot in the early days. These tisanes were from my aunt. I used to say she should have been born a mediaeval herb-woman, except they’d have hung her for a witch.”

But Nero has stopped looking at the pages. He’s looking at her instead; thoughtful, in a way that is so Vergil it makes her heart skip a beat.

“What were they like, your family?”

“My family...” How long has it been since family wasn’t Sparda and the boys? How much longer since it meant the house she grew up in, and the people who populated it? “Oh, they -- they’re long gone. Better not to dwell. I have the boys,” Except she doesn’t. “And you, of course.”

Nero isn’t diverted, not for a moment, and the tilt of his eyebrows is pure Vergil. But he lets it go for now.

They taper off into silence. It lasts for a few minutes, Eva turning over possibilities in her mind. The words, when they come, are nevertheless a surprise; something she hadn’t meant to let loose.

“My father was a twin,” she says abruptly. “He and my uncle were thick as thieves. I always used to hope I’d have twins -- they say it skips a generation, so I thought it was likely I would -- and then they’d both always have a friend.”

She lets out a hollow little laugh. A friend. What a fucking fairytale.

Where did she go so wrong? Yes, the boys had always had their spats, but Eva had chalked that up to a mixture of their demonic blood and the marked differences in their personalities, watchful but not truly worried. She tried to encourage them to get along, to talk out their problems, but had also comforted herself that it was something they would grow out of as they got older and developed a bit more emotional maturity. Siblings fought; it was perfectly normal. Even she and Elijah--

Eva squeezes her eyes closed. She can’t think about Elijah right now.

A warm, calloused hand covers her own and Eva opens her eyes to see Nero watching her, his expression unusually serious.

“It’s not your fault,” he tells her, quietly but with a forceful conviction behind his words that reminds her of Sparda. “Yeah, they’re idiots, and they’re both kind of fucked up in their own ways, but it’s not your fault. They’d be a lot worse if it hadn’t been for you.”

Is that true? Eva isn’t sure which is worse; that she has ruined her boys, or that they would somehow be even worse without her.

But none of this is Nero’s problem. Grandson, she reminds herself once again. Grandson. Not a peer, not a comrade to lean on. A young man she needs to protect.

Pull yourself together, Eva.

----

Eventually, Eva gets sick of sitting around Devil May Cry waiting for something to happen.

She has never been a passive person. Eva makes things happen. Ever since Lady asked for some tricks to help her on hunts, Eva has been building up her supplies again. Restocking her herbs, potions, and powders. Dusting off Dante’s collection of magic books (a surprisingly comprehensive collection; Vergil had always been the bookworm, while Dante was too much of a fidget-bottom to sit still for five minutes)  and reminding herself of her favourite cantrips. Eventually, she contracts Nico to make her a pair of guns like her old ones.

The last time Eva felt so lost, she was drowning in grief for her husband and it ended in tragedy for her sons. She will not make the same mistake twice. Reaching back through the years, breaking down the walls she had so carefully built up, she remembers how it felt to be fifteen and alone; fifteen and desperate; fifteen and unstoppable.

Then she asks Morrison for some work.

As a young woman trying to break into this line of work, Eva had gotten used to the looks she elicited from these “brokers”. The initial amusement, thinking she’s joking. The surprise when they realise she isn’t. The patronising shake of the head as they assure her this is no work for a pretty little lady like her. Finally, the shock and anger as they hastily reconsidered their position with a gun jammed up against their throats.

Over time, she’d gotten a reputation for being an infernal bitch who was extremely good at what she did, which meant the work came easier. Eventually, by the time she met Sparda, she’d been running her own jobs without a broker at all - unless they were coming to her for a favour.

But that was then. Now she’s back to square one. Unproved. Untried. Untested. It’s aggravating but Eva knows she’ll have to just deal with it if she wants an in.

Because Eva is pretty sure she can talk Morrison into kicking a few jobs her way. Asking Lady, or Nero, or Trish to share, though? It will all be there - amusement, surprise, disbelief - and the worst thing of all is that they will be speaking not from baseless stereotyping but all too real knowledge.

Dante told us all about it, Eva. You barely lasted a minute when the demons attacked, isn’t that right? This is way too much for you.

No. She will work until she has beaten the softness out of herself. Until she can go back to them on an even footing. Until it’s second nature once again to have gunpowder on her clothes and the spark of magic at her fingertips. Until the Underworld has learned to fear Sparda’s whore again.

Then she will get their respect, rather than their pity.

Morrison drops by periodically for coffee and a chat. There hasn’t been any money-grubbing yet; Dante owns the office outright - Eva has seen the deed and it’s real enough - and the bills are being paid out of his last earnings. It won’t last forever, but it’s been enough to take one worry off Eva’s mind so far.

Instead, Morrison seems to simply enjoy her company, or maybe he just can’t kick the habit of showing up at Devil May Cry to see Dante. Whatever the reason, Eva enjoys his visits and his dry humour. What Morrison makes of her, she’s not sure; Eva had told him, in a tone that made it clear she was lying, that she was Trish’s long-lost sister. Morrison had simply chuckled and refrained from asking any questions.

That’s one thing Eva always did like about brokers; they’re the kind of people who don’t ask difficult, unnecessary questions.

“You’ve got this place looking real good, Eva.” Morrison looks around with genuine admiration and gestures with his lit cigarette to the spider plant growing ever larger in the corner. “Way better than Dante ever did. Mother of God, the state I’ve seen this office in… well. Maybe best not to elaborate too much there.”

Eva laughs, remembering how Dante always tried his best to weasel out of his chores. Even getting him to make his bed was a challenge. It seems he hasn’t improved with age.

“It’s certainly been quite the project. But, now that it’s done, I’ve been thinking I need something else to do.” Eva watches Morrison carefully, waiting for his reaction. “Do you have any work for me?”

Morrison smirks. “Getting bored already? Yeah, I got a few things on the back burner - the kind of stuff the other ladies think they’re too good for, if you catch my drift, and the kid really has got his hands full.”

...Okay, that was absurdly easy. Eva narrows her eyes, but Morrison doesn’t look like he’s trying to mock her. On the contrary, when he sees her expression, he holds his hands up in mock surrender.

“Hey, I don’t control the work that comes in! Besides, pay is pay, am I right?”

“I’m looking for hunting work,” Eva says pointedly, wondering if he’s mistaken her meaning.

“Yeah, yeah, I got you.” Morrison chuckles as he takes a drag on his cigarette. “What, were you expecting me to say no? If nobody will do the work, I won't get paid either.”

“I…” Eva is floored. All of her preparation, all that time spent rehearsing her arguments, and it turns out she doesn’t need any of them. “I was expecting, uh…”

“Pushback?” Morrison gives her a knowing look. “Do you really think I’d have lasted this long with those ladies if I trotted out that kind of line? As far as I’m concerned, if you hang around with Dante, Lady, and Trish, then you know what you’re doing and you can take care of yourself.”

Morrison pulls a notebook out of his pocket and rifles through it, humming under his breath. He tears out a page and walks over to lay it on Eva’s desk.

“Here are the details. Just give me a call when you’re done with them and I’ll arrange your payment. Damages come out of your cut, mind you. If everything goes well, I’ll see what else I have for you.”

----

It really is grunt work, but Eva doesn’t mind; she’s not arrogant enough to think she could jump single-handedly into something like Red Grave, guns blazing.

The job also isn't urgent - hence Morrison being lackadaisical about bullying someone into taking it - which gives her the leisure of reconnaissance and planning time.

An empusa nest out on some waste ground that a local developer bought before noticing his unexpected squatters. Straightforward enough, although Eva takes more precautions than she thinks are necessary just in case. After all, she’s seen her judgement is far from perfect.

But in the end, all goes smoothly. No nasty surprises. Just some nasty stains on the concrete from empusas blown to kingdom come. Eva grimaces at them, hoping they don’t count as “damages”. The land is being developed anyway, right? Surely they’ll be putting down fresh tarmac?

In the end, Morrison does take a cut from her pay, but it’s less than she feared and so Eva swallows it with as much good grace as she can muster. The stack of notes is a reassuring weight in her hand. Ballast, though for (or against) what, she’s not entirely sure. The important thing is that she’s done a competent enough job that Morrison leaves her with the details of another couple of jobs. In this way a reputation is built.

“Morrison,” Eva calls out just before he leaves.

Morrison pauses on the threshold. There’s a beat before he looks back at her over his shoulder and Eva gets the impression he knows exactly what she’s about to ask.

“Do you think he’s coming back?”

Because Morrison is not Trish, or Lady, or Nero. He does not know her connection to these people. To Dante. So he has no reason to lie to her or spare her feelings.

He sucks in a breath, considering. “You know, I’d gotten to the point where I never thought I’d see anything Dante didn’t come back from. So many times I thought he was in way over his head, only for him to walk away laughing. But this job… this felt different from the start. Gave me a sort of -- premonition, you might say.”

A soft hum; something that might have been a laugh, if there was any humour in it, and Morrison shook his head.

“The truth is, Eva, I don’t know. I really don’t. He could come waltzing back in here tomorrow, carrying a pizza and laughing at us all for ever doubting him. Or we might never see him again.”

Eva sinks slowly into the desk chair, feeling the truth of it in her bones. A tidal wave of exhaustion crashes over her, threatening to drown her in one clean swoop. Tired of worry. Tired of uncertainty. Tired of never even having the cold comfort of a body to bury. Tired of that tiny speck of hope that even now refused to be snuffed out completely because, however ridiculous it was to expect it, there was still the chance--

“I knew someone else like that, once,” she hears herself say. “He never did come back.”

Morrison gives her a searching look. He seems, for a moment, to be on the verge of saying something more, but in the end refrains. Instead, he tips his hat to her.

“You take care, Eva.”

“Yeah,” Eva replies distantly. “You too, Morrison.”

----

The work is important for more than Eva’s ego.

Her blood sings in her veins once again. The hum of power at her fingertips, like the whine of electricity. A promise, maybe even a vow if you were so inclined to call it such, that one day in the none-too-distant future a small slice of the world would once again turn at Eva’s call and beckoning. She has known this once before when playing lady of the manor. Now, the power is both weaker, for lack of Sparda’s force bolstering her, and sweeter, for knowing it is all of her own clawing and devising.

Her blood sings and Eva tastes iron and lightning on her tongue. Her fingers smell of metal and herbs and something no mortal can rightly put words to; the tang of the Underworld and the burning sulphur of demons.

When Eva looks at her reflection in the chipped bathroom mirror and sees an old, familiar light in her eyes, she knows it is time.

Very little magic needs to be complicated. The point is will, and the directing of it. For those unfamiliar with the craft then the trimmings of rituals and candles can go a long way in finding that direction.

For those who live long enough to become old hands, just the thinking, coupled with the right runes, is enough. Eva takes a sharp knife, a handful of herbs, and a silver-backed mirror (in this, old ways are better; a mercury mirror would work better still, but this will do for now)... and she searches.

Blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh, soul of my soul, I seek thee now. Come to me, come to me, come to me…

It is a powerful spell. Kinfinding may not be enough to physically draw her boys forth from the Underworld, but it should at least show them to her in the scrying mirror.

Eva seeks until her blood runs dangerously thin and her head pounds and her vision begins to darken. She seeks further still until she knows herself at the very precipice of what she can safely come back from… and only then, with great reluctance, does she let the spell go.

She has not seen them, either of them, even once.

----

Eventually, it feels meaningless to even keep up the pretence she thinks the boys are coming back.

What has happened to them is almost immaterial. The nightmare scenarios are so numerous that eventually they blur together into one long snuff film that leaves her numb. Like Sparda, they were there and then they were not. Like Sparda, she will never know what exactly happened.

Devil May Cry becomes part tomb, part cocoon. She has saved enough money to keep Morrison at bay for a while even after Dante’s funds run out, and she continues to take work for the sake of it, though she doesn’t keep track of her income versus expenditures. If or when the money runs out, she’s not sure. It’s pointless to think so far ahead. Perhaps she’ll just die, like she should have before.

A wife without a husband. A mother without sons. Once, she would have vomited at the thought of a woman identifying herself by the men in her life, but somehow it crept up on her over the years and now she’s left with gaping, bloody holes that gung-ho feminist rhetoric does nothing to paste over.

Nobody seems to notice the change in her philosophy. Though, she gets precious few visitors anyway. Trish and Lady leave her to her own devices, having apparently satisfied their curiosity about her. Morrison has tapered off their tete-a-tetes and only shows up when he wants money. Nero is a busy boy these days.

One night she dreams about them. The dream is very similar to the ones she used to have about Sparda; lifelike, almost lucid dreaming, where everything was the same - she is in bed, having just awoken - except he is there, smiling gently, brushing her hair out of her eyes.

Sleeping in, Eva?

Dreaming about the boys is very similar. She dreams she awakens in the night to a sound downstairs. There is no panic of a break-in; nobody bothers her these days. Voices, muffled, from the floor below. Eva calmly gets out of bed, registering even the rustle of the sheets and the cold, bare wooden boards under her feet. She pads slowly out of the bedroom to the top of the stairs.

There they are, standing in the centre of the office, illuminated perfectly by a strip of moonlight through the window. It is like a picture. It is too perfect and too easy. This is how she knows she is dreaming.

Still, for the first time in months, her heart eases.

They are talking softly to each other, too softly for her to catch the words (there is a limit, she concedes, to just how much even her vivid imagination can conjure). Eva doesn’t mind. She stands at the mezzanine and soaks them in.

Dante gestures to the stairs and looks up. He freezes as their eyes meet. Vergil, a half-heartbeat behind his twin, mirrors him.

“...Hey,” Dante croaks, the gesturing hand that had fallen still now awkwardly waving. “We’re home!”

This is more than she expected. Eva’s throat constricts. Even her dreams of Sparda were not so vivid or so long.

“You’re late, boys,” she manages after a moment. “Dinner was hours ago.”

She is trying for levity, trying to play her part in this scene, trying to piece together something happy for when she wakes up, but her voice cracks halfway through the sentence and she finds herself choking on a sob.

Dante is halfway up the stairs in a moment, hand outstretched to her. Eva, too, is reaching out to her little boy and she cries out when she finally has her arms around him again.

She does not get even a heartbeat of joy before the world collapses into shadows and flames. Dante dissolves, her arms closing around thin air, and the staircase morphs into an endless corridor to hell. Her boys are nowhere to be seen, but she can hear them screaming.

Or maybe she just hears her own voice, screaming herself awake.

There are more dreams, afterwards; more recognisable for what they are. Her life runs before her eyes in reverse. Searching for the boys. Watching Sparda walk away for the last time. The face of every person she never saved. Then, at last, the denouement: Elijah, torn open. Her father and uncle staring sightless into an abyss. Her mother reduced to so many scattered chunks of meat.

Eventually, because Eva is someone who makes things happen, not someone things simply happen to, she makes the decision to go back. She has faced Red Grave; faced the ruined manor. It is time to face much older ghosts.

It is a private matter, and so Eva tells nobody of her intentions. She lets Morrison know she will be out of town on personal business, timeline uncertain; she will give him a call when she’s back. He is free, in the interim, to pass her usual work on to other sources.

For anyone else (because she still hopes, deep down, that her boys will one day come home), she leaves a note on her desk.

Out of town for a while.

Eva re-reads the brief scribble and wonders what else to add before realising there really is nothing more to add. No forwarding address or contact number, because she does not want anyone to find her. Anyone who wants her, can wait until she comes back.

She makes it ten minutes out from the city before she turns back to scribble an address at the bottom of her note.

Just in case.

----

Plane tickets are cheap these days, and she has a passport courtesy of Morrison, but Eva elects to drive. Call her old-fashioned, or even just plain curmudgeonly in her old age (ha), but Eva likes the hum of a good motor much better than the press of noisy crowds.

Besides, she’d need a car at the other end of the flight anyway, where she’s going. She can even call it a vacation if she finds a motel to spend each night in. If not -- she’s slept in a car before and it won’t kill her to do it again, especially when the rental is much more comfortable than any old banger she’s passed a night in before.

Highways turn to country lanes as she veers further and further off the beaten track. The temperature drops, too; winter in the shadow of the Appalachian mountains is nothing to sneeze at. Eva has forgotten a lot of things over the years (too many things), but she remembers that. Funny how events and people slide slowly but surely from her mind but sensory impressions remain: the icy, pinesap-tinged tang of morning air in winter; the crackle of a fire; the warm doughy smell and pillowy softness of homemade dinner rolls.

Become someone else, she’d told her younger son as their world burned around them. Change your name, change yourself, and hide. Not easy, no, nothing like easy -- but possible, for the right price. For the price of giving up who you were before.

Except no bargain is ever so neat and no transaction ever so complete.

#devil may cry #dmc #eva #dante #vergil #nero #nico #trish #lady #i have a whole headcanon backstory for eva #shocking revelation: she did not have a good time before meeting sparda! #fragments from the google docs

[dragonairice]

LOWKEY BEEN INSPIRED BY @not-sure-what-im-feeling s AWESOME OCS AND LORE (Go check them out)

And it inspired me to talk about MY ocs :D

I mention in passing that I am in fact writing a novel, but I try to avoid saying too much to prevent spoilers buuuuut I think I can keep it vague enough while still rambling <3

The novel (technically a novella) is called 'The Shadow Walker' and here's a draft of a blurb:

With no friends, an absent mom, an abusive dad, and a shadow that inexplicably went missing; Nicholas Walker is convinced his life couldn’t possibly get any worse. But everything changes when he meets something (or someone) who may or may not want him dead.

(Not the best but again it;s a draft)

ANYWAY THIS IS MY BOY NICHOLAS

He's 12 years old and a selective mute and my scrungliest little blorbo who experiences the horrors™. He doesn't have any friends, is neglected by his parents, and all in all has a bad time before the book starts :(

The only source of healthy food in the house (he borrows money from his dad and goes to the store alone) but is severely malnourished from eating nothing more than reheated takeout his dad left in the fridge. Nick doesn't talk verbally unless it's to his dad (out of necessity) and otherwise converses in ASL (which I'm learning for this book <3). Loves pretty buildings and stargazing, has a dream of visiting things like Notre Dame and the colloseum some day and is fascinated by architecture. I just realised that this kid would adore Minecraft but anyway after things get better for him he's given Lego models of like the eiffel tower and he loves them :)

Gonna stop before I spend the entire post talking about my boy and move onto

HIS MOMM

You know that thing that's like, "Not a bad person, just a bad parent"? Yeah. That's her. She ran away from her abusive boyfriend and left Nick behind out of fear, since she didn't know if she could survive by herself, much less with a child in tow. She ends up leaving with her best friend and they travel around the world a lot for their job. They're a musician who plays back up for bands in different places and Rachel ends up learning to play some stuff too after watching them for so long. The two end up dating at some point and they've been together ever since. Rachel still sends Nicholas a postcard every time she travels to a new place, but she doesn't have the courage to actually see him in person yet. Also fun fact. She's descended from a woman who was killed for being a 'witch' during the salem trials. This is relevant to the story :3

Do I have to talk about his dad??? Ughhhhh fine

This is Gregory Walker. I hate him. bye.

Not but fr, he's a terrible father. Works at a convenience store and his co-workers fear him. Lives off of take-out and instant ramen, never checks on his son. Spends all his money gambling and buying alchohol. Literally would not notice if he missed an entire month of his life (*cough* foreshadowing *cough*)

ANYWAY ONTO TWO OF MY FAVOURITES

LEXI AND CHELSEAAA

Lexi is a single mom who grew up kinda spoiled and is still figuring out how to raise a kid. Her parents are kinda helpful about it but also she doesn't want to raise Chelsea how she was raised so hgjhrj. Chelsea was orignally planned to be autistic since this entire book is a transparent cover for neurodivergent rep but the version of her in my head is so very ADHD instead. They only show up near the end of the book so I'm still experimenting with them a bit but Lexi is a huge book worm and Chelsea loves unicorns, like, I mean in the 'mythology is cool way' not the 'stereotypical girl behaviour' way. She does love pink things and sparkles though

THERE IS ANOTHER CHARACTER BUT THEY'RE A SPOILERRRR BUT I WILL JUST SAY THEY ARE NOT HUMAN AND ALSO WHAT THE TITLE OF THE BOOK IS TALKING ABOUT

(It's a sentient shadow, that's- do you get the pun in the name- there's three references in it-)

#The Shadow Walker #DragonairIce Rambles #The book's about halfway done now which is SO NEAT <333

[hyperfocuscentre]

giving disney princesses godly parents 'cause i'm bored

RAPUNZEL: I feel like Apollo is probably the most obvious option. She has a talent for singing and is incredibly creative: she sews her own outfits, makes candles and paints every blank space on her walls with colourful depictions of the things she sees and dreams of. Not even mentioning the healing powers. With the ungodly amount of time she had trapped in that tower, I'm gonna guess (using all the scenes of her completing her MANY hobbies) that she has a lot of knowledge of the most random shit. Also, the whole single drop of sunlight thing. I suppose you could also argue Asclepius as her parent, since she did manage to bring Eugene back to life but I'm gonna stick with Apollo.

MERIDA: So, not a godly parent but I'm counting it.. She'd be a Hunter of Artemis. The events of the entire movie are ripples caused by the rock that is Merida's refusal to get married (she's so aromantic, I love her). She'd much preferred to spend her time out in nature, shooting her arrows and doing everything that isn't expected of her as a princess. Again, I think it's pretty easy to place her.

MULAN: Okay, so my first thought was Ares. She's courageous and a brilliant fighter; an inexperienced woman surrounded by assumably-more-experienced men, yet she manages to be better than basically all of them. She's a victor of war. Maybe Mars, since I believe he's basically the more controlled and less brutal version of Ares? (atleast in HOO, anyway). You could also say Athena, she's strategic and seems to easily come up with strong plans mid action (the disguise herself as a man, the avalanche, the men disguise themself as women, the fan, the diy zipline. There's probably more that I've forgot). Maybe there's other obvious options but I'm lazy and sticking with my first thoughts but I'd be happy to hear other ideas.

MOANA: So, Poseidon was the first thought, for obvious reasons. She's got the whole connection with water and a longing to sail the seas that's linked towards her heritage, culture and it's history. Maybe, she's like Frank, a descendant of Poseidon with a family that's always seemed to be connected to the sea god (minus the shapeshifting powers, obviously). You could also link her to Palaemon, who I don't know much about so feel free to correct me, the protector of sailors (I believe he is a sea deity, or atleast thats what I read??). Choosing a greek deity for Moana is low-key hard cause she already has dieties (is that a word??) within her story so I'm gonna leave it at that because why not.

AURORA: So, most people's minds probably jumped to Hypnos immediately 'cause she's.. well.. sleeping beauty. Or maybe even Aphrodite 'cause, again, sleeping beauty. I can't argue against that because those are very valid ideas, though I'm more for daughter of Aphrodite than Hypnos because the whole sleep thing wasn't something she willingly wanted and was actually just tricked into doing. My mind kind of went to Pan- if thats possible- because I distinctly remember a scene with her in the woods, connecting with woodland creatures/wild (I don't know anything about this movie, help).

SNOW WHITE: Okay so I'm gonna say Aphrodite and leave it at that because I remember NOTHING about this movie other than her step-mother or someone wanted her dead for the absolutely treacherous act of being prettier.

ANNA, my beloved: Definitely not the most obvious option, but I want to go with Aphrodite again. She has an obsession with romance, she's desperate to be loved and feel love. She wants the butterflies, the pounding heart, the hand holding and the warm expanding feeling in her chest when she sees her lover. She literally tries to marry a man she just met. I also love this idea because it goes against almost every stereotype of a child of Aphrodite; she's a fighter, fierce and easily capable of defending herself; she isn't weak or helpless. She's one of the few princesses who gets the man whilst still being presented as a total badass. Furthermore, she loves so strongly in non-romantic ways too. She constantly stands at that door, trying to reconnect with a sister who suddenly refuses to talk to her. She SACRIFICES herself for that same sister.

ELSA: Boreas, he's the god of winter and ice. She has ice powers. I can't be bothered trying to think of a less obvious option but feel free to tell me about one that comes to your mind.

ARIEL: Triton. It's literally canon.

BELLE: Minerva is probably a very obvious option, if she can have kids the same way Athena did (can't remember). Belle values books and knowledge, the wisdom that comes with reading. She feels like the type of girl who would love to go to school and Minerva is supposedly the goddess of that. I'd like to be a bit less obvious and probably a lot more wrong (oh well) so I'm gonna also say one of the Muses is a possible option. Wikipedia tells me they were considered goddesses of literature, science and the arts. If I had to pick one I'd pick Erato probably, the muse of love poetry since, if my memory serves me correctly, Belle was reading a romance??

CINDERELLA: Maybe the child of Hestia? That is, if Hestia decided one day to throw away her oath of virginity or found a way to have kids without that. I'm not sure entirely why, it's just a vibe. Maybe favoured by Hera, since a marriage literally saved her from a life of abuse? I don't remember much of this movie, whoops.

I have absolutely no idea for anyone else and I give up so take what you have been given! Thanks to anyone who actually stuck with me and read through all this.

#disney princess #percy jackson #pjo #rick riordan #rapunzel #child of apollo #demigods #pjo fandom #pjo hoo toa #heroes of olympus #camp half blood #camp jupiter #merida #pixar brave #hunters of artemis #athena #ares cabin #athena cabin #trials of apollo #pjo tumblr #disney mulan #sleeping beauty #aphrodite #moana #child of poseidon #beauty and the beast

[dancingsunflowers-ocs]

𝗡𝗘𝗪 𝗣𝗟𝗢𝗧 𝗕𝗨𝗡𝗡𝗜𝗘𝗦

The time has once again come for me to talk about some plot bunnies!! These are some all of the plot bunnies I currently have that I haven’t really talked about much - feel free to ask me any questions you might have about them!!

Solana Corzo, Glee OC, Artie Abrams ship.

-Childhood best friend of Claudia Green, before her move to Lima.

-Loves the colour pink, Disney films, Taylor Swift and old vintage sci-fi films/tv shows.

-She basically shocks people with her smarts when everyone thinks of her as an airhead like Brittany.

-Is the only person who gets Rachel, as much to the annoyance of both Claudia and Francesca who can’t stand her.

Pedro Fernandez, Glee OC, Kurt Hummel ship.

-Revamped version of James Green.

-Has been best friends with Ariel Berry since childhood.

-Bisexual disaster and proud!!

-Barista at the Lima Bean and a student at McKinney High.

-Tough guy with a soft heart. Initially, he comes across as aggressive, socially isolated, and simply not given a break in the world.

Matilda Thorpe Wednesday OC, Enid Sinclair ship.

-Based on Matilda from the Roald Dahl book of the same name.

-Her parents are neglectful, however, her brother Xavier takes care of her and acts as a surrogate parent to her.

-She’s a telekinetic, and also has the power to manipulate written words.

-She also has quite a close familial bond with Miss Thornhill, similar to Matilda from the book’s close bond with Miss Honey… But slightly off 

-Roommate, and eventually the best friend of Bianca.

-Is a huge reader, and is especially a fan of the Percy Jackson books which she gets Wednesday into.

Feyra Sherwood, The Chronicles of Narnia OC, Peter Pevensie ship.

-Is a school teacher in the 60’s/70’s flower power era.

-After losing her mom, she, her twin brother and cousin discover the world of Narnia through a portal in an old storybook when going through their mother’s belongings.

-Discovers that she has stellar manipulation powers while she’s in the fantasy world.

-She and Peter have a slow burn romance, and she eventually proposes to him with a mood ring from her era/world.

August Sherwood, The Chronicles of Narnia OC, Edmund Pevensie ship.

-Is the twin brother of Feyra Sherwood and the cousin of Joan Connelly.

-Works in the National History Museum in the 60’s/70’s era.

-Discovers with Feyra and Joan, in which he finds out he has earth/weather manipulation powers.

-When he and Edmund first met, they were both constantly bickering with each other, and were basically too stubborn to admit their romantic feelings for each other.

Joan Connelly, The Chronicles of Narnia OC, Lucy Pevensie ship.

-Is the cousin of Feyra and August Sherwood, and is like a younger sibling to them.

-Is a college student during the 60’s/70’s era who’s questioning their gender/sexuality.

-When they and the twins discover Narnia, they finds out that’s they’re really skilled at using weapons.

-They get so confused when animals just follow them around for no particular reason.

-They later befriend/adopt an orphan wolf cub, after some hesitation at first, which they name Akela who laters becomes their companion.

Cherry Hearts, Descendants OC, Ben Beast ship.

-Is the daughter of the Queen of Hearts, but their relationship with each other is very stained.

-Is in contact with her aunt, Mirana of Marmoreal/The White Queen who she considers more of a mother figure than her own.

-A member of the VKs, she wants desperately to be good and break away from her mother’s reputation, and dedicates herself to being better once the VKs choose good at the coronation.

-Smart and sarcastic by nature but not mean.

-Loves strawberries, red lipstick and graffiti.

Sofía Madrigal, Descendants OC, Evie Grimhilde ship.

-Is the daughter of Mirabel Madrigal.

-Like her mother, Sofía is a very optimistic and enthusiastic girl who loves her family above everything, and would do absolutely anything to make them proud of her.

-Many years after Casita was rebuilt, Alma passed away, and it was revealed to Mirabel that she had the most important role in the Madrigal family all along, as she was always destined to be the next holder of the family’s miracle casa.

-Is very skilled at sewing and playing the accordion.

-The day before she was sent off to auradon, Mirabel gifted her with a hand-sewn butterfly plush. She said that she would always be with her if she kept the butterfly close, so Sofía keeps the plush in her mochila bag, as she is extremely homesick & misses her mamá, familia & casa very much.

-Unlike her mother, Sofía was blessed on her fifth birthday with a magical gift, joining the rest of the Madrigal family. Sofía has the gift of light, meaning she can create, cease & manipulate it, making her the family’s real life miracle candle. However her power is defective due to Mirabel being giftless, so her gift is uncontrollable.

Wanda Darling, Descendants OC, Harry Hook ship.

-Is the daughter of Wendy Darling.

-Enemies-to-lovers trope!! She has the purest of hearts, is kind and sees only inner beauty, which causes some tension between her and Harry when they meet for the first time in the second movie.

-Wanda negates Harry’s narcissism and teaches him humility. (She basically baked him a big, humble pie.)

-Super shy and doesn’t talk a whole lot, but incredibly smart and loving. Has a huge interest in astronomy.

Tagging: @luucypevensie (since she helped me with many of these!!) @ginger-grimm @daughter-of-melpomene @ginevrastilinski-ocs @manyfandomocs

#oc plot bunnies #oc: solana corzo #oc: pedro fernandez #oc: matilda thorpe #oc: feyra sherwood #oc: august sherwood #oc: joan connelly #oc: cherry hearts #oc: sofia madrigal #oc: wanda darling

[nostalgiachan]

Night Hunters

A server I'm on has decided to do a slightly modified version of Baldur's Challenge for the month, and I figure it wouldn't kill me to share my stories (since those take me infinitely less time to do than art).

First Prompt: What are Tav's parents like?

CW: child abuse

- - -

Every so often, Null would think of her firstborn daughter, and her mood would be soured for the rest of the day. 

Seven years of her life, she wasted on trying to teach that brat alchemy - a paltry amount when considering the natural lifespan of the Drow, but Null valued her time more than most. She’d been positively patient with the little idiot, showing her in truly excruciating detail how to measure, to grind, to boil, to bottle. But no matter how much she drilled, how much she disciplined, the knowledge never took. In Null’s eyes, if she couldn’t pick up even the basics of potioncraft after that many years, then the only worth Vier would ever have to her was as fertilizer for fungi.

Even so many decades later, Null still kicked herself for not doing the deed with her own two hands. The idea she’d had for getting rid of her daughter had been sound, of that, she was certain. There was a grotto just outside of the city of Aleanduis which was home to both a healthy ecology of various fungi, and a particularly vicious pack of night hunters. She’d send the child out to the grotto, ostensibly to collect ingredients, the horrid deep bats would see easy prey and descend upon her, and she’d quickly be rendered nothing more than bones and guano. No more Vier, the fungi get fed, everyone wins. 

But how was Null to know that the little goblin had been breaking into her library when she was away and reading about necrotic magic? And even if she knew, she certainly wouldn’t have thought the girl capable of actually harnessing those energies and fighting back against the night hunters. So when she found the girl mangled but alive, surrounded by moldered bat corpses, was she wrong to have been a touch impressed?

Yes, as it turned out, she was, because that little spark of promise Vier showed led to Null making the boneheaded mistake of trying to send the girl off to the Aleanduis Clerical Academy. She’d nearly driven their household to financial ruin trying to scrounge up the tuition money, but, she reminded herself, this would be an investment. Vier would go off for a decade or two and hopefully be molded into a fine cleric who would then hopefully be scouted by a noble house, and hopefully, she would remember the mother who put her there and bring her into the fold. After all, even if she gained some ability with potioncraft, she’d still need someone reliable from whom to source her ingredients, and Null the Alchemist was nothing if not reliable.

In retrospect, she felt she should’ve known her investment would never pay dividends. Twenty years passed, and Null didn’t hear word one from Vier. Had she graduated and failed to tell her? Joined a noble house and left her mother behind like an absolute ingrate? Was she dead in a ditch somewhere? As twenty years became thirty, became forty, became nearly a century, she never learned the answer.

But Null didn’t wait for Vier to magically reappear on her doorstep. Instead, she did as most Drow do when a child meets a mysterious fate: she dragged her husband, Verlein, off to the marriage bed to replace her. If the next child proved as worthless as Vier had, then both it and Verlein would find themselves thrown in the nearest hook horror den, and she’d go on the hunt for a man of better breeding.

Fortunately for her - and for Verlein, she supposed - her next few children actually took to their lessons well, and were more than capable of helping their little potion shop grow, if not quite flourish, over the years. Not the grand explosion of notoriety she’d hoped for, but one night, as she closed up shop, she swore she could feel something monumental just around the corner. Surely, opportunity would come knocking soon.

The universe, it seemed, had a sense of dramatic timing, for at that moment, she heard a knock on the shop’s door. Null’s momentary reverie was broken, and her response was immediate and enthusiastic.

“We’re closed!” she shouted. “Fuck off!”

From the other side came a slightly muffled voice, distinctly male. “Please, we have an urgent message for someone named Null! Please allow us entry!” A message? Who would be sending a messenger at this late hour? A grumble and a heavy sigh escaped Null’s lips as she unlatched the front door to receive her unwelcome visitor. “Fine, come in, but make it quick,” she spat without thinking, though as soon as her eyes fell upon her visitors, she almost wished she hadn’t.

On the other side stood what appeared to be a man clad in full piwafwi, face covering and all, rather tall and broad for a Drow. Behind him stood a handful of similarly-clad figures, each with faces obscured, each taller than average. As Null peered beneath the hood to see the man’s eyes, she was immediately taken aback; the man’s eyes were red, as expected, but his skin was far too pale to be a Drow. A human? But the only humans in Aleanduis were slaves, and no one would be perverse and foolish enough to dress their slaves in traditional armor. And humans didn’t typically have red eyes, as far as she knew.

The man boldly strode past the threshold, lowering his cowl as he did so, and the severity of Null’s mistake immediately became apparent. As the red-eyed human opened his mouth to speak once more, he revealed a set of dangerously sharp fangs.

A vampire. And she’d freely let him and his cohort in.

The last words that Null heard before those teeth tore into her throat were: “Vier Alurlssrin sends her regards.”

#my writing #baldur's gate 3 #baldur's gate 3 fanfiction #drow #vampire #baldur's gate 3 tav #drow tav #vier alurlssrin

[mxnkeydo]

enchanted ✧ chapter one

✧ ship aru x aiden

✧ what to expect princess arundhati shah lives a life of luxury, but meeting a mysterious boy opens her eyes to her neglective father's true ways, and to something a little more than that...

✧ genre romance, fluff, humor

✧ word count 1.78K

✧ warnings none

✧ link to main masterlist

✧ link to enchanted masterlist

✧ A/N i was bored. this idea hit me. here you go!

✧ ✧ ✧

There I was again tonight Forcing laughter, faking smiles Same old tired, lonely place...

Arundhati’s hand curled around the doorknob of her chambers as she stared out at the vast wave of people coming in from the arched entrances. From citizens to ministers to the maids scurrying around the tiled floor, every inch of the ballroom was occupied. The mere sight of it made her stomach lurch sickeningly.

She closed the door and gazed into the mirror for the thousandth time that night, brushing her hand against the reflection in the mirror. It was really her, her mother had told her, just the more mature version. The girl with the red lips and the perfectly pinned hair and the dark eyeliner was her.

As much as she wanted to, Aru found it hard to believe.

She quickly  pulled a strand of hair out of her perfect loose bun and let it frame her face. She swiped off some of the lipstick from her mouth, put on lip gloss instead. She even let herself indulge in some mascara, even though her mother—the queen—had explicitly told her not to.

They were small acts of rebellion, but they made her feel good nevertheless.

Finally she walked out the door, her extravagant lilac lehenga sweeping the floor behind her, heart beating in her chest like a messenger drum. Almost immediately the ballroom went silent, all eyes on her.

“Ah, and here she comes,” Queen Krithika announced. Her face shone with a dazzling smile, and she ushered her daughter closer, hugging her around the waist. “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the birthday girl—Arundhati Shah, heir to the throne of Ascharyaloka!”

Aru raised her hand with a soft smile, inwardly flinching from the uproar of noise that followed her mother’s declaration. Hand in hand, she and the queen descended down the spiral stairs, her anklets clinking delightedly with every step. Her long, purple dupatta brushed against her back, and Aru barely managed to cast away the urge to scratch at it for the queen would chide her and deem it “unwomanly”. 

Stepping onto the tiled ballroom meant human interaction, which Aru hated most of the time, but she pasted a fake smile on her face and shook hands with almost everyone present at the party. Yes, she’d told her mother she wanted to throw a party for her sweet sixteen, but by that she had meant inviting a few friends; Mini, obviously, and then Brynne and her girlfriend Hira, and Rudy (who devotedly followed Mini everywhere she went). But her idea of a party and her mother’s idea of a party were completely different, apparently, because her mom had called just about every citizen in the kingdom to the palace.

“Aru, hey! Enjoying the party?”

Aru turned around and found herself face to face with her half-sister, Kara. To say the least, Kara was… a character. She was calm and wise in a weird way that infuriated her sometimes beyond words. Now, though, Aru simply gave her a tired smile.

“Hi, Kara,” she sighed, adjusting her large hoop earrings. “And no, not really. It’s really stuffy and this place reeks of obnoxious noblemen.”

Kara shrugged. “I can’t argue with that. Chocolate?” She broke off a piece of her white chocolate bar and Aru gladly took it from her, letting herself sink into a small moment of bliss, savoring it before she had to go back to reality. Unfortunately for her, there was a new batch of guests coming in, so she hastily bid goodbye to Kara and went to her mom’s side.

“I really don’t like this, I hope you know that,” Aru said to the queen out the side of her mouth, still smiling at all the newcomers as she adjusted her crown.

Without looking at her, Krithika replied, “Oh, believe me. I know. Now look, that was the man who donated the most to our construction of the grand library. Make sure to shake his hand and thank him again, alright?” Aru rolled her eyes but complied. 

“Any other old brown men you want me to meet?”

Krithika looked like she was trying not to smile, and a small sense of pride burst in Aru’s chest. “Very funny, and try not to be racist to anyone tonight. Now go shake that man’s hand.” Aru rolled her eyes but complied. “Oh, and Aru? Keep your eyes peeled for any handsome guys your age.”

“Mom!”

It took her an hour to meet everyone at her party. It wasn’t even time to cut the cake yet and she was already exhausted and eager to go back up to her room, her safe haven. Luckily for her, the queen struck her spoon against a wine glass and beckoned everyone to the table where a four-layered cake sat on a glass stand. The faster she could get this done, the quicker she could get out of her fitted lehenga and escape all these people. 

The cake was grand, and that was saying something because Aru had seen a lot of grand things in the short sixteen years of her lifetime. Although the cake itself was white, it was adorned with purple flowers all around, all made out of frosting and fondant. She really had to hand it to the bakers because they seemed lifelike, so real that she could almost imagine reaching out and feeling soft petals on the pads of her fingers.

Flowers were nice. But pretty flowers that you could eat? That was even better.

After Aru was serenaded with a painfully out of tune chorus of “Happy Birthday”, she finally got to cut the cake. Inside, the cake burst with different shades of purple to match the party’s theme of purple and white and black. She got the first slice, and with one bite, she knew Brynne had definitely helped to make this. Aru had always been fond of vanilla, but Bee had taken it to the next level, making the rich flavor explode on her tongue. The taste sent pleasurable shivers down her spine as Aru made a mental note to thank her later.

Eating meant that she didn’t have to talk to anyone, so Aru let herself sit at one of the round tables closest to the palace exit, where fresh air circulated through the open entryway. Night had fallen, and the stars twinkled mischievously in the sky, like a secretive wink. Vaguely Aru thought of her father, the king. He had been the one to name her, Krithika had told her. She had been born at dawn, when the sky was beginning to brighten and the only star visible was the morning star: Arundhati. According to the stories Aru had listened to, he was noble and wise and funny, everything a woman looked for in a man. 

Not anymore, apparently. Suyodhana was never there, not even for her sixteenth birthday. I have work, he’d say some days. I have important meetings to attend, he’d say on others. No matter what he always had an excuse to stay out of their lives. Ignoring her was one thing; but Krithika was his queen. He didn’t get to ignore her. The fact that he did made her angry, so angry. But there was nothing she could do about it.

Aru let the thought go with the warm winds. They brushed her face like gentle hands, tickled her neck. She wished she could go out there now.

In fact, she could. Nobody was watching. Nobody would notice she was gone, for everyone was too busy eating. One little detour couldn’t hurt, right?

When she was absolutely certain no one was looking her way, Aru lifted her heavy skirt and walked out the door.

The sky was clearer now that she was outside. The full moon dazzled against the royal blue canvas, and it seemed to smile down at her as she strolled through the gardens. Her fingers brushed against various flowers; a bush of crimson roses, hanging vines of jasmine, clusters of bright yellow daffodils. The only sounds present were her soft breathing and the padding of her footsteps through the arrangement of plants.

So, naturally, when Aru heard the crunch of a twig from behind her, she was quite alarmed.

She whirled around immediately, reaching for the knife strapped to her shin in case of emergencies like these. “Who’s there?” She yelled, but the only response was the soft echo of her own voice coming back to her. “Show yourself!” She yelled once more. “I’m the—”

“I know who you are, princess,” a smooth, husky voice interrupted her. Aru’s jaw fell slack as a slender figure revealed himself from the willow trees. He slowly came into the light, his eyes full of restrained panic. “And, uh, mind putting that knife down?”

“Who are you?” Aru answered with a question of her own, but she still let the knife clatter to the ground. The trespasser was a boy, not much older than her, with the most mesmerizing eyes she’d ever seen. They were wide and dark, but not fully brown like the common color every citizen had—they had hints of blue and purple iridescence. His glossy curls bounced as the boy stepped forward, his hands up like he was being arrested. 

“I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” he said, looking down at the grass. “I was on a walk and I saw the palace and I just—you know, my mother used to sing at the palace during events like the one you’re hosting tonight.” He smiled wistfully—and gods his smile was charming. But then he seemed to catch himself and wiped the grin off his face. “I—I will take your leave now.”

“Who was your mother?” Aru found herself asking, just out of general curiosity. The boy turned around and shook his head sadly.

“It’s not very important. Many people sang for the king and queen. My mother was merely one of them.” Aru would have believed him if it weren’t for his eyes, suddenly tight and cold like ice. The ice melted though, and the next time she blinked he was at ease again. And, she couldn’t help noticing, he was handsome. He wore a plain black kurta that made him blend into the night, and it made his eyes shine all the more. The sparkled, reminding her of the stars.

“Where do you live?” Aru asked, but the boy only shook his head once more and winked, leaving her flustered and blushing like an idiot. “Wait, what’s your—”

The boy darted away, off into the darkness of the garden “—name,” she finished quietly, laughing in incredulous wonder. 

For the next few minutes, Aru stood there dumbly, still trying to remember her own name, until her responsibilities as princess rushed back to her yet again.

Walls of insincerity, shifting eyes and vacancy Vanished when I saw your face All I can say is, it was enchanting to meet you...

#enchanted #aruden #aru shah #aiden acharya

[specialinterestshows]

Only good vibrations in this smutty section of my Rhea Ripley x lady!reader fic (definitely longer than most sections thus far).

Warnings for this section: Brief mention of smoking weed, kink (BDSM, exhibitionism, edging, drooling)

-

Absolute Smokeshow (Part 30 of ?): Remote Control

“Ready to hear the rules for tonight?” Rhea smirked at you from the video call on your laptop.

It was a little over a week since she left, and the two of you finally found time to try out the vibrator she gave you. The rest of the Judgment Day was out having a “guy’s night” - whatever that meant - and the Eradicator had the hotel room to herself for a few hours. This was the first time the two of you had really sat down together on video and you had made sure to smoke a bit beforehand to calm your nerves.

“Yes, Mami,” you say, muscles clenching around the toy already inside of you as you listen closely. The vibrator was on and ready, and Rhea had her phone in hand, connected to it via the app. The sight of you naked and at her mercy on camera makes her bite her lip before explaining.

“I’m going to try every single setting on this, and you’re going to describe them to me,” she says, watching you shift on your bed, “But you’re not allowed to come until we go through every. Single. One.”

You blush, trying not to look at the image of yourself in the voice call.

“Understand?” Rhea’s voice gains a more commanding edge, prompting you to respond.

“I understand, Mami,” you say quickly.

“Good girl,” she purrs before tapping her phone.

The first three settings were steady vibrations, each more intense than the last. You described these as classic vibrator settings, specifically remembering the vibrating wand an ex of yours had. The fourth was a sudden departure, making you moan slightly in surprise.

“Use your words,” Rhea orders, stopping the vibration when she hears you.

“Like sitting on a washing machine,” your face warms slightly at having to admit you’d gotten yourself off that way before.

The setting changes again, making you squirm at the feeling.

“Motorcycle at a stoplight,” you do your best not to whine in disappointment as the vibration stops after you answer.

“You’re doing so good, sweet girl,” Rhea assures you, the sadistic look on her face contrasting with the softness in her voice.

Another moan escapes your lips as the toy begins to vibrate in a way reminiscent of Morse code.

“Mm, like, like being slapped with a vibrator over and over,” you felt yourself dripping onto your bed sheets, cursing your own lack of foresight in not setting down a towel.

One tap of her phone and Rhea changed the staccato pattern to one that so far was the easiest for you to describe: “ohgod, just like someone keeps switching between using their mouth and using their hands on me.”

“Good to know,” she says, likely filing away the information for later.

The vibration had stopped for now, replaced with the thrust function when Rhea taps the next setting. You twitch and moan at the new motion, which feels just like “being fingered.” A chuckle greets your ears at the description. The next two settings are more intense versions of the same sensation, and this time you do whine when the toy stops. You’re rapidly descending further into sub-space, having to focus now on not coming with each thrust inside you. The ache for release is almost painful and a bit of drool leaves your mouth, to your surprise.

“Let me know when you’re getting close,” Rhea warns, lust heavy in her voice as she watches you, “We’re not done yet.”

“Mm, y-yes, Mami,” you manage to whimper, wanting nothing more than to get to a point where you were allowed to come.

Your moan at the next setting is one of slight relief, having missed even a few seconds without stimulation.

“L-like having sex in a moving car, on a bumpy road,” you hear yourself say, desperation in your voice. Having to keep yourself from coming was starting to get difficult.

The next setting didn’t help much, the noises escaping you a cacophony of want that you no longer had the capacity to control. You groan slightly when the movement stops.

The sensitivity and desire you felt was so overwhelming, your voice came out as a soft whisper when you tried to give a description.

“What was that?” Rhea teased, “I can barely hear you.”

“Just like you fucking me with a strap-on,” you say again, louder this time, hand covering your face slightly as you look away from the woman controlling the toy.

“Sounds like a good one,” she says, savoring your slight embarrassment, “Just a few more to go.”

Suddenly, both the vibrate and thrust started working in tandem, making you cry out at the waves of building pleasure.

“Getting close!” you moan, frustration forming a knot in your stomach as the toy stops.

“Looks like we’re getting to the really fun options,” Rhea’s eyes seem to be looking into yours as she spoke, even through the video feed, “What did that feel like?”

“Like, um, putting your phone in your pants and calling it to get off,” you admit, face growing warm.

“Not that you’d know what that feels like,” Rhea mocked, “I’m getting to know so much about you.”

The next setting was the most intense by far, bringing you close to the edge very rapidly.

“Mmclose!” you whine, fighting the tightening knot in your stomach.

“Good girl,” Rhea praised, turning off the vibrator, then more harshly, “Speak.”

“H-how I would imagine it feels to be fucked by two people at once,” you say, too desperate to be shy.

“Last one,” she says, “but you still can’t come until you tell me how it feels.”

“Mmhm,” you nod, bracing yourself.

Somehow you hadn’t prepared yourself for this level of intensity, feeling as though the toy was wrenching the pleasure from you regardless of how much you resisted.

“Mami!” you cry out the only word you can think of in that moment to let her know you were close. The motion stops just in time, making you groan and whimper, sheets in disarray around you from how hard you were gripping them. The wet spot beneath you had grown slightly, but you were far from concerned.

“Oh wow,” you take a moment to catch your breath before continuing, “like if you used your strap and a wand on me at the same time.”

“Such a good little slut for Mami,” Rhea praises, making you clench around the pink silicone, “Now come for me.”

The movement inside of you shifted between the most intense settings, sending you into an overwhelmingly powerful orgasm as it sprung to life. An enthusiastic “yes!” resonates from your chest, followed by a cascade of moans and whimpers as the pleasure tore through you.

“You’re so fucking hot, fuck,” Rhea growls, her image coming into focus on the screen as the toy becomes motionless once more and you blink in a daze.

“Holy wow, Rhe, that was… amazing,” you sigh contentedly, feeling too good to bother searching for a better word.

“The boys won’t be back for a while yet, if you wanted to go again,” she says, giving the camera a sultry look.

You smile, bite your lip, and nod, bracing yourself for more.

[end part thirty of ?]

Part 31: https://www.tumblr.com/specialinterestshows/726585802673520640/absolute-smokeshow-part-31-of-meet-and-greet

-

Tag List (thank you!)

@cherryberryshine , @littlemiss-fanficlover , @elisewithak , @babybatlover , @girlofpink

#wwe fanfiction #the judgment day #rhea ripley #rhea ripley x reader #rhea ripley x dominik mysterio #the judgement day #lady!reader #stoner themes #smut #specialinterestshows presents #absolute smokeshow

[fadedapparition]

i am thinking… about how a high approval lavellan really easily ends up relating to solas the way briala related to felassan. and how i actually like this much more than the romance route because it’s just as interesting and possibly even sadder.

lavellan doesn’t HAVE to see him this way, but they're given room to decide that solas is their mentor in an environment where they’ve otherwise been completely cut off from their culture-group. you have the opportunity to ask him for advice on just about anything, and the transmission of knowledge/history forms the bedrock of any positive relationship between himself and the player character. the dalish have limited written records, so most lore is passed down orally from keepers and hahrens to younger members of a clan. when solas starts rambling about the fade, it’s not just some guy telling stories, but an older elf sharing knowledge with his protege that would otherwise be lost with his death. he is fulfilling the responsibilities of a hahren in the same way felassan fulfilled them for briala, and he’s doing so while secretly the most literal hahren you could find. solas can occupy the role of an elder, but he is also among the oldest elves in the setting: not only a hahren, but the most hahren.

and in being granted the honor of a position as their elder, solas must confront the fact that lavellan is his legacy. they are the product of the world he’s created, the mortal race that owes its existence entirely to the catastrophic changes he made that he’s since come to regret. they purposefully incorporate him into their cultural lineage, and by doing that, they compel him to acknowledge the ties that bind him to present-day elves. he’s meeting his descendants in the post-apocalypse, and he’s grappling with the reality that for as bad as the world might be, it remains populated by people who recognize themselves in him.

for felassan, briala was the catalyst for an identical realization, and he was willing to die at solas’ hands to affirm her personhood (and, by extension, everyone else's). solas finds himself in precisely the same situation, except he’s been murdering his dearest friends to deny this possibility since before the story began. when he meets felassan’s own version of lavellan, when he actually encounters briala herself, he describes her in glowing terms because he realizes how closely they resemble each other. maybe this is why felassan bonded with her so strongly. the person she reminded him of could easily be solas.

i don't agree with the (prevailing?) interpretation that solas tries to separate himself from present-day elvendom because he doesn’t see other elves as people. i think he’s doing it because he wants to escape the truth that destroying the world means destroying his heirs, people who are as much like him as they could be while still surviving the terrible world he bequeathed to them. if you help elves, choose dialogues that reference elven lore, or even just point out to people that you are an elf, solas throws approval at you, but if you tell him directly that you are both elves and therefore similar, he gets scared. he knows lavellan is his people, but doesn't want to internalize that because that would turn him into a second felassan - and make his murder of the actual felassan completely meaningless.

the solas romance is about this immortal promethean god-figure recognizing an equal in the present and falling in love, but i personally like this version of the story more because it places greater emphasis on the seniority and power he holds. he's one of very few lines of defense between lavellan and a chantry that has a long, storied history of elf-killing. he has access to complete, firsthand accounts of their history, and can permit or deny them that knowledge at will. they're granting him their trust and their admiration, and it's on him to decide if he's worthy of it. they are his symbolic child, and he is the only person with the capacity to prevent them from becoming a sort of isaac to his abraham.

but instead, in true deadbeat fashion, he skips town, changes his number, and stops responding to your emails. and that’s why the new game is called dragon age dad

#i'm rambling. but i do think this guy is very cool! he is my dad! he sucks! #felassan #solas #dragon age meta #dragon age #there's like an entire 'patricide is regicide is deicide these are the same things' rant i've had in my head for years now #that applies almost exactly to solas. but i haven't written it out bc last time i tried it was literally incoherent

[seleneprince]

For my genderbend au, I was thinking of the following names for the girls:

Female! Jacaerys:

Jacaera: Simple and easy. Obviously I didn’t work my brain hard for this one, but I actually like how it sounds. It reminds of a warrior queen’s name. Her nickname would be “Jera”. 

Alysanne: Rhaenyra would name her like this in hopes her daughter would become a queen as good and beloved like the namesake. And I’ve noticed there hadn’t been more Alysanne Targaryen descendants, which doesn’t sit well to me. Her nickname would be “Lysa”. I like this one too.

Visenya: Rhaenyra always had that name reserved for someone, but she didn’t got the chance to use it until so much later. If she had a daughter, she’ll most likely choose this one, to honour the sister she never got to have. I like the name but I prefer to give her a name that fits her character more.

Elaena: Even though the show decided to completely erase this fact and tried to force an unrealistic narrative with Alicent, canonically Rhaenyra and Laena were besties and had a special bond (it’s heavily implied they were something more). In the books it is said that Rhaenyra flied to Laena’s side when she gave birth and threw herself at her dead body, crying and begging her to wake up. So I feel Rhaenyra would totally name her one of her daughters similarly to her beloved friend/lover.

Female! Lucerys:

Aemma: Like the beloved wife and mother, this would definetly be an option for Rhaenyra. Since in this au fem!Lucerys has a strong resemblance to her grandmother, this will probably cross Rhaenyra’s mind, wanting a chance to honour her mother’s memory (and piss of Alicent). But like with fem!Jace, I want her to have a more original name, separated from another character.

Lucerya: Same thing than Jacaera. I didn’t think too much with this one. I’m not sure if I want them to be just genderbend versions or ocs on their own right, so depending on my choice, I’ll give them “feminized” versions or different ones.

Rhaenys: The least likely one, but I like to imagine the picture created if Rhaenyra named her daughters like the first Targaryen queens. But considering Rhaenys’ posture with fem!Lucerys, this probably won’t sit well, although maybe Laenor would like to name her like his mother too. 

Valaena: Visenya, Aegon and Rhaenys’ mother, the first Velaryon to be known. What better way to honour the family by naming the future Lady of the Tides like this ancestor, while also winking at her Targaryen ancestry?

I have more names, but these ones are the most recurring ones. Let me know what you think!

#house of the dragon #hotd #genderbend hotd #female jacaerys velaryon #female lucerys velaryon #rhaenyra targaryen #fire and blood #aemma arryn #rhaenys targaryen #laenor velaryon #jacaerys velaryon #lucerys velaryon #team black #asoiaf

[godofdystopia]

Wednesday Addams does not like Rainbows... yet

So guess who just finished the first season of Wednesday and is jumping on the Wenclair bandwagon feet first? This guy, that’s who!

In truth, i was probably going to write something like this anyway because there's so much shipping potential in Wednesday: Larissa x Morticia, Larissa x Morticia x Gomes, Wenclair (obviously) and so much more. Then i saw a prompt by @pass1onfru1t that i said to myself “Hey, i could do that!”

So behold my first wenclair fanfic, expect more to come

In this short little number: Wednesday is completely head over heels for her cute and bubbly roommate and would do anything for her, but wearing something rainbow patterned? Yes, but only after complaining. Enid is despondent for reasons Wednesday doesn't understand and will have to learn what this whole Pride thing is about.

Bianca and Yoko aren’t paid enough for this shit.

Word count: 3.4k, told you it was a short one

Wednesday Addams typed away, working on her grand novel. She had to beat Mary Shelly and she would. Yes, her original plan for the novel was drastically differed from the current version she was writing, on account of how back when she first started she hadn’t yet fought a Hyde, a resurrected human supremacist wizard from the colonial days, his necromancer of a descendant, and the grand conspiracy/revenge plot that led to a dozen deaths and the near burning of Nevermore.

Life just sometimes worked out that way.

She slowly set the current scene: The protagonist had finally made it to the center of the grand labyrinth underneath the cathedral and beheld the fate of their loved ones. The Corrupt bishop had locked them away in the darkness and let them be eaten by the rat swarm beneath it and all that remained was the Hyde that her brother had turned into. Her wife was fighting the bishop and his crusader knights above while below the Hyde approached, emotional appeals were not working and it seemed as if it would kill and devour her in the mad rage it had descended into which would lead to him taking his own life once he awoke.

All in all, it was far more cheerful than she would usually like. And she knew the exact reason why: Enid Sinclair.

Thoughts of her roommate brought the now customary bout of increased heart palpitations and the usual tightening of her lower stomach, almost like nervousness if she had ever felt such before. She even felt the corners of her mouth tug upward slightly.

Thing, resting beside the typewriter in his fluffy little bed that Enid had insisted on making for him, signed away like crazy. His fingers sliced through the air as he went from one sign to the other.

Wednesday watched him call her a big softie and simply sighed. “Call me that again and I'll flay the skin from your bones.” Thing signed again about how her threat lacked any of its usual heat and she was reluctantly forced to admit he was right.

Enid was making her soft, and yet she found that she surprisingly did not care.

She was forced to admit that she completely and utterly smitten with the werewolf girl.

It had started after the battle with Tyler and Thornhill had finally wrapped up, and Enid had clung to her relieved that she was alive. Wednesday Addams was not a hugger, nor would she ever be, and yet having Enid wrap her arms around her felt right and so for the very first time in her entire life she’d… reciprocated.

It brought disgustingly soft and happy feelings to her to remember it. And there were other disturbing signs as well.

She found herself thinking often about the werewolf girl, just imagining her and keeping her in her thoughts like some co-dependant leech.

She found herself feeling disappointed, dare she say despondent, whenever Enid wasn’t around or had to leave suddenly when they spent time together.

She found herself wanting to kill Ajax more than she usually did. At first it had simply been because he had broken Enid’s heart by standing her up and Wednesday desired to take an eye for an eye but now it was because the very thought of Enid and Ajax being romantically involved filled her with jealousy. Although she was forced to admit that that had also been the case when she had originally fostered her anger.

But worst of all, worse than anything else, was that Wednesday just couldn’t say no to the girl. Enid wanted her to wear the snood? She’d wear the snood wherever she went. Enid wanted to go to Hawte Culture to shop for clothes? Wednesday would swallow her pride and follow her with only mild complaining. Enid wanted her to join her and Thing’s mani-pedi session? Thing would take that night to his grave.

She was turning into as much of an overly romantic sap as her father, soon she would be… dancing and singing Enid’s praises to the high heavens and making revolting kissing faces towards her while spouting off imbecilic pet names loud enough for other people to hear.

Those thoughts finally drove her distraction away and she refocused on her novel and most certainly ignored Thing’s mocking signs about how she had the slightest dusting of pink on her cheeks. Because she didn't, not at all.

She had just gotten to the first dismemberment when the door to her room opened and Enid all but danced in.

Wednesday simply quietly pushed the typewriter away, she wouldn't be able to get any work done with her roommate in here with her.

“Wednesday! Wednesday, Wednesday, you’ll never guess what I got for us!” Enid said happily, holding something behind her back with a huge smile.

No, no Wednesday would certainly not get any work done.

“Yes, Enid?” She asked as she made her way over to her roommate’s side of the room, trying to puzzle out what new thing the werewolf girl would try and drag her into. She most certainly ignored how she was actually looking forward to what it was, because that would mean acknowledging that she was becoming as disgustingly domestic as her parents. She planned on beating Mary Shelly at writing, The Zodiac Killer at creative murder, and the rest of her time at Nevermore before she let herself do something like that.

With a happy squeal, she brought her hands forward and presented yet another snood. It was as wooly and well-knit as the other she’d gotten her though the colors were certainly… a choice. It was a bright orange and pink separated by lines with a stripe of white down the middle in a rainbow pattern throughout the whole thing. It was disgustingly colorful and Wednesday knew without a shadow of a doubt she’d be wearing it before the hour was up because she was turning into her father and couldn’t say no to Enid.

The snood matched the one Enid currently wore in that like hers, it was also in a rainbow pattern: This time darker colors of dark pink, purple, and blue. The thought of Enid wanting her to wear matching snoods with her was… well, Thing clearly needed to get his sight checked out because his slanderous claims of Wednesday smiling were lies and falsehoods.

Who was she kidding, really?

“So… um,” Enid looked almost nervous, shuffling from foot to foot and avoiding eye contact. “What, er, do you think of it?”

Wednesday felt an eyebrow raise at the sight.

“Because, well, if you like it… there’s ah, well that’s good.” Enid finally looked at Wednesday, their eyes catching.

Wednesday truly was cursed with her fathers moronic displays of love-sickness because she actually felt her chest contract at how adorable pitiful the sight was.

“It’s hideously revolting.” Wednesday said simply, because the snood completely clashed with her chosen color palette, being far too bright and cheerful for her tastes. It was also rainbow patterned, something that was also far too bright and cheerful for her tastes. Were it anyone else asking she would simply stare them down until they realized the stupidity of their question. But because it was Enid, Wednesday knew exactly how this would go.

Enid would look at her with an expression of adorable pathetic begging and ask her again and because father had placed a curse upon Wednesday to be an absolute fool for the person she loved she’d sigh and put the snood on within ten minutes and pretend to hate it while doing absolutely nothing to take it off because Enid would beam at her with pure happiness and that would make it worthwhile.

Except that’s not what happened.

Instead, once Wednesday stated her hatred of the rainbow patterned snood Enid drew back as if hurt and looked at her like Wednesday had placed a hundred curses upon her.

“Oh.” Enid said simply, looking like she was close to tears. Wednesday utterly despised the feeling of guilt and shame that flooded through her.

“Enid, What-” She began before being cut off.

“I should go. I, I need to go.” Enid raced out of the room and out of sight, and Wednesday just stood there wondering what on earth had just happened.

Wednesday blinked, looked at Thing and raised an eyebrow. Thing did the hand equivalent of a shrug.

“It was a rainbow with happy colors, I don't do rainbows.” She stated as she turned the entire conversation over in her head trying to find out what went wrong. Thing signed from the desk and Wednesday frowned.

“Perhaps, but why would insulting this be different than every other time I insulted the existence of color?” Wednesday made a habit of insulting every overly colorful piece of apparel that Enid got her to try on before she caved and wore it anyway because she was utterly incapable of saying No to her.

Once more Thing did a one hand shrug.

Well, it wasn’t a murder mystery but it looked like Wednesday was back to investigating and finding answers.

Hopefully before Enid decided to hate her forever for insulting her rainbow thing because though she would do anything for Enid she really hoped she wouldn't have to wear something rainbow colored and happy, she would never be able to live with herself.

**********

Unlike hunting down a murderous mystery monster and trying to uncover a decades old revenge plot, hunting down clues for why your crush was sad was an altogether different beast entirely.

For one thing, she couldn't kidnap her suspects and torture the information out of them since the perpetrator was, well, herself. Had Enid been sad for some other reason caused by another then that would be a different story, a very bloody and nightmarish story where every living soul in Nevermore learned the hard way what happened to those who hurt the girl she cared for more than anything else on this earth.

But alas, Wednesday couldn’t torture her way through this no matter how much she wished to. Enid had asked her to try and be more… nice to the other students and though she would absolutely eviscerate anyone that deserved it she was trying for her sake. But to find out the answers she needed would require hardcore social manipulation on a scale Wednesday just couldn’t replicate yet, and thus she would be forced to seek outside help.

Thing was just as clueless as she was, Eugene was currently back home visiting family, Xavier was somewhere in Jericho and going there to find answers would take too long. Which unfortunately left only one other person.

As Wednesday told her story, putting as much facts in as she could and ignoring Thing as he rested on her shoulder and made false claims of her being… She did not know what a ‘Simp’ was, but once she did she would make sure to punish Thing accordingly for referring to her as such multiple times.

Bianca Barclay listened to all of this, watching Wednesday as she talked and Thing added his colorful commentary, and when she was finally done Bianca walked over to the nearest seat, put her head in her hands, and let loose the single most despairing and annoyed sigh that had ever existed.

“Wednesday, you are the dumbest smart person I've ever met in my life.”

Wednesday frowned, and even Thing tensed in indignation. “I would choose my next words carefully if I were you.” She said in lieu of threatening retribution as she still needed Bianca’s help. Revenge could come after Enid was happy again.

“Yeah, no.” Bianca finally looked up at Wednesday and just stared at her with utter disappointment. “No, I'm not taking that from someone who's never seen the Lesbian Pride Flag before.”

Wednesday said nothing, merely waiting expectantly.

Bianca sighed again. “Fine, okay, I guess ill be the one to explain it. Why the hell do I have to explain the lesbian flag to a lesbian in 2022? Why is this my life?”

“Save your despair for when I can properly enjoy it and get on with the point.” Wednesday said annoyed.

“Fine, whatever, this is my life now.” Bianca got up and began to pace back and forth. “It’s a symbol for lesbians who want to show solidarity and pride, it was made after Pride Month grew too big for one singular flag for everyone under the LGBTQ spectrum.”

Pride, now that was an interesting name for it. One of the seven deadly sins, often considered the worst of the lot by many. An entire month dedicated to it? Now that did sound fun. She wondered if there were months for the other six sins before shaking her head. Those questions could come later, and it was obvious that February was the month of lust if everyone’s obsession with romantic love and physical attraction was anything to go by.

Again, it would have to be saved for later. Enid was far more important.

“What’s pride month?”

Bianca just stared at her again. “Tell me you're joking?”

“If I were I would not ask.”

Bianca wanted to scream. “How the fuck do you not know what pride month is!? Have you never wondered about all the rainbows during June? Why every corporation suddenly decide to pretend to like the LGBTQ community for a few weeks?”

“It’s during June?” Wednesday asked, nodding. “That explains it, during June my family sequesters itself in the house to avoid the sight of rainbows. We’re allergic to primary colors.”

Bianca snorted despite her annoyance, a smirk growing on her face.

Wednesday looked towards the ground and frowned in memory. “My uncle Fester broke out into hives one year after breaking up with his current boyfriend and was forced to behold a rainbow in the sky while my brother developed a rash across his back when he saw one. It was quite gruesome.”

The smirk fell right off of Bianca’s face and she groaned in despair again. “You’re not joking. Of course you’re not joking, why on earth did I think you were? This is the dumbest conversation I've ever had.”

“Look.” She said, walking over to grab Wednesday and pull her behind her to her dorm before the Addams girl could make another remark that broke Bianca’s brain. “I don't have even a fraction of enough time to explain the entire history of pride month to you so you’re doing that shit on your own. I'll give you the bullet points and send you on your way.”

Wednesday would like to do literally anything else, but it was for Enid so she would force herself to endure.

She’d get her revenge later though.

**********

“And, and, and she called it revolting! She called it disgusting and, and, and…” Enid broke down into fresh sobs.

Yoko would love nothing more than to help… actually, that was a lie. Her girlfriend was coming over later and Yoko needed to clean up the dorm before she got here or no make-out sesh’s for her, except the moment she wants to start Enid breaks down the door (literally shattered it to pieces with her werewolf strength because fuck her room she supposed) and then collapsed on the bed hard enough to shatter the legs and just started bawling.

Apparently Enid had tried to confess with a snood, a fucking snood, and Wednesday had turned into a homophobe? And insulted her? Or maybe she’d called her a slur, to tell the truth Yoko had been too busy worrying about how she’d be able to clean the room in an hour to listen to the first half of it.

Either way, she now had a sad werewolf on her now ruined bed, there were door splinters lodged in the wall and covering the floor, and Yoko had been studying for her midterms and thus was, as a whole, absolutely too tired for this shit.

Before Yoko could try and wrangle up anything resembling a response to all of this, there was a knock at her door, or the empty hole where her door used to be.

“What? Can’t you see I'm… busy… right…” Yoko trailed off, just staring.

Wednesday Addams stood at her door and she was absolutely decked from head to toe in pride apparel. A rainbow hoodie, lesbian flags painted on her cheeks, a bi flag hanging from her shoulders like a cloak and the black and gray snood wrapped around her head like a hood with a pair of rainbow leggings. She looked like she was about to start a one woman LGBTQ march through Jericho.

“Enid, can we talk?” Wednesday said in her usual monotone, walking into the room.

“Oh, sure, just come in. not like it’s my room or anything…” Yoko grumbled. Wednesday didn't even pay attention to her.

“Go away, I don't want to talk to you.” Enid muttered, her voice muffled from Yoko’s pillow as she continued burying her face further into it to avoid seeing her.

“Allow me to explain.”

Enid said nothing, so Wednesday continued.

“When you brought me the snood, i didn't know what it meant.” Wednesday began, and Yoko actually felt her jaw drop because what the fuck? who doesn't know what the lesbian flag means? “I believed you were just handing me a piece of colorful rainbow apparel and responded accordingly.”

Wednesday seemed to swallow nervously before continuing. “Bianca has made me aware of the significance and meaning behind the scarf and the colors upon it.” Wednesday looked away from the extremely still and attentive form of Enid, feeling more… feelings emerging. “The thought that you would give me apparel that will keep boys from asking me out again and also anger many people throughout Jericho who will see me as a monster for liking other women like I do… well, it means a lot.”

“That’s not what the lesbian flag means at all!” Yoko cried out exasperated. She was summarily ignored by both Wednesday, who had never paid any attention to her in the first place, and also Enid who was now sitting up and listening even though she still couldn’t bear to look at her yet.

“In truth, whether I knew the flag’s meaning or not i would still have worn it when you asked me.”

“Then… then why did you say you hated it.” Enid asked, hope lacing her voice.

“Because I hate color and rainbows, and for reasons I cannot fathom, the lesbian flag was made with far too many bright colors. Although… for you I have made an exception.”

Enid finally dared to look back at Wednesday and her jaw dropped at the sight of her, all the rainbows and colors and… “You did this… for me?” Enid asked after a minute of just staring in wonder.

Wednesday gestured to her attire and felt nervous and embarrassed, two things she would take to her grave and beyond. “It took awhile for me and Thing to steal enough pride apparel to pull this together but after learning the significance behind it I could do nothing less. I suppose I will be sending others to my family after this as well for they will want to be supportive of my choices. Though as for why I did it…”

she coughed into a fist and looked away, not being able to meet Enid’s awed expression for fear of falling prey to even more feelings. “I can never say no to you. My father has cursed me severely.” She looked to the ground and scowled. “Like him, I am but a slave to the person I love.”

Wednesday paused, that had not been meant to slip out. She had confessed? She had confessed dressed like this?

Oh dear god, she was her father.

Enid paused, finally heard the words, and after a second launched herself from the bed with enough force to send the bedsprings tearing out of the mattress and several inches into the floor. Enid tackled Wednesday to the ground and hugged her like her life depended on it, nuzzling her head into the crook of Wednesday’s neck as her body partially wolfed: Wolf ears sticking out of her head and wolf tail wagging furiously in utter bliss.

Wednesday, rather than do anything she normally would have had it been anyone else, simply began to pet the top of the werewolf girl's head and smiled. It was only the smallest possible smile but for Wednesday it was like she was beaming.

Thing, crawling up onto Yoko’s shoulders signed furiously and she understood.

“She really is a simp, isn’t she?” She asked. Thing nodded, or did as close to a nod as a severed zombie hand could do.

“Olay, I'm glad that you two are dating now but can you both please get the hell out of what’s left of my dorm room?”

Enid and Wednesday both promptly ignored her and continued cuddling on the floor.

#wednesday #wenclair #wednesday addams #enid sinclair #wednesday x enid #bianca barclay #yoko tanaka #wednesday thing #wednesday is soft for enid #and as Thing said is also a simp #its the addams family curse #the addams family #fanfiction #fanfic