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idanit · 2 years

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Beyond Evil fic recs

I watched Beyond Evil, tripped, learned hangul, and inhaled most of the BE AO3 tag. These are some of the stories I enjoyed, paired with slightly edited excerpts from my private fic reading notes and/or my AO3 comments. Mind the summaries and the tags!

General and Teen

one good movie kiss Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik; Lee Dong Sik & Park Jung Je, Yoo Jae Yi, Lee Sang Yeob Wow, I love it? I'm into each and every section of this so far, they’re all good in different ways. (...) Unexpectedly, I really like the Jae Yi scene. I didn't know I needed to see her and Dongsik scrubbing the windows of her shop off insults. She was so in character, too. And I love Dongsik's POV in all of these. (...) I really loved seeing Dongsik struggle with voicing — no, realising — what he wants.

the way home Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik Good dialogues. I can picture the scenes and their expressions. (...) This is slow and good and aching (...) It aches with the weight of the twenty years. (...) A recovery-after-hurt fic. (...) Loving someone middle-aged, having so much to learn about them. (...) I read this one in a daze. I hope there are other similarly good get-together fics that explore grief and trauma out there. (...) These characterisations were really good except for a few beats I disgreed with.

see the light is bright as ever Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik Bedsharing in a guest house because of phone reception reasons. Gentle talk, tears, tension, anger, guilt, affection, all of it.

call you out on your contrarian shit Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik Ohh, I liked this one. The voice is a bit restrained, in a good way. The characterisations are recognizable. Dongsik gets into his head that Joowon should date someone younger, but Joowon's mind is set. Melons are eaten at a lake house. Tea is drunk. A sleepy conversation is had.

rome wasn't built in one day. Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik This starts out really dark, wow. Dongsik's POV. It leans into their shared trauma as their bond, into what I would almost call codependence (...). I'm intrigued. (...) It's very tasty to see them so scared of losing the other that they won't talk about ANYTHING even as they start to live together. (...) This is so painful. They're insane, they're the worst. (...) There was something satisfying about this unnecessarily dark take on their get-together.

The Human Heart Is Hungry Still Han Ju Won&/Lee Dong Sik Very slice-of-lifey (...) It was such a slow, gentle story, and I enjoyed its subtle emotional threading a lot. (...) Joowon and Dongsik go to a hardware store together and I am happy about it. (...) It's pre-relationship and it lays the ground for it very well, in a very understated way, in charmingly small things, a touch here, a thought there. (...) And everyone else is here! (...) It was obvious that you gave a lot of thought to what would happen to everyone post-canon, and that you've done your research. Manyang felt like a real, lived-in town and everyone's lives and circumstances interconnected in really satisfying, believable ways.

still there inside my chest Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik One of these slow, soft, radiant get-together fics with (...) smooth, transparent writing. Joowon keeps coming to Manyang, they visit Dongsik's mother, there's the butcher shop (...), you know the drill.

grounding Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik The only one bed trope. I love that the case that stranded them in the storm-surrounded inn was something that reminded Dongsik of Minjeong and that this is what they kept thinking about and the reason Joowon tried to provide some comfort (handholding!). I like how annoyed they still find each other, I like that this is mid-canon.

Offering Han Ju Won&Lee Dong Sik Oh, an actually good fic? (...) Joowon collapses at the station, his bloody hands and all. Dongsik cleans them for him, then drives him to his apartment. It's still the Hurting Joowon genre, but it was good hurt/comfort, honestly. In character, competent writing. That's all I need — so little, but apparently so much.

if you say it with your hands Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik Aching, aching! Good. I walked into it not expecting borderline sexual content, but I got the most beautiful scene of the sex Not Happening that I have in recent memory. Joowon lets go of his need to control bit by bit, but he's not there yet. All is good.

Family Jewels Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik, Han Ju Won & Lee Su Yeon There's something poetically satisfying in the idea of making Joo Won's mum be still alive in a canon where so many disappearances turned out to be deaths. A reversal. How will these people deal with it? (…) the writing is pretty good. In an understated sort of way. (...) good descriptions. (...) Radiant! Queer! Joy! (...) I like how Joowon and his mother meet as two people more than as mother and son. Healing. This author truly knows what they would need.

yours to keep Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik Going shopping to a posh store together, Dongsik asking Juwon about his childhood, nice. (...) Yep, this section was very satisfying. (...) I kinda like the scene. It's... pulled out a bit. Quite matter-of-fact, very we-don't-talk-about-it. (...) Alright, I like this Dongsik voice. (...) The theme is loving/living in a "normal" way, which I enjoy.

i don’t know much about gentleness, but i will protect you from now on. Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik This was about Dongsik going to jail, then to Hokkaido, then back to Manyang, where he reopens Jinmook's store, all the while feeling like he's a ghost, or like he's being haunted by ghosts. Juwon moves in with him for two weeks, which I loved, obviously. Then he stays. (...) it had multiple scenes that brought me a lot of satisfaction.

Mature and Explicit

a safe place to go mad Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik What an emotionally excruciating setup. Making Han Joo Won kill a person in a car accident, her shins breaking? (...) This disassociated writing style doesn't feel overdramatic at all. This would, in fact, break Joo Won. (...) Dongsik is literally so perfect here. (...) I loved Joowon comparing himself to his mother and his father as he goes through different stages of traumatic response. This was so good! I love how you write them, I love how in character they are as they're put through trauma, disassociation, arguments and softness (...). It was great to see how Dongsik is a perfect match for a distraught Joowon, since he knows exactly how to take down his emotional outbursts and his half-baked logic, step by step. No one else could have done that for him. And the softness of the last chapter is a balm to the soul.

Resonant Frequency Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik Ah, this is so good. (...) I believe in their established relationship here. It's easy to see them like that. (...) This is such good character work. Nuanced and in-depth; can we get more of this in fics. (...) some good imagery (...) This is a GOOD CASE wow (...) I'm actually invested, and it already pulled a few twists on me. (...) Juwon trying to be kind. The case from fourteen years ago, and how it resonated with Dongsik's history and Juwon's guilt. Dongsik under Juwon's skin, hurting so bad and so beautifully. There is a lot to love here. (...) I really enjoyed Chief Moon. I liked how deep you get into the characters, all the surprising little lines that feel extremely right (...) The two of them are so different (the contrast between their reactions to spending some time in a club was excellent), and yet they fit together so, so well.

Hook, Line, and Sinker Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik It's quite well-written. (...) I totally believe in a Juwon who, captured, feels mostly resigned. (...) This is really digging into Dongsik and how he would have reacted to yet another important person in his life going missing/dead. (...) I believe in Dongsik getting angry at Juwon who doesn’t seem to care about his own wellbeing, and this leading into a discussion of feelings. This fic really sold me on the „no more time” angle. (...) This is satisfying.

And Each and Every Time, for You Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik I like this one (...), it has good dialogue and they feel in character. (...) well-written, funny. (...) Absolutely pitch perfect Dongsik voice so far. (...) It feels so good to be in the hands of a decent storyteller again. I don't have to watch out for bad punctuation and clunky structure. I can just enjoy the ride. (...) The author can write shouty arguments too??? yessss (...) Perfect dialogue. (...) This sex scene was remarkably in character. The best erotic writing is when the characters don't turn into paper figurines, don't stop existing because the author wants to write a sex scene in that moment; it's when their personalities are amplified, not erased by the act (...), and we can see how they're themselves in this different context. I love to see it. (...) The way they talk, what they do, what, how and why they want, it's all gloriously them.

Splinters Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik, Min Jeung/Jae Yi/Ji Hun Why is this fic so perfect. It has literally done nothing wrong. (…) I love authors who really think about what they have at their hands and slot things together in unexpected, but inspired ways. This brought me so much joy! Your characterisations are absolutely spot-on. I instantly fell in love with this Min-jeong and her narrative voice, and then adored the dynamic she's had with everyone, particularly Ju-won and Jae-yi. You've made so many inspired little choices here, like having Min-jeong talk about her trauma with Ju-won, of all people (...). It was just a pleasure to read. (...) Your writing is very smooth, funny and poignant in turn. (...) Also, you just went and singlehandedly created the Min-jeong/Ji-hun/Jae-ji ship, which is quite out there, but, to my surprise, I was very into it.

Not Tomorrow Kang Min Jung & Lee Dong Sik This was a pretty good fic and the study of the relationship between Dongsik and Minjung that I wanted to read. (...) So eerie to watch Jinmook interact with Dongsik, way way before he knew. (...) I like seeing Dongsik helping bring her up like this. (...) It really hurts. Dongsik coming to her rescue again and again until the one time where she's really in danger and he’s not able to rescue her in time.

come home soon Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik I love this so far. Every sentence is doing something, the writing is quite tight, the tension is very much there. (...) This is like a gift to me, personally. (...) This is exactly what I wanted, show me how Manyang feels about the two of them! (...) great turns of phrase (...) The writing is so no-nonsense that I really have to pay attention to follow it, in a good way. (...) Smooth transitions between memories and the present time, that’s nice. (...) Wow, I want to read this all over again.

the world's great big injustice Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik Yes, make the sex scenes all about these weirdos instead of writing boring cookie-cutter General Porn. (...) Oooh the Oh Ji Hwa's scene was very good. (...) Is all of this really in character? Honestly not sure. Perhaps not. But this author's writing is pulling me in so hard that I don't mind either way. It's close enough to a version of them I can imagine. It stands on its own. It's compelling. It's enough. (...) This is the kind of writing that likes to be reread. I read the remix first, but now I want to reread them both and then slot them together like puzzle pieces.

for what it's worth Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik This is a remix of the fic above. This was... interesting. There was something there. I liked how the story operated on the unspoken and the unacknowledged (...) I like how this is constructed, the thin threads of stubble - halves - halfhearted connection vs intent - silence and sound. (...) The back-and-forth transitions between the past and the present, quite smooth. (...) sex scenes full of characterisation and theme. (...) Is this all about Juwon's habits? His trauma? The hesitancy seems to come from several things. He disassociates a little, but unwillingly. (...) Ok, this really gained heft on a reread. I really liked how pulled out it is, restrained. It's very appropriate for this Juwon's POV.

r/tifu by being my student's gay awakening Han Ju Won/Kwon Hyuk Such a cracky premise (the title is Kwon Hyuk's POV), but I'm here for it. (...) This is fun so far; clear writing. (...) Why is this good? The characterisations are on point. (...) I really believe in this Hyuk. Climbing up the social ladder and angry when he's still being dismissed, glossed over, unwanted beyond what he can do for people. (...) Satisfying. (...) I do wonder how much Kwon Hyuk tells himself he wants that wife with two point five children just because that's what he's supposed to want. He's clearly not straight in this fic.

Exposure Therapy Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik Oh wow, this was so good. A get-together fic, with looking for Bang Hoseok in the reed fields used as a binding/bonding activity/memory. Dongsik is exactly what I've been thinking of him being recently — a bit reluctant about his whole thing with Juwon, but not for the lack of feelings. They're both incredibly in character here. It's in the little gestures. (...) This author Pays Attention and Extrapolates Correctly. (...) I love this Dongsik, he really is himself here. And Juwon too. The way they talk to each other. (...) I didn't expect this to be so good from the start, but then it started to drop these pitch-perfect little elements time and time again — it's honestly impressive given that there really isn't much here. It's not a high-concept fic or anything, it's not constructed. It's quiet and it flows easily, and there isn't a lot that's happening, except emotionally. And it works so well.

#beyond evil #fanfic #fic rec #beyond evil fanfic #fanfiction #idanit reads #turns out i'm quite particular about what i want and don't want to read in this fandom so these are naturally geared towards me #my blindspot is WIPs because I filtered them all out #if there are some excellent WIPs out there feel free to rec them to me

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eldritchtouched · 2 years

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Miquella/Mohg headcanons, for those who partake.

1. Regardless of how their bodies are interpreted, Miquella’s actually the one in control when they fuck. Doesn’t matter if he’s the one getting fucked or he’s the one fucking, regardless of if they’re cis or trans, perisex or intersex, he’s the more dominant of the two, in an understated and quiet way. Mohg, meanwhile, is submissive in the bedroom, despite being a bombastic, theatrical man with a flair for the dramatic.

2. Both of them are absolutely touch-starved. Because of this, once they started their relationship, they initially don’t know what the fuck to do because it’s everything at once and they wanted to feel everything because holy shit it’s so good why is it so good where was this all my life. This also means that there’s some humor in how a few times when they first started having sex ended prematurely because one of them came from just making out or basic touch. After the initial period of humping like rabbits to make up for lost time, they do settle down a bit, though they make a lot of casual contact. Enough that it’s still noticeable.

3. There was some awkwardness over Miquella’s curse. Mohg, despite many peoples’ interpretations, isn’t actually a pedophile. This led to a lot of weirdness because he’s absolutely head over heels because Miquella is charming and likeable and his personality and characteristics are all clearly adult, but his body’s cursed so it was a really bizarre sense of ‘I love him but I don’t want to fuck him like this.’ Miquella himself was ambivalent over this because his curse fucked around with his desires massively. Once the curse is lifted and Miquella’s a full god, however, this awkwardness is gone.

4. Mohg purrs after sex. Miquella quite likes it and thinks it’s cute, though Mohg also doesn’t like when he alludes to it with others. He has an image to maintain.

5. With regard to kinks, Mohg has a massive breeding kink, regardless of his form, and a praise kink. Miquella’s kinks are all over the place because the man has got to have some repression gold medal because of being cursed looking like he’s a child for literal centuries (and thus not able to fuck because everyone took one look at his body and went ‘nope.jpg’). People are surprised if they ever learn Miquella’s the one constantly suggesting new shit to try, since they assume the divine pretty-boy would be very vanilla while the man who looks like a demon would be into some really freaky shit.

6. Miquella is used to being doted on by people throughout his life so, when he’s finally got someone he’s in a relationship with, he showers them in love and affection and contact and gifts. Mohg doesn’t know what to do with this because, while he has taken up a very revolutionary stance on the macro level, he still feels almost unworthy on an interpersonal level of that level of affection.

7. They initially met on the Altus Plateau while Miquella was masquerading as Saint Trina. Over time, as Miquella traveled as Saint Trina, they became very close and started hashing out plans to overthrow the Golden Order. This is why the Bloody Helice and Miquella’s Needles look so similar in design motif, for example- they unified the designs to show their connection to anyone who would look deeper.

8. They did eventually have a ‘proper’ marriage ceremony in Elphael long after the relationship started, mostly to appease Miquella’s followers’ wish to see him married in a lavish ceremony.

9. That they are half-brothers is something Mohg is indifferent to because they were never raised together. Miquella, because of aforementioned repression gold medal, is into it (to the shock of anyone who finds out). All that being said, the ethics/ramifications of Miquella taking on a mortal consort at the suggestion of some of his followers is something neither of them are keen on. Marika and Radagon did so in the past and the mortals ended up broken shells of people and left a lot of bitterness because of their willingness to cast aside previous consorts. Likewise, their marriage has political ramifications between two very different followings. Both of them argue it’s perhaps safer for everyone involved for them to just stay together instead of risking more conflict.

#nsft #dead dove do not eat #mohgmiquella #miquellamohg #mohg #miquella the unalloyed #i'm not doing noncon with this bc that's frankly not my cup of tea #and i like the thematics of if it was consensual far better #incest cw #mohgmiq

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truckreincarnation · 7 months

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Shattering Pain | Avery | Trial 2.1 | Re: Frank, Harriet | ATTN: Frank

All of this case was a fucking lot, as per usual, and the newly re-named Avery was not happy about it in the slightest, to understate things by a lot. Whatever he was feeling specifically though… the majority of it was being held Back and out of sight while he trudged through the water to sit in his seat, expression part way between worry and a scowl, not sure which to settle on. And then, he listens, keeping silent even as all of his feelings persist.

At least this time, with his changed eyes, he can direct his aura where he looks, down at his desk alone, instead of at his neighbors when he needs to.

He does glance at Frank momentarily, and Bian for a time, before nodding just once to Meili and then Harriet at some things vaguely, but… finally, it’s their time to speak up.

“I… Yes, the first blood and injuries definitely happened to Perry while she was in the tree, and then as she fell out of it as well, making that the start of the trail. I… think I have a good understanding of what could have happened there, though I’m slightly uncertain as to why it started. I think… its need to describe exactly what was found there, or go over Perry’s injuries as well and what was around the location of her body in the crafting room, so I… I can start doing that. And I’m warning you now that I’ll be talking about it.”

A little in-character warning for the description of harm to come, because most everyone else seemed to have been avoiding it. He does give a small nod to Harriet first, though.

“First… I believe that the tree with the makeshift hammock in it was Perry’s regular sleeping spot, as I’ve spotted her there before. The hammock was made of a regular sheet originally from the dorm rooms, and the rest of the bloodied bedding found on the ground under the tree also seemed to have been from there.“

"And as has been said before, the hammock sheet in the tree did look like it had been sliced, though only half of the tear was clean like from a blade, while the other half was more ragged, possibly from gravity or physically tearing it.”

“Of note so we’re all on the same page, near the ragged side but not exactly on the tear of the hammock, there was only a tiny smear of blood. Meanwhile, there was also a blue bandaid stuck to the hammock near the portion that was more clearly cut, which as Harriet just mentioned, likely came from the blade of the Yuliya doll that was missing its covering band-aid.”

“Of note, there was a small bit of blood on that blade, as well as a fiber that was the color of the hammock stuck on it, though I’ve purified it since then. We also… took the time to check the width of the blade against Perry’s injuries, and it seems like it matches the small cut on her cheek, but no other injuries.”

…Avery pauses, allowing that to… maybe sink in a little bit for everyone else. Then… they take a deep, slightly shuddering breath, before getting themself to continue talking. They’d already warned the others what they’d be talking about, but now it was time to really get into it.

(CW: Detailed Injury talk, Broken bone mention)

“As for the many injuries around Perry’s arms, legs, and throat… There are 15 of those kind in total, and they’re all not especially deep like stabs but also not consistent with each other, all varying in width, length, and depth by a bit. Looking closer as well, I noticed splinters of wood in them as well, which… leads me to think that they happened as she fell from the hammock and hit a lot of branches, which seems to fit the blood stains found on various branches of the tree that were in a pattern that makes that theory possible.”

“She also had… multiple broken bones according to Shroud, that being her right ankle, her left humerus, and three of her ribs. I… imagine those also could have occurred in the fall.”

(CW: cont, Injury description)“I… I don’t know if what happened at that tree was just… a freak accident, or if anyone was there to cause it and set things in motion. But… I… have a hard time thinking that the killing blow was anything other than the shatterstone crystal that exploded, which… I’ve worked with those before in… my bomb making. They explode when broken over a large area with a large amount of force, and it doesn’t take much more than being dropped on the ground to cause that.”

“They’re… extremely dangerous, and I have… a hard time believing that the shards would have only struck and even gone through her chest but nowhere else on her body if she was just… holding it, or… or something like that. But I don’t know what happened in the crafting room either. If… if anyone has any further questions about how the shatterstone functions though, I can probably answer it.”

(cw: end)

…So it was a type of crystal that HE had been using and experimenting with before, huh…? Ahaha…

Once again though, he doesn’t even try to give his own testimony, apparently not finding doing so a priority in all of this. And to be fair, he had a hell of a lot to say. And in the end… of the testimonies shared so far, though there’s a lot of details that might be nice to know, only one thing stands out to him at least at first, as he turns to Frank, going a bit quieter now.

“…Just… to get a better idea of things. Frank, can you… say where exactly you saw Perry, and… what it was you both talked about, if you can…? And just… do you know if she was already… wearing that headband too, when you saw her?”

He wants instinctively to apologize for even asking it, and for everything Else too, but… he knows that won’t do any good. Not when every time he says the word ‘sorry’ someone tells him not to or worse, entire fights break out. So now, he certainly won’t.

#ch2 #trial2 #submission #Avery

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hurlumerlu · 2 years

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EDIT because this is frustrating me and I can’t leave well enough alone : This post isn’t a comparison between Bell’s Hells, the M9 and VM. When I wrote “the usual epic feel of fantasy backstories”, I was thinking of other media properties. In fact, I think the M9′s backstories in particular didn’t feel particularly epic either, for a number of reasons that would warrant another post. (as for VM, the way we were just given their backstories at the begining of the first episode means we can’t really compare either). Feel free to do your own comparisons in the tags (or in reblogs, or in your own posts), of course ! That’s what tumblr is for. But I personnally think it’s very tricky to compare the newbies to the earlier parties, because our visions of the M9 and VM is very colored by what they became. /end of this slightly neurotic Nota Bene

I’m really enamoured with the way most of the CR3 player characters approach the life-shattering events in their respective pasts. There’s a quiet, understated acceptance to it that really depart with the usual “epic” feel of fantasy backstories, and it lies not in what happen aned but entirely in how what happened was processed by the characters.

A robbery goes wrong. Your friends have to skip town, leaving you behind with a hole in your skull and terrible debts to pay off. And it sucks, sure, but what would have been the point of everyone going down when one could take the fall ? Shit happens. Life goes on. You get back to work and people greet you in the street.

Your husband dies during a surprise attack on your home. It’s probably the worst loss you’ve ever experienced. For a while, you may even feel like this should have been the end of your story too... and yet, life goes on. You both knew the risks when you signed up as bodyguards. Your time together was good. You say his name, and you smile.

One day you’re a woodworker - though perhaps a rather shady one - the next you’re a bloody werewolf. And it’s not an easy experience to navigate ! So yeah, you’re looking for answers, guidance, but to be honnest you were always a bit of an outsider, and you may have gained more than you lost. Anyway, life goes on. You craft a wooden toy ship for this new friend you made.

You’re killed in someone else’s story and awaken hanging from a tree. You’re dead. You’re not. You hear your killer’s voice inside your head. No one should have to live through that, but you did, and after the terror and confusion and emotional turmoil fade, well, what can you do ? You design a puppet out of dead things, you make yourself at home in abandoned houses, you meet this strange girl and the loneliness dims. Against all odds, life has gone on. So why shouldn’t you ?

I don’t know. I just think it rings true.

#i'm not including fcg because there's a much bigger focus on the mystery behind his party's death #and it feels more like he doesn't know how to process it rather than anything else #which is not what this post is about #imogen and fearne stories are also different #critical role #cr spoilers

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istumpysk · 2 years

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Operation Stumpy Re-Read

AGOT: Daenerys IX (Chapter 68)

A rare Sansa -> Daenerys chapter transition. What could the author be trying to tell me, I wonder.

She was walking down a long hall beneath high stone arches. She could not look behind her, must not look behind her. There was a door ahead of her, tiny with distance, but even from afar, she saw that it was painted red. She walked faster, and her bare feet left bloody footprints on the stone.

Oh nice, Daenerys leaves bloody footprints behind her as she pursues the red door.

If you’re ever feeling stuck on a Bran chapter, hop on over to a Daenerys POV, where the messaging is about as understated as being hit head-on by a transport truck.

+.+

Drogo held her in strong arms, and his hand stroked her sex and opened her and woke that sweet wetness that was his alone, and the stars smiled down on them, stars in a daylight sky. "Home," she whispered as he entered her and filled her with his seed

Oh shoot, Daenerys seems confused over where her actual home is. Curious!

+.+

but suddenly the stars were gone, and across the blue sky swept the great wings, and the world took flame.

Across the blue sky swept the great wings, and the world took flame? Really?

I can’t with this fandom.

+.+

The red door was so far ahead of her, and she could feel the icy breath behind, sweeping up on her. If it caught her she would die a death that was more than death, howling forever alone in the darkness. She began to run.

Icy breath behind, sweeping up on her! If it caught her, she would die!

✨ hoowwwwwlliinngggggg ✨

Are the wolves hooowwwwwlliinnnngggg for you, Daenerys?

I’m laughing.

+.+

A great knife 🔪 of pain ripped down her back, and she felt her skin tear open and smelled the stench of burning blood and saw the shadow of wings.

Don’t you worry George, I keep seeing it.

Her words were a knife 🔪 through Dany's breast. - Daenerys VIII, AGOT

Mirri Maz Duur chanted words in a tongue that Dany did not know, and a knife 🔪 appeared in her hand. Dany never saw where it came from. - Daenerys VIII, AGOT

Another pain grasped her, and Dany bit back a scream. It felt as if her son had a knife 🔪 in each hand, as if he were hacking at her to cut his way out. - Daenerys VIII, AGOT

+.+

The door loomed before her, the red door, so close, so close, the hall was a blur around her, the cold receding behind. And now the stone was gone and she flew across the Dothraki sea, high and higher, the green rippling beneath, and all that lived and breathed fled in terror from the shadow of her wings.

When Daenerys flew, all that lived and breathed fled in terror. Do you think that’s hinting towards her defeating the Others?

Good lord.

+.+

And saw her brother Rhaegar, mounted on a stallion as black as his armor. Fire glimmered red through the narrow eye slit of his helm. "The last dragon," Ser Jorah's voice whispered faintly. "The last, the last." Dany lifted his polished black visor. The face within was her own.

Okay but wait, if Daenerys sees her brother decked out in his infamous armor, and lifts his visor to reveal her own face, that has to be positive foreshadowing, correct?

How are these people real?

+.+

After that, for a long time, there was only the pain, the fire within her, and the whisperings of stars.

She woke to the taste of ashes.

Mmm, tasty!

Say a prayer for them.

+.+

"No," she moaned, "no, please."

Here we go! Speak to me, author.

"No," she whimpered, "please … leave me be." - Sansa VI, AGOT

+.+

Ser Jorah Mormont lifted her in his arms and carried her back to her sleeping silks, while she struggled feebly against him.

Sandor Clegane scooped her up around the waist and lifted her off the featherbed as she struggled feebly. - Sansa VI, AGOT

+.+

After a time—a night, a day, a year, she could not say—she woke again.

She was in bed, curled up tight, her curtains drawn, and she could not have said if it was noon or midnight. - Sansa VI, AGOT

+.+

After the dimness of the tent, the world outside was blinding bright.

Then her bed hangings were yanked back, and she threw up a hand against the sudden light and saw them standing over her. - Sansa VI, AGOT

+.+

She should weep, she knew, yet her eyes were dry as ash. She had wept in her dream, and the tears had turned to steam on her cheeks. All the grief has been burned out of me, she told herself. She felt sad, and yet … she could feel Rhaego receding from her, as if he had never been.

The grief is always short-lived and impassive with this one.

+.+

"Monstrous," Mirri Maz Duur finished for him. The knight was a powerful man, yet Dany understood in that moment that the maegi was stronger, and crueler, and infinitely more dangerous. "Twisted. I drew him forth myself. He was scaled like a lizard, blind, with the stub of a tail and small leather wings like the wings of a bat. When I touched him, the flesh sloughed off the bone, and inside he was full of graveworms and the stink of corruption. He had been dead for years."

With Daenerys, there is never life. Only death.

+.+

"The shadows have touched you too, Ser Jorah," she told him. The knight made no reply.

Ha, you’re fucked.

Touched Daenerys too!

+.+

Ser Jorah had killed her son, Dany knew. He had done what he did for love and loyalty, yet he had carried her into a place no living man should go and fed her baby to the darkness. He knew it too; the grey face, the hollow eyes, the limp.

Well, hold on. Let me be the bigger person here. Credit to Daenerys for being honest with herself.

+.+

"We were too few to stop them. It is the right of the strong to take from the weak. They took many slaves as well, the khal's and yours, yet they left some few."

There they are again.

+.+

I promise you that, by the old gods and the new, by the lamb god and the horse god and every god that lives. I swear it by the Mother of Mountains and the Womb of the World. Before I am done with them, Mago and Ko Jhaqo will plead for the mercy they showed Eroeh.

Daenerys, are you going to trap him, and burn him alive in the sacred city?

That was how Khal Jhaqo found her, when half a hundred mounted warriors emerged from the drifting smoke. - Daenerys X, ADWD

Dany commanded Ser Jorah and the warriors of her khas to guard the entrance and make certain no one set the building afire while they were still inside. - Daenerys VII, AGOT

Of course you are.

+.+

She lifted her head. "And I am Daenerys Stormborn, Daenerys of House Targaryen, of the blood of Aegon the Conqueror and Maegor the Cruel and old Valyria before them. I am the dragon's daughter, and I swear to you, these men will die screaming. Now bring me to Khal Drogo."

Aegon the Conqueror and Maegor the Cruel were heroes, right?

+.+

"When will he be as he was?" Dany demanded.

"When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east," said Mirri Maz Duur. "When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not before."

Works for me!

+.+

"This was no god's work," Dany said coldly. If I look back I am lost. "You cheated me. You murdered my child within me."

That didn’t last long.

+.+

"I spoke for you," she said, anguished. "I saved you."

"Saved me?" The Lhazareen woman spat. "Three riders had taken me, not as a man takes a woman but from behind, as a dog takes a bitch. The fourth was in me when you rode past. How then did you save me? I saw my god's house burn, where I had healed good men beyond counting. My home they burned as well, and in the street I saw piles of heads. I saw the head of a baker who made my bread. I saw the head of a boy I had saved from deadeye fever, only three moons past. I heard children crying as the riders drove them off with their whips. Tell me again what you saved."

+.+

The birth had left her too raw and torn to take him inside of her, as she would have wanted, but Doreah had taught her other ways. Dany used her hands, her mouth, her breasts. She raked him with her nails and covered him with kisses and whispered and prayed and told him stories, and by the end she had bathed him with her tears. Yet Drogo did not feel, or speak, or rise.

The fuck is wrong with you? He’s an animated corpse, you freak.

+.+

She knelt, kissed Drogo on the lips, and pressed the cushion down across his face.

Don’t ever let me say Daenerys has done no good deeds.

+.+

If I look back I am lost.

Is this a constructive mantra to have?

+.+

"You don't want to wake the dragon, do you?"

"… don't want to wake the dragon, do you?"

"… don't want to wake the dragon …"

"… want to wake the dragon …"

"… wake the dragon …"

"… the dragon …"

I bet they think this is about that funeral pyre.

Final thoughts:

Hey, can someone let the Daenerys fans know it’s not a good thing if her temperament and response to grief and pain is being directly juxtaposed with Sansa's?

One of these girls does not choose violence, while the other burns a slave alive.

I wonder which one ends the story as Queen.

-> return to menu <-

#operation stumpy re-read #agot #daenerys ix

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clandonnachaidh · 3 years

Text

Light Across The Seas That Sever (Ch6)

AO3

“Mind ye’ve got that meeting this afternoon?” Ian reminded him for the thousandth time as they all sat at the breakfast table and Jamie fought the urge not to roll his eyes, already mildly annoyed at the fact that his bowl of porridge wasn’t quite right. He should’ve made it himself without backing down when Jenny had insisted on doing it for him, that way it would’ve been thick enough to plaster a wall with, just how he liked it. But his sister would never surrender the spurtle, working it through the oats and milk until they became creamy and setting a large bowl of sugar on the table, much to Jamie’s distaste. Thick enough to clart a wall and with enough salt to make your eyes water, that was exactly how he’d had it since he was a bairn, their mother taking hers in the same way. Only Jenny and their father had preferred that their breakfast be covered in sugar and the sweetness of the Scottish strawberries that grew wild on Lallybroch estate.

“Aye, I ken fine well enough,” Jamie grunted without turning his eyes towards Ian who was trying to encourage a spoonful into Wee Ian’s mouth. “Whit was the name of the estate again?”

“’Tis the only estate in Tomich but did I no’ tell ye? He’s changed the meeting to the golf club.”

It had been his idea to begin with but now Jamie was uncertain about how their drunken plan was taking shape. After one too many whiskies of a night, he and Ian had been sprawled in front of the fire as they chastised the blend that they were imbibing, arrogantly announcing that the two of them could do much better. Jamie hadn’t thought anything of it as he’d stumbled to his bed and let sleep take him but a few days later he found himself mending a fence post in the back field as Ian continued his musing about Broch Mordha putting its stamp on the world as a new destination for a premier whisky distillery and the two of them, its innovative creators.

Jamie grunted as he rose to his feet and deposited his bowl into the deep sink, letting the tap run to soak the dish and refusing to turn his body to take in the picture perfect family scene that was sat at the kitchen table.

“Mr Dunsany—“

“He’s a Lord, is he no’?”

“Is there a reason yer being a particularly crabbit arse this morning, brother?” Jenny’s voice was dripping with irritation, not wanting her nice family breakfast to be ruined by the interminable grey cloud that had been brewing over Jamie’s head for the past few weeks.

“Jen, leave him be.”

“I will not. He’s been a moanin’ greetin’ face since he came back from that bloody reunion and ’tis hell time he snapped out of it,” she said a little louder to ensure that Jamie heard the emphasis that she placed on the insult as it flew from her mouth.

This caused him to turn on his heel and level his sister with a careful eye.

“I’m sorry, Janet, but sometimes I think ye forget that there is a world outside of Lallybroch. Life can be a damn sight more complicated than poppin’ out weans and tending tae chickens, ye ken.”

If her temper didn’t hit the roof, her eyebrows certainly made a good go of it. Silently, her fingers curled tightly around the spoon, stilling herself against the pull of Wee Ian’s chubby little hand that was fisted in the material of her shirt, demanding attention.

“I ken that fine well, James. But ye canna jus’ come home every time ye see her and sulk like a wee bairn that doesna get what he wants. Grow up a wee bit, aye?”

At the end of her parting shot, Jamie felt the anger licking at the sides of his throat. The rage that he’d been directing towards himself was now begging to be let loose on someone else, someone that would bite back and Christ, Jenny would do just that. It had been this way since he’d come home, the frustration melting into a sullenness that had punctured the idyllic bubble that the family lived in at Lallybroch. In his worst thoughts, he resented both his sister and his best friend and the happiness that they shared. Jamie loved them to their bones, of course he did, but after leaving Oxford with yet another memory of how he’d let Claire slip through his fingers, the last thing he wanted to see was the very evident love between Jenny and Ian and their three children.

And so he found himself, in a suit that was a bit tight across his shoulders but he’d purchased anyway in a department store on the Inverness High Street, shaking hands with Lord William Dunsany in the bar of a golf club that he’d never seen fit to frequent himself. Jamie tried his hardest not to let the glances from the club members get to him as they walked around the lounge with an understated belonging the he’d never feel himself. He made sure that he gave a strong handshake, looking the shorter man straight in the eye and made the informed decision to swap from his usual Scots to his best Received Pronunciation, assuming that Lord Dunsany was one of those people who claimed to be a ’Scotchman’ but was as English as they come with the age old story of inheriting Scottish land as a birthright. Jamie had realised, however, that the man certainly knew his whisky and would make a not-half-bad business partner with himself and Ian if he managed to convince him to part with some cash.

Jamie was fuzzy on the details of how’d they’d come to the agreement but two hours and four whiskies later, he found himself once more shaking hands with Dunsany. The Lord would foot the seed money in exchange for a fairly sizeable but not unfair amount of the business and as a personal favour, Jamie would escort his eldest daughter around Edinburgh the following evening.

“She’s up here with me to get away from some nonsense that’s gone on at home but she’s been cooped up in her hotel for days while her mother tries to organise a townhouse for her. I just want her to get out and see the city. Who better to show her around than a native?”

Late next afternoon, his slight hangover thankfully having subsided after a coffee and a square sausage roll, Jamie stepped off of the train and onto the platform of Waverley Station in the heart of Edinburgh.

The tang of the breweries immediately filled his nostrils and he breathed deeply as the ever present sound of bagpipes floated down from the upper level of the street. While Lallybroch where was his heart lived, and he loved the humour and familiarity of Glasgow, Edinburgh held a special place in his heart. He never got tired of grabbing a coffee and walking the length of George Street in the sun, the castle bursting into view if he turned his eyes to the east.

Slinging his bag over his shoulder, he made his way towards the hotel that Dunsany had insisted on to putting him up in, the same one as his daughter just to make things simple. Although Jamie had spent many a morning diving into the spectacular breakfasts put on at one of his favourite places in Edinburgh, The Huxley, he had never imagined staying at The Caledonian that loomed over the small establishment just metres from its door.

Jamie didn’t quite know what to do as the doorman who was wearing a bloody top hat opened the door to the hotel for him so he settled on giving the man a polite smile, resisting an absurd urge to give him some type of formal bow. He had been in nice hotels before but nothing like this with its polished marble floor and a huge vases of fresh cut flowers on most surfaces that he could see.

“Mr Fraser, we have you in the Robert Louis Stevenson Suite for two nights. Here is your room key and it also includes the number for the Concierge, should you have any need. We have a table booked in the Peacock Alley bar for you and Miss Dunsany at 6pm this evening and I would be happy to make any dinner reservations you would like to make, within or outwith the hotel. Michael can get the rest of your bags from the car,” a neat blonde woman smiled at him from the reception desk as she inclined her head to the bellboy hovering at a polite distance over Jamie’s right shoulder.

“It’s nae bother, lass, I’ve only got the one bag,” Jamie muttered with a hint of embarrassment as he pulled the bag from the floor and swiped the keycards from the desk, smiling back at her. “Thank ye.”

When he stepped through the door that bore the name of one of Scotland’s most beloved authors, his growing Imposter Syndrome ramped up a few notches. Crossing the floor towards the window, Jamie was greeted by a beautiful view of the castle as it loomed over the city. He didn’t quite know how to act, having never been in such a large and clearly expensive hotel room. In fact, it wasn’t even a room, the woman at the desk had called it a suite.

Flicking through the TV channels for a little while, settling on the new show about Billy Connolly’s upbringing in Scotland, his fingers lazily scratched at the bare patch of skin just above his belt buckle. Something about being in a different city and having some time to himself made him feel lighter than he had in weeks and he gave himself permission to laugh at a particularly lewd joke that spilled from The Big Yin’s mouth on the TV.

Jamie’s phone, lying face up on the mattress beside his left shoulder, startled him as it gave a firm buzz. Sitting up, he opened the latest message from Geneva, telling him that she wanted to go out for dinner somewhere nice tonight. He was under no illusion as to the fact that when someone like Geneva Dunsany used the words ‘somewhere nice’, she was actually saying ‘somewhere expensive’. But thankfully, Jamie knew just the place and sent her a reply saying that he had it in hand before phoning down to the reception and having the helpful woman book a table at a restaurant he knew would be impressive enough but not so posh that he would feel out of his depth by eating there.

Although they’d messaged back and forth that afternoon, he hadn’t bothered to enlarge the tiny picture next to her name at the top of the screen. Toying with his phone, Jamie resolved that he had to know what the lass looked like, not wanting to have to shuffle embarrassingly around the bar trying to figure out who he was there to meet.

Her picture brought to its full size, he looked at her for the first time and tried was pleasantly surprised. She was clearly beautiful. Dark hair that flowed in loose waves over bare shoulders, her skin a beautiful olive brown from a summer tanning on a beach somewhere. She was looking at the camera dead on with a surety that came from a privileged upbringing, her face painted perfectly and a twist of the lips that couldn’t really be called a smile, as if she didn’t want to be seen to be having fun. She looked like every posh girl that Jamie had met in his life, every girl at university who would air kiss their friends on both cheeks while their manicured hands clutched at bags that cost more than his first car.

Suppressing a groan at the thought of spending a weekend with a person who no doubt came from an entirely separate world than the one he’d grown up in, Jamie divested himself of his socks as he plodded, bare feet on plush carpet, through to the bathroom to take a shower and clean himself up ahead of his evening.

Later, he sat at the bar, his fingers playing with the patterns on the cut crystal glass that housed his double whisky, he felt a gentle hand rest on his shoulder.

“James Fraser?”

His stomach dropped into the floor.

The thought hadn’t even crossed his mind at what hearing his name fall from the lips of an Englishwoman would do to him. He felt an absurd wave of revulsion swipe through him in an instant and he took a quick drink before turning on his stool to face her, swallowing the bile that had risen up in his throat.

“Och, lass, nobody really calls me James. Ye can call me Mac. ’Tis another one of my family names,” he tried to sound light and not as if the sounds of his name leaving her lips felt like the flesh on his back had been ripped open to the bone.

There was a reluctance in her eyes and he immediately knew that she was uncomfortable so he did his best to send her his most charming smile, gesturing for her to sit and then signalling to the bartender.

“What would ye like tae drink?”

“Martini, if you would, extra dry, extra dirty,” she ordered confidently as the bartender nodded and turned to begin preparing it for her.

With her chin in the air, she asked, “So, my father said you were a business associate?”

“Aye, I suppose I am now. My brother-in-law and myself wish to start our own whisky company. Your father has kindly offered to help.”

“My father isn’t generally in the habit of helping out of kindness.”

“Aye, well, hopefully he trusts that we ken what we’re doing. Or that we’ll figure it out at the very least,” Jamie tried to joke but she gave him nothing. There was something cold in her demeanour that he hoped he wouldn’t have to fight against for the whole evening.

After watching the martini disappear down Geneva’s throat in record time, he offered her an arm as they left the hotel and were hit by the cool air of Edinburgh in the evening. As soon as Jamie took the first step towards Princes Street, Geneva halted.

“We’re walking?”

“’Tis no’ far, only ten minutes or so. We have time before our reservation,” he replied, gently tugging on the arm that she’d looped through his so that she would begin to walk with him. Her feet stayed firmly planted on the concrete.

“These are £500 shoes, I’m not walking anywhere.”

“Lass, Edinburgh is a city tae get lost in. If we get a taxi we’ll just be looking at the sides of buses and traffic lights. Yer father asked me tae show ye the city,” letting her arm slip from his, Jamie took a step forward and gestured towards the castle, atmospherically lit from beneath now that the sun had gone down. He turned back to her with a kind smile and held out his hand. “Let me, aye?”

Reluctantly, she acquiesced and let him lead her away from the hotel. Jamie’s skin tingled at the contact and he realised that he hadn’t touched a woman apart from Jenny since the university reunion with Claire. He flexed his fingers experimentally and felt something swell in the pit of his stomach when Geneva tightened her grip in response.

The two of them made small talk as they walked through Princes Street gardens and up towards the restaurant, Geneva seeming happy enough with the venue that he’d chosen. He’d heard good things about The Witchery before and as they sat down at a table covered in a pristine white cloth, surrounded by painted dark wood on the walls and ceilings, he noticed how pretty Geneva looked in the candlelight. Only a fool would try to argue that she wasn’t beautiful. But there was a coldness to her that hadn’t warmed yet and so he kept on being as charming as he could, hoping that another glass of wine might bring down the steely demeanour that she seemed to hold on to for dear life.

Oxford had been full of girls like Geneva Dunsany. Wealthy, privileged and confident. After four years of university, Jamie had perfected the art of tuning out their inane conversation about which exotic place they’d spent their summer, who’s guestlist they’d been placed on for the weekend and what they were planning on wearing. So he knew how to respond to her constant stream of speech, nodding and agreeing in the right places and sending dazzling smiles across the table when he felt like rolling his eyes. Though somehow, he found that he didn’t actually dislike Geneva Dunsany. Something in her eyes, or maybe it was the way she chose her words, showed Jamie that the poor little rich girl personality was an act. Underneath the mask, she felt the same way that he did—unfathomably sad.

Something inside of him felt sorry for her, recognising the pain that he knew all too well in another. And while he didn’t particularly care for the woman, Jamie decided to be kind to her. He leaned closer across the table and started to respond to her stories with anecdotes of his own. With the help of another two martinis, she began to blossom in his company and the two shared a relatively pleasant evening together.

When they reached the hotel elevator, Jamie had nothing on his mind other than stripping off his constricting shirt and sleeping off the whisky cloud that was hanging somewhere around his temples.

“What’s on the agenda now, then?” Geneva asked as they stood side by side.

“Shower then bed, I think.”

“Sounds good to me,” she all but whispered, Jamie’s head twisting to see the dark look of seduction that was painted on her face. “Mind if I join you?”

He didn’t say no.

It was shocking how easily he slipped into the worst version of himself. There had been a few nights in the past where he’d spent too much time and money in the pub in Broch Mordha and woken up the morning with some woman curled around him at whatever bed and breakfast they’d invited him back to. He only ever slept with women who were in the area for the moment, never anyone who he’d run into again. It was always when he was half gone with drink, his body acting solely on blind need that he succumbed to his baser instincts.

The doors of the elevator opened and Geneva walked in purposefully, turning to look at him with an alluring smile. Jamie walked in beside her and pressed the number for her floor.

They found pleasure in each other’s bodies but it was skin deep at best. A simple matter of scratching an itch that they both clearly had and had resolved to using the other to sate that particular need. There were no delicate touches or gazes held for any real length of time. Jamie set himself to work, making sure that she got hers before followed suit. It was perfunctory. Pleasant. And when they both uttered their subdued sounds of fulfilment, Geneva immediately rolled away from him, shielding herself once more.

“Do ye want me to go?” Jamie’s voice broke through the dark silence of the room.

Her response was barely a whisper, “Please.”

He dressed quickly, roughly, and scrambled around in the dark for his phone that had fallen from his pocket. Geneva was lying as still as a statue but Jamie could hear the odd sniff from her and realised that she had begun to cry. After dithering between his options, his inherent gentlemanliness won out.

“Is there anything I can do?”

There was no response for a few seconds and he took that as his answer, beginning to move towards the door of the room when a single word stopped his hand from turning the doorknob.

“Stay.”

Keeping his eye on her as though she was a frightened animal that might bolt at any provocation, he slowly began to undress. When she moved over slightly to give him room to get under the covers, he did just that and felt a strange sense of kinship as she wrapped her body around his. Jamie held her, stroking her hair until she fell asleep in his arms. The sound of her gentle breathing was the only thing filling the room until his phone suddenly pinged with a notification.

Facebook Congratulate Claire Beauchamp on their engagement!

Before he could stop himself, he opened the app and looked at the posed photograph of the two of them, her left ring finger showing off an almost comically large diamond ring.

After telling our friends and family, we are so happy to announce that we are engaged! We thank everyone so far for their kind words and well wishes. From the future Mr and Mrs Frank Randall.

Every muscle on his body was thrumming with energy. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what the energy was made from. Rage? Fear? Utter desolation? Whatever it was, it was coiling its way around his ribs, holding him in stasis and holding him hostage as he experienced it.

He wasn’t even considered a friend anymore, seeing as he hadn’t been given the privilege of a private message, having to find out through fucking Facebook. She had clearly changed in her time in Boston, the Claire he knew would never have given up her name and become Mrs Frank Randall. Randall-Beauchamp at the very least, for Christs sake.

Tasting the rare metallic nature of blood in his mouth, Jamie realised that he was biting the inside of his cheek. He felt the need to get up and do something, anything to expel the energy that was going to burst out of him if he didn’t channel it into something. But he was stilled by the feel of Geneva’s naked body against his and a rush of guilt tried to swallow him whole.

How dare he question Claire’s life, assume to know her situation all the while he was in bed with another woman. Reminding himself for the hundredth time that Claire had made her choice and it wasn’t him, he swallowed his pride and went to send her a message, even though he knew it wasn’t a smart idea.

He shouldn’t have had that final whisky.

Jamie: Just seen the news. Congratulations to you and yours.

A blatant lie but what was he supposed to say?

To his surprise, her reply was almost immediate.

Claire: Thank you!

Short and to the point. Two words that would shut down any further conversation, a feigned attempt at excitement and gratitude that he prided himself on being able to see through.

He knew that he would have been one of many to send the same sentiment that day but he had kidded himself that his text would receive a more personalised response. Maybe all she thought of him was a copy and paste response as she planted her phone down screen first on the sofa before climbing into the arms of her future husband.

In an attempt to hold the tears at bay, Jamie curled an arm around Geneva’s prone body, bringing up his hands to his arm and pressing his palms into his eyes until he saw stars.

#light across the seas that severed #clan donnachaidh #ao3 #outlander fanfic #jamie fraser #Claire beauchamp #outlander #modern au

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you-turn-it-into-light · 2 years

Text

KEIKO - dew (2021) Album Review

So the album got released today and I listened to it like 10 minutes after it came out (Japan and Australia's time zones being basically the same right now is pretty cool). So I'm giving my thoughts after listening to the new songs a couple of times, and I'll actually give out of 10 ratings if that's at all interesting.

Overall:

I think this album is a lot stronger than Lantana. Most of the songs on Lantana I thought were kinda 'meh' or straight up dislike, and only a couple of them (Yuugao and Endroll) are ones that I actually liked.

This album, overall, leans into a much more electronic sound than Lantana with tracks like Latte, Revolution and Kimi ga Nemuru Kara (although the latter is much more understated). I'm a little mixed on it, as I'm not really into electronic sounds.

The covers are REALLY boring. The outfit and colour design is aesthetically pleasing, but it is one of the most boring album covers I've seen in a hot minute. Even though I didn't like the outfit of Lantana's album, at least they had a really nice background with the flowers. It also matched with the name. 'dew' has nothing to do with anything in the cover, it's not even outside??? The covers look any other boring j-pop solo female ballad album, which does nothing for Keiko and the variety on display in this album.

I have no idea why the drawing is the super limited edition's cover? It doesn't make much sense to me. Why make the most expensive version the one that doesn't even have Keiko on it? (Same with Lantana) The items on the cover itself, aside from the mugs, seemingly have nothing to do with the songs from the album itself. However, the drawing itself is lovely, and I hope they paid the artist a lot based on how bloody expensive that version is.

Keiko's solo career is currently doing a great job at showing her entire range, which Kalafina never did for her. Although I'm sad that Kalafina isn't around anymore, I'm happy that I'm finally able to hear these singers at their full capacity.

I might do a whole other post based on the music videos alone, so maybe look forward to that.

Okay, onto the thoughts of the song!

Nobody Knows You - 4/10

I was disappointed by this song. It has everything that I like in some of my favourite songs. It's dramatic, there's a big cello presence, the lyrics are interesting and profound, and Keiko's using her deep resounding voice that's my absolute favourite. However, the melody is so... boring. The verses make me feel like I'm walking slowly only to reach a climax that's just as boring. The instrumentation suffers from repetition, the drum phrases in the verses and chorus sound too similar. The cello in the verses is very nice and atmospheric, but the strings section in the chorus repeats the same phrase over and over again, just like the drums. It leads to a very samey and boring song. Which is a shame, because the parts of the song I actually liked such as the bridge and the instrumental solo after that is really interesting and cool. I especially love the melody of '審判の日が下るまで'.

Tooriame (通り雨) - 8/10

Not gonna lie, the first time I heard this song I thought 'wow this is so boring'. The melody did nothing for me, it was just a very basic ballad. However after listening to it a few times, the song really grew on me. I love the piano + cello combo. The lyrics are nice, if nothing special. But the melody eventually grew on me thanks to Keiko's lovely and emotive singing, I particularly love the '何度笑えるのだろう' and 'そばにいるから', it really shows how powerful Keiko's voice can be. I'm really glad Keiko decided to sing this with a lower tone, it blends nicely with the cello. Speaking of the cello, that solo???? Gorgeous.

Sakura wo Goran (桜をごらん) - 6.5/10

Similarly to Tooriame, I thought this song was so boring at first. To be honest, I'm not a big fan of Tsunku as I'm a bit morally against the whole idol culture and sexualising and taking advantage of children as young as thirteen for money and men that are in most cases much older than them (he is the producer for Morning Musume and other Hello Project related groups for context) but I believe in separating art from artist, and this is a whole separate discussion. I eventually grew to be okay with the song. The lyrics and the melody are cute, and Keiko's high tone makes it sound lovely. The whole song gives off a 'graduation ceremony' vibe, which is a bit weird cause Keiko is 36 now and very much out of high school, but I can still vibe with it. I particularly like the lyrics '桜をごらん美しいのは　一年準備してたから　さあごらん私も負けないわ', they're quite lovely. Overall, it's sweet but doesn't leave much of an impact on me.

Michite wa Kakeru (ミチテハカケル) - 7.5/10

This combination of strings and a more rock sound is very anisong-esque, but I can forgive it mostly cause I just really like the song mostly. I'm not a huge of Keiko's higher singing here, I think it could be a little deeper toned to fit with the atmosphere. I really like the urgency of the verses and chorus, with the fast singing, repeated lyrics and vocal phrases, and equally as quick strings phrases, especially in the pre-chorus. The chorus is a bit bland, but I like the reincorporation in the bridge. Also, a mixed voice C#5? Nice.

Latte (ラテ) - 3.5/10

I'm can appreciate the chill, electropop sounds of this track even if it's not really my thing. The sprinkling of gorgeous piano phrases in the verses is really nice and spices up the arrangement nicely. Keiko's singing is as lovely as always, even if the lyrics are a bit boring. There's not really much to say about this song, it's just not really my cup of tea (pun intended) I guess? It's a chill track that I could listen to while doing homework, but not much else. If anything, it certainly gives off the sitting at a modern café vibe.

Hachigatsu no Sora (八月の空) - 4/10

Sorry Keiko, it's boring. The song is too slow and bland for my tastes, even if Keiko sounds lovely at the top and bottom of her range. I think this song could've done without the electronic elements if it was trying to emulate the feeling of summer, but that's just me. I quite like the water effects in the background though, it adds to the atmosphere. Not much to add, but I like it more than Latte I think. I was hoping they would keep Keiko's final harmonization of 'ha ha ha' at the end, cause I really liked in the lives.

Genjitsu no Metaphor (現実のメタファ―) - 8.5/10

Is it generic? Yes. Do I love it? Also yes. I missed upbeat songs and actual drums. It took me a while to like this song, but it's just really catchy. I am mixed about Keiko's understated singing here. She sounds great as always, but it really doesn't leave as much of an impact as it could. It proves to be however that Keiko sounds better consistently in her mid range as opposed to her higher range when singing upbeat songs. I love the drop in the bridge, it's very satisfying. Overall, the song and instrumentation are very generic, but I still like this song very much.

Kimi ga Nemuru Kara (キミガナムルカラ) - 6/10

This song is quite nice. It's atmospheric and the strings are used to very good effect in this song. It adds much needed spice to the otherwise more drab and forgettable arrangement. That cello section in particular is quite great (I'm a sucker for cello in dramatic music). The instrumental section is the main heart of the song, and does that support the rest of the song for me? Unfortunately, no. I appreciate it as a ballad and I might grow to like it more one day, but as it is, it's just a bit boring in my opinion.

Waratte Yaru (笑ってやる) - 9/10

This song is honestly a lot of fun. I love the instrumentation and arrangement. The electric beat accompanying the drums instead of replacing them creates a syncopation that has a lot more oomph, and I'm living for it. I love the sound of the guitar in the verses, it's heavy and dark and just sounds great to the ears. In general, the more heavy sound of the instrumentation is just great and helps the song feel very rock-y, and I love rock. And the DRUMS! The phrases in the verses and chorus keep the song energetic, but they are pulled back in the pre-chorus and I love it. Listen to the drums in the bridge and you'll understand why I love them. Anyway, moving on to Keiko. Keiko has never been great at singing English, but I can forgive it because it's so catchy. I wasn't a fan of the song at first cause in the Lantana concert she was obviously having a lot of fun (which is great) but it distracted her and made her singing a lot more shouty and a little screechy. She sounds a lot better in the studio version, but the chorus is still my least favourite part of the song. I particularly love the part 'Bye-bye 不甲斐ない貴方のために泣いてあげる　明日は来ない I'm still standing わかるでしょ？', it's just really badass. Anyway, I love this song.

Revolution - 2/10

Oh no, going from one of my favourite songs on the album to my least favourite of Keiko's entire discography... oops. This song is just so poppy in ways that I don't like about pop. I don't like the electronic sound and the backup vocals are obnoxious and unnecessary. They kind of ruin the song in my opinion. I feel like the melody could've been used great with different instrumentation but the way it is, it's really cheesy. The only thing I like about this song is Keiko's singing. She sounds as great as always, and she's particularly emotive in some parts. I like how she's able to be more flexible and show off her runs and head voice. However, the rest of my thoughts on this song are negative... unfortunately.

Lost - 9/10

This song is lovely. I think it's a story about a breakup, or a lost love. However, Keiko sings the lyrics with fragility and power that conveys the emotions beautifully. Her head voice in particular is absolutely beautiful. The instrumentation is unlike anything else in the album, and it makes this track very refreshing. I love the melody of the chorus, is sounds as if the protagonist is quietly lamenting their lost love, but then becoming more upset and desperate as the chorus continues. It's beautiful.

Burn In The Wind - 9.5/10

This SONG!!! Bright sounding songs are usually very hard for me to like, but this song I loved from the first teaser. The melody of the chorus just unlocks a feeling of nostalgia for something I've never experienced. The way it just explodes into the 'LET IT BURN' from the more low-key verses makes it just that more impactful to me. Keiko sounds great, her high notes sounding heavy and powerful. The melody for the verses is almost just as lovely. The instrumentation is nothing really to write home about, but overall this song is just great. I think it might just be my favourite song on the album.

My Least Favourite Songs (in no order): Revolution, Latte, Hachigatsu no Sora, Nobody Knows You

My Favourite Songs (in no order): Waratte Yaru, Tooriame, Lost, Genjitsu no Metaphor, Burn In The Wind

#keiko #keiko solo career #dew #review #personal thoughts #kalafina #long text post #text post

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payasita · 3 years

Note

Are writing requests still open? If you’re not too busy could we please get some sweet Grimm/Herrah fluff? Or just more of the dreamers in general being chaotic? Hope you have a good holiday period!

Monomon the Teacher was marched from her lab at the business end of a nail. She was caught alone late one night, still working long after everyone else had gone home or retired to bed.

Lurien the Watcher was bodily dragged away mid-painting, after getting bashed over the skull from behind with one of his own candelabras. Never saw it coming.

Brumm put up a hell of a fight, but persistent force and sheer strength eventually brought him low. And he too was stolen.

Troupemaster Grimm was summoned by arcane means, and then succumbed to an impressively intricate trapping circle of soul and rune and blood. He was unharmed, save for some wounded pride at the prospect of being invisibly caged where he stood, like a common mime.

And Divine? She simply tagged along out of boredom.

The Troupemaster surveyed the situation they were in, and the laboratory in which he and the others had been... invited. He rested his chin on a hand with a sigh, leaning against the edge of the circle behind him. A solid wall of bright runes made itself visible along the point of contact.

"Woe betide us and all that, but if I can be honest, this is a refreshing change of pace. Does anyone remember the last time someone managed to lay low the most powerful members of our little Troupe all at once?" He addressed his varyingly incapacitated cohorts.

Divine perked up, adjusting her bindings some for comfort. "I do! It was that chilly old crone, the one with the pretty glass house."

"It was a castle. Made of ice. Built over a capital city also made of ice." Brumm croaked out, ever helpful. Grimm thought for a moment.

"A queen?"

"A vicereine."

"Ah! The Icy Vicereine, yes, of course. Lovely woman, as I recall, very polite. Bastard of a time trying to keep the lanterns lit after all the flooding, though."

Brumm sniffed, a wet sound implicating some blood probably running up his throat. Grimm softened, wanting to reach out, but settled for his role keeping the mood light. Little else to do, what with the circle.

"Well! She certainly hadn't kept us waiting so long. Isn't it considered good manners around here to greet one's guests?" It was a genuine question.

"I would hesitate to call us guests, Troupemaster. And I am afraid the rules of etiquette do differ a bit when it comes to hostages," the one still conscious mortal chimed in, apologetically. Grimm rather liked her; she'd been watching the Troupe and observing the lab space around them with open fascination, and had an understated confidence to her words that gave her an air of grounded wisdom. Plus, Grimm had the opportunity loaded and waiting to refer to her situation as "squid-napped", which he thought was quite frankly hilarious.

"Hostages!" Divine chirped out in delight. "How fun! Do you think they'll try and torture us?"

There was a pause, and then the troupe all burst into varying laughter.

The sound seemed to stir the bloody fabric heap of a bug currently trussed up on the floor. Whoever brought them all here took extra precaution with him; the poor creature had so much rope around him that he was practically cocooned. As powerful as he must normally be to warrant such measures, it was unlikely that he could currently do much more than wiggle. And so he did precisely that, groaning uncomfortably as he woke.

"What…?"

"Lurien," the other mortal called.

"...Teacher? Why are…?"

"Do not move too suddenly. I cannot do a very thorough check for a concussion right now, so please just try and stay awake."

That startled this "Lurien" some, if the new little whiff of fear Grimm tasted in the air was of any indication. He attempted to sit up, and in what little success he found, noticed the Troupe.

"Hey, you. You're finally awake. Mrmm."

"Greetings!"

"Good evening," they welcomed him. The bug responded cordially by nearly passing out a second time.

"Teacher, what-- what in Hallownest--?!"

"Peace, Lurien. They are prisoners here as well, and won't harm you."

"Prisoners?!" He all but shrieked.

"Precisely," Grimm affirmed.

"Penned in," Brumm supplied.

"Party guests!" Divine cheered.

"I believe we may be somewhere in the Soul Sanctum," Teacher observed, to Lurien's immediate panic.

"The…? But it was destroyed!"

"Much of it. But the estate housing it was enormous, and it is very likely that the underground wings still stand."

Grimm squinted up. "Technically, everything is underground."

"Kingdom's underground," Brumm nodded.

"Cozy, isn't it?" Divine purred.

"But why are we here?" Lurien implored through strain.

"Why indeed," a new voice cut through. All turned to the source of it. A large bug in tattered noblemen's garb under a mediciner's coat. Grimm was quite sure they were mortal, but there was the odd fact that the heavy iron door behind them was still chained shut, and they'd definitely not already been in the room. Also, they were floating, and trailing an stark electric current of volatile soul behind them, and he did not know of very many mortals who could contain enough of the stuff to do things like this without simply melting. This creature must have found some ghastly way to suck up as much of the little Wyrm's gifted soul from their fellow bugs as their body could handle. Only a guess, but a good one, Grimm thought, because the nightmares whispering about on their shell were very much not only their own.

They swept their wild gaze across the room, and smiled broadly.

"Has everyone gotten comfortable?"

"Aaahhh, quite!"

"Yes, thank you."

"Mrm. No."

"Who are you?" Lurien punctuated the Troupe's assent with a tight voice.

"Oh, no one important. Not yet. But soon, I'll be among the ranks of the gods. At last," they whispered out in near reverence.

"What is it that you want from us?" Teacher's voice betrayed only curiosity. That seemed to please their host very much.

"Knowledge. The most important kind. I've brought you all here, for your secrets," they floated in closer, and grinned down excitedly at Teacher from above her head.

"Honored Teacher, your knowledge creates life. It created beings that move and think and deal out their wrath, out of science alone. We have much to discuss."

They flitted over to Grimm, and splayed out their hands to the other two of the Troupe in a wide gesture.

"The circus of nightmares! Avatars of rebirth, whose patron king roars back to life from the ashes of oblivion, and through scarlet eyes sees and knows the ends of billions long dead and those born in their place! You trade in eternity for the paltry price of a name and a face, forever pumping the mad, desiccated corpseflesh of the Nightmare Heart with your own diseased hands!"

"Why, thank you." Grimm curtseyed.

With a hint of ozone and a flash of soul, the bug disappeared and reappeared directly in front of Lurien, tearing a yelp of fright from him.

"And you. Watcher of the City, advisor to the King. I have heard the rumors, I know what you hide. I know how the Wyrm decrees the most devoted of his clergy to live forever," they said lowly.

"I--What?"

"That is what I want. All of you contain pieces of the secret to life-- the secret to my immortality! What we all came so close, so very long ago under our master’s genius. Before the weak ones fell to dream, or simply bubbled away in their incompetence."

The soul-corrupt scholar punctuated their point by whipping out a hand, and grasping a gelatinous creature that looked to materialize from where it hid in thin air. It squealed as they popped it.

"But I will succeed where the doctor failed, and with your knowledge, I will attain ascension!"

The Watcher spoke up with a faint tremor. "...But-- But I am not--"

"Lurien, hush," Teacher whispered harshly.

"Oh, it should be a simple process, revealing your nature. I can start by merely examining your shell, run some tests-- it should be a quick process if I can manage to peel enough of it off in one go," they grabbed at the edge of Lurien's mask, pinching and jostling it like an over affectionate grandmother. He spluttered.

"You-- you can't-- Someone will notice us missing!"

"Maybe, but not before I've gotten what I need. You really ought to have your servants come in much earlier in the day."

"Unhand me, you foolish--"

The soul twister did quite the opposite of that, dirty claws plunging into an opening in his vestment and closing tight around Lurien's throat. Teacher sat straight up.

"Stop! There is no need for this. If you are a person of science, you will know I'd be happy to share my notes on the ooma and uoma. And I would be more inclined to do so now, if you'd release my friend." Her tone was remarkably professional, given the decadent cocktail of mortal terror currently swirling about inside her.

"Oh no, I need you all," they gritted out in their struggle.

"Then start with me. You'll get all you want to know from a simple interview. I swear that to you."

The scholar's eyes narrowed, but they did release Lurien. He promptly doubled over hacking and wheezing.

"... Is that so?"

"It is. Go and fetch a pen. Though, I would advise you to opt instead for a screen of acid. It is a lot of information, and those can retain plenty of it, theoretically forever. You will need to ensure your writings will not ever fade, yes? I have plenty of blanks back in my archive where you found me."

The sickly scholar eyed her, and then the bug gasping on the floor at their feet.

"... Don't move."

And with that, they blinked out of the room.

Teacher visibly deflated a little.

"... I… had not truly expected that to work. But hopefully it bought us some time."

Lurien was still recovering from his coughing fit, and Divine squinted at him.

"...Hmmm. That one doesn't look very immortal to me. It smells regular. But a very very nice kind of regular!" She stretched the word "nice" into a near hiss in her obvious hunger. He tried to steady his breathing, then just gulped it down.

"I… the Watcher title is-- is symbolic immortality? The mask I wear is the same one that-- So the idea is the role will live eternal, side by side with Hallo--"

"Ahhh, well that's unfortunate. Getting your scrumptious shell stripped off won't be a very fun experience for you at all! But at least it will be a short one, lucky bug," she encouraged, perfectly chipper. The Watcher then began the horribly awkward activity of whispering prayers to himself while in the presence of another god. But far be it from Grimm to begrudge a creature their self-soothing habits, especially while he was a guest in their realm.

Monomon offered her friend some reassurances too low to hear, and then turned her attention on Grimm.

"Now then. What is your plan from here?"

"...What, me?" He grinned, amused, "I'm as much along for the ride here as you and your future-flensed friend there, madame Teacher."

"...I see. So that is not going to help us at all?" She gestured up with what little of a tendril poked out of her bindings, and the Troupe all looked to the ceiling in unison. A grimmkin novice sat on a pipe high up on some complex machine, and cackled its greeting.

"Oh. Hello there, little kindred. Come for the show, have you?"

"Flay his flesh and feast for flame!" It sang out merrily. The Watcher seemed just one more stress input away from vomiting.

"...Mrmm. Suppose we could send it out for some help," Brumm rasped.

"Must we?" Divine huffed.

"The King…! Send it to--!"

"Mm, no chance," Grimm waved Lurien off. "Grumpy old serpent would simply blast it out of the air at first glance." He was also pretty sure that the dear Wyrm would ignore Grimm’s call for aid even if he recognized it, for knowing that doing so would inconvenience the circus.

"The city guards, then? Sir Hegemol?" Teacher tried.

"Ahh, a knight. Do you suppose one of those would have a reaction any different from his?"

She watched the grimmkin laugh as it set another one of those hidden aberrations alight with its torch.

"... Perhaps not."

She seemed to get an idea then, a gentle shifting of color coalescing along her bell.

"Herrah. Have it tell her where we are. She will definitely hear it out."

Grimm stood shocked, and his companions glanced between the two.

"You are acquainted with her?" Brumm asked. She nodded.

"The three of us are good friends. ...She speaks well of you all," the latter sentence came out slowly, as if she were still trying to understand it herself.

"She does?" Grimm brightened considerably. And then he stilled, and shook his head.

"No. Not her. Out of the question."

"...Why… why not?" Lurien asked weakly. Grimm just gawked at him.

"Why not? I cannot let her see me and my Troupe like this," he gestured down at the circle, and out to his loyal companions. Divine was snickering, and Brumm's eyeroll was so blatant that it was practically audible.

The mortals just stared.

"It would be embarrassing," he clarified. "I may not be entirely of this plane, but you two seem like cultured lifeforms. Surely, you must understand the importance of keeping up good appearances. Especially with a queen. This just wouldn't do, you see."

The overt staring just continued. Perhaps Grimm had been wrong in his assessment. Teacher's form contracted slowly in an approximation of a long breath.

"... We have been captured too, and I know for a fact Herrah wouldn't hold our current… presentations against us." She was subtle about glancing at the big bloody spot along the back of her friend's cloak.

"I can say with confidence that she will not think less of you for your own state."

"To be sure. But you know, we really have not been seeing each other very long. I'd rather not risk anything potentially awkward." Grimm was pretty sure that this sort of vulnerability should come just a bit later in a courtship. Brumm just sighed.

"Master, you really are overthinking this."

"Better over than under," he shrugged.

"Oooh, but this is your first time meeting her friends! How's that for awkward?" Divine gasped. Grimm balked at the realization.

"... Ah, you’re right! And we were never even properly introduced-- do forgive me for the misstep," he bowed, though the movement was impeded somewhat as he tried to avoid scraping the edge of the circle.

"I am Grimm, master of the Dread Troupe. The gentleman currently bleeding at you from the floor there is my darling, talented musician Brumm, and behind him is our lovely resident fortune-teller Divine."

Brumm and Divine offered a nod and a "How do you do," respectively. Teacher paused. Processing, or perhaps simply calling upon any remaining patience.

"... It is a... pleasure. My name is Monomon. That is Lurien. Please call Herrah."

"Absolutely not."

"But we haven't much time--"

"Are you truly so worried, master? It is obvious that she already thinks well of you." Brumm cut in, honest concern in his voice. Grimm sighed, long suffering.

"I-- no, no. I know that, Brumm. But if I do not compromise on my impressions with you, after we've spent the better half of a millennia together, I certainly won't with her."

"Mrrm. I have seen you in worse positions. That has never factored into how I love you."

"And I love you too," he answered softly. And then swiftly regained his professionalism.

"But the answer is still no."

"Aaaaah! Honestly, just call your beast-friend so we can get something entertaining going. I am going to get bored again. ...Oh, wait, nevermind. I just remembered we'll get to watch the short one get peeled! Carry on." Divine giggled into a free claw, and then promptly slipped it back into the ropes. Grimm chewed on that thought, while The Short One made a choked noise in the back of his throat.

"Ah, I actually doubt it. Once our host catches on to the fact he isn't immortal, they'll probably just kill him outright. Or-- I suppose he's still got plenty of soul to suck away, I doubt they'll want it all to go to waste if they can--"

"Call Herrah! It-- It would be romantic!"

All eyes were on the Watcher at his outburst. The Troupemaster's interest was piqued.

"How's that?"

"Er-- think of it! The… the bold warrior queen, charging in to slay the villain and rescue her imprisoned paramour. She would relish the chance," he explained, voice high with just a touch of desperation. All attending hostages now stared at Grimm, waiting.

He smiled wide, his jagged teeth briefly startling his new friends.

"...Like the tragic princes of ancient poetry! Oh, I rather like that-- I do not believe I've ever gotten a chance to play that sort of role before, that of the damsel. ...Or, was it the damselfly?" He steepled his hands, already going over the scene in his mind. It was always such fun to try out new acts. He turned back to his troupe.

"What do you two think?"

Divine tapped at her chin thoughtfully. "...Mmm, sure, I can see it suiting you, master. Very… histrionic!"

"Hrm. It is a bit cliché," Brumm pointed out. Lurien was quick to stutter out his dissent.

"Cli-- uh-- Good sir, does not all fine art fall victim to repetition, when it is well received? Clichés exist for good reason! It can be comforting to an audience to sometimes fall back on a well loved narrative, can it not?"

(Monomon silently noted that there was just a touch of passion in his voice, too much for him to be fully lying. She found this especially funny, considering just last week he'd vented fervently about the triteness of common tropes in art at her for the better part of an hour, after about two glasses of wine. She would not bring this up now, but made a note to remember for later. If they survived tonight, of course.)

"That is a good point. Comedy of the profession is found everywhere-- all forms of visual shorthand are. Necessary for a good story, sometimes," Grimm nodded sagely. Lurien returned the gesture with hasty enthusiasm.

"It is! And this one is all but written for you. You need only set the stage."

"Mmm… Let me think on it."

"Doesn't that kind of story tend to end with a kiss breaking the curse?" Divine hummed off to the side, addressing Monomon. But it was not Monomon's attention she instantly had.

"Ooh! And a nail through someone's thorax," She playfully shoved the Teacher with a claw, as if the anxious mortal would agree and titter about the idea with her. She recieved no such enthusiasm.

"... I do not think a kiss would have any bearing on the integrity of the binding circle. In fact, simply rubbing part of it away might be enough to free your master," she intoned, staring pointedly at Divine's free limb. Her advice was steadfastly ignored.

Grimm then caught everyone's attention with a single clap.

"Alright! Little kindred, go and summon the Queen of Spiders. Tell her of what brought us all here, and do try and make the situation sound dire. Feel free to embellish as you like."

The grimmkin saluted with a parody of gravitas, cackling as it departed in a flash of essence. Lurien slumped back a bit, and let out a heavy sigh of relief. Brumm side-eyed him.

"... Mrmm. Not bad. You are smarter than you look," he kept his voice down.

"I beg your pardon?" He hissed back under his breath.

"Go ahead and beg, then. Mrm."

Lurien sank back into the floor, and again prayed quietly for tranquility.

Unfortunately for that effort, the sanctum scholar reappeared with a harsh sizzle of soul, giving the mortals a good fright.

"Ahh, our wicked adversary returns! And not a moment too soon," Grimm welcomed them with unabashed excitement. They dismissed the Troupemaster in favor of addressing Monomon.

"I have found the tubes. First, you will show me how to write in them," they pointed at the blank container in their hand.

"Then, the secret to creating life."

"Simple enough," the Teacher agreed amicably.

Monomon stalled their host for an impressively long time, much to Divine's growing vexation. And it appeared that "Teacher" might be her actual job title, with how patiently and thoroughly she explained the workings of the acid, and then managed to spin their questions about creating life into a lecture on the consequences of defining life through either a purely philosophical lens, or a purely scientific one.

Grimm idly wondered if she ever worked with children, and then mused on the good fortune Herrah's young daughter had, to have such a clever role model in her life. He did vaguely recall the little darling telling him some story about jellyfish, once, though he had assumed they'd been imaginary. Well, he supposed Monomon very well still could be imaginary, though that would certainly make her one of the more convoluted nightmares he'd seen in a good while!

He was torn from his reverie by their host letting out a frustrated shriek, after about the fifth or sixth time the Teacher tried to explain the difference between entropy and enthalpy to them.

"Enough of this! We'll get back to you, but for now…" they turned their cock-eyed attention onto the Watcher, who was sat up against the wall with his head bowed. He seemed to sense the incoming danger and jolted, while Monomon quickly argued for more time.

"No, wait, I can tell you about the uoma cores-- or the lumaflies. I've a theory that the currents we use to charge them could reanimate dead limbs, perhaps even ones sewn together from different bodies--"

"Raising the dead is old news, archivist. I will be avoiding death entirely."

"Stay back--" Lurien snapped. Grimm found that he pitied the doomed bug just a little. Such lonely terror one finds themself in, when their unlucky prayers go unheard beneath the din of everyday life. He made a mental note to ask the Watcher if he'd consider a conversion of faith, if he survived the shelling. Monomon's continued bargains went entirely unheeded.

There was an almighty crack heard from some level above the lab, followed by faint shouting. The voices were indiscernible, but Grimm was more than well enough acquainted with what the commanding of an invasion sounded like. The scholar paused in the middle of their movement to unmask their victim, hands falling.

"What in--? Who is that?! What have you done?!"

"What the fuck could I have done?!" The Watcher blurted shrilly, earning a swift kick to the abdomen.

Grimm and company lauded.

"What marvelous timing!"

Their host whipped around.

"You--!"

"Places, now," the Troupemaster continued. "Is everyone on their mark?"

"As ever!"

"...I do not have my accordion. Mrmm."

"Not to worry, love. The percussion of soulfire and nailmetal will be ambiance enough."

"Aaahhh, unfortunate how we couldn't do wardrobe first."

"We all look perfect, Divine."

"I've got blood in my eye."

"Brumm's got blood in his eye."

"Ah. Alright, yes, be a dear and help him with tha--"

"Shut up shut up shut up shut-UP!"

The fury of the soul twister was realized in a flaring of unchecked power, bursting every lantern in the room to smithereens and sending glass and frantic lumaflies every which way. The lab was now only illuminated by the dim, sickly light of trapped soul in all the strange machines, and by the constant crackle of the bug's own mad electric discharge.

They warped with a flash to the biggest of those machines, and began fiddling with a console.

"Not yet, not yet, not yet-- I shall have to harvest early-- you'll do. You'll have enough for now."

Monomon let out a gasp and drew back suddenly at the sensation of a cold, spongey lifeform bubbling up from the cracks in the tiles inches away. Lurien swore at the small fleet of similar creatures oozing to visibility all around him, but the terrible hoard did not pursue the mortals. Instead, they took to the air and made their ways toward the machine by the scholar. Each took hold of its own thin, hollow cable from a network hooked up to a vat, and every cable ended with a strong looking metal clamp.

"Go go, hurry, now!" They shouted at the accursed things, and at once, the creatures launched themselves exactly where they were pointing. At Grimm.

Reflex made him try to skitter back, but he was met with immediate resistance from the seal at his back, runes pulsing up the surface of his immaterial cage. So he could only watch, and try and bat the hideous things away as they began attaching the clamps to random areas all over his body and wings. They pinched like all of damnation, and his efforts to pry them off were futile as the hateful creatures just kept adding more.

"I'll only take enough to kill the intruders-- just that. I don't need more. Not yet. Not yet."

The scholar flipped a lever, and with a thundering clang of old machinery, all of Grimm’s world was agony.

He heard Brumm shout something, though he could not process what. Soul was distilled in a crude process through searing veins and thousand-degree carapace, and the dry shriek that was ripped from his throat would leave the whole tower and the soil around it cursed for years to come.

It was gruesome, but in a smaller, holier way, it was exquisite. The pain and mortal panic from the Troupemaster, and the surrounding horror of his faithful crew as they watched, all fed the Heart like nothing else. He felt as if it were trying to pound its way out of his chest and burst him, in an ecstatic reversal of his own birth.

At the very least, it was a stark reminder to the Nightmare's vessel to be very, very grateful that what he served loved him so dearly. If it ever instead wanted to see him suffer, there would be nothing he could do to escape it.

His drained soul filled the vat slowly, for all the trouble it was giving Grimm's body. The extractor was clearly a hack job; it was no wonder so many hundreds lay dead underground. This place must have been terribly inefficient in supplying for what it demanded. The last sanctum scholar rapped it with a fist in their impatience, eyes flicking towards the door.

"Hurry, hurry--"

That same door-- at least ten inches of solid iron-- split down the middle in an eruption of razor silk magic. Through the fissure, the Queen of Deepnest charged in needle first, flanked by a small company of her stalking Devout. The scene in front of her was thus:

Monomon and Lurien tied up against the wall, surrounded by a crowd of science's nastiest blunders that were slowly trying to claw up their cloaks as they struggled.

Brumm, exhausted on the floor from his vain and painful attempts to wriggle out of his ropes. Freshly bleeding from the effort, with Divine now using her free claw to try and saw him out.

A bloated, screeching old bug hitting switches and throwing down levers, all the while corroding everything around them with their uncontrolled emissions of electric soul.

And Grimm. First, sparking and convulsing in midair inside a summoning circle, and then collapsing to the ground in a wheezing heap as the machine failed, tears sizzling to vapor midway down his face.

He looked up at her, blearily, and watched as she froze when she saw him in turn.

Grimm would not forgive himself for then losing the chance for a dramatic opening line. All because he had to go and faint just a few seconds too early, like an amateur.

The Troupemaster was too busy being unconscious to be privy to much of the conflict, but he got the gist of it when he awoke towards its end. The battle was brief, brutal, and finished with a good old-fashioned beheading of their dearest hosting scholar.

In the end, their demise had been a collaborative effort. Herrah had been the one to swing the needle, but Lurien-- apparently freed at the Queen's first opportunity-- had been the one to incapacitate them in a wrathful display of priestly violence, allowing her a clean kill. It wasn't exactly Grimm's dashing Beast slaying the evil singlehandedly and then whisking him off as the narrative might have traditionally called for, but it was still a riveting performance by the cast at large.

And speaking of dashing, Brumm had been the one to wipe away the circle and remove the cables from Grimm as soon as he was unbound. They shared a quick embrace, before both set about having a (slightly dizzy on Grimm's end) fantastic time cutting down hoards of hostile abominations together. Divine even got to eat one. Said it tasted "just okay".

And as the Troupe busied themselves depopulating what remained of the laboratory, with some silent backup from Herrah's soldiers, the Dreamers convened nearby. Monomon worried over Lurien, and gave him a proper checkup of his wounds, eventually declaring him only minorly concussed. No one had any injuries that a bit of rest and careful focus couldn't set to rights.

"I am hale, Teacher. Worry for yourself, at least for a moment," Lurien pushed a probing tendril back from his bruised abdomen. Monomon did not scoff, but her displeasure was palpable nonetheless.

"I was unharmed."

"You were also captured because you were alone in your lab at stupid-o'clock in the morning, hon. Did you even remember to eat today?" Herrah jumped right in.

"...Is that really what you are going to fixate on, after the night we’ve had?"

"I don't see why not. I did just save you from all the more immediate danger."

"...The Beast has a point. Perhaps proper sleep should be a higher priority for you than transcribing field notes," Lurien agreed, just glad to no longer be the object of scrutiny.

"And what were you doing again, before you were ambushed around the same time?" That relief proved short lived under Herrah's probing. He cleared his throat.

"I... had a very important project that needed my immediate attention."

"He was painting."

"Definitely painting."

"I was not p-- anyway. Allow me to thank you, on that note," the Watcher all but had to corral his tone back into civility. Herrah relaxed her stance a bit, slinging her great needle over a shoulder.

"But of course. And thank you for bringing your own light show into the fray, Watcher. I am almost tempted to say that you'd make a fine soldier. If you weren't so damned fussy, of course."

"None of that is even tangentially a compliment. And that is also not what I wish to thank you for."

"...You don't want to thank me for saving your shell, in apparently more than one sense?"

He did not dignify that with a response. Instead he just stared at her, radiating tiredness, and spoke flatly.

"Thank you, sincerely, for your continued insistence on speaking to us about your frightening bastard of a lover. It was because I knew him for an enamored thespian that we were able to convince him to send for your aid at all."

The two women gawked at him for a second, and then Herrah turned to Monomon for even a hint of context.

"...It is a long story," was all the Teacher said.

"...Fair enough. They do tend to be, when it comes to him."

The three glanced over at the bloody revelry going on in tandem, and Herrah cleared her throat.

"So. What do you think?"

"...Of Grimm?"

"Was 'frightening bastard' not indicative enough of my feelings?"

Monomon gave a light slap to the Watcher's shoulder.

"Luri."

"Do excuse me. I have been told I've suffered a minor concussion." His tone remained bone dry.

"Rough night, huh?" Herrah tisked. Lurien just glared.

"...Ahem. I will admit, Herrah, he is… on a different sort of depth than the rest of us," Monomon explained gently.

"Meaning…?"

"Are you serious?" The Watcher cut in. "The bug is a monster."

"Lurien--"

"He has no regard for good or right, nor does he seem to care for anything but his own crooked whimsy!"

Monomon looked between them, ready to mediate an all out brawl. But to both their surprise, Herrah just shrugged.

"True enough."

Silence, save for the nearby burning and squishing.

"...You… are just going to accept that?" Lurien finally asked.

"I am." Herrah sheathed her needle, and took a quick moment to size up her friends.

"You know, your people were the ones to first call me ‘beast’, out of fear, before I formally adopted the title myself. Is it really so shocking that I am not surprised at your assessment of him?" She gestured over, her tone merely conversational.

The two of Hallownest seemed somewhat abashed, at that. Monomon was the one to speak up next, and carefully.

"...It is not the same. I do not believe Lurien calls him a monster out of any of the same ignorance that produced your title. We understand the Nightmare King quite well, Herrah. He isn't mortal. His perception of life and time is skewed in the context of eternity, beyond our understanding. Beings like us are only a flash in the pan, to him."

"I am aware."

"Does that not bother you?"

"You still adore your King, even knowing what he is, and what he has done."

The Watcher looked as though to respond, but faltered, coming up empty.

"... Do you hold affection for him as a patron, then?" He asked instead.

"Not at all,” she spoke without hesitation. “Just as a bug."

There was a quiet seriousness shared in the words between them. The Beast knew he understood. And the Watcher was surprised that he truly did.

And then the Teacher was finally unable to contain her curiosity.

"... Don't take this the wrong way, Herrah. But. Why?"

Herrah laughed, just a bit, out of fondness for her.

"No special reason. He tries very hard. He is loyal. He makes me laugh. Why does anyone pick anyone?"

None could pinpoint when exactly the mood had lightened, but all were silently thankful for it. Lurien idly adjusted his clothing, as if anything could be done to again make his cloak as presentable as it'd been before the stains and tears of battle. Monomon hummed, limbs undulating lazily.

"... I suppose he can be... sort of charming. In his own fashion," she tried.

Herrah snorted. "Oh, don't let him hear you say that, even if it's true. He'll want specifics."

The Watcher cleared his throat. "... I will admit that it is difficult to see a being as only a senseless demon, after watching how they could suffer. That machine-- if I can only name one thing here as monstrous, it'll be that, or the hideous mind that devised its kind," he admitted, surveying the wreckage of the extractor. The lab at large was left little more than a wasteland of broken glass and sparking rubble, by the time everyone was through with it.

The Beast went silent, at that.

"... Right. On that note, excuse me for a moment."

"...Of course, Herrah."

With that, she left the other Dreamers. Once alone again, the two shared a look.

"...I do not… I do not have to like him, do I?" The Watcher asked, reluctantly. Monomon giggled.

"No, Luri. But we like her, and she adores him. All we have to do is be supportive."

He picked at a dry spot of blood on his sleeve. Not his own.

"... You do not like him either, do you."

"Wyrm, no. He's a garish prick. But one can't account for taste, I suppose."

Lurien guffawed behind a hand.

Herrah made her way over to the Troupe, where they stood examining a runestone tablet imbued with the ideas of this place. None seemed particularly impressed by it.

"'Pure focus', hm? Purity as a concept attainable past the 'constraints' of the mind," Grimm reflected.

"How ambitious," Brumm attested.

"How dull," Divine groused.

"How very unimaginative. If one believes the mind to be a hindrance, perhaps it is simply because they've not been in the habit of using it much." The Troupemaster's eye was critical on the stone's words, though he doubted the stone itself was at all abashed by it.

"Mrmmm. These scholars were intelligent, in their own fields."

"And a dirtcarver is intelligent in its own. You'll not find a better digger, but they also make for dreadful conversation. There is far more to life than one's niche study. No need to obsess so much that you end up getting rude about it."

Divine snickered behind a claw.

"Master's just pissy at them because he got siphoned."

"Sapped."

"Su--"

" 'Scuse me," Herrah made her presence known. The Troupe whirled around to greet her by turns, Grimm's cloak twirling.

She looked between the two latter members, and gestured off to the side with a tilt of her head.

"I'd like a moment alone with your boss, if you wouldn't mind."

"Not at all. Mrrm."

"So long as you keep him in one piece! Lovely needlework, by the way. Such nice clean cuts, and such distance achieved with our funny host's flying head!"

"Thank you." She sounded sincere. With that, Grimm's dutiful clan slunk and strode off at their leisure, leaving him with his favorite living mortal.

"It really did launch all the way across the room, didn't it? I wonder if all that soul-hoarding pressurized their body like a sewer pipe," he mused. He wondered if chopping his own head off would result in physics not unlike a backed-up gas stove finally lighting.

"Maybe. Arms out, hon."

"Hmm?" He complied at once, curious.

"You had a lot of metal through you where it oughtn't have gone, doing freaky unethical soul science that it oughtn't have been doing. I'd like to get a look at the damage." She took on the tone of a general, leaving little room for argument. Not that he'd been at all inclined.

"Is that right?" Grimm rasped, amused. "How funny, after a battle like that. Speaking of-- What a sensational performance it was, don't you think? I am not normally one for improvisation, but one certainly cannot disparage that which yields results."

"Mhm," Herrah had a few hands on him, examining the spots where he'd been... siphoned was what he was going to go with. No evidence of his torment remained, save for some sporadic bruising along the soft leather of his wings. The sort of thing barely worth the effort of focusing away, when time would take care of it just as quickly. Still, she looked him over carefully. Wrists, wings, neck. Wherever she might have seen a clamp on him.

"Any pain, still?"

"Mm?"

"From the extraction. From what I'd been here to witness, it hadn't looked pleasant."

"Ah. All is well, I assure you. Unpleasantness is perhaps an understatement for what had been, but I still cannot complain, for how it all turned out." He watched her passively, keeping obligingly and eerily still as he went on.

"The low point of any good show is instrumental for its success, you see. It is the suffering that invests the audience in how it'll all turn out for the main players."

"Mm." She checked around his face, now. Eyes and horns and markings. Perhaps scanning for any cracks on him that hadn't already been there. Something about this scrutiny was disquieting, and he found himself wondering what expression laid behind the mask. He continued with careful brightness.

"... And I am sure you had plenty of fun in your role! It was a good one, and played so well. The gallant Beast Queen, leading her soldiers on a daring mission of vengeance and rescue. Really, all that was missing was a serpent to slay."

This was the part where Herrah made fun of him, or half-jokingly suggested they use the Pale Wyrm as a substitute. She did neither, instead holding his face so he would be looking her in the eye, were her own bare to him.

Visible or no, the aftertaste of fear simmering deep inside her gave him a bit of context for that expression he wondered about.

"No, sweetheart. It wasn't fun. When the novice came, I worried about you, and about all of them. " The softness of her tone either contradicted or complimented how her garb still sported so much of his kidnapper's blood. He was not entirely sure, but stood transfixed either way.

"We lost track of the messenger, and it was your screams that led me to find you. And then I saw you trapped, and thought you may be dying. I was afraid, Grimm."

"...Ah," was all he could say in return. He really was having such a bad night for improvising lines. She huffed, the ghost of a laugh, and rubbed a thumb along the marking beneath one eye. And just when he thought he was already as still as he could be.

"So I'll ask again. Any pain, still?"

He mulled that over. It did not take long for him to realize he'd been wrong about there being a fixed correlation between time and vulnerability. And what a relief that was. Mortals so often seemed to be running on a timer, and he sometimes forgot that the things they counted down were often completely arbitrary. It was usually enough to act on a good feeling, if there was good faith.

Emboldened, he laced his fingers with hers where her hand rested on his cheek. He leaned into it, just a little, and let the millennia-shared persona rest for a moment.

"...No. I am… I'm alright. I am certain it looked worse than it was," he sighed at length.

"It looked like torture."

"In that case, it was about the same," he admitted wryly.

"Well, at least you're not stagshitting me about it." Her amusement was a comfort, but he still felt inclined to hang onto the moment.

"...Your friends, though, may suffer some consequence or another from this night. The Teacher seems easily prone to nightmares as it is, from what I can sense. I would suggest keeping an eye on them both."

Herrah glanced back. "...That's actually not surprising. She's always been resistant to sleep. Or any sort of rest, it seems like."

"An active mind wanders on its own accord when left idle. And it may be reluctant to go anywhere pleasant."

"Now there's a common feeling, hm?" She tried for levity. Came up a bit distant.

Grimm turned his head slightly to place a kiss to the heel of her palm. Her attention was brought back only briefly, as she spotted one particularly nasty bruise at the inside of a wing, right under where it connected to his forearm. That one appeared to have broken skin. She pulled her hand back down and reached for it, but he quickly tucked the arm away before she could appraise it.

"Ah-- I would not touch that."

Herrah paused, and made a sympathetic noise under her fangs.

"I can be gentle. May I?"

Now, he should have probably found that hilarious. He was the Nightmare's vessel; yet only a prince of that realm, but still a god in his own right. And she was something that could be irreparably damaged or ended by something as inconsequential as an unlucky fall, or a knife stuck into the wrong place. Gentleness was not the issue here, it was the literal burning flame that held his shell together.

But she thought it looked painful, and wanted to do something about it.

He displayed the arm again, hesitant, and otherwise kept still.

"Thank you, sweetheart." A kind smile was evident in her voice. He wanted to see it, but erred on the side of motionlessness.

She did heed his warning, only touching the faux cloak material around the wound. She pushed his arm up, and the swooping flare of more wing revealed yet more stark spots of abused flesh.

"Oof. Poor thing. I've a poultice we can apply to these, if you wouldn't mind me stopping by the tent with it later."

"Of course," he found himself saying, ability to self-heal quickly forgotten.

"I'll probably have to bring Hornet. She overheard your messenger, and would appreciate seeing you and your clan still alive and well. And Monomon, later."

"...Ah. My apologies."

"None necessary, it wasn't a needless worry on either of our parts. And I already assured her you'd be fine, and that I'd make it so."

For him, for the portent of doom and dread, she had wanted to make it so.

"And how are your cohorts faring? Brumm looked as though he'd been batted around like a baldur runt. …Grimm?"

"Hm? Oh, Brumm is well. Already took advantage of all that jarred soul lying around. Said it sat dusty in him, actually."

"What were you staring at?" She asked over a laugh. Hands still on his wing with rare tenderness, one cool and light on his wrist. Worried about him. Smiling because of him.

"Oh, nothing. Anyway, Divine came willingly, and she seems more or less pleased with how she got to spend her evening out and about," he went on, feeling light.

"... She just… tagged along."

"Why, of course. You try dragging her anywhere she doesn't want to be. She'll park her whole tent and stay behind until she's good and ready, entire rituals be damned," he admonished affectionately. Herrah shook her head, moving on in that way she did when she was comfortable with not needing to understand him or his troupe to accept the reality of them. She unfortunately released him as Monomon and Lurien approached, led by a Devout.

"Your majesty. Are we to escort your…" the Devout glanced at the other two Dreamers, "compatriots to their homes?"

"There is really no need," Lurien tried for polite, but ended up closer to pleading. Monomon seemed less rattled by the idea.

"I would not mind an escort. Though, the Fog Canyon can be a bit… treacherous, for unfamiliar soldiers."

"So I've seen," Herrah faced the Devout, all business. "Up for the challenge, colonel?"

"Always," the Devout straightened her stance.

"Good. Split the company and make sure both civilians arrive home safe. You're all excused for the night after that."

"Yessir."

"I-- Really, Beast, I am more than capable of--"

"Watcher. I said, you're both getting home safe. Royal decree." That shut him up for a second.

"Aww," Monomon cooed. Grimm found that he agreed.

"Isn't it so sweet, how she cares?" He added, openly adoring. The Devout colonel stood awkwardly unsure of where to look. The Beast and Watcher both looked anywhere but at each other, much to the Teacher's entertainment.

"What? You were all nearly murdered tonight." Herrah said it like an excuse. Lurien coughed.

"Th-- Quite."

"It is still sweet. I suppose even the Queen of the deep and the spiders is capable of fretting," Monomon was the picture of mild amiability.

"Oy. Off you fuck, then," Herrah waved them off, receiving a harried salute from the Devout. Lurien followed her quickly, but Monomon lingered another second.

"...It was nice to formally meet you, Troupemaster. You are as charming as Herrah says." She gave her approximation of a bow, happily returned by Grimm with his own polite farewell, before drifting off after her escorts.

Grimm stood straight again, and turned to Herrah with a smile that could cut glass. She was too busy glaring nails after the Teacher to notice.

"You told your friends I'm charming." It was not a question.

"If she has a neck in there somewhere, I am going to wring it." The Queen declared.

"You find me charming."

"Y-- Of course I do, you absolute clown." She was getting huffy. A sensible person would elect not to provoke her further.

"What is it that charms you, specifically? My stories? The magic? Ah, I know-- I've caught you staring at my face on enough occasions, I bet it's my eyes," he elected to provoke her further.

"Perhaps I ought to figure out that entrapment circle and stick you in a bog somewhere."

"Would you?" He sidled closer, that smile still sitting pleasantly deranged on his face. She thought for a second, as if seriously considering it.

"...Probably not. I'd miss you a good deal," her hand came up to tilt his chin down, and again he stilled, instinctively cautious with her.

"And you know, it's nice to get to tell you that." She moved her mask up a bit to nuzzle a kiss onto the side of his face.

And all at once, unbidden, Grimm had an exceedingly clear visual of the deepest, stickiest nightmares housing themselves in her mind. They were those of a soldier. Those of one who in her lifetime came to intimately know war, know famine, and know pestilence that ravaged her entire world. One who now had to deal with the aftermath of surviving those things, when so many around her did not. Everything unsaid, and unearned, and the regrets that stayed.

Herrah cleared her throat, and he blinked, caught staring. She spoke casually.

"Too sappy, hm? Moving on, then-- How about you gather the other two, and we make a proper funeral pyre of this place?"

He chased her hand with his own when she stepped back. She was the one caught by surprise, then, perhaps by how seriously he looked at her.

"Thank you for telling me," he brought his voice down nearly to a whisper.

"... It's really nothing, Grimm--"

"No, it is not. That one's absence might be lamented… It is a lovely thing for a person to know. I do hope you know it to be true for yourself, as well. For it is, from so many around you, all of whom are profoundly grateful that you still live. And from me."

It was in Grimm's nature to pick and pull at all the tangled things that rotted away in a bug's mind, and bring them to the surface. He knew himself to be doing that now, even if as gently as he could manage. For it, he would not make her respond.

Instead, he pushed the mask up just a fraction more to kiss her properly. She went willingly, and neither rushed to pull apart.

When they did, though, he smiled again, crooked and creepy as ever.

"Now, about burning this place out of all creation."

"... Ah. Yes. Think you'll need a hand with that?" She spoke after a brief moment.

"Thank you, but I do believe my Troupe and I have it covered from here. I trust you both to be up to the task?"

He addressed a large pile of machinery and rubble a few feet away, where Divine and Brumm promptly popped out from hiding behind.

"Yes! Folly and fire will dance together so prettily, I think." Divine chirred.

"Mrmm. I can gather the kin. We've a surplus of oil for the lanterns that needs spending," Brumm ruminated.

"Marvelous!" Grimm approved.

"Gods below," Herrah shoved her mask back down, and further hid behind a hand in mild mortification.

Later, and somewhere with a far colder color pallet to its lighting and theme, a different deity was surprised with the news of explosions heard from all around the abandoned Soul Sanctum. No one was harmed, and nothing other than the Sanctum damaged, but he received reports of the fire being so hot that the rainfall would evaporate in a visible radius all around it.

He deduced the perpetrator of this phenomenon quickly enough, and ended up internally declaring it a problem for tomorrow's Pale King.

Tonight's Troupemaster Grimm, meanwhile, was warm in his tent, indulging in the whimsical activity of receiving medical care.

#anon #drabble #anon. i owe you my life #inspiration hit like a TRUCK and yet it took four days #largely because i only had time to write it on my lunches and smoke breaks at work or on the bus #the troupe is so fun and im not sorry #evne for the stupid references #this is 8 thousand words though and i am sorry about THAT #grimmherrah #will terribly #free chapter of tales for later i guess?

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saltyladynightmare · 3 years

Text

Jiliu AU Part 3

Dead Man Walking

Beginning, Previous, Next, Masterlist

A/N

Warnings:

Kix spends most of the chapter dead certain he is going to die, casual mentions of death, semi detailed description of dirty/bloody armor, cafeteria food, fake medical practice, panic attacks (possibly? It might be closer to bouts of despair), lying in official reports, mass cover ups, the understated horror that is being an expendable clone in a suicide company

In other news, what is it called when a company gets new recruits? Reinforcements? Isn't that for when they get support from another company of troops during a battle? I don't know, and apparently nether does google, so that’s the word I've used. If you know better, drop me a line. I'll edit it.

You will see the word "kam'vod". This is a word I have shamelessly stolen from an origin I no longer remember. Their word was "kam'ika", as in "younger brother who hangs from the kama", and it was such adorable imagery, I couldn't let it go. My "kam'vod", meaning "brother who sticks close enough to step on the kama" (I am aware kamas are knee length) came from the fact that I couldn't fit the word "duckling" into the narrative. Has Kix ever heard of a duck? Do ducks exist in Star Wars? So. Have some fake Mando'a.

I should have italicized all of the vod, Vod, vod'e, and Vod'e in my chapter. But I've decided I don't care enough to do it, and most of you are probably familiar with English enough to know it is not English, and familiar enough with Star Wars to know it is Mando'a, so I'm not feeling too bad about it.

This one was a struggle to get down, but I think I've finally managed it. As always, beware grammar and spelling errors. My beta is out of country, so if there are more inconsistencies than normal, well. Point them out politely, or be ignored. :)

Have the beast. I am done with it.

~~~~~

Kix woke up tangled in Jesse, who was dead to the world. A quick situational assessment placed him in Jesse’s berth in the barracks, stripped down to a set of blacks that he very clearly hadn’t been wearing yesterday. Judging by how they pulled and stretched as he moved, the blacks probably weren’t even his. But they were clean, and that was really all Kix cared about at the moment.

Well, not all that he cared about.

It took a couple minutes to peel Jesse’s fingers away from where they had clamped around Kix’s wrist, and a few more to get the other man to uncurl enough for Kix to slip off the berth and replace his body with Jesse’s pillow. Kix watched with fond amusement as Jesse wrapped himself around the flat bit of foam.

He waited until Jesse settled again, nose buried in his captive pillow, before reaching under the berth. His fingers bumped into grimy plastoid. Kix grimaced, but pulled it out anyway.

He...did not remembering that dirty.

Blood. Caked on his polyens and greaves from kneeling in the General's blood. Dirt, dried mud everywhere, packed in the clasps and splattered across once-white surfaces, and Kix wasn't even all that convinced his armor was white anymore, what with the layer of orange-brown grime. He couldn't tell if it was all from the catacombs and the stupidity he had had to put up with there, or if the orange fog had something to do with it. Can plastoid stain? Nothing Kix had gotten into had done that yet, so there might be hope. The blacks he'd been wearing had probably been burned if Jesse had anything to do with them.

Why had Coric let him anywhere near the General and his open wounds?

Another thing occurred to Kix.

It’s a good thing he hadn’t been in any sort of state to treat anyone else.

Kix shuddered at the thought of how many infections he would have caused, before shaking the imagery out of his head. The muscles in his jaw twitched in an effort to avoid grinding his teeth together. There went any possibility of a nice day. He’d woken up in such a good mood, too.

Kix grabbed his the vambrace his comm was still clipped to, and detached it. The dirty plastoid went back into the pile, and comm switched on. It’s the work of a moment to check to shift rotation, then another moment to call up the comm frequency of the medic in charge.

CT-6116 - How is the General?

It took several long seconds before the comm pinged with a reply.

CT-7346 - Alive.

CT-7346 is typing...

Something that had been straining in stress in Kix’s mind relaxed at that one word. The rest of him waited impatiently for the rest of the report. It pinged twenty-two seconds later.

CT-7346 - The General has vomited twice since your shift ended. Both times he rolled over before hand, so he didn’t choke. It has been 4.5 hours since the last time. His temperature is still too high, at 104.3 degrees, with typical fever symptoms, and he is delirious. He left his cot at 0321, but didn’t resist being led back. IV insert site was undamaged, but he hadn’t put pressure on the puncture. This has been rectified. He was also put on oxygen when his oxygen levels got too low. They have leveled out again. Otherwise he has spent most of his time asleep.

Kix let more of the tension in his shoulders drain away. Eyes sliding closed, he rolled his neck to help the muscles relax.

General Skywalker survived the night. That’s good. That’s very good. Anyone who survived the night had a much higher chance of surviving the injury.

Kix’s comm pinged again. He checked it. It was CT-7346 again.

CT-7346 - Everything is under control here, sir. Do what you need to do this morning. I’ll see you when your shift begins at 0800.

Kix narrowed his eyes down at the screen. He did not just read that.

Jesse sniggered. Kix’s eyes snapped over to him, tension spiking right back up.

When’d he wake up? Kix hadn’t even heard his breathing change!

Jesse was in exactly the same position, eyes cracked open, and cheeks bunched up from the smile he was smothering with the pillow. As Kix watched, he stretched luxuriously across his berth. Several of his vertebrae popped, and he went limp, satisfied. His head rolled back to face Kix.

“What’s got you looking fit to burn your comm, Kixysticks?” Jesse asked huskily.

Upstart Shiny, Kix didn’t say. “Nothing,” he said instead. He knew CT-7346 was right. If nothing else, Kix himself would kick anyone else out of his medbay if they showed up in filthy armor. Doesnt mean he had to like it. Anyway, CT-7346 wasn't actually a shiny, he had been in a number of battles and lived to tell the tale, so calling him one would be inaccurate.

“You gonna eat breakfast with me today?” Jesse asked half-hopefully.

Kix froze. He thought back.

It had been a few days since he'd eaten in the mess hall. He'd been working almost around the clock prepping the medbay for the mission, and had taken his meals at his desk to free up more time when he didn't just eat a ration bar.

Hrn.

Kix quirked his mouth apologetically. "I'll eat with you," he agreed, then glanced at his absolutely filthy shell. He added, "I need to clean my armor first--" before cutting himself off. He ducked to check under the berth, and then the berth on his other side.

Not finding what he was looking for, he sat back up, baffled. "Did I actually leave my helmet in the medbay or was that a sleep-dep hallucination?"

Jesse blinked at Kix, confused. Then his lips twitched, and he dissolved into a giggling mess.

~~~~~~

Kix's neatly stacked armor clattered to the floor of the sonics, spilling across the durasteel in protest of its rough treatment. Kix had dropped it maybe a finger length from the floor.

He stared down moodily at the mess sprawled at his feet for a moment. Two. Then he sighed, and let his shoulders slump. This was going to take awhile.

It took him just over twenty minutes. It should have taken fifteen, at worst.

But he had blood streaked over his chest plate, his vambraces painted from '57's gloves when Kix had been maneuvering around him to stitch up the injury, and caked on his poleyns and greaves from kneeling in a pool of his General's blood-- Kix jerked that thought onto safer currents sharply.

His armor is dirty, and scraped. The scratches would be the worst to clean out, with how plastoid tended to melt and curl in on itself for even the smallest of damages, the dullest shards of rock. Kix would need to file all of those down, then fill them with sealant. Gauges were excellent places for bacteria to hide, after all.

Kix shrugged the looming pile of things he'd need to do off, and reached for the sonic shower head, thumbing the switch to make sure it was on the sonic setting. No need to waste his water ration on his armor.

He ran the sonic head over his armor in slow sweeps of his arm, giving extra attention to the life support panel in the backplate, and all the various clasps. It was soothing, almost, watching the dirt and dried blood flake off to reveal scratch-dulled white and blue. Thankfully the orange residue from the artificial fog came off with a little bit of patience. It took significantly less time to go over the insides of each piece with the sonic given the worst of the grime there was dried sweat for the most part.

After going over each piece with the sonic, he quickly ran his bare fingers over the plastoid, checking for weaknesses. When nothing glaring turned up, he set the armor piece to the side, neatly stacking it as he went.

None of this, of course, was what the sonics were intended for, but not a single Vod who comes in to blitz themselves clean for their next shift so much as glanced at Kix funny. In Torrent, it had long been established that a quick run through the sonic would get just about anything off faster then any amount of scrubbing. It still took Kix longer then he'd like this time, because he'd let it sit overnight, and the orange film had quickly become his fifth least favorite thing to get off his armor. He was definitely going to need to go over it all with a cleaning solution before he put it on. Of only so he didn't smell like rotting fish and whatever was in that muck.

Kix sighed as he set the last piece on top of the stack. He really should have done this the night before. He hadn't though, so he pushed that thought away until it was whisked away. He hauled himself to his feet and scooped his armor up with one arm. Crossing the first step off Armor Maintenance on his to do list, he left the sonics to put his armor in a cubby for safe keeping while he took a shower.

While Jesse has apparently blitzed him off the night before, he definitely hadn't made Kix clean his teeth, and he was feeling it.

The cubby room was quickly filling as the Vod'e on first shift less prone to early rising started getting ready for the long day ahead of them. The first day after a mission was always a long one, if only because everyone was running on empty while still trying to run a ship that not only needed three times the number of crew that they had after getting new troops, but a ship that they didn't really have the training to run. It was always worse post-mission. Casualties meant not only were they dealing with grief, they also had to deal with an even greater manpower shortage. This was not including the injured who were kept on bed rest. It also means Kix was going to be short on free hands once his shift started.

The Vod'e, on recognizing him, moved to make a path for him to Jesse's preferred cubby. Kix nodded in acknowledgment, and made his way there. There were advantages to being CMO of Torrent, and that included being allowed to get to the preferred cubby unaccosted.

And since Kix was stripped down to the lower half of Jesse's blacks--clearly stating he was not on duty-- he even got to walk by without more then a nod of acknowledgement every few feet. Which is just as well, as Kix had things to do, and no time to do them.

Like shave.

Kix had not shaved in two and a half days, and he was not having it any longer. Not only was it getting to the point that it was itchy, he abhorred how he looked with it.

He reached the cubby in short order, and took the set of blacks he'd grabbed from his bunk on the way here and his hygiene kit out before he set his armor down. It was tight fit, with the edges of his armor scraping lightly at both sides but the cubbies were one of the very few things about the Resolute that had clearly been designed to accommodate the clones, so Kix managed. He still had to get creative with getting his rolled up blacks and hygiene kit into the cubby with his armor, but he managed that too.

He took the bar of soap out of his hygiene kit before he squeezed it in, then stripped. After carefully rolling and storing Jesse's blacks in the cubby, Kix went back into the sonics, to the corner he had commandeered earlier for his armor.

He took the time to quickly sonic the grime his armor had left on the floor down the drain, before giving himself a quick, thorough once over. Once he's certain he was clean, he punched his codes into the plate for his water ration with his thumb.

Kix doesn't let himself rush this. If this is the last proper shower he is ever going to take, then he was going to enjoy it.

He rotated between letting the warm water, as hot as the Resolute's tanks would go, run over his skin, and no water at all, to scrub at himself properly. When he's finished rinsing off for the last time, utterly confident he'd gotten all of the skin off he could, a quick check of his water ration showed he'd only used twenty-four percent of his remaining ration.

Excellent.

It will take three more days to reach Coruscant, plenty of time to use the rest of it before he gets shipped to Kamino for lethal injection.

He did a quick blitz under the sonic to take off the worst of the damp, then goes back to the cubby. He sets his slick bar of soap on top of the row of cubbies for safe keeping, before extracting his clean grays and lower blacks. It took barely any time at all to pull them on, even with the necessity of fighting against how the fabric clung to his damp skin.

He wriggled his hygiene kit free of the cubby, grabbed his soap and made his way over to the sinks to get started on scraping his facial hair off with the straight razor he'd been gifted with by a civvie on one of his first missions. He was going to take his time, and he was going to enjoy it.

Kix walked out of the 'freshers just over thirty-five minutes after he walked in, sonic-ed armor in one arm, and hygiene kit and borrowed blacks in the opposite hand. It only took him that long because he'd taken his time.

He's back on Jesse's berth four minutes later with a bucket of cleaning solution, microfiber cloth, and maintenance kit, balancing his chest plate on his knees. Jesse, still stripped to his blacks, pressed the ball of his outstretched foot into Kix's hip from the opposite end of the bunk, where he was brooding over the datapad full of all the datawork he was required to do as Rex's SiC. Kix patted his foot sympathetically, before settling down to work.

Wiping down each plate is a simple process, and well practiced. Kix finished in a handful of minutes. One good thing about not having any sort of padded lining in their shell is that it is very easy to clean. That was where the advantages ended.

He thumbed a particularly deep scratch crossed diagonally across the red medical symbol on his left spaulder. The edges were slightly stretched and bend stiffly under his fingers. It was from a bad fall, if he remembered correctly. He had tripped on something and collided with the shale studded wall of the catacombs. The General had clamped a hand like iron around his wrist and all but dragged him back onto his feet before he could go sprawling.

Kix abruptly realized he hadn't actually had a post-battle medical exam yet. He added it to his to do list, along with touching up his paint and filing in the scratches, then cracked his maintenance kit open to repair the flimsy-mache life support built into his shell.

When that was done, he put his tools away, and started on the three blasters he'd had in his possession by the end of the battle. He took them apart one at a time, cleaned and reassembled it, then moved on to the next. Next, he checked each of his utility belt pouches. He added restocking to his to do list for after his shift when he found he was down to dust and lint. He'd need to restock his medpack too, but that's protocol for after a battle. He had left it in the medbay the night before, so he could do that during his shift.

Not that he would need any of it ever again, but Kix was not going to dwell on that.

A quick glance at his comm showed he had plenty of time for a social breakfast before he needed to clock in for his shift. He tapped Jesse's foot lightly.

Jesse clicked the power button on his datapad, and turned all of his attention on Kix, dropping the 'pad into his lap almost carelessly. Almost. Datapads weren't exactly something Torrent had an abundance of, and Jesse knew his privileges. He wasn't about to abuse them.

"You ready, vod?" Jesse raised his eyebrows.

Kix hummed in confirmation, reaching for his boots and a balled up pair of standard issue socks. "Just need to get kitted up," he said, sliding on a weirdly thin sock, before jamming his foot into the corresponding boot. "Thought you might want to as well."

Jesse sniffed pretentiously, arranging his sprawl of limbs into something stiff and stuck up. "Perhaps I do." He held the pose for three point four seconds before swooping down to drag his stacked armor out from under his berth. Kix huffed at him, a smile curling his mouth.

Yeah, Kix had needed a break.

Kix was kitted up before Jesse. He smirked, and Jesse scowled down at the sole clasp on his vambrace that had been giving him trouble for three missions now for keeping him from the sweet, sweet relish of beating Kix in a race neither of them had begun. Jesse scrabbled at it for a second, before it finally clicked into place, neat as you please.

Jesse hissed like a wet tooka.

Kix gathered every last bit of his not inconsiderable self control, and did not say a word. He didn't bother to keep the grin off his face, however. Catching sight of it in the corner of his eye, Jesse's head snapped up and around to pin a glare on Kix.

Solid 4 on the Rex Fury scale.

Kix grinned wider, and hooked his thumbs in his empty belt. "Should we make a stop at the armory on our way to the mess?"

Jesse sniffed, nose crinkling. "And get to the mess after all of the good stuff is taken? Not likely."

Kix rolled his eyes fondly, turning for the door. "If you insist," he said over his shoulder. He heard plastoid clack together, and almost felt Jesse jolt into motion when it registered he was being left behind.

"Hold up!"

~~~~~~

Breakfast was the same shipboard food as always, just barely more tolerable then rations, and worlds above ration bars. Protein gelatin cubes, some kind of unidentifiable starch mush, a fibrous glob of what might have once a vegetable of some kind, and a packet of insta bread. The bread was the best part. The complimentary water was a close second.

Kix ate his serving with Jesse, a Hardcase sporting a pair of impressive black eyes, and a few others as well as their kam'vod. Kix was please so many of the Vod'e newer to Torrent had survived the battle.

He finished his meal surrounded by the chatter of his living, healthy vod'e, and let himself enjoy it for a few minutes longer than strictly necessary.

Kix left the mess hall with the exact amount of time he needed to get to the medbay in time to start his shift.

The doors swoosh open, and his boots hit the medbay deck at precisely 0800.

In the same instant, the hot prickly weight dropped down onto his shoulder like an invisible serpent full of quills. It rubbed up under his chin like one of those tookas from the videos someone had smuggled into the barracks.

So. He hadn't imagined it, then.

Something flickered out from the back of his mind, but he dismisses it before it has a chance to fully form.

He swiped his wrist with his imbedded ident chip over the scanner built into the wall next to the door to clock in. He ticked over his priorities.

Put out any fires that may or may not be going on at this moment. Locate and clean his bucket. Check on the General. Do his rounds. Then, last but not least, get started on that mountain of datawork that was absolutely waiting for him at his desk.

Kix scanned the medbay quickly, looking for anything that needed his attention immediately.

The med bay of the Resolute is a large room at the center of the Pelta-class Assault ship.

There were four rows of cots; one on each wall, then two down the middle, headboard to headboard. Each cot was separated by privacy curtains Kix and The other medics had hung themselves three days after their first mission. Since Torrent rattled like dehydrated peas in a can on the ship even after picking up reinforcements from Kamino, they didn’t have enough Troopers to fill all of the beds in the medbay even if every last trooper was in one. To open up space, the extra cots, had been folded up, and stored in the corner to the left of the entrance, pinned in place by the nearest bacta tank.

Before General Skywalker had been assigned to Torrent, they had only had two bacta tanks, and rarely had the bacta to fill both. Now, five lined the left wall. Before then, they had made due with tubs they had found during clean up, then sanitized. They still used those, because it used so much less bacta it was a better use of resources, and this more practical when keeping in mind that they didn't have a set resupply schedule. It was still nice to have the tanks though. Nicer still to have the bacta to fill them.

Between bacta tanks 3 and 4 was the door that lead to the Inventory. Kix was going to have to check on the antibiotic growths they kept in the three salvaged chillers they kept in there later. He added it to his on-shift to do list, right above checking to see if anyone else had already gone through their supplies.

On the opposite wall was the door to the sonics, and both of the doors to the operating rooms. They almost always ended up doing surgeries in the main room, simply because there were too many Vod'e who needed surgery to do them two at a time. This last mission...hadn't actually been that bad, thankfully, especially since Kix had been out of commission after treating the General.

Along the back wall was four desks pushed together into a rectangle on the left, and a length of counter space with two sinks on the right, with a small cabinet bolted to the floor at the end of the counter that boasted a small kaf machine. The desks, one for each official medic of Torrent, were regularly shared with the first aid specialists on shift.

All in all the medbay was as calm as it could be with the number of wounded Kix saw in the beds. Only one tank was in use, most of the patients seemed to be napping or playing one of the quieter card games, and no one was yelling about anything. Though, Kix would bet credits that more than a few Vod'e were having conversations in hand sign, however limited the signs were.

When nothing screamed with the need for Kix's attention immediately, he began his search for his helmet. If it was anything like his armor, it would need a good thorough cleaning before he could wear it again.

A few minutes later, a Vod Kix recognized as CT-7346 walked up to him, just as he unearthed his dirty bucket from a crate of spent IV bags, and stim and hypo cartridges. What loving brothers Kix had, just leaving his armor in with the trash.

A quick glance inside to check for any cartridges that might have lodged themselves inside showed he was in the clear, then Kix turned to his fellow medic. Kix blinked.

Sometime in the last thirty-six hours, '46 had shaved his regulation cut down to the skin on the sides, and trimmed up the front. Likely, because he had apparently come face to flame with an explosion, if his singed eyebrows and eyelashes were anything to go by. The tip of his nose might also have been just a little bit more red that it was normally, too. Otherwise he looked like he had survived the experience unscathed, whatever it was.

"Su'cuy, '46." Kix tipped his head in greeting.

'46 grinned. "It's Risk, sir."

A slow smile spread across Kix's face. There was no way he was going to let this go. "Picked a name, did you?"

The newly dubbed Risk smiles crookedly, eyes glittering mischievously. "They offered a name I was willing to go by, you mean." They exchanged knowing smiles, before Risk sobered. Kix followed suit. "As I mentioned in my comms, General Skywalker survived the night." Risk launched into his shift hand-off debriefing, and Kix absorbed it all.

Risk didn't tell Kix anything new about General Skywalker, just repeating what he told him over comm. He did, however, mention that Captain Rex had been discharged an hour before as he had recovered from his blood donation well. Risk also gave a thorough run down of all the other patients.

All in all, it hadn't been a bad mission, injury wise. The General was the most critical case, and he was doing better.

"--and that concludes my report, sir." Risk sidestepped into at ease, and met Kix's eyes squarely.

"Understood. Dismissed, Risk." Kix tilted his head in acknowledgment.

Risk flashed a grin, saluted, and spun on his heel to make a beeline for the doors, leaving Kix in charge of his own medbay once more.

Kix watched him go, then started to make his way to the sonics. He only took the time to do a quick look over of the more critical patients, and General Skywalker. When all seemed well, he trotted off. Time to clean his bucket of all the gunk that had it had accumulated since he'd last seen it.

~~~~~~

A little over twenty minutes later found Kix, freshly cleaned bucket stowed under his desk, on his second to last patient for his first-thing check in.

Meticulously straightening the three tubes trailing from Kade's arm up to the three different IV bags hanging next to him, Kix paused. Took his hands away. Curled his gloved fingers into fists, and breathed.

It's going to be one of those days, then.

The weight squeezed his shoulders gently. Kix got the distinct impression it was trying to be encouraging, even though it mostly felt miserable. He pushed that aside. If he had to fight himself every step of the way to get things done, then he would. He had done it before, he can do it again.

Kix shook off what ever was trying to convince him to root himself to the spot and moved on to his next and last patient of this round, General Skywalker.

First, Kix touched light fingers to his General's flesh wrist. He was so...still. Kix had never seen him be anything like still.

When he didn't do more than roll his head slightly in Kix's direction in response to the light touch, Kix began his check up. The General was definitely still sleeping, and Kix was not about to disturb him.

Second, he set up his datapad to sync up with the sensor discs stuck to various parts of his General's skin for a more in-depth reading, before he pulled his scanner off his belt with a quick glance to make sure it was on the natborn setting, and waved the wand over General Skywalker's unmoving body.

The machine beeped, and showed that his vitals were significantly improved, heart rate steady, blood pressure normal, and respiration even. His body temperature was still uncomfortably high at 104.2 degrees, and both his heart rate and breathing were slightly too fast for Kix's liking, but both should calm down when his body overcame whatever was making it react against the transfusion. For now, General Skywalker was stable, and that was going to have to be enough. Kix clipped his scanner back onto his belt and continued.

Kix checked the IV lines to make sure nothing had gotten kinked, then reached for his datapad. He blinked down at the screen.

Data unavailable. Check sensor disc placement.

Great.

Kix set the 'pad down, and leaned over his prone General to check each disc. The man had probably knocked them off center with his graveyard sleep walking.

When Kix's bare fingers touch the disc glued just above the General's heart, something darted forward to latch onto his chest plate. The weight around Kix's shoulders seized, thrashing, sending pins and needles up and down his body.

Attention!!

Later, Kix wont be certain why he hadn't reacted the way he was trained to, but right then he was mostly just startled. He jerked back on reflex, before he is yanked to a stop by the grip on his armor.

Anakin Skywalker locked his eyes on Kix, and Kix could not look away. He didn't remember the General's eyes being so bright. They were...they were normally darker blue weren't they?

Skywalker dragged him closer. "Protect yourself." It sounded like he'd been gargling gravel. He was definitely dehydrated. "Lie to depur so you can stay with your vod'e." The words curled differently than they normally did. Like he had changed his accent. Skywalker shook him a little, demanding his attention. Kix brought his hands up to circle Skywalker's wrists. "Medics," he rasped, something knowing, urgent, in his wrong-blue eyes, "Medics are important, Kix, an' rare. Lie, Kix, and lie well."

Kix watched in horror as his General's eyes rolled back in his head, and went limp. The weight around his shoulders slumped around his shoulders in the same instant, perfectly still like it hadn't ever been before. A very tiny piece of Kix's mind in the very back of his head that often went ignored took note, and drew a connection. A slightly larger but equally ignored piece saw the connection and immediately rebelled against it. This, too, was ignored.

The rest of Kix snapped into high gear, mental alarms screaming.

He yanked his medscanner off his belt again and began scanning with one hand, even as the other started taking the General's vitals manually.

His skin is hot, and sweaty. Someone had wiped off the grime of the battle field off sometime during the graveyard shift. His pulse is slightly elevated even from two minutes ago, and his respiratory rate is shallow, but only a little faster then it had been before. The General's body had not been ready to move yet, and he was paying for it.

The scanner beeped, and he checked the reading. It agreed with his findings.

Nothing was wrong, so much as the fever, blood loss, and bad transfusion had simply caught up to him.

But Kix is a paranoid man, and it served him well as a medic, so he dropped the scanner and pulled the handheld analyzer he had picked up earlier for just this sort of situation off his utility belt. His other hand pulled a packet of clean needles out of one of his pouches.

He peeled the packaging open and pricked General Skywalker's middle finger. When a bead of bright red blood welled up, Kix squeezed a few drops onto the tiny test dish, and slotted it into the machine. He punched in the sequence for blood analysis with one hand, while the other applied pressure to the tiny puncture with a plaster. When the machine beeped to signify it had started processing, he set it down on the bed, and finished peeling all of the protective backing off the plaster to stick it on the finger properly.

Kix was just settling his General's hand down when the analyzer beeped cheerfully three times. He grabbed it up, and looked at the readings. Swore softly.

How was the man still alive? Is this a Jedi thing, or a Skywalker thing? If its the later, then what did Kix do to deserve to be his medic?

General Skywalker's blood sugar levels were excruciatingly low, and his iron levels were borderline anemic.

The man was on two separate IVs to address both of these issues, so what could be wrong?

Kix reached for the bags to check the labels, twisting one to get a good look. He sighed. The fluids were exactly what Kix would have given him, if at lower concentrations than what he currently needed. Thankfully they were almost empty, so Kix didn't have to feel bad about wasting supplies.

Kix whipped around to demand the proper fluids, only to halt at finding a Vod almost right next to him. Kix had no memory of anyone moving near him. But Kix had things to do, so he recovered quickly. "I need a bag of fifty percent dextrose, and another iron IV. Go," he snapped.

The Vod nodded sharply, and bolted. He was back in less than twenty-four seconds.

The moment the bags are in his hands, Kix was exchanging them. He passed the spent bags to the Vod to dispose of them with a wave, straightening tubes and checking connections with his other hand. Satisfied, he ran fingers over all of the glitchy sensor discs Coric had stuck General Skywalker with when they had still been trying to make his biology make sense. They had given up eventually, but Kix still wanted those deeper readings.

That done, Kix hovered for a long moment. Nothing goes horribly wrong. Right.

It took a lot more effort to force himself to move on to the next patient than Kix ever wanted to admit. It takes considerably less to keep his mind from touching on his latest order--and it had been an order. There was no mistaking it.

Medics, as a rule, had a number of skills that were slightly less critical for the average trooper that made the difference between a good medic, and a Good Medic. One of those skills was multitasking. It was vital in a medbay that was liable to go belly up in a moment's notice. Kix had it in spades.

As Kix leaned over a Vod with a cracked femur, that skill came into play.

Kix didn’t know what the word 'depur' meant, but it didn’t take a genius to know the General was talking about the Jedi Council and the Senate itself.

His hands went still, halfway through a manual check of the Vod's formerly cracked ribcage when the though occurred to him. He stared unseeingly.

Hands wrap around his palms. Kix inhaled reflexively, and jerked up only for his eyes to collide with the Vod's he was meant to be checking on. Ridge.

Kix...hadn't recognized him.

He also hadn't been looking, he told himself.

"Sir?" Ridge tugged on his hands to get his attention again. When he had it, he pressed Kix's hands to his bare chest. Kix twitched. He wasn't wearing gloves, and Ridge was warm, heart steady. "Are you here?"

No. No, he is not.

Kix matched his breathing with Ridge's, who was exaggerating each breath just enough to make it easy. Gathered himself. He sorted through his minds quickly, bundling everything about--that, and crammed it into a tiny box in a forgotten corner of his mind. He could, and would think about it later. For now, he had brothers to care for.

Kix didn't smile reassuringly at Ridge solely because he knew it wouldn't work. He decided the truth would suit this Vod much better. "In all the ways that matter."

Ridge eyed him disbelievingly, but chose to let it go. Kix was the one who finally peeled his hands off of Ridge's chest, and continued with his check up.

Two very short hours later, Kix found himself standing in the doorway of the storage room. He had done everything that he needed to, even somethings that he hadn't needed to, and his next set of rounds wasn't due for another hour and a half.

The moment Kix knew that, the tiny box in the back of his mind exploded.

Kix is not a coward.

He needed to make a decision.

First, was lying to his superior officers something Kix can in good conscience do? If it isn’t, he can simply tell the General he wasn’t about to accept orders from a delirious fever patient. If it is...well. Kix has never done something like this before. He'd need to think about it.

The tiny piece of him kept chained in the back of his head said that he already knew what he needed to do. He knew what he was going to decide because he had already made that choice.

Kix blew right past on the momentum of his louder thoughts. They tumble over and around each other, flinching away and clashing together in a wadded mass of sensation through his head.

Second, if he did decide to go through with it, how would he do it?

He sat at his desk, the one in the corner, across from Nausea's preferred desk, and let the idea twist and tie itself into something that will either be usable, thus validating itself, or tear itself to pieces and solving Kix's problem for him. He poked and prodded at it, half certain something would turn up to scream the it Won't Work, even as his fingers sorted through the five official datapads on his desk for the one with requisitions. Finding it, he pulled it out, and go to work.

Thankfully datawork isn't exactly something that required Kix's undivided attention, so he was free to keep hacking at the dilemma, even as he approved or discarded the requisitions. Some forward-thinking Vod had apparently already taken stock of the inventory, so Kix had quite a few forms to go through. Most of them would not be approved. They had just restocked, after all. Kix signed off on them anyway.

He kept finding himself trying to...pet...the weight across his shoulders that still hadn't so much as twitched since it went limp. Kix very pointedly did not allow himself to worry about it--the weight or the attempted pettings.

He was signing off on the last form of the lot--he had checked; it was definitely the last--when his personal datapad pinged softly for the alarm he'd set purely on muscle memory to tell him when his next round was.

Kix tapped the screen to silence the alarm, and peeled himself out of his uncomfortable desk chair. He pulled up his mental list of patients, organized from most to least critical, to the front of his mind, even as he made his way to the sink to wash his hands. He cross referenced it to what he remembered doing on his last round, as well as the updates the draftees had sent him over the last hour, and adjusted the list accordingly. After drying his hands on one of the sterilized hand towels, Kix moved to the Vod at the top of the list.

One of the on shift draftees, a scout named Skippy, was already at the Vod's bedside with a bundle of sheets and a tray of--Kix flicked a quick glance of the contents-- everything Kix would probably need to change the patient's bandages.

Kix tipped his head in greeting to Skippy before reaching for the new set of gloves he had on his tray. Kix snapped them on, and got to work. Occasionally, he pointed things out to Skipper absently, like how the edges of stitched cuts were a good red color, because Kix was supposed to be teaching the medbay draftees how to do these sort of things, even if he was distracted. When he was done, he peeled off the gloves and dropped them on Skippy's tray. Skippy, observant as he was, doesn't say anything about how quiet Kix knew he was being, and went away to prep a new tray.

Kix moved on to the next patient on his list, careful to keep his hands from touching anything, where another draftee waited with a tray.

Forty-six minutes later, Kix had gone over every last patient in his medbay, including the General, who still hadn't woken up. His blood sugar level was better, but not by much, though his iron had improved enough for Kix to feel comfortable taking him off the iron drip. He seemed to be sleeping slightly better, even if his fever was still way too high. Kix had assigned one of the newer draftees to lining General Skywalker's side with chilled bags of water, and exchanging them every ten minutes, in an effort to help leach some of that heat away. He had ended up keeping the General on the dextrose, and swapping the iron with ringer solution to try to combat the rising risk of severe dehydration.

The weight still hadn't moved again, even if it felt a little less like death warmed over now, the very tiny piece in the back of his mind noted. This is ignored again.

He washed his hands again, and took three fingertips worth of the hand cream Nausea had come up with to keep their hands from drying out from the little container. He rubbed it in while he went to the little kaf stand some bright soul had set up a week after Torrent's first mission. Kix was pretty sure it had been Staple who had done it, but he had died from a bolt to the head on Torrent's fifth mission kneeing over a gunner, trying to keep his insides inside, so Kix would never know.

Reaching the little cabinet, Kix unlatched the door, and pulled out his preferred mug out before re-locking it. He cradled the mug to his chest plate as he went about checking the kaf machine. He traced his index finger over the splatter of Torrent blue paint, curtesy of Jesse and Hardcase, on the otherwise standard issue white mug he’d nicked from the mess hall. The pot wasn't clean, but a quick look showed it had only been one pot since it had been cleaned, so Kix left it as it was. The water level was fine too, though it would need to be refilled for the next pot. Someone had changed the grounds earlier, it looked like, and had only taken one pot from it. Kix set his mug next to the machine and bent to reopen the cabinet to retrieve the kaf tin. Straightening, he peeled the lid off and scooped two spoonfuls of the medium brown powder into the grounds basket with the little spoon someone had spirited away from the mess hall, before dropping the spoon back in, and sealing the lid. He slid the tin back into the cabinet, and re-latched the door.

Bad things happened on ships with loose doors. It was just asking for trouble, and Kix wasn't about to borrow more of that, thank you very much.

Closing the top of the kaf machine, he punched in the start sequence of the mode that would give him the strongest kaf possible with the grounds he had. The machine beeped a tiny, cheerful little sound, and started boiling the water.

Kix sighed heavily.

He set both hands on the edges of the little cabinet, leaning into it. His eyes traced the edges of blue on his mug.

He really just...needed to make a decision.

He caught himself bringing a up hand to stroke the invisible, not-there weight, but aborted the movement before his fingers leave the cabinet top completely. Again. Kix hissed, clamping both hands onto the edges.

The kaf machine beeped, and shot a stream of watery brown liquid into the pot.

Kix stared down unseeingly, hands braced on the edges of the cabinet, head low. He knew what his decision was. He still didn't move a muscle for all fifty-seven seconds of the pouring instead of acknowledging this one fact. He didn't fight it. He let himself have this.

The machine beeped again. Kix removed the pot on auto pilot, and poured until his mug was full. Raised the mug with his other hand and took a gulp, immediately felt the absence of rotgut, toped it off again, and put the pot back. He was back at his desk almost before the kaf in the pot settled again.

Setting the mug down as far from the edge of his desk as it could be without getting in the way, Kix settled into his chair, and then just sat there. Just for a moment. Then he shook himself off, and pulled his datapad closer.

Half an hour and three separate edits later, he hit send.

~~~~~

Not half an hour later, Kix was in the middle of rebandaging Scrap's arm for what would probably be the last time, listening to his tale of how he had gotten all of his various injuries, when the medbay doors slide open. Boots marched down the aisle, toward Kix. A murmur of greetings followed those boots as they passed.

"--it had been so much deeper, sir, but less than five minutes later, it literally started to shrink before my eyes." Scrap waved his free arm around. "It tingled like bacta, but it didn't itch the same way. My leg had--you know, the broken one?--had been totally broken. I had a brand new knee halfway down my calf, broken, kind of thing. Except, while my cut was healing itself," Kix pinned the end of polycotton, and checked it's hold, "my leg was grabbed by something invisible, then got pulled straight." The end held.

Kix peeled the latex gloves off, and rubbed his hands vigorously together to get that horrible powdery feel off, before snatching up the pen light to check Scrap's mild concussion. He knew who had just come in, and he knew why he was here.

Scrap continued talking. "It didn't hurt as much as getting a bone normally does, which was nice, and then it started tingling like my cut had." He shrugged, keeping his head steady so Kix could check his pupils. Such a considerate patient. "I'd been surprised, but also not, when I was told I had a bad partial fracture, instead of what ever it would have been called before."

Scrap's pupils respond well, and he didn’t flinch from the light, unlike his last check up. His concussion was well on its way to healing, than. Once his leg healed enough that it could support his weight for short periods of time, Kix would be able to discharge him.

The Captain's boots came to a stop right next to Kix. Kix grabbed Scap's injured arm before he could salute with it and irritate the cut.

This doesn't deter Scarp from greeting Rex. "Good afternoon, Captain!"

Kix set his pen light down on the tray his current draftee, a pilot named Gypped for unfortunate reasons, was holding for him. He turned to Captain Rex, and saluted.

"Sir."

"Kix," Rex nodded in greeting. "We need to talk."

"Yes, sir." Kix dropped his salute, and nodded sharply. "Permission to finish here?" He tilted his chin at Scrap.

Captain Rex nodded once. "Granted."

Kix turned back to Scrap to get him resituated, flicking his fingers in dismissal at Gypped. Rattling off what Scrap was allowed to do, what he was not allowed to do, and his new estimate on when he should be able to be discharged, Kix efficiently wrangled the Vod down onto his bed with very little resistance.

Kix stepped back, and gestured for the Captain to follow him. He lead him out pf Scarp's curtained cot, and around to one of the operating rooms. Kix palmed the keypad, stepped though when the door slid open, and started flipping on light switches. Captain Rex stepped in after him, and palmed the keypad.

The moment the locks sealed, Rex was talking. "What are you trying to do here, Kix?" Why are you lying? The warning rings loud and clear.

Kix took him in for a long moment, hands pausing over the switches.

The Captain's armor was clean and filed, filled and sealed. His paint had new scratches, but that was to be expected.

While paint was easy enough to get, Torrent had a finite amount of space onboard the Resolute, so paint usually got overlooked in favor of food, weaponry, and medical supplies, limited as the selection was for them. As such, everyone usually saved repainting for when it was very necessary, like when a piece was replaced entirely, or scraped up beyond all recognition.

Like his armor, Rex's skin and hair were clean, and he was starting to show something like a sheen of blond facial hair on his jaw, though he had clearly shaved this morning. He looked like he may have actually gotten some decent sleep last night, and he was holding himself as he always does when he wasn't trying to hide an injury.

Kix wouldn't breathe a word of it to anyone but another medic, but Captain Rex held himself differently when he was hiding an injury. Picture perfect trooper, instead of experienced ARC Trooper, and it helped Kix immensely when he was trying to deduce if he needed to force Rex to the medbay.

Rex wasn't hiding an injury right now, but he was tense, shoulders too tight to be anything less than stressed.

Kix did not want to have this conversation.

He counted to five, and began.

"The General woke up this morning." Rex perked up a bit at that, but Kix went on before he could ask anything. "It wasn't for very long, but it happened to be when I was checking on him. The short story is that he grabbed me and ordered me to protect myself. Then he told me to lie." Kix went into detail of what had happened, and then explained his own reasoning for following through with it. By the end of it, Rex had his arms crossed over his chest, eyes narrowed. Kix could almost feel his ire like a physical thing. "I decided to tell the truth that would keep me alive."

"You shouldn't have to lie," Rex stated, "you will be decommissioned if it's ever found out. Skywalker--"

Kix cut him off there. "General Skywalker is the only reason Torrent didn't die on the planet." You know that, vod.

"We never would have blown up the catacombs," Rex countered. True enough. "We would have come up with something else."

Kix raised both eyebrows, and crossed his arms. "Would we have? Did you have a different idea at the time?" At the tick of negative at Rex's eyebrows, Kix continued without pause. "Do you have an idea we could have used then, now?"

Rex's cheek jumped from the force he was grinding his teeth with. He knew exactly what Kix was doing. "No." Kix made a note to check his teeth on his next physical.

"Then how do you know you would have figured something else out in time, if he hadn't been here?"

Kix could almost feel something in Rex straining against what he was saying. "Kix, he is a newly graduated knight, he's as shiny as a Jedi can be--" he started.

"If you really think that man out there is shiny, you haven't been paying attention." Kix said flatly.

"I have--I don't--he has to be--" Rex spun away, kama flaring out. His hands curled into fists at his sides. One of them darted up to drag over his shaved blond fuzz. Kix tracked it, noting the tiny quiver in his Captain's fingers as they ran over his most visible so-called defect.

Kix dropped the line of thought when Rex turned back. His chest panged when his eyes catch on the strain around Rex's eyes, tight with something horribly like desperation. "If he isn't shiny, Kix, then that means--" he stopped, words failing. "The Jedi Order is different."

Kix took that, absorbed the force of what Rex was really saying. "Yes." He agreed finally. He caught Rex's eye. "It's supposed to be."

The Jedi Order was meant to be made up of people with an ironclad moral code that kept them from hurting others even on accident. People with otherworldly powers, laser swords, and robes. Good people, Jedi, Generals who would lead the Vod'e An to battle, and lead them well.

That code that they were all but promised was supposed to make them different from their trainers. Different from the Cuy'val Dar, from the Kaminoans.

Different from Kamino.

Kix could name a lot of Vod'e who had clung to that promise at their lowest. He supposed this is what you get for making regular people into your salvation.

An ocean's worth of disappointment, and a whole lot of dead brothers.

"A person don't ask other people to lie to the ones they trust." Kix said quietly. They ask it when they don't trust them.

Rex's eyes were hard. His shoulders were...more weighed down then they had been before. Kix hadn't known he'd put so much faith in the Jedi. As a medic, Kix had never been able to afford that.

Still. He was sorry all the same.

"The General doesn't trust the Jedi Order." Kix said nothing. Rex needed to say this out loud to process it, so Kix wouldn't stop him. Rex huffed harshly, and rubbed a hand over his face. Kix waited. Rex kept his hand pressed over his eyes. "You're right," he said finally. "He's not a shiny. He doesn’t trust the people who should have his back. He's the sort to trust that kind of thing--" their General had only been theirs for three weeks but that much had been clear within twenty minutes of meeting him, "--which means they have given him reason to believe they will not support him now."

They stayed there in silence for a moment.

After a little bit, Kix left his Captain to his thoughts, and started going over his latest to do list. He hadn't finished it by the time Rex had asked to speak with him. He was going to have to check whatever work his draftees did to his patients without him there to supervise.

He felt tired just thinking about it.

Kix was maybe a third of the way through resorting the list by order of priority, when Rex raised his arm, and started tapping on his comm.

At Kix's raised eyebrow, Rex explained, "I've called Jesse and Hardcase here. We need all hands on deck to deal with this." Kix nodded, then settled at ease. He had things to sort and time to do it.

Nine minutes and change later, a brisk knock sounded on the door.

Rex slapped the key pad, opening the door.

Jesse and Hardcase are on the other side. They both salute.

"Sir."

Rex jerked his head. "In."

When they come in, Rex closed then locked the door behind them before turning back.

"Sir." Jesse leaned against the operating table casually. "Any reason why you called us here?"

Rex, being Rex, cut to the heart of the matter. Normally Kix was all for it, but it should be said that this isn't really the kind of topic that should be dropped like so much fluff.

"If the truth of what happened to General Skywalker gets out, Kix is going to be recalled to Kamino, either for reconditioning or decommissioning. Which depends on if the General survives or not." Rex ignored how Hardcase flinched, and how Jesse froze. He kept going. "The General woke up, lucid as far as can be determined, earlier today, and told Kix to protect himself from that." Hardcase boggled at that. Normally, Kix would laugh at it. Kix didn't feel much like laughing. For his part, Jesse...thawed. Kix wasn't sure what to make of it. "Kix has decided the best way to go about this is to alter the reports to tell 'the truth that would keep him alive'."

Kix wrinkled his nose at Rex for the quote.

Harcase's eyes widened, gaze bouncing between Rex and Kix. "What?"

Jesse just looked Kix in the eyes. His voice was quiet. "Kix." Kix looked back. "Are you sure?"

Kix inhaled slowly, running mental fingers over all the paths he had worn into the problem. He followed the one he had decided on. It still felt right, like the ring of a bell.

Eyes locked on Jesse's, he nodded once.

Jesse sucked in a deep breath, face settling into hard lines.

Hardcase started bouncing on his toes. "Are we actually doing this? For real?" The beginnings of his trademark grin started spreading across his face.

Jesse turned to Rex, who gazed back at him calmly. "What do you need me to do, sir?"

Something, somewhere, shattered.

Kix couldn't help but feel like that was a good thing.

Mouth quirking, Rex gestured to the floor. "May as well have a seat. This is going to take a while." He jerked his head at the table in the middle of the room. "Help me make some space."

Jesse and Rex shoved the surgery table to the side to make room. Hardcase plopped cheerfully down onto the ground, and dragged Kix down after with a snagged wrist. Kix allowed this because he wanted to get off his feet. The other two join them in short order.

"Right," Rex twitched his kama into what Kix assumed was a more comfortable position before settling. "We have a lot of pieces that need to be sorted, so let's begin. Our priorities are to protect Kix, watch our six, and keep this from biting our Jetii in the shebs."

By the time they finish, two and a half hours later, Kix was feeling much more grounded then he had been. The other three officers left the medbay; Jesse to rewrite his report, and to spread the news, Hardcase to ensure the supplies they had reflected what was used in his own reports, and Rex to do even more datawork then he already had. For Kix's part, he went back to his patients. All of his reports had already been written the way they needed to be.

Every last Vod on the Resolute would know the 'official' story within two hours.

~~~***~~~

Eight hours later, every last clone trooper of Torrent Company had turned in their mission reports. Each report told tiny pieces of a whole new truth. A truth that would not only keep them safe, as every last one of them knew exactly how fickle that particular concept was for a clone trooper, but also their CMO. The truth that would, hopefully, maybe, protect this General of theirs who had pushed himself well past his limits, broken more rules then they knew, to save as many of them as he could.

In this truth, it went like this: they were outnumbered, outgunned, and loosing.

General Skywalker had been herded behind enemy lines with a squad of some of their only shinies, Captain Rex, and Medic Kix. There was no way to get back to the men without a lot more fire power then they actually had. General Skywalker made the call to instead go deeper into enemy territory, once it became clear they were about to be caught in a pincer attack. It also stood to reason that the best way to destroy as many droids as possible, one needed to be where a large number of droids were. Beyond that, something was jamming their comms, and they needed to deal with it for the sake of the mission. They knew the droids had set up their camp in the catacombs. The jammer would doubtlessly be there. So that is where they went.

It very quickly became obvious the place was set to blow. They didn’t have enough time to undo the explosives. They ran. In their rush, they found the jammer, and destroyed it. Captain Rex sent out a comm for a retreat.

They stumbled into a cavern filled to the brim with droids, most of whom were active. Three of the shinies died in the following fight, and the other two were injured. The General threw a fuel canister, and Captain Rex shot it, blowing it up. In the resulting chaos, the five of them managed to get away.

While they crawled out of the catacombs, the General caught a grenade with the Force. He didn’t catch all of the shrapnel, getting injured in the process. Kix didn’t have time to treat it. They ran again.

The General made the judgment call to climb the first of the mountains they come across when they knew they wouldn’t be able to avoid the clankers. Due to the length of the battle, and that confrontation in the cavern, they didn’t have the amo to deal with any droids they might come across. The moment they reached to top, the General collapsed.

Something set off the explosives, collapsing the catacombs. They found out later that Torrent had gotten Captain Rex’s order to retreat, and were out of range.

Aid had been a long time coming, so to keep General Skywalker alive, they had given him a blood transfusion. Medic Kix calculated it was about a pint from both Captain Rex, and Kix himself, nether of whom were injured. By the time pick up had arrived, Medic Kix had managed to get General Skywalker stable enough for transport.

The General was in need of medical aide. He may or may not survive the trip. The Resolute was en route to Coruscant, to get the General to the Jedi Temple according to protocol.

This new truth was, of course, a lie.

The only reason they had even a slight chance of pulling it off was that the Resolute was one of the very few ships in the GAR staffed entirely by clones. Without this one crucial factor, they wouldn't have been able to fudge up the time line nearly so spectacularly, much less postpone their departure long enough to dig up their injured and the dead for treatment or a proper pyre as they required. Thankfully, the Vod'e they did find alive were stable enough to immediately transport up to the Resolute for treatment.

With no one to tell them otherwise, Torrent's truth was the only one the Jedi and the Senate would get and so it was as good as the Truth.

They wouldn't know that it was the General and a squad who as sent the bombs. That he had gotten injured defending the leftovers of that mission while they set up the detonator. That Kix hadn't seen that he was injured, or that General Skywalker had run on that same leg, and then hauled four troopers in full kit up one of the mountains with the Force, which they already knew had rules for it's use. Torrent didn't know what those rules were--better be cautious.

Of course, if the General might get punished for using the Force in such a relatively minor way, then the Senate and Jedi Council definitely should not know about how he had grabbed them with the Force and took them to safety even as the ground beneath their feet had fallen away.

They certainly didn't get to know that the General had needed more blood then any man his size should need, for all that he didn't have a bleed. Torrent would not be giving anyone a reason to run any sort of tests on their General. Stars knew they knew what that's like, and they wouldn't expose their Jetii to that if they can help it.

So Torrent lied, and they lied well.

It would be enough.

It had to be enough.

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