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fannishcodex · 3 years

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Interesting meta from cruelfeline and others inspired my idea for a role swap AU where the main swap is between Hordak and Adora! There are other character swaps in the AU too, or swap variations.

Hordak is the latest Prim-Al, a living weapon that a First Ones faction clones over and over again each time one perishes in battle. FO created Prim-Al in response to their magitech AI Light Hope going rogue and constructing her own army of androids she calls the She-Ra.

More under the cut, including Queen Adora, leader of the Etherian Alliance and stranded android still loyal to her creator, and her discovery of a baby Hordak (Content Warnings: ableism; child abuse; Catra is a villain and completes her transformation into a Shadow Weaver-like figure, and the implications of that):

But first, a little more summed up detail on Prim-Al’s deal, because there’s more to it:

-Hordak’s genetic template is a mysterious Subject A. The FO took preserved samples of Subject A to continually make clones of him for Prim-Al.

-FO also made a digital copy of Subject A’s mind, a magitech AI named Prime. As a digital clone of an organic mind, much of him acts like an organic mind. Though FO has added some heavy programming and other alterations, they’ve tried to leave much of the organic-based behavior intact for multiple reasons--as an ongoing experiment in digital clones of minds, as an attempt to deter another rogue AI by trying to make this AI more aligned with organics (in contrast, RS!Light Hope was generally not based on an individual’s organic mind, she is not a digital clone like RS!Prime).

(Magitech is what it sounds like--a typically powerful fusion of magic and technology.)

-AI Prime is contained in the RS!Sword of Protection, and is actually the key to its power.

-The clones are actually vessels that channel magitech AI Prime through the sword. When a clone holds the sword, they sync with AI Prime inside, and together they essentially fuse and transform into Prim-Al.

-Prim-Al occurs in two stages. The first stage has some boost in power, some physical changes in body and clothes. The last stage has a greater boost in power and more physical changes--aged up (to a certain point), more muscular, longer hair, clothes, etc.

-AI Prime will only grant power to the clones/can only sync with the clones because they share a blood connection to the organic mind he was based on. This reaction is largely rooted in AI Prime’s magitech nature.

-Despite the death of Subject A, FO was able to preserve his mind and DNA to continue weaponizing him via biological and digital cloning. (The reasons for the FO’s focus on Subject A are also classified, though one can infer that Subject A possessed a power FO wanted to preserve and control....)

-AI Prime/the Sword of Protection is passed down through multiple iterations of Prim-Al.

-One of AI Prime’s functions is to also serve as a living archive of information, and so AI Prime remembers every Prim-Al. He is supposed to have this information available for new clone vessels to access.

-The clones do get names, but as they mature FO generally uses them less and refers to them as Prim-Al more. FO generally mistreat Prim-Al/clone vessels/AI Prime, seeing them as just weapons to keep under control.

FO doesn’t create a clone army because they’re honestly paranoid about creating another powerful enemy; they think that just one Prim-Al under selective limitations will grant them better control and avoid another Light Hope debacle. There are other classified reasons for this too. Also a FO faction created Prim-Al; the entirety of FO are embroiled in a civil war among each other as well as the war with Light Hope and other enemies.

The FO also put limitations on AI Prime for similar reasons, and all the more so because he’s an AI--they don’t want AI Prime to be another rogue AI like Light Hope.

Feel like sharing some design/tone notes:

Besides playing around with fusing traits from both Hordak and Horde Prime, I was also influenced by Link and the Master Sword in Breath of the Wild, as well as the Drifter in Hyper Light Drifter.

(Above: Base Form!RS!Adora is partly a drawover of a show image.)

The She-Ra units are magitech androids with a base form and a more powerful form they can transform into. This transformation is rooted in their magitech nature.

Gonna try to keep these notes on the art as more of a summary for now, and may reveal more specific details about the role swap AU later in separate text posts or even just keep it to later fic--also, still brainstorming, so material in the sketches and the text may change later; and also just felt like this art needed more context/clarification/background info:

(Baby!RS!Hordak is supposed to resemble canon!Imp, thanks to fic from/talking with @revasnaslan. More info on that is below. Also yes, RS!Adora wrapped baby!RS!Hordak in her cape. :3)

FO preferred raising/training/indoctrinating the Prim-Al clone vessels from infancy, thinking this would give them greater control. They also thought it would make Prim-Al feel even more connected to organics and avoid sympathizing with any rogue AI like Light Hope.

RS!Adora finds the alien baby stranded on Etheria due to a wayward portal (like her situation), and she names him “Hordak” based on the little data she gets from the wrecked escape pod she finds him in. The data had only been text that read “Predecessor: Kadroh,” and she just reversed that name for the boy. RS!Adora names him as part of his paperwork, intending to have him sent to the infirmary with the other orphans, she can’t spend anymore time on him.

RS!Adora fought the Prim-Al before Hordak, but never knew his name was Kadroh. She doesn’t immediately see a resemblance between Hordak and Prim-Al because Hordak is a baby and she’s never really thought about Prim-Al being an organic infant before. Another significant thing is that like in @revasnaslan ‘s Where One Fell-verse fic, infants/children of Hordak’s species start completely blue, and then their faces turn white as they mature; also as @revasnaslan pointed out to me, there’s Imp, baby/child-like clone of Hordak without a white face. So RS!Adora slowly starts seeing the resemblance between Hordak and Prim-Al as Hordak’s growing up and his face starts turning white, and she honestly starts internally freaking out because by this point, between having to provide him medical assistance for his defect and having to spend more time with him than intended and watching him grow up more closely than she planned, RS!Adora is attached enough that the implications of Hordak somehow being the latest Prim-Al is distressing for her and provides a serious conflict with her loyalty to RS!Light Hope...

(Also just feel like saying that while I’m brainstorming that RS!Adora is kind of an android that’s been around for a while/like 1000+ years, I’m more in the camp that thinks that canon Hordak is actually quite young/not centuries old, even though he might have the potential for that/he can get that old later.)

There are more details on how baby RS!Hordak ends up on Etheria and the unique situation behind his birth, but that’s for another text post or fic.

RS!Adora passes herself off as an organic (even a native) while on Etheria. One metal arm is left exposed due to a minor glitch there that messes up the regen protocol for her synthetic skin; she pretends it’s just armor mainly for aesthetic/ceremonial purposes. But this is equivalent to a superficial scar, and it does not hinder or cause RS!Adora any great pain. Before Etheria she was considered one of RS!Light Hope’s perfect androids, and a random portal just plucked her from routine combat duty. (Light Hope didn’t really notice; any missing She-Ra units were assumed to be casualties of battle, and she had plenty more She-Ra units to replace any losses.)

RS!Catra is a commander in RS!Adora’s Etherian Alliance. RS!Adora and RS!Catra have grown estranged while nominally on the same side. (I’ve been brainstorming RS!Adora/RS!Scorpia down the line after quite a few things go down.)

RS!Catra learned magic in Mystacor and RS!Light Spinner was her most influential mentor. RS!Catra’s specialty was transforming into a large predatory feline and other spells to strengthen her body. (I just keep getting more intrigued by original ‘80s Catra.)

When RS!Light Spinner roped RS!Catra into helping her with the Spell of Obtainment, things turned disastrous. The spell backfire warped RS!Catra, scarring her with a shadowy substance and granting her new shadow-like powers that made her vastly stronger, but the abrupt and traumatic change wrought by magic led to an initial period of insatiability and loss of control that resulted in RS!Catra transforming into an even larger, shadow-constructed feline that killed/devoured Light Spinner and other sorcerers investigating the commotion. RS!Catra flees Mystacor after this and eventually gains control over her new power, but grows more corrupt with it too, and is also left with a new hunger. Years later RS!Catra throws her lot in with the Alliance of monarchs and RS!Adora to solidify/take control of Etheria. (At the moment there’s tentatively another complicating factor with the Spell of Obtainment in this AU, but gonna leave that for another post or fic while I spend more time privately brainstorming it first.)

(Also RS!Catra’s design is very much based on her S3 finale corrupted form because I thought that was neat and that it could work in this AU. I also liked the idea of just using shadow magic to wrap around her and transform her into a large predatory shadow feline as a callback of her original ‘80s incarnation.)

Though RS!Adora is at the head of the Etherian Alliance with RS!Catra as her commander and essentially right hand, most of its high command is made of princesses and other monarchs/nobles who wished to tighten their control over Etheria. However, the Scorpion kingdom, Bright Moon, and Dryl resisted this agenda, and the Alliance considered them enemies and part of the rebels.

RS!Catra actually does just drop RS!Hordak off at the infirmary with the other orphans, complying with RS!Adora’s orders. Despite sensing some strong magic from RS!Hordak, RS!Catra’s content to leave him with the other orphans and just keep an eye on him for now.

(The magic RS!Catra’s sensing from RS!Hordak is something that can only be really triggered once he has the Sword of Protection.)

But when Hordak’s around four years old, his body starts breaking down/his defect becomes apparent. Many in the Alliance give up on the boy’s use as a soldier-in-training (or even use as a servant) and consider casting him out, despite RS!Adora’s insistence that they have enough resources to spare on providing the boy with ongoing medical assistance. (RS!Adora is motivated by a variety of things, including honoring Light Hope’s precept that all creatures have a place under her reign (until she orders otherwise); and at this point RS!Adora still feels some connection to her fellow portal traveler stranded on Etheria and feels compelled to try to help in this situation.) It’s then that RS!Catra steps in and takes in RS!Hordak as her ward. She still thinks he has use (she can still sense great magic from him) and sees this as an opportunity to position herself as the boy’s “savior” and really secure his loyalty.

Though the relationship between RS!Adora and RS!Catra is gradually deteriorating, the nature of RS!Catra’s true motives for taking in RS!Hordak is essentially lost on RS!Adora. While largely everyone in the Alliance had spurned the idea of keeping RS!Hordak around any longer now that he was defective--something RS!Adora found rather discouraging--RS!Catra’s the only one other than RS!Adora to express some interest in the boy. In the face of that much rejection, RS!Adora thinks that if RS!Catra wants to take RS!Hordak as her ward, she should have him.

RS!Adora constructs RS!Hordak’s first set of assistive armor. This eventually includes surgery and giving him ports for a closer/better connection to the armor. RS!Adora continues to treat RS!Hordak and maintain his armor, and helps educate him on how it works when he expresses interest in it and science/technology in general.

RS!Catra is not a good adoptive mother to RS!Hordak. She trains him brutally, pushes him as far as his defect will allow, telling him he needs to work harder to make up for his defect and keep up with everyone else. Her harsh words encourage his self-loathing, and she does aim to break him down to keep him compliant. She’s basically partly swapped with Shadow Weaver in this AU (partly since RS!Light Spinner isn’t really swapped, she’s partially in a “what if she was really on the wrong end of the Spell of Obtainment and was killed by its backfire like those Mystacor sorcerers were,” and also “what if Catra was her student at Mystacor instead of Micah.”)

For a long time RS!Hordak believes he deserves RS!Catra’s harsh treatment, and is afraid that she’ll cast him out if he’s not good enough. He’s aware that there’s no one else in the Alliance that would really take him in. He worries that RS!Adora would just withdraw her mercy and assistance if she realized how weak he really was, so he often tries to hide as much of that as he can from her, including signs of RS!Catra’s abusive treatment. RS!Catra sometimes softens with RS!Hordak--for example, she taught him how to drive a skiff and those were calm lessons, with RS!Catra less demanding and less harsh than when she trains him in combat--but she does not provide him with consistent care and continues to emotionally/verbally/mentally/physically abuse him.

(Above: Definitely referenced a screenshot from the show. Not pictured: Probably RS!Prime losing his shit immediately after this and cursing RS!Catra out and maybe breaking out a recording of one of RS!Adora’s tongue-lashings to unsettle her.)

RS!Catra is furious when RS!Hordak finally runs away in his teens. Her relationship with him has become somewhat less business and more dangerously personal; she has developed a twisted affection for him as her adopted son, and that makes her reactions even more volatile and harsh when he runs away. RS!Catra does not react well to RS!Hordak’s attempts to escape her.

(When RS!Hordak leaves the Etherian Alliance, he’s a little younger than canon!Adora when she leaves the Etherian Horde due to some reasons that’ll be saved for another text post or fic.)

RS!Hordak isn’t used to getting encouragement from an authority figure/older adult, it always startles him whenever it happens.

(Playing around with role swap AU--also felt like having RS!AI Prime be softer than both canon!Light Hope and canon!Horde Prime, and that’s included him being more supportive/encouraging and even more snarky/playful as another sketch comic indicated above [though part of his humor is just like a result of--he’s pretty old, some inhibitions have just dropped over time and he’s seen quite a few things just repeat over and over, and part of his response to that is to sometimes act more flippant].)

While previous Prim-Al have had some slight variations in appearance depending on the individual clone vessel’s clothing/scars/etc., Hordak’s Prim-Al transformation is the most drastically different. All of his older clone-brothers have had white hair and yellow eyes, and so their Prim-Al transformations have had long white hair and one yellow eye, while the rest turned green and gained visible pupils. Hordak has blue hair and red eyes, and so his Prim-Al transformation reflects that more--the red eye stays, and Prim-Al now has blue hair with a few streaks of white. He has clothes with a primary color scheme of black-and-red instead of black-and-white. Hordak’s Prim-Al is slightly shorter than previous Prim-Al. Hordak’s Prim-Al has more armor, since they shield his defect--which Prim-Al now has since Hordak has it. Due to this, Hordak’s Prim-Al, while gaining a significant boost in power/etc., is typically not as strong as his brothers’ Prim-Al transformations. (However, Hordak’s determination and tolerance for pain is regularly equal to his older brothers’ own determination and tolerance for pain.)

Though the defect remains, the use of AI Prime to trigger the Prim-Al transformation again provides greater power. It also does have some effect on appearance and structure. A closer examination of Prim-Al should show this: Prim-Al looks more like someone recently scarred/mutilated/afflicted with a defect, rather than someone who’s grown up with it. And so, though defective, Prim-Al’s arms look less withered and retain more muscle, and generally look better than Hordak’s usual arms. (And again, they still have a magitech boost going on.)

While FO did program AI Prime to have some regard for the clone vessels, he started caring more than they had planned. AI Prime grew to genuinely care for every clone vessel for Prim-Al, and saw them more as brothers. This now includes Hordak. And though he values his brothers and means well, AI Prime’s cynicism and (remnant) programming can sometimes get in the way of his attempts to help. His own deep-seated trauma can be a factor too.

With every new clone, AI Prime initially tries to distance himself to avoid further pain, because he grieves the loss of every clone--but he ultimately always admits to seeing them as brothers. (With his long life and the FO and Light Hope and other external factors trapping him in this cycle, AI Prime somewhat copes by comparing the whole thing to the passing of seasons. He’ll be passed down to a new clone-brother, he’ll try to resist caring about the clone-brother, he’ll grow to care about the clone-brother anyway, clone-brother dies, he’s alone until the next clone-brother comes, and then the whole thing starts again.)

Though AI Prime is a digital clone of Subject A’s mind, he doesn’t have complete access to his mental template’s memories due to FO intervention. The FO also did not tell AI Prime everything.

Yep the LUVD crystal is there, RS!Entrapta should be another sketch post or fic. She’s gone from like the oldest princess to the youngest princess in this AU, and is around the same age as RS!Hordak.

Thanks for checking this out, hope you enjoyed this AU! Hope to have more about this up later.

Forgot to add: Yep RS!Kadroh is that Kadroh, he’s RS!Wrong Hordak in this AU.

#spop #hordak #adora #horde prime #she ra and the princesses of power #my fanart #role swap au #my fanfic

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commonwealthoccurences · 3 years

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Such Good Friends

Prompt: Fake Dating Turns Real

Day: 3

Word Count: 2,298

It had started out as a joke.

A prank on Desdemona, really, as Deacon and Sole often pulled, considering it was the most entertainment they could get, staying underground with the Railroad for months at a time. Tinker Tom had made a light comment about the fact that he thought Sole and Deacon were together, and, well, with the way Deacon’s eyes lit up with an idea, Sole knew there was no easy way for them to get out of it.

If they tried to brush off one of his pranks he would often turn to them with pouting eyes, disappointed and whiny, and they didn’t have the energy to deal with that at the moment. So they gave in and casually confirmed that they were together. Deacon sat back and rested an arm on the back of his chair, grinning in satisfaction. He had a new way to torture the rest of the Railroad while they were waiting for the Institute to get off their backs.

And then it just… kept going. Sole fell into such a routine after a month or so that even after they could leave the Railroad HQ, they automatically responded to the questions about them and Deacon being together without question. Of course, they knew internally that Deacon wasn’t with them. He didn’t care for them like that, they were just really good friends that had bonded over some terrible shit that had happened. They were playing a practical joke, that’s all.

Deacon often would sling his arm over their shoulders, both as a way to sell the joke and to tease Sole, who he knew was much more reluctant to be part of this than he was. Sole would wind an arm around him and lean into him, partly playing along with the joke, and another part finding themself craving his company, though they told themself they would never admit that. If they did he’d never drop it.

It was easy to find themself back in this rhythm, sharing the weight of their steps with him as they walked through Goodneighbor, raising a hand to acknowledge the drifters they saw all the time when they were around for work. Deacon didn't say a word about the way they sought out contact first, and simply hooked an arm around their shoulders and smiled. They were a little too good at playing the happy couple sometimes, Sole thought.

They felt empty as soon as they stepped through the gates that led them out of Goodneighbor, Deacon’s arm falling away from them, his form leaving theirs. The distance was ridiculous in their mind, an expanding void that left them cold. God, they felt dramatic. With a subtle shake of their head, they readied their weapon in preparation for returning to the wildness of the Wasteland, and pushed away any thoughts of Deacon. They were friends. That was all they were allowed to be.

When they finally found a place to rest, halfway back to Sanctuary as they needed to speak to Preston, it was in an abandoned house. Sole found themself brushing their fingers against the deteriorating walls decorated with crumbling wallpaper, ash staining the tips of their fingers as they moved through the rooms. Deacon allowed himself to watch them through his sunglasses, head tilted in a way that made him look like he was simply examining his weapon, as they stepped through the house.

They looked like a ghost. He could imagine them, in their past life, walking through a clean, pristine environment, the house warm and bright without the traces of the wasteland. He wondered quite often if they missed it. Who was he kidding, of course they did. But he had to ask himself if they would trade the life here for their life before the war. Sacrifice everything they'd gone through for another few days somewhere else. Without him.

Maybe that was one of his biggest insecurities, maybe not. Deacon would never let himself dwell on it long enough to consider it seriously, but it popped into his mind at the most inconvenient of times. When they were wrapped around him at the Third Rail. When they threw their head back and laughed at a joke he made, clinging to him to avoid falling out of their chair. Is it worth it? He would think. To stay here, with me? Would you give anything to leave? Would you miss me if you woke up tomorrow and it was all a dream?

He swallowed the bitter taste that flooded his mouth and watched as they stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by broken glass, dirt smudged against their cheek, their eyes catching the light as they got lost in their thoughts. The way the setting sun filtered through the broken walls made them look like a painting, something you’d see in a museum of beauty persevering through the ugliest of environments. Like the flowers that grew through the cracked concrete of the broken roads from another time, another world he wasn’t part of.

They looked up through the remains of the ceiling and tilted their head, looking at the dancing colors of the sky that shifted as the sun continued to set. After a moment, they closed their eyes and imagined having peace with Deacon. Finding somewhere they’d never have to worry about raiders or the other horrors of the wasteland and could simply exist with him. They wondered if there was another time where they were happy. Where their biggest worry was the bills and what to have for dinner when they could never agree.

Later that night, when they had started a fire to fix some meat over and sat down for one of their many late night discussions, Deacon indulged himself. He asked what it was like, before the war. Before they found themself frozen and thawed in a time period no one would want to wake up in, before they had to fight for every breath they took and defend everything they owned with a ferocity they could’ve never imagined before. Before.

Sole sighed and paused to think, slowly shifting around the beans in their can with their fork. He let himself watch them again, watch the gears turn in their head as they dug up memories from their other life. They hummed. “It was… simple. Boring, actually, some days, despite the war. It was a privilege to be bored back then. It was hard to work as a librarian when something so significant was happening elsewhere.”

Deacon nodded, encouraging them to continue. “But it was a nice kind of monotony most days. I liked working somewhere quiet, where people could escape from what was going on. I was lucky since I got to shut out the shitty things and focus on books for a while.”

“What was it like? Working there. What did you do?”

He was fascinated. He could never imagine a world like theirs, where they could just work with books, something considered a rare resource nowadays, and go home to something clean and neat and do it as much as they wanted, over and over again. “It was nice. It was always quiet as a general rule, so people could read in peace. My job was to deal with the shelves, so I would take books on a cart out to the shelves in different sections and put them where they belonged. I spent a lot of time organizing, too. It was nice, straightforward. Everything had a place, including me.”

Their smile was sad as they looked at him. He almost found himself craving more information, needing to know more about something he’d never be a part of. They sighed and put their food down next to their boot and leaned forward, elbows resting on their knees, hands clasped in front of them loosely. “Sometimes we’d have kids who came in and I’d ask them to tell me about the stories they’d chosen. The way they lit up and got lost in these fictional worlds… it was something special.”

The wind whistled through the broken slats and Deacon could almost imagine the carefree laughter of kids carried with it from ghosts of the past, much like the one sitting before him. It was easy to imagine Sole carefree, as well; it was all he wanted for them. “I always walked the same way home, which now I realize was stupid as hell. A great way to get stalked, or worse. But I walked the same way home in the evening and made dinner when I got home. I’d feed my cat. His name was Muffins.” They laughed at this and Deacon smiled. “And then I’d tidy and sit down at the terminal and email some friends I had to move away from when I graduated college.”

“Tell me about them?”

The night continued as Sole talked themself hoarse. They drew laughter out of Deacon easily with silly stories of their college antics, tales of being late to classes they didn’t want to take, rushing through campus like they had mutants on their heels. They described their favorite coffee shop in detail to the point where Deacon could almost smell the coffee permeating the air.

It was an accomplishment, Sole thought, when Deacon sunk down in his seat and slowly eased off to sleep. They struggled not to laugh when they noticed him getting sleepy, his head nodding forward as he fought to stay awake and keep listening. Instead, they kept their voice level and continued speaking about their past life, a life they missed, but not as much as they missed Deacon when he was away, and watched him sink right into the grip of sleep. As soon as his breaths were even for a while, they eased their speaking off, careful to make sure he wouldn’t wake, and sat back in their chair. They guessed they had first watch.

It was nearly a week later when Sole was relaxing on a chair in their house in Sanctuary, legs thrown over one of the arms, torso crooked as they squinted at the book they held. The ink was smudged from the wear and tear that came with existing in the Commonwealth, dirt staining the pages. The writing was barely legible and it was a fight with every word to understand the writing, but they would get there through sheer determination alone.

Deacon knocked his specific pattern on their door and they looked up expectantly; not many settlers knocked and they knew that rhythm anywhere. “Deac!” They called out as the door opened.

A familiar face poked through the door and they smiled, putting down their book and looking up at him expectantly. “What’s up?”

“I have something for you.”

Their smile dropped slightly. It was a toss up with surprises from Deacon, whether or not they’d be pleasant. To his credit most of them had been very nice as of late, which was simultaneously wonderful and suspicious. “Should I be scared?” They asked.

Deacon shook his head and stepped through the door, his hands behind his back. They leaned in an attempt to get a look at what he was hiding, though they nearly tumbled off of their chair. With a huff they straightened themself up; they had to return to work in a few minutes, there was no way they could afford to get injured, especially in such a dumb way.

Deacon approached slowly, purposefully trying to make things look more ominous, a wide grin on his face. Once he stood in front of them he brought his hands out from behind his back and watched their jaw drop. “Deacon.” Their voice was a light gasp as they looked from his hands to his face in wonder.

In his hands was a tiny, black kitten. It mewled pitifully at Sole and they felt their heart jump. With careful motions they reached forward and Deacon handed it to them, revelling in the way they sucked in a breath and let out a quiet “Oh, precious” and brought the kitten to their chest, cradling it like it was made of glass. After a moment of stroking it’s tiny head they looked up at him as if he held the world in his hands, their eyes brimming with tears. “Was this because…?”

“Muffins? Yeah. I heard about one of the settlements having a litter of barn kittens and had to take a chance. I remember you said you missed him the most from before and, well, here we are. I know this kitten won’t replace him and that wasn’t my intention-”

Deacon was cut off by Sole unfolding themself from the chair, still holding the kitten protectively, and kissing him. They pulled away after a moment, suddenly awkward. Deacon found it hard to look at them despite the fact that they couldn’t see past his dark sunglasses. “Uhm.” Sole opened their mouth, fighting to find the words to explain their actions.

Deacon paused. “Damn, if I knew that was how you would say thank you I would’ve brought the whole litter.”

Sole looked at him with a relieved grin and shook their head, leaning into him in a way that was all too familiar. They turned sideways, making room for the kitten, their shoulder blade against his chest as they brought the kitten up to eye level. “What do you think their name should be?” Sole asked.

“Missile launcher.” He replied automatically.

“Deacon we’re not naming the cat Missile Launcher.” Sole looked at him in mild disappointment, unsurprised.

Less than a month later, it wasn’t uncommon to see Deacon and Sole walking through the paths of Sanctuary, lost in conversation with each other, Missile Launcher trotting eagerly between them, tail swaying contentedly.

#Fallout 4 #fo4 #Deacon #fluff #friends to lovers #oneshot #imagine #fake dating #au

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realityhelixcreates · 4 years

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Beta, Theta, and Me Chapter 3: Get Hired

Chapters: 3/? Fandom: Thor (Movies), Avengers (Movies) Marvel Cinematic Universe Rating: PG Warnings: Swearing, Homelessness, Relationships: Loki x Reader (But not right now) Characters: Tony Stark, Loki(Marvel) Additional Tags: A/B/O, Sorta, More Of An Exploration Of Life And Self Expression Within An A/B/O Framework, Loki Does What He Wants, But Loki Does Not Actually Do What He Wants, Antagonistic Bosses, Loki Has A Throne Now, But It’s Not What He Wanted

Summary: The real reason Tony Stark hired you is revealed, and you get a lateral promotion.

You backpedaled so fast that you collided with the back wall of the elevator with a loud thud.

Loki just stood there, watching.

You leapt forward and punched the 'door close' button.

Horribly, comically, the usurper prince just stood there as the doors slowly closed in his face.

Tony caught your wrist before you could hit any more buttons.

“Woah, woah, woah! Okay, yes, I'm sorry, I should have warned you. That's on me, I'm sorry.”

“What the fuck is he doing here!?!” You screeched. “Why is he in New York? Why isn't he in jail? Why is he still alive?”

“All very good questions, and I'm working on them. He's only here temporarily, and at the behest of his brother. He's made a lot of promises.”

“You want me to be a maid. You want me to be That Guy's maid. Why? Oh god, is this about the salad dressing packets? I thought they were free, I swear-”

“It's not about the salad dressing. It's about...Look, Thor tells me that he needs help around the place. Says he's been injured somehow.”

He looked fine to me!” You exclaimed. “He looked ready to murder the whole tower!” You frowned at the door. “The elevator shouldn't be able to keep him out. Why hasn't he broken in here yet? Why are we still alive?”

“Okay so that's the thing. I don't like it either, but his brother swears the guys conquering days are behind him. I don't necessarily buy it, Thor's always had a soft spot for his brother, and their culture is just different enough that 'attempted world takeover' might not be that big a transgression by their standards.

However-” He cut you off before you could start screeching again. “-Thor has told me a few things, which is a shocker, considering how tight-lipped he can be about Asgard. One: The situation has completely changed. Asgard is in shambles. The whole place, wiped. That's why they're all here; this is all that's left of them. Thor obviously doesn't want any more of them dead, Loki included, because now they're an endangered species.

Two: Thor is the king now. No more uncertainty between the two of them, no more jockeying for approval. That ship has sailed. It's over.

Three: There is something else going on that Thor was very evasive about. Or maybe he just didn't have the information to share. On their way to Earth, their ship was attacked. Whoever it was killed a lot of people, but Thor tells me Loki did something that kept the majority of them alive, but whatever it was left him horribly injured. I know he doesn't look like it, but it might be something internal, or mental. In any case, he's a hero to his people. I didn't think he had it in him, but guy's surprising me to the end, I guess. Which brings us to...

Four: Loki knew the guy who attacked them. Knew him and had worked with him. And, according to Thor, cannot speak a word about him. That's what we need though; we need to know what Loki knows. That's why he's here, that's why we are here with him. There is something here that guy wants, and we need to know what to plan for.

Which means we need to take care of Loki, and maybe acquiesce to a few of his demands.”

“Which are?”

“Well...he needs someone to keep the place clean, maybe cook sometimes. So, for the good of the world, you must become Loki's maid.”

“The actual fuck? Why me though?”

Tony's eyes found the elevator ceiling, as he tried to come up with the right words.

It clicked.

“Oh.” You said. “No one knows he's here, do they?”

“Well, not many people, no. For obvious reasons.”

“And I just got in a fight with someone who has been looking for a reason to fire me since I was hired, so if I don't show up tomorrow, no one will think twice about it.”

“Well-”

“And if I just disappear entirely, it won't matter. I was just a homeless drifter, no one will care.”

“That's not it.”

“It is. It's all right. I understand. There are things you can't risk, and I am extremely expendable.”

He looked guilty, at least. Practically squirming with shame. Good. He understood too.

You hit the 'open door' button.

The elevator doors opened slowly with a ding. Loki was still standing there, as if he hadn't moved once in the entire time you'd been talking.

“Hey there, curlicue, got a minute?”

Loki's lip curled.

“Clearly.” He drawled, in a voice much lower than you expected.

“Well, after reviewing your list of dema-er, requests, we have seen fit to assign you a maid.” Tony pressed against your shoulder, urging you forward and out of the elevator. “This is _______. She can clean, and cook a little.”

Loki eyed you slowly up and down, his expression between a sneer and a smirk.

“This is the best you have to offer, Stark? This filthy, malnourished waif? I'm offended.”

You drew back at the tone of disgust in his voice. Wow, rude.

“I think you mean grateful? Because you only get the one, so better not fuck it up.”

“Very well.” Loki grumbled. “You may leave us.”

“I mean it!” Tony threatened as the elevator doors closed. “You better not treat her bad! I'll hear about it and then I'll-”

The doors closed, leaving you alone with a killer.

“Okay.” You said quietly. “So, it's good to meet you. I think.”

You held out your hand, which he just glanced down at impassively. He didn't take it, but his fingers did twitch as if he was thinking about it. You reached out further to grab his indecisive hand-

-But your fingers passed right through him, his whole body fizzling away in a crackle of green light. You screamed and jumped away. You had made Loki explode!

A deep chuckle reached you, morphing into a soft cough. At the end of the entryway hall, where the penthouse expanded into a more open, circular area, was Loki. No armor, no horns, just a rich robe, a wheelchair, and a large neck brace that his long hair spread out over.

“Pathetic creature.” He rasped. “Frightened of phantoms. Come here and let me look at you.”

The place smelled strongly of Alpha, you finally noticed, and you sighed quietly. You didn't find the smell as pleasant as other people seemed to. It wasn't bad, exactly, but it did mean that he was probably used to people just doing whatever he said.

You ambled down the hall towards the new boss. You'd been in New York at the time of the attack. You weren't homeless then, but you had hidden in the subway all the same. The aliens didn't have the time to go down there. They were too busy zipping around topside.

But footage of the battle had been all over the news, including this terrible man. This horrible Loki, who stared at you with tired, sunken, calculating eyes. As if he were searching for your worth. It was strange to see him like this. He probably couldn't even stand on his own.

“As sacrifices go, you are a poor offer on his part.” Loki finally said. “But you will have to do.”

“Sacrifice?”

“Yes, of course. Didn't Stark tell you? Every full moon, I must drink the blood of an innocent. The moon waxes full tonight, and my great hunger must be appeased. Unfortunate for you, but that is how it goes sometimes. Now lean down and stretch out your neck.”

“Oh yeah? If you're a Dracula, where's your fangs then?” You demanded, crossing your arms.

“Look here, delicious morsel.” He opened his mouth, and long fangs slid into place. You jumped back in surprise. Could he actually be-?

Loki laughed again, once again trailing off into a pained cough. The fangs were gone.

“How are you doing that!?!”

“I am powerful beyond your greatest imaginings. I can seize your perceptions, even alter your very sense of reality.”

His body changed in a sparkle of green light, to your own form. It was disconcerting to see yourself tucked into a wheelchair, bulky neck brace holding your head straight and stiff.

“I can be anything.” He said, in your voice. “Anyone. I could be right behind you at any moment, wearing any face, and you would never know.”

“Wait. Does that mean that first face isn't real either?” You asked.

He went silent. Your stolen visage dissolved back into dark hair and snow-white skin, cold gaze glittering up at you.

Oops. Strike a nerve?

“I have an order for you.” He said icily. “For your first service to me, I want you to go into your rooms, and bathe. You are utterly filthy, and I find the stench distracting.”

You bristled a little, but you couldn't exactly refute the accusation. You hadn't had access to a shower in a while.

Loki held out his hands and a bundle of sage green cloth shimmered into being.

“Don't put your old clothes back on. They carry the same odor. Use these instead.”

You eyed the little bundle suspiciously. Why did he just...have these?

“These are real, right?” You asked. “They aren't gonna just disappear off me when you feel like being funny, right?”

“Now that would be predictable, wouldn't it? No, these are real, and they are for you. That uniform you are wearing is ugly and graceless, as well as smelly. There isn't much I can do with the rest of you, but I can at least dress you properly.”

“Thanks, I think.” You said, accepting the clothes. “I'll just...go shower, I guess.”

*****

Your new apartment was unfurnished, but it had hardwood floors, and real tiles, and excellent lighting. It was certainly miles better than the cramped little place you'd shared with your old roommate, and even more than the old, drafty house you'd grown up in, before your parents had gone completely stupid.

They would have protested this. Working for a billionaire. Subservient to the enemy. And for what? In exchange for a roof over your head and food to eat? For health insurance and financial stability? What about Liberty? What about self-sufficiency? What about independence?

But you weren't like them. You understood the reality of the world.

The shower felt wonderful. You didn't have toiletries yet, but someone had left behind tiny little soaps and shampoos, like you would find in a hotel. They would do just fine for now.

There was so much grime to wash away. Dirt, and dead skin, and scabs. A year and a half to scrub out of your hair, off your shoulders, and down the drain. The warm water felt like new life, like rebirth. Like shedding your old skin and growing into a new one.

There were no towels, so you just squeezed as much water out of your hair as you could, scrapped it off yourself with your hands, splashing droplets everywhere, flapped your arms and walked in little circles in what you had decided would become the living room, just trying to dry off and figure out your new situation.

This would be the living room, and that would be the bedroom, and that would be a hobby room, if you ever decided to get back into things. You would put a little table there, in front of the window between the living room and the kitchenette. A couch or chair there, a sleeping bag, maybe even eventually a real bed! A houseplant, and food in the kitchen, a laptop, and maybe a pet fish. Like a real person.

And outside, an alien. An Alpha. A war criminal that you had to obey. He was waiting, and you could almost feel his impatience.

You were as dry as you were going to get. Might as well get dressed.

Loki was right about the elegance part. Stark janitor uniforms were simple and utilitarian, but this Asgardian style uniform was well fitted, high quality, and beautiful.

How had he known what size to give you? He was a prince after all; perhaps he was such a connoisseur of women that he could tell from a glance. The underthings especially gave you pause.

There was one accessory-a choker made from velvet ribbon, with a bejeweled golden horned serpent biting its own tail affixed to the front. It was a little too much like a collar for your liking, so you slipped it into one of the multiple pockets in your new uniform.

You headed back out into the hall, to find him waiting in his own living room area, gazing out the wall of windows at the city view. His back was to you.

“That took entirely too long.” He said without turning. “Were you truly so encrusted with grime? Perhaps you will require sandpaper next time, to remove it all?”

“I didn't have a towel.” You admitted.

“Ah yes. You haven't moved in your things yet. Or...do you not have anything to move?”

“I have things.” You said, slowly approaching. “They just aren't here.” They were scattered out in hidden caches around the city. There wasn't much, it was true, and no furniture, but you had a sleeping bag, and some blankets, backpacks, toiletries, even books. In more suburban areas, it was much easier to rummage in the trashcans. You just had to wait until very late at night, on weekdays., and find the houses that didn't have motion activated lights. You could find some good things there.

He glanced up at you as you came to stand beside him. He couldn't turn his head in that big brace, but his eyes followed your reflection in the glass.

“You are not fully in uniform.” He said.

“What? Oh.” You said, remembering the necklace in your pocket. “Well...I'm just not comfortable wearing a collar. I'm a maid, not a dog.”

“Silly thing.” He said. “It's to let the world know that not just anyone gets to order you around. That you are a servant to royalty, and are not subject to poor treatment.”

“Still...”

“Turn me around.” He interrupted abruptly.

You didn't know why he needed you to do that, when he seemed perfectly capable of getting around on his own, but you obliged.

“Now kneel.” He ordered.

“What?”

“Kneel, servant.” He repeated a little impatiently. “There is a little bit of ceremony that must be observed, to make you officially mine. Kneel before me.”

This was getting a bit too kinky for your tastes, but you did it anyway. Maybe he was playing games with you, or maybe this really was the way Asgardian royalty did things. You didn't know.

But he very suddenly had a dagger in his hands, with such a long blade, it might as well have been a sword, and you shied away. Maybe Stark had been wrong, and his murderous streak had not been erased after all. If he killed you, he would no doubt be severely punished, but that wouldn't do anything for you, now would it?

“Kneel, and bow your head.” He commanded. You did, hoping it would keep him from getting stabby.

He laid the blade on your left shoulder, very close to your neck, like he was knighting you.

“______, Maid of Midgard, I accept you into my entourage as the executor of...maidly duties, which shall consist of both whatever I need and whatever I ask.”

When you opened your mouth to protest, he quickly raised a finger.

“A good servant does whatever is required of them, and a good master knows what not to ask. Now rise. And put on the necklace.”

And you did.

“You are now the first of my entourage on Earth. Congratulations. Now do go make us lunch. I am famished.”

#betathetaandme #loki x reader #loki (marvel)#tony stark

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thepetulantpen · 5 years

Text

Modern AU/Giving

(Day 2 of @widomauk-week , slowly catching up!)

When a purple tiefling, with what appears to be a bowling alley carpet draped over him like a shawl, sets down a rainbow picnic blanket next to Caleb and proceeds to spread out tarot cards, it’s not even the weirdest thing he’s seen today.

Honestly, the streets of Zadash have an abundance of strange people walking down them and an even stranger population living on them. The homeless, the criminals, the drifters- they all have their place on the streets and every one of them is weirder than the next.

The stranger finishes setting out his cardboard sign (proclaiming that it’s $10 for a reading) and various other cheap, vaguely supernatural trinkets then looks up at Caleb.

“This street any good for business?”

He’s about to default to “I don’t know”, which would be sensible and at least half true but he hears Nott’s voice in his ear, nagging him about making friends. He supposes he could at least try, for her sake.

“Ja, uh, there’s a corporate building that way,” he tilts his head to their right, down the street, “so there’s usually a healthy commute. From my experience, the people here are...rather gullible.”

Caleb knows that he can’t really be incriminated on those vague words alone- this stranger couldn’t possibly guess all the cons he and Nott have been running on this street- but it still makes him nervous to share any details at all. There are eyes everywhere in Zadash and Caleb can’t ever be sure he’s safe, even hidden on the streets.

The tiefling either doesn’t notice or isn’t bothered by Caleb’s silent distress and offers a broad smile.

“Thanks! I’m Molly, by the way.” He holds out a deep lavender, tattooed hand with pointed nails.

Caleb takes it in his own, somewhat grimy, hand and shakes, formal and brief. “Caleb. Caleb Widogast.”

Molly smiles wider, teeth sharp and more shiny than any street-side psychic should have.

“I’m sure I’ll see you around a lot, Mr. Widogast.”

...

Molly certainly delivers on that prediction, showing up to the same street corner almost everyday. They see each other frequently enough that Nott has taken to stealing buttons to add to his coat and Caleb has started to help out in his little future telling scam.

Of course, Molly doesn’t admit its a scam, only ever spouting in-character bullshit about how the stars really can guide us, but he does accept Caleb’s help in drawing people in and figuring out just enough information to earn a tip. Nott takes the role of pickpocket, borrowing customers’ wallets to dig for clues that Molly can use while Caleb keeps them distracted.

It’s pretty effective, they make an excellent team, but he knows their time together is limited. Caleb can’t stay on this street corner attracting attention for so long. It’s time to move.

“Molly?”

Molly hums to indicate he’s listening, but doesn’t look up at Caleb, too busy setting up for the day. Caleb clears his throat, waiting for a few painful seconds before Molly meets his eyes, eyebrows raised.

“Yes, Mr. Widogast?”

“Uh,” Caleb doesn’t know why he’s nervous, or why he’s even decided to tell Molly this, “I just wanted to let you know that me and Nott are going to move streets.”

“Oh,” Molly pauses, thinking for a moment and then, “What street?”

Caleb fidgets, choking on his words as his mind drowns in the red of Molly’s eyes. Before he gets a chance to answer, Molly looks away, frowning.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude if I’m not invited.”

Caleb blinks, replays the words and, once he understands what Molly is saying, holds up his hands.

“No, no, of course you’re invited. I just didn’t think you’d want to move, is all.”

Molly moves from his rug onto Caleb’s ratty blanket and puts his hands on Caleb’s shoulders, leaning in so his forehead rests against Caleb’s. His eyes are so much more intense up close, where the red seems to take up his entire field of vision. Caleb swallows, anxious and unable to move, although he’s not sure he even wants to.

Molly grins, shattering the tension with the edge of his fangs. The midday (exactly 12:33) light reflects across his canines, horn piercings and hair jewelry, forming Molly’s personal disco ball.

“My street is wherever your street is, Mr. Widogast.”

...

It turns out that Caleb’s street has no protection from the rain whatsoever.

Caleb stares up at the angry, storm-torn sky, drinking in what he perceives as a sort of karmic punishment from the universe. He does what he can to shield Nott, but there’s little he can do for her with no welcoming shelter in sight. She’s already drenched and shaking with resurfaced memories of rushing water, only adding to Caleb’s guilt.

He shouldn’t have moved streets, shouldn’t have let his damn paranoia take away their shelter. He shouldn’t have let Nott get this close, should’ve convinced her to leave Caleb, and the dangers associated with him, behind long ago.

He shifts, another series of apologies on his lips, but doesn’t manage it before a colorful shape breaks through the grey mass of water all around them.

“I thought I’d find you here!”

Molly smiles as if they aren’t caught in a near flood, as if this is just another day of sunshine and bright conversation.

Caleb notices he doesn’t carry any of his normal supplies, only that heavy coat on his shoulders.

“Don’t you have anywhere to stay, in this rain?” A frown crosses Molly’s face, concern an unfamiliar expression on him.

“No,” rain gets caught in Caleb’s eyelashes as he looks up at Molly, “We live out here.”

Lightning cracks overhead and Molly has to shout over the renewed rumbling of the storm. “Would you like a roof to ride out the storm under?”

Caleb hesitates, wary of overly kind offers, but Nott detaches herself from his side and pulls on his hand to make him stand.

“Yes, please!”

...

Yasha’s home is a lovely, if cramped, little place. It sits sandwiched between two larger buildings, looking as if it was added as an afterthought to fill space.

Caleb has no idea how two people can live here, let alone how they will manage four, but he is grateful to be dry and warm.

For now, Caleb and Molly have been left to their own devices at the tiny table shoved in the corner of the kitchen, drinking cheap tea and staring at the rain hitting the window.

“So, uh,” Caleb’s eyes dart down as Molly’s suddenly turn their full force on him, “this is where you live?”

“Yes, it’s near the florist, where Yasha works, and it’s cheap so I can cover my half of the rent telling fortunes.”

Caleb nods, glancing around at the tiny living room beside them and the stairs at the end of the hall leading to the two bedrooms. It’s better than the streets, certainly.

“Thank you, for lending us a room. If there’s anything I can do to repay you-“

“That won’t be necessary. Although,” Molly smirks, an idea visibly lighting up behind his eyes, “I have been in need of someone to hang out with lately. There’s this bar that just opened down the street and it’s always more fun to drink with... friends, I suppose.”

Noticing Caleb’s blush, he tacks on, “Or more than that, if you’re up for it.”

Caleb sips his tea, using it as an excuse to close his eyes briefly, trying to sort out his thoughts and block out Molly’s stare even as he can feel it piercing through the darkness.

There’s a swirl of thoughts, questions and calculations making a dizzying, multicolored pattern against his eyelids and then it all cuts out abruptly, replaced with the simple memory of Molly’s carefree smile.

Maybe it’s time for him to let go. For just an evening.

Surely it couldn’t be that bad.

“Ja, I think I’d like that.”

Molly smiles, delighted, and Caleb can’t help but return the grin, letting go of his spiraling thoughts for the first time in months.

“It’s a date!”

#widomaukweek2019 #widomauk #mollymauk tealeaf #caleb widogast #critical role #modern au #its not the best but honestly ive been struggling to anything at all lately #oh well #maybe ill clean it up for ao3 later

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sleepyfan-blog · 5 years

Text

Darkness Drifter

Fandom: Darkness!Drifter by @bl3ppsn3kk . Regular Drifter by @onebizarrekai

Characters: Nightmare, Darkness!Dream, Dreammare

Warnings: none (tell me if I need to tag anything pls)

Word count: 1,260

Summary: What if Drifter was composed of a different Dream and Nightmare pair?

Nightmare doubled over, grateful that no one was close to seeing them - awful memories flooding through his mind. Every single death. Every single person he had tormented. Each world he had broken and twisted to suit his whims. The sick thrill he had felt every time that another person fell under his control. His thoughts drifted to Dream - the other person that the mysterious voices had mentioned. His other half. Gentle, fierce Dream, who had desperately begged him to return to himself, to pull free of the corruption. Who had...

Fallen into despair, in a long-dead AU - having fled from his allies in order to break down. Utterly vulnerable and perfectly poised to be twisted to suit his needs. And oh, how Dream had fallen. Desperate for any scrap of affection, and willing to fall for his sweetly whispered words. And that was the very least thing that he'd done to the other. Miserable sobs left Nightmare as he covered his face with his hands.

"I... What sort of demon was I? D-Dream... I-I'm so sorry." Nightmare whispered, tears streaming down his face as more awful memories flashed through him. Corrupting the other's apple-soul, slowly twisting Dream further and further... Causing the other to be completely psychologically dependent on him - desperate for any scrap of his affection and willing to do anything in order to please him... Including killing former allies and friends, when manipulated into doing so.

He was then hit by Dream's memories... And his deep, unyielding love and affection for him, no matter how he tried to kill him... Or how awfully he used and manipulated the other. But where... Where was Dream? Why couldn't he see or feel the other? Was he alone in this body? "Dream? Please... Please don't be gone... Whe-where are you Dream?" The voices spoke again, urging him to calm down, that Dream would return if he centered himself.

It took Nightmare longer than he wished to calm down... But as soon as his emotions were stable, Dream appeared next to him, smiling at him sweetly, his eye lights... A grey-blue and tinged with a dirty gold. He was clad in dark blue and black clothing, his star-charm almost completely black as well "Nightmare! We... We're together... It's okay... No one can tear us apart... I'm so happy." The grin on his face widened a little further as the spirit pressed a little bit closer to the other, pouting a little as he went through Nightmare, unable to actually touch him.

No. No no no! He was back to normal - all of the apples were back on the tree! So... So why was Dream still corrupted? It didn't make sense. Nightmare pressed a hand to his (their?) mouth, taking a couple of deep breaths in and out in a desperate attempt to calm down, shaking a little bit as the tears came faster from his eye sockets "Dream I.. I'm so sorry for what I've done to you..." He desperately wished that he could pull the other into his arms and hug him tightly, promising to actually protect and care for his beloved - rather than use and mentally torment the other.

"Nightmare... You don't have anything to apologize for! You just showed me what the multiverse was really like... You've always cared for me and after I stopped fighting you, you started to protect me again. There's no need to cry... U-Unless. D-Did I do something wrong?" Dream asked, a worried frown appearing on his face as he fluttered around Nightmare, ghostly hands ever so lightly touching his face. The other gasped and choked a little as a spectral black substance began to run from his eye sockets and down his face.

"N, you haven't... You haven't done anything wrong, Dream. It was... I was the one in the wrong. I hope..." Nightmare swallowed down his words, knowing that he would only further confuse and distress his other half by speaking. "You've been very good, Dream. I love you."

The other lit up, and the black goo stopped flowing down his face He seemed to radiate joy "Thank you! I... I'm so glad to hear that." He responded with a brilliant smile as he pressed a little bit closer to his beloved, a soft rumbling purr in his chest. "I wish that we could hold one another... But at least we know for sure that no one will ever be able to separate us... I have no idea how we were fused like this... But I... Unless it bothers you, Nightmare, I don't care! We're safe and we're together. That's all I need."

Nightmare choked a little, his eye lights vanishing for a couple of moments. He could feel the other's love and contentment in their current state. How the hell was he going to convince the other that they needed their own bodies "I... But wouldn't you rather have your own body, Dream? That way we could cuddle one another..." He offered weakly, shaking a little. He still was unsure as to how the hell this had happened - they did share Drifter's memories of what his life had been like as a singular guardian... How long the other had existed was terribly fuzzy.

"I... I guess that would be nice. But I... I... We might have to talk to Ink in order to get this fixed and uhm..." Dream fidgeted a little, cringing in on himself as he remembered some of the harsh words that the creative guardian had heaped on his shoulders when he'd found out that he'd defected... Or rather, that Dream's positive aura no longer worked, which was apparently one of the main reasons why Ink had bothered with the whole Star Sanses charade in the first place. "I'm not sure how he'd react to us."

"Well, we've got to try at least. Chin up, Dream. We'll figure this out, together." Nightmare soothed, doing his best to send positive feelings and a warm smile the other's way. His chest ached when Dream perked up so considerably at that - any hint of praise seemed to do the trick in encouraging his beloved. Stars above what the fuck had he truly done to Dream? And why was this permanent? Hopefully the other would revert back to his true self once they were separated. "How would we find Ink, beloved?"

"Hmm... Oh! I know! We could try the doodlesphere. If Ink has left whatever AU he's from initially, he should most likely be there." Dream offered with a sweet smile.

"Alright - take control of the body and move us there, Dream." Nightmare instructed, wincing internally at how easy it was to order him around.

Dream's eye lights vanished for a couple of seconds "I... A-Are you sure that you want me to do that? I'm fine with you being in control. I can just give you the information on how to get there..."

Nightmare shook his head "No, Dream. It'll be easier if you take control and bring us there... Besides, you can talk to Ink better, you've known him for longer."

"I... Wait! We can get some ink or paint, spill it on the ground and call out to him! He should show up then... At least that's the method I know to summon him." Dream offered with a sweet smile.

"Hmm.. Alright. We'll start with that." Nightmare decided with a nod, and the formerly positive spirit relaxed a little at that. Nightmare was worried about how passive the other was, but this sort of damage couldn’t be undone easily.

#my writing #darkness!Drifter #darkness!dream #nightmare #dreammare #D!DVA #outcome: starshine

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apparitionism · 5 years

Text

Sound 7

I haven’t done any public-facing work on this in some time, but I’m still very much in the middle of writing a sequel to Soon. Here’s a piece of it. When last we checked in on our intrepid Russian translator and her beloved violinist (and child), it was 1963, and they were finding their shared life in New York rewarding in many ways, while difficult to negotiate in others—which, I must say, describes my own feelings about this project. Writing is sometimes like pushing an overloaded sled in the weight room: if you can budge it a yard, that’s a victory. This maybe moves Sound along less than a foot, but even so. (No links to the other parts of Sound, or to Soon, but the former are findable here on Tumblr and the latter is both here and, in improved version, on AO3.)

Sound 7

1964

The device is crafted to appear innocuous.

It hides inside a dictating machine, a Philips, the newest model. The machine works just fine, both while concealing the device and not, and Myka has to learn to use it; she has to commit to it, so that its presence in her possession will appear natural. She finds that she likes recording her thoughts this way, though she’s embarrassed by how awful she sounds when she plays it back; even at normal speed, her voice is pitched higher than she ever imagined. Has she heard herself like this before? She’s listened to so many people’s speaking voices on tape—Russian-speaking voices, back in those days—but never her own.

Christina is fascinated by the Philips and begs to dismantle it. Helena wrinkles her nose at its sound quality: she complains of a high hiss and tells Myka she can find her a far better piece of equipment if she is committed to making notes in this way.

Myka has kept from Helena the real reason she has taken up dictation.

She tries a fast translation of a page of the text she’s working on now, Bryusov’s “V zerkale”—“In the Mirror”—by reading Cyrillic on the page, then speaking it in English into the machine. It’s difficult to keep from simply reading the Russian aloud, so she imagines it spoken in someone else’s voice, leaving her to translate simultaneously, UN-style. She tries Helena’s voice... too distracting. Her grandfather’s and grandmother’s are too familiar, and thus untranslatable. Lullabies. Max? He has a lovely voice, but the problem with imagining him speaking is that she senses him also whispering his own translation right along with himself, and that’s no help. She settles on a departmental colleague, a native Russian speaker whom she knows not well but well enough; his quiet, measured tones turn out to be Goldilocks-correct. “He” reads her the Bryusov story, and she tells it to the machine: “I have loved mirrors from my very earliest years...”

She’d been baffled when Abigail first handed her the machine and explained what it contained, for she couldn’t imagine she knew anyone Abigail would possibly have an interest in bugging. Myka doesn’t have that kind of access, and she certainly doesn’t have the expertise needed to secure this thing in place and make sure it works. Or the nerve, she tells herself, but while that might have been true in the past, she isn’t sure it’s true now. She feels a certainty in herself when she goes to Russia now. This reason, this deal she’s made, it defines her. It’s a mission, a discipline. Like Helena practicing her violin, though Myka doesn’t know what the honing of her nerve is preparing her for. What her performance will be.

“You aren’t planting it,” Abigail had told her. “And anyway it’s just a piece. You’re passing it along.”

Myka’s flicker of disappointment at this news frightened her.

She practices taking the Philips apart, removing the device, hiding it on her person, and putting the recorder back together again: quickly, silently. It’s useful to need to keep this activity from Christina, though equating Christina with KGB, even in this little way, makes Myka morally queasy.

Myka knows KGB officers listen to the hotel rooms that she and other foreigners stay in; she knows her movements are tracked; she knows that everyone to whom she speaks might be an informer. She doesn’t know how much time she’ll have when the moment comes to hand over the equipment, and she doesn’t know where it will happen.

“Why can’t I just carry it on me?” she asks Abigail. “The thing itself?”

“This is safer. Trust me.” The don’t ask why wall in Abigail’s voice: whatever she knows about what might happen to Myka—arrest, search, worse?—Myka will need not to know it’s coming. Abigail has told her in the past that an expression of genuine surprise is difficult to fake, and similarly hard for other humans to dismiss.

“Oh,” Abigail also says, offhand but not, “you may run into someone you know. Don’t react.”

Be surprised; don’t be surprised.

****

The session is intended to produce a simple demo.

Helena is in the hallway just outside the booth when she hears the sound engineer take a call. She is about to leave for the day; she has just checked in, on that very telephone, with her booking service, but nothing other than the brief rehearsal she just attended is scheduled—not a surprise, here on this relatively quiet Saturday morning.

“Hey, H.G.!” the engineer calls to her. “Want some more practice?”

She takes the phone from him. The bleary voice of Ben Cone, in whose booth she had lately sat while he produced a song that swiftly hit number three in the nation, tells her that he is supposed to be putting together a demo, but his hangover is too fierce; can she fill in? He knows she knows what to do, he says, and anyway, it’s just a demo. Everybody should be there in a half hour or so, bye. Oh, but she’ll have to find her own singer; his passed out only a couple hours ago, still sleeping it off. In no shape, you know?

She thinks of Rudy Lewis: “I’m your man for demo vocals,” he’d told her, years ago. “Don’t you call nobody else.” His sugar voice. She would have called him; he would have done it. Cruel of fate to hand her this chance, so short a time after... well. She should not dwell on that, not now.

But then she does think about it, when the song’s writer, who shows up to play piano on the track—where’s Ben; hung over; no surprise—hands her the music.

The song is titled “I’ll Pass.” “It’s simple,” he says. “Just a ‘thanks a lot but no thanks’ lyric.”

Helena can’t discern his real intent here, for the lyric strikes her as... multilayered. The verses suggest that the singer’s beloved finds the singer inadequate, inappropriate, in response to which, the singer says in the refrain, “I’ll pass, baby; I’ll pass.” A rejection? Or a sincere, bleak promise to show a different self to the world? Rudy would have sung it with the full range of meanings right there to be heard. But it isn’t Helena’s job to care about the meanings. It’s her job to produce a demo.

She is to do it with this songwriter-pianist, plus a guitarist, a drummer, a bassist... and a young saxophonist. Helena tries to send the latter home, but he says he needs the money. He says also that he would be happy to play anything she wants, if saxophones aren’t her bag, so she hands him a triangle from a box of orphan percussion and regrets to inform that the middle eight will not belong to him after all. He looks at the triangle, looks at her, pronounces this the screwiest session he’s ever seen—how many can he possibly have seen?—and then starts asking about when to ring, when to muffle, how much shimmer, and is there a brass beater anywhere in this studio because everybody knows the sound from stainless is too cold. (Helena takes his name and his number and files them away for the future.)

The musicians run through loose takes, tight takes; Helena likes the loose takes, despite the songwriter hitting an off note or several. It’s just a demo, and the looser renditions give a better sense of the song’s potential. She considers sitting down with them in the studio to add her violin, but there’s no string arrangement, and inventing one, even something simple, would begin to define the song. The demo should suggest no strictures, just a loose sense of what this melody and lyric could become.

She tries calling a few vocalists, but—again no surprise for a Saturday—she can’t find anyone, and no singer she knows well is in the building, so she asks each of the musicians to try a few bars. The guitarist wins the brief talent competition, with a soar of a tenor that Helena can’t believe hasn’t been put on record before. (She is filing him away too.) He says nobody ever asked, that he only ever sang in church—but he never goes to church anymore, which vexes his mama. Further, he notes, “I can’t sing and play at the same time,” and while Helena is outwardly expressing sympathy for his mother, she is also worrying about her ability, even with experienced engineering help, to lay in a vocal right on such a spare arrangement.

Can the now-trianglist take over the guitar part? “No strings, sorry,” he says, and doesn’t that just fit the day.

And indeed it isn’t quite right, in the end, the way the vocal lies against the music. But Helena rationalizes it, intellectualizes it—it’s trying to pass as a right part of the track. “I’ll pass, baby”? Some can. But: for only so long. The length of a pop song, perhaps.

“I was thinking about Rudy today,” she tells Christina when she finally arrives home, far later than she’d imagined, after the lengthy mixdown. “It’s just a demo,” the engineer had complained. “How rough would you be on me if it was a real track?” Which had made Helena think of Phil, but that association, and its implications, were too much for an already overloaded day.

Christina’s reaction to Rudy’s name is a quiet “oh.”

****

It had been an unremarkable day in late May, and Helena and the rest of the musicians who had assembled for a Drifters session were waiting, smoking, and growing a little irritated, for they all had additional bookings, and the more sweet time the singers and production took to arrive, the more likely the musicians were to be late for those other sessions.

Irritation turned to blank incredulity when Bert Berns, who was to produce, and the other men walked in, for Bert said, with no preliminaries, “Rudy died last night.” He added, “Overdose.”

They recorded four tracks that session. Helena could not have said, afterward, what any of them were, save the final one, a song that had been intended for Rudy to sing: a ballad called “I Don’t Want to Go On Without You.” Charlie sang it instead... that he could do so said something about professionalism, or shock, or both of them together.

Who, hearing any of those tracks on the radio, would discern that they were documents of grief? They would seem like the simple pop songs they were, and was that an obscenity, or was it just an extreme version of the work that pop music was designed to do?

“How do I tell Christina?” Helena asked Myka. “What do I tell her?”

“I don’t know—I don’t know anything. My only thought is ‘the truth.’” Myka said this as if it really was the only thought she had right then, the only thought she knew how to think about anything.

But Myka was right, so the truth was what Helena told Christina: Rudy took too many drugs, and he died. Christina asked why, and Helena thought she was asking a medical question, about what the body could and couldn’t tolerate. “No,” Christina clarified. “Why did he want to?”

Helena did try not to lie to Christina. Shield her, but not lie to her. So she said, “I think”—because she did not, in fact, know—“I think it was because he thought the world had no good place for him. He wanted a place, yet there was no place. I think that at times he wanted to let himself forget all of that. All of what surrounded him.”

Christina said a weary, “Misinformed beliefs,” and Helena could answer only with “That’s right.”

Helena had assumed she would attend the funeral alone, but Christina asked to go, then asked if Myka would go too. But Myka said, “That’s not a picture we should make.” At this, Christina nodded, and Helena could not hold back a small internal push of pride at that knowing assent. While Christina took great satisfaction in being far more American than Helena herself was, she was persistently British in her understanding of appearances.

They went out to buy her a black dress.

“Is it for a very special occasion?” the saleslady asked, because Christina was unsatisfied with the first three she tried.

“Yes and no,” Christina told her. Helena felt the push of pride again. She looked at Myka, who wore a “what is she becoming?” face, and Helena wanted to take her hand and echo “I don’t know—I don’t know anything,” then follow that with “But isn’t it miraculous that we’ll both find out?”

That miracle meant Helena would not need to find her consolation in a needle.

The night after the service, she would have been desperate to hold any woman in the dark, but instead she was lucky enough to hold the woman she loved. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” Myka said in that dark, the same words she’d said to Christina in her new black dress, afterward. She’d also said, to Christina, “How was it?”

Christina hadn’t cried at the service, but rather sat, eyes wide, holding Helena’s hand. She hadn’t even spoken until just now, and Helena was certain that only to Myka would she have broken her silence: “They said nice things about him,” Christina responded. Then she’d leaned against Myka, as if to reassure, as if Myka were the one in need of comfort, and said, “Not the right nice things.”

****

Tonight, late at night, Myka clearly expects Helena to be pleased, both about having been asked to produce the track, and about having done it. Instead, Helena says a bitter, “It’s just a demo,” and she doesn’t quite cry about Rudy, how he was not there but should have been, why he was not there to sing a song he should have sung.

“Nothing you do is just anything,” Myka says, kissing the corners of Helena’s almost-wet eyes.

“It was the work of just one afternoon,” Helena says, trying to shake off the sadness, yet also irrationally resentful of how Myka makes her want to shake off the sadness. “I’ll be surprised if I or anyone hears of it again.”

****

Myka’s handoff is easy. Like this: A week into her two-week stay, her two weeks of lecturing and researching, she is reading in Moscow University’s library. She is heavily supervised, of course, and she has already been told that she will be gaining no access to certain authors’ work: “Sorry, not available.” (The “to you” is implied.) The librarians are happy to hand her as many issues of Novy Mir as she wants, however, particularly since she is able to show them that she herself, Myka Bering, translator of many Russian works, was mentioned in a commentary written by its editor, Alexander Tvardovsky, in 1960. She does not point out to them that Novy Mir publishes several of those authors who are considered forbidden.

It is so easy: they do not want her to take notes, so she says, “May I use my dictating machine?” It is such a novelty that all the librarians must come and look at it, speak into it, hear snippets of their own voices. After all that, how can they say no? Myka promises to be quiet with it, but there is really no need. The library is libraryesque only in that books are on offer.

So easy: when a man approaches the table and points at the machine, her first thought is that he, like the librarians, wants to acquaint himself with the dictating technology. Instead he says the correct code word, and Myka answers him in kind. She demonstrates the Philips for him, and he thanks her. He then sits at a table of his own, not far from hers, and proceeds to ignore her completely.

She asks to visit the ladies room, which is of course in an isolated location, and she is given one of “the girls”—women who fetch books from the stacks for the mostly male scholars—as an ostensible guide. Ostensible because no American can be left to roam unattended, yet this particular girl wants only to go outdoors and smoke cigarettes. She doesn’t care in the slightest about Myka, who may be American but is just a woman, and old besides. So Myka goes into the washroom, calmly disassembles the Philips, removes the device, and puts it in the pocket of her suit jacket. She then just as calmly reassembles the machine, collects her watcher (who exhibits far more care in putting out her half-smoked cigarette, to save for later, than for her Myka-watching task), goes back to the reading room, reads and dictates for another hour, then goes to the man at his table. “I forgot to show you,” she says, “that the machine plays back at two speeds.” She hands him the machine and the device at the same time, listens to her own voice weirdly manipulated, and then it is done.

An hour more she reads and dictates, then she prepares to depart. The librarians, and Myka’s heedless escort who likes to smoke outdoors, wave her goodbye. She feels no need to look over her shoulder.

The summertime sidewalks of 1964 Moscow are full and bright. The weather is fine, just right for the young women to wear sundresses, for the young men to sport shirtsleeves. Their conversations are animated. They direct their eyes high, up at billboards, particularly film advertisements, and Myka tries not to read too much into the title of one: Den’ schast’ya, Day of Happiness. A girl in a lime-green shift pulls at the hand of her male companion and directs his attention to an elaborate wooden model train in a shop window; they both laugh. The train cars’ colors are washed out, too long exposed to light in that window, no buyers. While such a sight would have been sad in New York, here, for the young and sundressed and laughing, Myka infers that it’s a mark of all they believe they are leaving behind. The faded past; who needs it?

On these same sidewalks, though, as if they have been imported from that faded past, an older generation walks heavier. Silent. They dress as if they must wear all they own or lose it, no matter the weather. They find no distraction in advertisements, and they don’t bother with window displays. The past is always there; why be reminded?

Myka tries to remind herself, and keep in the front of her mind, that she has more in common with those who walk with weight. She is doing dangerous work. She will become careless if she forgets about risk and consequences. But a sharp lightness has come to attend her time in Russia... she keeps secrets all the time, no matter where she is, but the secret she keeps here, while she is here, is distinct: the threat of its revelation accrues to her and no one else.

The most salient secret she keeps at home is vastly different, in that its discovery would damage Myka, but reverberations from that discovery would very likely destroy Helena and Christina.

Walking down a summertime sidewalk of Moscow, responsible only for her own safety, affords Myka a guilty freedom. That such freedom should be one through which she is constantly followed and watched and listened to should be ironic, but instead it seems like part of a mistaken-identity comedy, one in which Russians have been told to follow and watch and listen to Myka Bering, but they are following and watching and listening to a person who feels free, and that cannot possibly be Myka Bering, so they are following and watching and listening to the wrong person after all. Who do they think she is?

Who does she think she is?

Her final event in Russia, a week later, is a reception for all the university’s visiting American scholars. Myka is one of only three lecturers who have come for these two-weeks; several more have spent the entire now-concluding summer term here in exchange for some Soviets who are probably at similar receptions on U.S. campuses. Different hors d’oeuvres, same receptions. More than a few are scientists, which helps to explain the heavy presence of people at this party who are clearly not academics. Myka meets several American diplomats, most of whom are probably straightforwardly State; some, though, must be CIA under official cover. Similarly, there are some actual Soviet diplomatic eminences, but also, plenty of KGB making their power known.

Myka finds herself chatting with two junior diplomats—or “diplomats”—one American whose name she did not quite catch, and one Russian, his name Nikolai. Nikolai will no doubt be reporting back to his superiors everything about his American interlocutors, regardless, but in this conversation he is just a young man, dark with a softness about his mouth. “What is happening in New York?” he asks her, and his English is all right, nearly full-speed, but she tells him he should feel free to speak Russian with her.

“Want practice,” he demurs. But he flashes her a small smile as he does so. In that soft mouth, his teeth are wolf-white. Nikolai has never skipped out to smoke, outdoors or anywhere else. He is clean.

The American glimpses someone across the room and makes a “come here” motion. Myka looks over to see who is approaching... and she understands why Abigail told her not to react. “Professor Bering,” the American says, “and Nikolai, I’d like to introduce you to Joseph Holden, the famous Olympic wrestler.”

Joseph has received the same instructions Myka has; he shakes her hand and says “A pleasure, professor.” Then he shakes hands with Nikolai. The clean Russian shows his wolf teeth again, more widely.

Myka does not know anything about this, whatever “this” might be. Her fizz of ire at Abigail for not being forthcoming is probably inappropriate and definitely fruitless in this moment, but she feels it. She looks at Joseph, who always seems to make easy situations less so, and she directs that fizz at him, too.

Myka and Joseph have one moment together during which they are unobserved, or at least less closely attended to. “Why are you here?” she asks him, because she can’t stop herself.

He laughs. “Oh, I’m finding Moscow really something,” he says, his voice fully corn-fed, but that is not the end of it. Quick, quiet, he adds, “I’m bait.”

Myka has no time or space to get more from him. Nikolai reappears, and Joseph turns back to him, his charm wide, open.

The burden of risk.

****

Myka returns home from her two weeks in Russia to find... difference. Her own blood is colder, because it always is after Russia, but also because she doesn’t know the contours of the operation she brushed past. She’ll find out soon enough—she won’t let Abigail fail to read her in, not on this—but she is still shivering.

Helena, meanwhile, is hot: her demo version of “I’ll Pass” is charting.

She’d had no idea, she tells Myka, that the demo was being cut for Lester Sill—he’d been Phil’s partner at Philles Records, but their relationship had soured. “As it would,” Helena said, and Myka recognized that little curl of lip. Sill was now at Colpix, hungry for talent... Helena had been told that when the demo was played for him, he’d listened through, then stood up and walked out of his office. “We’re done,” he’d said as he left. “Release it. It’s a hit.” Helena admits to Myka that she imagines—worries?—that all he had heard was some vestige of Phil’s style, some oddity that Helena had unknowingly reproduced. That that was what caught his ear.

“It’s just one hit,” Helena says, as if in apology, and Myka can’t understand why she isn’t thrilled to have done—on her first try!—exactly what she has always intended to do. Then Helena says, “It was an accident.” This gives Myka clarity: Helena doesn’t know how to make it happen again.

After any time in Russia, Myka is always a bit more Russian than she was before. Which is not to say that she will ever understand or feel with fullness what it is to be Russian... but some not-quite-Russian lives inside her, some unschooled child of all these: her grandfather, her grandmother, all the voices she has heard on tapes, all the words on the pages she has translated, KGB, dissidents, victims, perpetrators, even young girls in sundresses. They all wrestle for pride of place within her. Those real Russians never explain themselves, never step up and tell her, never sit her down and bleed into her bones. But those Russians, and even the not-quite-one who doesn’t fill her skin, they all know: there are no accidents.

TBC

#bering and wells #Warehouse 13 #fanfic #Sound #part 7 #Soon sequel #I know it isn't much #and I know it's been forever #plus some passages are still rough #but I do keep trying to make it real #in ways that complicate but also make motivational sense #and I'll keep doing that #because I owe it to these characters #who have moved so far beyond where they began #(anyway JH's significant line has been lying in wait since I started thinking about Sound)#(and so has that song title)#(which I may decide in the end is too heavy-handed)#(but it can deliver its thematic hammer for the time being)

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arthrmorgann · 5 years

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ALL the emojis for my loves, lorna and tig! 💕💕💕

🌲 What is the kindest thing your OC has ever done for someone? What is the kindest thing someone has ever done for them? On the flip side, what is the worst thing your OC has done to another person?

Lorna: Probably standing up for Tig when the truth comes out about his involvement with NERO, as well as being quick to offer her help (without knowing what the Berley Lake camp was going to do) when Lost Lake was attacked by the militia. She had grown fond of the camp and the people there over the time spent there and was determined to not see it fall. And whilst she never participated in their big clash with the DCM, she helped in the weeks after, ensuring the camp was quickly able to get back to there feet. Worst thing? When she hunted down and killed a drifter who had been picking off people from their camp, as well as giving some grief to supply runs. She wasn’t authorised to do so by Holly, but she had seen another people get hurt by that man, that she knew she had to do something.

Tig: Helping Lorna and Margot escape is definitely up there as perhaps the kindest thing he’s ever done. Having a rough idea of the inner workings of NERO (or what he assumed to be going on) as well with how shitty he knew some of their members could be when he found the two trying to escape he knew he had to help them. By that point, he had been beginning to question the motives of the group and saw helping the girls flee as an opportunity to alleviate his own guilt as well as ensuring two innocent people were not hurt.

🌳 What does your OC do when they see others upset or in pain? An upset friend? A stranger?

Lorna: Lorna’s not the greatest at dealing with people who are upset or in pain. She’s sympathetic of course, but can struggle to convey this. She finds herself best suited to a listening role and offering words of encouragement. She’s better at dealing with people she knows who are hurt as opposed to strangers.

Tig: Tig’s a huge softie so he sees someone hurt or in pain and he immediately kicks into an over-protective mode. He’s not the most confident of men, but he really shines when helping and healing others.

🌿 What is something true about your OC that they refuse to admit about themselves? Is there any reason to this besides embarassment?

Lorna: That she’s a bit of a hopeless romantic at heart? She’s not embarrassed by it, but she tries to ignore that part of herself because she is afraid to let her walls down and potentially get hurt again.

Tig: That he’s a surprisingly good singer! And as mentioned, he’s not a very confident man, so the idea of singing for the camp is practically a nightmare for him.

🍃 Describe a regular day for your OC. What is their schedule (if they have one).

Lorna: A regular day for Lorna starts off with an early wake-up at around 7am (depending on the day’s schedule she may stay in bed for an extra hour or wake up an hour earlier). After waking up, she has a quick breakfast before meeting up with the rest of the security team. Once Paul hands out assignments for the day, she can usually be found in one of the lookout towers in camp for most of the day, at around 2pm she switches her role with another member of the security team and spends the next two hours patrolling the camp borders, or just patrolling the camp itself. Depending on what’s happened in the day, she’ll head for dinner at 5pm and then head back the infirmary with Tig for a little bit. At 7pm she goes back to lookout duty for two hours, before getting some free time. Lorna tends to head to bed around 10-11pm.

Tig: Much like Lorna, a regular day for Tig starts at around 7am. After a quick breakfast, he tends to have a quick word with Holly, informing her of their list of medical supplies and how any patients are doing. After speaking with Holly he heads to the infirmary (a repurposed room in the lodge) where he spends most of the day. He heads for dinner at 5pm, and then returns to the infirmary, where Lorna will often join him for a quick catch-up of the day’s events. Tig tends to clock off around 10pm and then heads back to the cabin he shares with Vadim. He’s usually pretty pooped from work so tends to head straight to bed when he gets home.

🍂 How does your OC think they will die? Does death scare them? Is there any reason for this?

Lorna: Defending the camp. She’s had a few close calls in the past so the idea of dying out there doesn’t frighten her as much as it once did.

Tig: Tig’s pretty paranoid that someone will eventually bump him off for his dealings with NERO or that NERO will find him and bump him off themselves.

🍁 What is your OC’s most traumatic experience? (If they don’t have just one traumatic experience either pick one or describe them all!)

Lorna: The deaths of her father and sister were probably the most traumatic thing she experienced. There were a few years between them but their deaths hit her hard, and she still feels their loss to this day.

Tig: The whole chaos that came with the start of the outbreak. He’s seen some awful things, but honestly, nothing compares to the sheer hell of witnessing the world fall apart right in front of you and then dealing with the immediate aftermath.

🍄 How would your OC react to the death of a friend/family member/loved one? Is there anyone they can confide in?

Lorna: She doesn’t have any family any more, but I imagine losing one of her friends would be pretty much devastating to her. When she in the mood to talk, Tig’s usually the one who acts as her confidant. She’d probably shut down if anything were to happen to him, he’s the closest person in camp to her, and practically family at this point.

Tig: He’d be an emotional wreck for weeks after. He’d cry a lot, and isolate himself more than usual.

🌾 What would your OC be like if they were evil. Or if they’re already evil what would they be like as the good guy?

Lorna: Probably like a bitchier, more relentless person than she is now. She’d attack or maim anyone who slighted her and wouldn’t have any time for attempts at alliances between camps.

Tig: If Tig was “evil” he’d be something of the quietly manipulative sort. The type of person who seems kind and genuine, but was really manipulating situations to suit his own needs.

💐 How would your OC react to somebody telling them that they love them? (+ bonus give another characters/OC name!)

Lorna: Lorna wouldn’t really know how to respond for a moment She’d probably stand there bewildered, and jokingly ask him if he was confident he felt that way. Depending on who it was, she’d be smiling afterwards, possibly reciprocating her own feelings, before bestowing a sweet kiss in gratitude. She’d ask a lot of questions about where to take their relationship from that point on.

Tig: When Vadim admitted feelings for him, it really caught him out of left field. He had a budding friendship with the man, and had flirted here and there, but hadn’t expected anything to come of it. When Vadim confessed to him he actually started to cry, caught completely off-guard by this announcement. He was secretly very happy though and was quick to share his own feelings, albeit it in a rather flushed, awkward manner.

🌷 What does your OC hate about themself? What lies about themself do they believe? On the flip side, What does your OC love about themself?

Lorna: Lorna doesn’t really hate anything about herself, to be honest. It’s the perceptions about her she doesn’t like. A few people see her as this cold, at times harsh and cruel woman, and she wishes they didn’t. She’s not great at expressing herself, but she does wish more people saw the nicer side to her, that she isn’t all suspicions and raised eyebrows.

Tig: His lack of confidence. He can defend himself if pushed, but he hates the nerves he gets, and that he frequently second-guesses himself. He wishes he could be braver and do more, and lowkey hates it when people assure him he does enough tending to the infirmary.

🌹 Does your OC have any scars? How and when did they get them?

Lorna: Answered!

Tig: He has a small knick in his right eyebrow as well as some minor cuts and scrapes.

🥀 What is something your OC blames themself for and is it really their fault? Does it keep them up at night and is there any lingering trauma?

Lorna: Answered!

Tig: He frequently blames himself for things that happened at the Medford Survivor’s Camp. Although his fears are definitely misplaced, as Tig was only a small cog in the NERO machine and had no idea of the raids they were conducting against other survivors in the city. When he stumbled upon that abandoned camp in the city, he was just as surprised and horrified by what he saw as Lorna was.

🌺 In what situation would your OC be pushed to commit an act of violence? Would they go as far to kill someone if they had to? How would this affect them and their relationships with others?

Lorna: Answered!

Tig: Tig’s not a particularly violent man, so it’d have to be like the literal scum of the earth type of character that would get him to lash out. Tig would only ever kill as a last resort, but even then I think the notion of taking someone’s life and it not being mercy with sit heavy with him for a very long time.

🌸 What would your OC do if they were given god-like powers or the ability to change anything about the world for a whole day?

Lorna: Bring her sister back.

Tig: Boost his confidence, make the world as it was for a day - or at the very least bring back some pre-outbreak amenities for the day to enjoy.

🌼 Describe one of your OC’s worst nightmares.

Lorna: Her worst nightmare is seeing Margot dying, standing there and being powerless to do anything. An alternative version of this dream is seeing herself as a freaker who killed her, and not being able to stop herself and being unable to recognise what she’s doing.

Tig: Tig’s worst nightmare involves him being trapped in a dark room. There’s a NERO scientist with him and they’re doing an unseen experiment on him. He’s almost trapped in his mind in this nightmare though, as whenever something is done to him he doesn’t lash out or make a noise, but inside his head he’s screaming.

🌻 What advice would your OC give to their younger self? What advice does your OC need now?

Lorna: That she doesn’t have to brave all the time. Letting yourself be vulnerable is not a weakness. It’s okay to cry.

Tig: You can be strong and dependent without having to brave. Don’t blame yourself for things that are outside of your control.

#ty airika!!!#out here making me do the most haha #oc: lorna douglas #oc: tiberius howell #chuckhansen

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guardians-of-the-light · 5 years

Text

Trust

Destiny Fic - 1580 Words

“Do you trust him?”

The young Corsair's question came with a soft caution. Not because she was fearful of what came next, but because she knew the tender nature of their topic.

The Hunter's answer came calmly, though she could tell the restraint was hard endured. “To save his own skin? Absolutely. But the Traveler would have to mend it's broken ass before I'd think that Drifter is any good for the City.”

She turned her gaze from him back to the binoculars that gave her a clear view through the piercing night that hung over Rheasilvia. Beside her, the Hunter lay prone with a City sniper—Veist made from what she could tell—braced firmly against his shoulder. His bright green gaze seemed to burn through the rifle scope as if there was bad blood that connected him to the mysterious man in the Tower's belly.

“I swear Kala, some of the younger ones don't seem to have eyes.” He sighed, “They say he's just incentivising more rigorous training, that the game is no more dangerous than a strike assignment, but I'm not buying it. Maybe once he stood with us, but he came back a rogue and without loyalty to the Light, he has no reason to help ‘train’ unless he's getting something out of it.”

She let out a thoughtful hum before she spotted movement on the distant cliffside. They were close enough for her to nudge his side and he got her message, adjusting his aim slightly to let loose a hissing void round.

“Maybe what he's getting out of it isn't that much of a harm to you all.” she proposed.

“I don't see an arrangement that requires harnessing the Dark as particularly helpful to us.” He put in, his patience held his tone steady, but Kala couldn't help the spark of defensiveness that shot through her.

Her icy eyes flitted over to him for a moment, “The Awoken have long harnessed the Darkness. It's not unthinkable that it can be used for good.”

“Uldren.”

Another silenced shot jerked the rifle after his flat remark.

“That was because of Riven.”

“Who was taken.”

“Which is something only the Hive know how to do.” Unlike her partner, Kala's patience was beginning to thin as an agitation creeped into her voice.

“But look what that little act unleashed.” His voice was suddenly somber and she was grimly reminded of the heavy sickness that her lands suffered. Of course she hadn't forgotten, but her people's curse was the work of an outside force. She wouldn't attribute it as the result of consorting with the Dark, but the Hunter continued and eased her dissent.

“Either way, my people weren't born into these forces like yours. The Light is a gift that not all of us can even wield, and the Dark is like a toxin…” His voice lowered, “It consumes us.”

For a moment something flickered in his eyes. As if something locked deep reached an ugly claw through its cage and was gone as soon as it had come. His next shot missed and a ragged silence stretched between them for several lingering seconds.

Kala took her eyes off him and searched for another target to call while she thought of another approach that might calm his nerves.

“I'm sure your Vanguard have some sort of plan to deal with him.” She soothed, but when she felt him tense beside her, it became apparent she'd done the opposite.

“The Vanguard.” He paused, reigning in the disgust that had snuck into his words. Taking a breath, he started over, though an icy bite would still line his voice. “The Vanguard can’t seem to make any unified decisions at the moment. If they had the slightest clue what to do with him, it’d be news to all of us.”

The last round from his rifle hit its mark, “The different orders have largely been taking up the leadership for a while now.” He didn’t need to specify the loss that fragmented their leadership. Kala already knew, and based on the way he yanked the bolt to eject his spent clip, she suspected his wounds still had yet to heal. “The Praxic Warlocks and a few of us Hunters seem to be the only ones who seem to be willing to do something about any of this.”

His tone leveled out as he slid a fresh magazine into the rifle's sheath, “I suppose Ikora may be planning, although the Praxics just want him out—even killed.” Kala blinked in surprise at such a rash conclusion, “But I doubt Zavala is in any rush to address the Drifter.”

As quickly as it had gone, that sharp edge in his voice rose up again, “He seems to think the only threats to the City come from outside the walls while shadows crawl right beneath his feet.”

He fixed her with his bright gaze, a ridiculing glint in tandem, “You wanna know what he said to me the other day?” He didn't wait for an answer. “When I asked him about why the Drifter hasn't been investigated properly, he told me, 'he isn't a direct threat to the livelihood of the City’. And that he's always had the City's best interests in mind, unlike me.”

In his eyes, she could see a pain that had settled into a simmering anger. He'd previously told her of the lengths he'd gone to in order to protect his home on more relaxed occasions. After hearing the condescending reception from someone in his leadership, she empathized with his frustration, even harboring hints of her own distaste towards this Zavala.

“Not everyone will recognize the care you put in to those outside of yourself, Thane.”

He held her soft gaze for a heartbeat and she could almost distinguish a calm thankfulness spreading over his features. Their moment wouldn't last long though; they still had duties to fulfill, and the grateful face once again vanished into the shadow of his hood.

They had ventured out to intercept a particularly troublesome group of Scorn that had plagued the area. The lumbering lieutenant orchestrating the area's operations fell quickly and silently to Thane's precise strikes. When he rose, she posed the question that'd been dwelling in the back of her mind.

“So what about you then?” Lime eyes met cool teal, “I can't imagine you just taking a sideline seat in all this.”

Thane stood up to full height clutching the long barrel of his rifle as he took a moment to clarify his thoughts. The rifle’s silenced muzzle rose to his shoulder and with his snakescale hood shrouding his troubled gaze in the thick night, he suddenly looked lost, and so very alone.

A pit of worry had begun to open in Kala’s gut, but when the Hunter turned to look at her, his gaze was as determined as ever. “I believe the worst of our situation, is our lack of information.” He began coolly, “We don’t know what he’s after, and by extension what might be after him.”

The worry that had been quickly abated was beginning to bubble inside her again. She didn’t like where this train of thought was going, but still she heard him out. “The current approach clearly isn’t working, we need someone on the inside in order to know what he’s trying to pull.” His eyes narrowed and his voice darkened, “His plans may still be developing but he’s no fool. I’m going to have to go deep before he’ll start to trust me. May have to burn a few bridges if necessary.”

Kala’s eyelids fluttered as she tore her gaze from him, tucking away her supplies into their respective pockets. An uncertainty ate at her, she would never know how much Thane had just set against himself in that moment, or the effects that beings of Light would suffer in mingling with the Dark. She didn’t need to know, the knot that formed in her chest at knowing he was headed down a troubling path was enough.

“You know, it doesn’t have to be you.” Her voice was soft and laced with concern as she stood up beside him. “I’m sure someone else would gladly do the same.”

“Maybe, but this is what I do.” His own voice began to mimic her softness upon seeing the worry on her face. “And the more eyes the Vanguard has, the better.”

Their eyes met and in those heartbeats, she desperately wished she could just snatch him away and save him from his impossibly convoluted obligations. She had thought the troubles of the Dreaming City’s curse were the hardest thing she would bear witness to, but the turmoil in his viridian gaze threatened to rival. Nevertheless, she knew there was nothing she could say to change his mind, and with the drop of her eyes she relented.

With a tenderness they’d only shared once before, she placed her hand on his upper arm as he turned to leave, “Promise me then.” Her voice almost a whisper. “Promise me you’ll be careful.”

It was an empty plea, but she needed something, anything to hold onto in this new venture of his. It seemed for a second he hadn’t heard her, but then her touch turned into an embrace as he stepped back towards her. His arms wrapped around her waist as he cradled her weight, and she felt his words warm against her ear as he breathed.

“I promise.”

#|•grimoire•| fics and lore #|•blackjack•| thane #forsaken #the drifter #destiny fic #dreaming city #kala tepej

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thefirstknife · 3 years

Text

Iron Lord Saladin Forge

Season of the Lost dropped some major lore about Saladin and I love every piece of it so I will make a huge post detailing stuff about and what's important.

The lore is on Iron Banner armour which you can see in-game when you go to the armour section. The lore is the same on each class so it doesn't matter which one you read. It's in the order of how armour is set, so helmet -> arm piece -> chest piece -> leg piece -> class item. There's some extras on Iron banner weapons that I'll add as well.

The rest under the cut due to length and also spoilers!

I'll link to the Hunter gear because I'm a dirty Hunter main and I read it from there and that's what I have open because I couldn't remember the names for other two classes, but the lore is the same on all of them. The set is called Iron Forerunner.

We haven't really had any substantial Saladin lore in D2 besides few lore pieces from Chosen and Splicer. Not nearly enough I think, especially since he wasn't properly introduced in D2 at all and it was kinda assumed that everyone would know about him from the Rise of Iron expansion in D1. He had plenty of voice lines, but with no real context. His voice lines in Season of the Chosen were interesting, but also made a lot of people think he's a bad person and a warmongering coward who sat on his butt during the Red War and was then preaching action for action's sake.

The situation is obviously more complex, but I've always said that it's Bungie fault for not explaining more about him prior to his involvement in the Season of the Chosen. Well, now we got some really interesting information at last!

Anyway, helmet first!

Flavour text:

"Some know the legend. We threw ourselves on the blades of tyranny so others may live free." —Lord Saladin

This is referencing the Iron Lords' fight against the Warlords in the Dark Age. Saladin is heavily influenced by his time in the Dark Age. It seems like some really old Guardians never get over the trauma of living through that (Drifter is another example). Side note: this could also be referencing the battle against SIVA since Rasputin is also known as "The Tyrant." It's not fully relevant tho, as Saladin was equally affected by both periods in his life.

This first entry details something we don't really think about when it comes to Guardians: death. It's a temporary thing with them so it doesn't really matter. But Saladin recounts how he remembers his deaths and how each one felt. Despite the fact that he will be brought back, the pain and struggle of dying are very real. There is also the associated trauma of the realisation that you will go through this over and over and over:

He laughed when his Ghost reassembled him. Then, he cried.

It's not something mentioned often, and definitely wasn't a point raised with Saladin. It gives some context to how seriously he takes combat, training and the lives of his fellow Guardians.

Saladin remembers the day he stopped counting deaths. "Something about you is different," Jolder had said, and put her hand on his.

This explains that his worldview of the role of Lightbearers changed the moment he was invited to become an Iron Lord. It's also important to remember that he loved Lady Jolder very much (in whichever way you want to interpret it) and that watching her make the choice to die a final death has had a heavy impact on him.

Saladin remembers all this and more when he looks at the Crow. He feels rage form a hot pit in his belly when Osiris tells him about the young Lightbearer's suffering at the hands of his fellow Guardians. Osiris asks him if he can keep a secret.

"I don't like secrets," Saladin says, and that's the end of it.

Saladin doesn't really say this during Chosen and his interactions with Crow, but it's evident from this that he cares deeply about the young Light who suffered in ways Saladin only remembers people suffering during the Dark Age. It's also important to note that the Osiris he speaks to here is Savathun. Saladin seems to be uniquely unaffected by Savathun's schemes. This will repeat itself again later.

Second, arms piece.

Flavour text:

"Some know the legend. We were forged in the fires of a burning world." —Lord Saladin

Same thing as before. Referencing the post-Collapse Dark Age. The lore tab details a really tragic story of the Iron Lords burying bodies, including the implication of Saladin burying the body of a child. He recalls that these people were victims of Fallen Raiders.

"It's a vicious circle," Efrideet had said as she tied off a funeral shroud with great care. Saladin remembers the bundle being very small. "One day, I'm going to break it."

Saladin remembers how easily the body fit in his arms, how light it felt as he laid it in the grave. He remembers, with shame, pretending not to hear Efrideet's words so he wouldn't need to respond to them.

He remembers not having anything kind to say.

He obviously regrets not having a stronger stance on this in the past. Where Efrideet seems to have always been keen on ending the cycle of violence, he clearly thought differently and is now ashamed of it. This transitions into more about his relation to Crow:

Saladin remembers all this and more whenever the Crow talks back to him. Sometimes, he bites down on the inside of his cheek. Sometimes, he looks up to find his Ghost focused on him with a knowing look.

He doesn't say anything to his Ghost either.

Because Crow was saying things that reminded him of Efrideet. Breaking the cycles of violence, extending a friendly hand, not treating everyone like an enemy. It's evident that this turmoil is still inside of him as someone who spent most of his time fighting for survival, only to be told by those younger than him that there's a way out of that war. It's a very common struggle of people dealing with trauma and specifically PTSD to not be able to imagine and/or live in a world of peace and to outright reject the possibility of peace ever existing. Saladin is very clearly dealing with that and here, we see it from his own POV: despite sometimes being harsh to Crow, there were times when he chose to say nothing because deep down he knows that Crow is right. Accepting that is a long process though.

Third, chest piece.

Flavour text:

"Some know the legend. We rose from the ashes of a dying world to save humanity from itself." —Lord Saladin

Same again, but this is an interesting way to phrase it. He's talking about humanity being a danger to itself, not about any external threat. Ultimately, the Traveler's gift was the first thing that harmed humanity post-Collapse, despite later being the thing that saved it.

This leads into Saladin's thoughts on the Red War, something we've been sorely missing for a very long time.

Saladin remembers losing his connection to the Light. He remembers thinking that the Traveler must have discovered his most secret doubts; the darkest thoughts he shared with no one—not even his Ghost. He remembers the strange sense of relief that had washed over him until his radio crackled to life just moments later.

His deepest secret? Probably that Light is a burden. When he lost the connection to the Light, he specifically thought it had only happened to him and then felt relief. Freedom from the eternal war he has to keep waging. I'm sure he feels incredible shame for thinking it would be better to just lose the Light and die a final death, but alas, he is bound by duty. Especially a Titan's duty.

He stands there thinking about it for a while before finally deciding to embrace that duty. And now we know what he was doing during the Red War:

"Saladin," his Ghost said again, and Saladin remembers moving. He remembers clutching his radio and rallying survivors—those strong enough to make the journey—to the Iron Temple.

It's been abbreviated as him "sitting out" the Red War because he didn't fight. Of course it was strange that the last remaining active Iron Lord did not show up to the City to fight alongside all the others, both Guardians and ordinary humans. That Lord Saladin, someone who endured so many hardships and fought so many battles since the Dark Age, hasn't come to help humanity in its time of greatest need.

But now this hits different. He didn't fight, yes. He couldn't. Losing the Light wasn't just something that made him scared (like all Lightbearers): it was something that made him scared of how he might actually enjoy dying a glorious final death. To end the trauma and the memories of all the horrors he's been through. So instead of throwing himself into a reckless death, he chose to stay in the Iron Temple and protect survivors.

So yeah, he didn't fight, but he did something equally important. The Iron Temple is an extremely well protected fortress that's very difficult to reach and breach, so any survivor he gathered was perfectly safe there until the Red War ended. Sometimes "sitting out" is more noble than fighting.

Saladin remembers all this and more whenever the Crow challenges him on his cowardice during the Red War. He wants to break the young Guardian's back to teach him a lesson about what it's like to feel helpless, but something stops him.

He remembers hearing stories about the Crow's life on the Shore before he arrived at the Tower, and does not raise a hand against him.

The lore entry ends with telling us that Saladin was clearly very agitated about Crow's teasing. But in the end, he remembered what Crow has been through and realised that Crow already knows what it's like to feel helpless. He did not need a reminder and Saladin decided to take the teasing without a response. It truly frames some of those voice lines in a different light, knowing this background.

Fourth, leg piece!

Flavour text:

"Some know the legend. We crossed a burning world with sword in hand, bringing justice and blood." —Lord Saladin

Once more, we are told that Saladin was mostly forged (eheh) through his experience in the Dark Age.

The lore page details a bittersweet memory Saladin has of him with his fellow Iron Lords and friends enjoying some good time over a meal and song.

He remembers Radegast asking him to sing the song taught to them by the people of the blacksmith's village, but agreeing only when Jolder and Perun promised to join in. Their voices rose like wolves in the night and were so raw by morning that none of them could speak.

This is honestly heartbreaking. Saladin being this happy and free to sing and enjoy himself: compared to how he is now. But even with that, he has retained the need to do it again sometimes, if he ever finds people to be comfortable around.

Saladin remembers all this and more when Zavala tells him Amanda has taken the Crow out to drink in the City's streets. He wonders what song they'll sing, if it's anything like the one he's heard everyone humming lately—even though he hasn't tried it himself.

I love how he projects his past joy onto the two young people and wonders if they'll do the same as he did once. Here we also get another hint about Saladin apparently not being affected by Savathun's viral chant. It might be a point relevant in the future.

Finally, class item!

Flavour text:

"Some know the legend. We crushed the Warlords beneath our heel so that they may never rise again." —Lord Saladin

Nothing new here. Just Saladin recounting how hard they went against the Warlords.

The rest is a very poignant lore page that details the relationship between Saladin and Zavala. Zavala studied under Saladin who was his mentor and it's been repeated often that Saladin has retained a "soft spot" for him.

Saladin remembers the first time he met Zavala. He remembers thinking that the Awoken had regal bearing like the stags he once hunted on the Steppes. His shoulders were broad, and his chin held high. When he moved, he did so with the strength and purposeful deliberation of someone with the power to determine his own place in the world.

"You'll never have a son," his Ghost had said, "but it isn't too late for you to take an apprentice."

I love when non-Awoken describe Awoken, there's always something ethereal about it. But I'm mostly putting this part here because of what Saladin's Ghost says.

First, I am incredibly soft for older Guardians adopting younger ones as kids and teaching them. Easily my favourite dynamic ever. Saladin seeing Zavala as a son makes me cry a thousand tears.

And second, is this finally a full confirmation that Guardians cannot bear children? It's kind of a strange place to put it, but it seems to be the implication. It makes sense they wouldn't be able to, but it's also nice to have some direct lore information about it in case it pops up as a question. I'm sorry if this ruins anyone's fics.

Saladin remembers their sparring matches. He remembers how Zavala always got back on his feet, no matter how many times Saladin put him down. He remembers refusing to offer the younger Lightbearer a hand up. Until the day Zavala finally bested him in combat.

He remembers lying flat on his back, left shoulder dislocated and ribs shattered, a strange pressure on his chest that made it difficult to breathe.

"Finish it," Saladin had commanded because that was the way of things. His Ghost would revive him.

Saying nothing, Zavala hauled him to his feet instead.

I love how this is placed at the end, paralleling the beginning of Saladin remembering his deaths and the pain of dying. But instead of "finishing it," Zavala pulls him back up. It's definitely something Saladin hasn't experienced before, especially not before becoming an Iron Lord, when all of his deaths were just gruesome ends to a struggle. Then seconds after, he'd be back up. He took the revival for granted, until Zavala offered him the alternative. Again, an interesting perspective about something we don't usually think about much. I do wonder how Saladin healed afterwards though.

Saladin remembers all this and more when his former apprentice calls him into his office and tells him about the face behind the Crow's mask. Zavala says he knows that Saladin doesn't like secrets; that it's unfair to ask him to keep one of this magnitude, but there will come a time when the Crow needs someone—the way Zavala needed Saladin.

"You never needed anyone," Saladin insists.

Zavala only smiles.

This page ends with the two bonding again. Despite their differences and disagreements, there's mutual respect between the mentor and the apprentice. The father and the son.

And Saladin thinks Zavala never needed him, but that is obviously not true and Zavala tells him so. He also tells him that Crow, and implied Guardians like him, will need the same guidance.

It gives us a full circle back to Saladin's musings about his purpose as a Guardian and Lightbearer. He may have doubted his place in the world before, but seeing as he's still here with us and actively participating and helping; training us through Iron Banner, helping with the Eliksni, refusing to side against the Vanguard despite the difference in opinion, now serving as Zavala's ambassador for the Cabal and easily bonding with someone he would've considered an enemy not long ago...

I think Saladin knows his place. He's one of the strongest Lightbearers and most principled among them. He is not swayed by lies and deceptions, he does not abide by them and speaks plainly. He has deeply rooted beliefs in justice and he will not compromise himself, even if it means conceding his position to make peace with a former enemy when that enemy proves their worth, honesty and good intentions to him.

He is a Guardian.

He is an Iron Lord.

#destiny 2 #lord saladin #lore vibing #long post #more iron lord lore bungie please?#iron temple as a social space?#please?#anyway i love this new lore about him so much #i wish we had it before people formed some crude opinions about him #but hopefully this can retroactively clear certain things up

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websurfergeorge · 5 years

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Web Surfer George! Who...?

Another web community? What's the difference? A Spirit of Giving...

Hello, and thank you so much for your valuable time. Imagine, if you will, a world class online community that makes millions and millions of dollars… and then gives money away to its members and the real world community. What a powerful and interesting thought. Please, keep reading…

My name is Ronald Slaton. I am a freelance photographer in Tampa Bay, Florida. Having well over 25 years of shooting experience, teaching photography within the Hillsborough County Library System, and being a published short story author, my entire life has been shaped and driven by communicating with people. Which led me to a wonderful idea...

Web Surfer George

There are two very different and very important things about Web Surfer George. First of all, it is an "all included" online community. Not only is it open to singers and musicians, dancers and choreographers, actors and directors, and models and photographers, it also welcomes moms, dads, teachers and students, realtors, buyers and sellers and everyone in between.

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Paid Referrals - The site is in Invitation Only mode, and will remain there always. Each member has an Invitation Link and when someone joins through that link, the referring member earns a commission. Currently, it is 5% for Platinum members when a referred member pays to upgrade. Also, the commissions go as much as “five levels” deep, with additional levels of earnings as succeeding members join underneath.

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============================================================

Subscription based...?

Like all businesses, capital is all important. A web site is no different. Bills have to be paid, services secured and problems corrected. Of course, there are also management and labor costs. I can not run this on a large scale alone, and a starting workforce has to be compensated for their time, expertise and commitment. I can not expect them to take time away from other pursuits and their families, then merely offer them a warm Thank You. In short, this site can not be a dining room table "Get to it when we get to it” business. I need an Office Manager to handle the business, an executive assistant to carry out any and all tasks, a network administrator for the web site, techs for routine and emergency maintenance, updates/upgrades and fixes, a person for member services and correspondence and, of course, an accountant and an insurance agent as well as a lawyer/firm to sort out legal matters. And of course, we have our eye on an official home:

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Okay, we have built an awesome web community, secured funding, tuned the site and relaunched an all-new and super powerful site! So, how do we go from asking for money to actually making money? In a nut shell, word of mouth and advertising will create a buzz which will drive up curiosity and spark visits. Who wouldn't want to join a site that has no ads and actually pays you to get your friends to join?

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Building a bridge to the Real World

As a heavy user of online services, entertainment and research, at the end of the day, I want my time to have meant or produced something valuable. At times, after long hours on the computer, I come away feeling like I totally wasted my time. I have used systems that give points, credits and level-ups. However, nothing actually transferred over to the Real World into something I could actually use. So, I decided to design Web Surfer George to not just be a great site to be on, but also make all that surfing and clicking add up to something… real.

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Be blessed in all that you do!

Ronald Slaton - Owner/Operator

Referral Link: Web Surfer George

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neoyi · 6 years

Note

Can you tell us about your HLD headcanons please?

Sure. I should also add a small disclaimer that a lot of the headcanons are just story ideas based on an AU where Drifter and Guardian doesn’t die, instead living out their lives in a post-apocalyptic world and their growing romance and eventual family life they create for themselves whilst uncovering Drifter’s amnesic past. I want to also add that much of these ideas are contradictory to canon since I’m just messing around the world for funsies. …It would have been a romantic comedy. Sooooo on that note…*Drifter can be incredibly hyperfixated with their interests. This largely extends to ancient ruins and past history left behind by civilizations of yesteryear, especially from blue-skinned folks like they are. It’s not just a fascination of What People Did back in the days, but an honest attempt to find any clues of their memories. *Drifter likes games, strategic games specifically. They like solving puzzles and unraveling complex mathematics. They play alien tabletop RPGs; they dig epic, long novels and can memorize obscure facts and useless trivia. They’re the kind that’d have a blog and write long-winded essays on Why This Character Had Amazing Character Development. *Drifter has something of a reputation. Having traveled around the world for years has caused the dude to get into their fair share of scuffles. Drifter’s stance is largely Neutral and the most they do is stay in a place, then move on to find more ruins and historic sights. But every so often, there might be That One Criminal who damns an entire town or some Megalomaniac who uses ancient tech to try and blow up the world and Drifter just happens to be there. With their sword and gun. Wasting the shit out of That One Criminal or that Megalomaniac. And perhaps in time, Drifter became a bit of a legend, the “Red-Cloaked Hero”, the “Savior”, “The Crimson Drifter” or whatever inane nicknames the people named ‘em. Drifter has become a symbol of hope and in these struggling times, some people gravitate towards that. For all Drifter claims neutrality, they don’t sit back when people need help, but it comes with baggage and people tend to recognize them - both the decent folks and the jack-offs who seek to kill ‘em for their own means. All Drifter wants is to be left alone, man. *One of the things I’ll never find the time to do is create small, one-off comics of Drifter getting into all sorts of adventure. Most of these would be wordless and the situations could range from anything to Drifter helping archeologists unlock lost history and fighting a giant robot inside or something like saving a princess in a far-off kingdom from a monster or stuck pulling a heist with some well-meaning thieves. Whatever comes to mind.

*Drifter has helped other drifters and archeologists with their research because for some very odd reason, they can unlock specific tech and locales that even other blue-skinned folks can’t…*Guardian is the son of a farmer and a drifter. His mother settled down from drifting life to tend to the farm with her husband (who is far from a warrior as you can get.) He has an older brother who currently travels the world, getting by through trade stories and inventing weird things. Guardian left the farm shortly after his father died (a stack of alcoholic beverages landed on top of him one day) to travel the world to pursue his dreams of studying history of ancient civilization. He settled in Central at some point and has stayed there since. He keeps in touch with his family.

*Guardian’s real name is “Tim.” I got that name from a joke from an HLD thread I read a while ago. He also has a last name, but it cannot be written here for it is very, very, very long, and contains letters that aren’t even in the current alphabet. *Guardian is into kitschy decor. He unironically loves curtains with corn cob patterns or their world equ. of garden gnomes in his garden. I have a jokethat Guardian must be written to be the most blandest guy you could ever meet. He talks endlessly about the potatoes he’s grown in his backyard, goes to bed at a reasonable hour, and can listen to his neighbor talk about the structure and kind of bricks he used to build his house. Guardian is unassuming, but kind.

*Incidentally, this is why Drifter eventually fell for Guardian and chose to stay in Central: he gives Drifter a solitary, quiet life that they want. Drifter’s gotten into enough shenanigans - whether they wanted it or not - and damn it, they’re just tired. Adventure will always come to them because their need to explore old ruins and tech and those tend to invite trouble, but at least they can do it together! Once they’re finished, Drifter also has a home to go back to that gives them the respite they need.

*Drifter totally had a one-night stand with the Dashmaster. This is not scandalous news in Central because a frighteningly number of people have had one-night stands with Dashmaster. Because he’s Dashmaster.

*Guardian has two jobs in Central: he, along with other volunteers, guards and patrols outside of Central for monsters or any signs of danger. He’s also a teacher at the town’s only school. Subjects vary, but it’s mostly history on his end.

*The Swordmaster is Guardian’s best friend. The two (and a couple of other buddies) hang out at the local bar every week.

*Drifter was the one to propose to Guardian. That was the unexpected part because at that point, they’ve already been discussing marriage. They both just assumed Guardian would propose. *Drifter only ever won once against Soccer Kid. Once.

*Drifter only wakes up early whenever they’re not in town because it’s practical (gotta cover as much ground as possible when you’re on the move.) Whenever they’re in inns and other shelters though, they sleep in. (Guardian always wakes up at the crack of dawn. He is often subjected to pillows being thrown by Drifter whenever he gets too happy in the morning.)

*I haven’t decided where Drifter got their current clothing. I think Drifter got their helmet off of a dead soldier, the cape probably off of another drifter’s corpse, and maybe Drifter - in one of their rare moments - splurged a little on their boots. They’re good quality boots and you need ones that last!*Drifter used to own an old motorcycle they used to travel around for a bit. It got too damaged and had to be abandoned eventually.

*Drifter’s favorite food is red meat. Guardian likes potatoes. *Restless and/or impatient Drifter involves them chewing on things, tapping their fingers, or shaking their legs.

*Guardian’s method of organizing is mostly pushing books and materials off to the side as much as possible. Once Drifter gets the hang of daily chores, they tend to go far enough that things must be alphabetized, we are not animals Guardian. *Drifter is practical enough to be able to fix their clothes whenever it’s damaged, but Guardian is the superior seamstress. He’s also better in the kitchen. Course, a lot of this stems from the latter having lived in civilization most of his life while Drifter mostly learned what they needed to survive. The latter tends to take advantage of what towns offer (ex: they eat conservatively when out in the middle of nature, but stuff their face in taverns because they have the opportunity to do so.)

*The stray dog that wanders near the eastern sector of Central ended up following Drifter when the latter, feeling a tinge of pity, gave the pup some food. The dog has never left Drifter since. This bothered Drifter at first since they had no use for a pet, even going as far as naming the dog “Babo” (”stupid” in Korean), but damn if the dog did not grow on ‘em. (Incidentally I actually drew out most of the pages of this comic, but I never inked or posted them up online.)

*Life before Drifter was well, a drifter, was spent during the last remnants of the blue-skinned (yeah, I never thought of an actual name for these guys) civilization: in the midst of the great war that screwed them over. They were the [NAME REDACTED], child of the Librarian (herself a big contributor to the giant Titans) and a cut character from the game: Rivan. The latter was the last King of their civilization and, well, he was nicknamed Mad King Rivan for a reason. Knowing he was off his gourd in his mad pursuit for power, the Librarian stepped off the Titan project and got the hell out with intent on living a peaceful life alone with her than unborn child. Drifter spent most of their childhood with their mother with no acknowledgement on who their father was. The Librarian spent her time creating the pendant (and Drifter’s companion bot), containing memories of their time, and as much information on their culture as possible, slowly realizing over time that the end was nigh. The Librarian sent Drifter to safety during the last days of their civilization. Drifter was placed in a pod, frozen in time until they eventually woke up with no recollection of who they are. Drifter has no idea the pendant and their companion bot has pretty much all the info they could need (it also requires solving a complex algorithm to unlock the info, too.)

*That said, Rivan is still alive and he not only intends to bring his kingdom back (a big reach in and of itself at this point), he knows he has a child…

I think that’s all I can think or muster. Hope this is good enough.

#hyper light drifter #anonymous #neoyi talks

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atombombbagel · 6 years

Note

🌸 Imagine a Sole who continuously do good deeds to the people even the companions without ever revealing themselves. The only thing that stands out about them is that they wear a shirt with wings printed on the back, earning them title of ‘Guardian Angel’. The companions get curious and sought to find this ‘hero’, failing multiple times. Until one lucky day, Sole gets wounded in the leg, ruining their chance of escape, which then allowed the companions to meet this beautiful soul.

(I switched up the ask a little bit, It’s hard to come up with scenarios with Sole just getting hurt, so I only did that for some, hope you don’t mind

Cait:She’d been looking for someone like them, and Angel that could help her getthrough her most difficult time. She’d heard about them, heard the whispersabout them through the Combat Zone, they’d taken down some big raider bossesand maybe they could help her get out of this shithole. When she’d had the time,she’d gone looking for them but every time she came back empty handed.

“Look what we found,” aman spat, bursting through the doors of the Combat Zone. A person struggled inthe man’s arms, trying to pull against him, but his grip was iron tight. Hepushed them to the ground in front of everyone and Cait stepped out from theshadows. Cait’s eyes roamed the person’s body, her eyes widened when shenoticed the famous angel wings printed on the back of their shirt.

“It’s you,” she said in disbelief,coughing when everyone turned to look at her, “I mean, finally a real fight,had enough of you losers anyway,” Cait pulled the person off the ground, “Getready for a fight lads,” She hollered, causing cheers to come from every dangraider in the place. Sole looked up at her, “don’t worry, follow my lead,” shewhispered with a nod, “Yer getting me the fuck out of here.”

Curie:(So although this makes no sense with Curie’s story, here she is already out ofthe vault and already a synth)

Curie rushed to theperson on the ground who was squirming in pain. They were lying on their back,blood oozing out of a wound in their back.

“I’m going to turn youover,” she informed them, receiving a nod from the person, “what’s your name?”she said as she flipped them over, her fingers running over the patterned wingson the back of their shirt.

“Sole,” they struggled tosay, wincing in pain as Curie lifted up their shirt, showing the bullet woundin their lower back. The bullet had luckily missed Sole’s spine.

“I’ve heard about you,”she said, using a pair of tweezers to dig the bullet out of the gaping hole.Sole cried out, biting down on their arm as she removed the bullet, putting itin a metal bowl behind her. She poured some Vodka on the wound, causing anotherstring of cries to fall from Sole’s mouth. She then injected some Med-x and aStimpak, before helping Sole to their feet.

“I’ve heard about youtoo,” Sole said with a smile, “Thanks doc,”

“Perhaps we could learn somemore from each other?” Curie said hopefully, ever since she’d heard about Soleand all the things they’ve done, she’d wanted to assist them, be by their sidein their travels.

“Absolutely.”

Danse:He remembered the wings, the only thing he’d seen when they’d swooped in andsaved him and his team from a group of ravenous feral ghouls. Before he couldthank them for the help, they’d disappeared without a trace, he’d asked aroundbut nothing, no one seemed to know of this mysterious stranger.

Danse was on route, doinga quick supply run when he spotted a person getting dragged to the ground by a groupof feral ghouls. Lucky for them Danse was quick on his feet and good with his weapon.He darted towards them, shooting the ghouls in the process, the laser rifleripping through the skulls of those undead killers. He held out a hand andlifted the person to up on their feet.

“You’d want to be morecareful civilian,” he said, his gun dropping to his side as the person dustedthemselves off.

“I’ll make a note of it,”they said with a smile, “thanks for your help,” they backed up, “Oh, and itsgood to see you again,” they turned, walking in the opposite direction, turningback to watch the stunned expression on Danse’s face as he realised who he’djust saved.

“Wait, I’ve been lookingfor you.”

Deacon:Deacon always thought that he was the hardest man to find, constantly having anew face, new clothes, wearing his shades to hide his appearance. But thisangel was by far, the most difficult to get a hold of, even for a spy likeDeacon. Desdemona had insisted that Deacon find this person, something aboutthem being an asset to the organisation.

He was walking backthrough the Commons, always on high alert, as he made his way back to the NorthChurch. He was startled when a person appeared from seemingly out of nowhere,grabbing onto his shoulder.

“Didn’t mean to scare youbut I need some help,” they said, clinging onto Deacon’s shirt, he wrapped hisarm around their waist and then he noticed the shirt, he’d found them, well,they’d found him. He dragged them into the Church. They both stumbled alongthrough the tunnels, finally reaching a doorway. The door clicked open andDeacon pushed through it, dragging Sole along behind him.

“Looky here everyone, Ifound them,” He said, with a smile. Carrington stopped what he was doing and immediatelycame to Sole’s aid, helping them sit down on a chair as he attended to theirwounds, “We’ve heard great things about you, fancy telling us your name?”

Hancock:They’ve saved multiple ghouls. Preventeda super mutant attack right outside the gates. Angel wings. Hero.

He’d listened to thestories shared between the drifters around town, he’d offered top caps foranyone who could provide any information or even find them, so he couldpersonally thank them for all they’d done for his town. Reward them even. Butnothing, it’s like they didn’t even exist.

Hancock leaned againstthe dirty brick wall, taking a long drag of his cigarette as he listened to Fahrenheitramble on about something. He wasn’t even really listening. He turned aroundwhen he heard the gates crack open, a person stepping through, nearly stumblingto the ground. Then they did, doubling over and heaving on the ground. Hancockflicked his cigarette to the ground, stalking over to the person, his eyeslingering on the print on their shirt.

“Now have I been lookingfor you,” he said, grabbing them under their arm and helping them to theirfeet. He noticed their battered and bruised face, their cuts extending downtheir arms, they looked like they’d been in an explosion.

“Glad to be of service,”Sole replied, coughing heavily. Hancock nodded towards Fahrenheit and shewalked over, wrapping Sole’s other arm around her shoulder as she helped Hancockcarry her towards the Hotel Rexford. He’d talk to them once they’d gotten somerest.

MacCready:Although he’d wanted to be the one to take out those bastards, Winlock andBarnes, he’d heard that they’d met an unfortunate end by the one they call ‘GuardianAngel’. To him the name didn’t seem like a coincidence, he’d been looking for someonelike them, someone to help him save his son. He didn’t like taking advantage ofpeople, but he’d heard that this person offered help and they didn’t expectanything in return, not that he had anything to give anyway. He’d looked for them,but he couldn’t locate them.

Sole stumbled down thestairs to the Third Rail, leaning over the bar as they ordered a luke-warm beerfrom Whitechapel Charlie. MacCready had walked out of the back room at thatmoment, spotting them at the bar. And he thought maybe, finally, his luck waschanging. He walked up to the bar, sitting down on the stool next to Sole.

“I’ll have what they’rehaving,” MacCready said, looking over at Sole, “You’re just the person I’vebeen looking for,” he said just above a whisper, leaning in to them.

“You and a long line ofpeople, what can I help you with?” Sole said turning to MacCready and thentaking a sip of their drink.

“It’s my son,” he started.

“I’m in,” Sole interrupted,MacCready was surprised by Sole’s reaction, not a lot of people would jump in andoffer to help a Merc. But he wasn’t going to complain about it.

Nick:(Again, this would make no sense with his story, but oh well).

Being a detective with alot of experience in the field, you’d think that Nick Valentine could trackdown anyone, but this person was harder to find than he’d expected. It was onlyby chance that he stumbled upon them. He been investigating the disappearance ofa man which lead him to a raider base. He’d found the man, not alive but thenhe saw them, tied up to a post, another victim to the sick acts of the raiders.He was nimble, getting them in and out without anyone seeing them.

“Thank you,” Sole said, rubbingthe red rings around their wrists where the ropes had cut into their skin.

“No thank you, I’ve heardgreat things about you kid,” he paused, “not a lot of people would help outanyone in these parts, you’re an inspiration,”

“That means a lot comingfrom you Valentine,” they held out their hand to him and he took it, shakingtheir hand, “I’m Sole,”

“It’s great to finallymeet the girl/ man behind the persona,”

Piper:A story, that’s all she wanted. ‘The Guardian Angel’ would make a great title forone of her stories, she was desperately trying to find them, the scoop too goodto pass up. Even though she was good a snooping and spying, getting informationfrom people, she could not for the life of her find this person anywhere. Itslike they were a ghost.

She was walking back fromanother search when she heard a loud crash coming from the left of her. Whenshe turned around she nearly got knocked over by a person, who’d been runningtowards her. They grabbed her hand.

“Run,” They said, causinga panic to shoot up through Piper. She held onto their hand tightly as theyboth ran through the streets. Piper looked back to see a Super mutant suiciderrunning in their direction. Sole pulled her around the corner and pulled a pinout of a grenade with their teeth, tossing it in the direction of the green monstrosity.Sole dived to the ground on top of Piper as the explosion rang out in the background.

Sole slowly liftedthemselves off of Piper, holding out their hand to help her up.

“Sorry about that,” Solesaid as they dusted ash and dirt off their hands. Piper was speechless foronce, still processing what had just happened, “Anyway, you have a good day,”Sole said with a nod, turning around and walking away. That’s when Pipernoticed the trademark wings on their back.

“Wait!” She called out,catching up with them, “I know you don’t know me but I know you,” Sole turnedto face her, “I have a story you’d be perfect for…”

Preston:Reports had come back to him about a wanderer, who had been helping out variousMinutemen settlements, without his authority, not that he was mad about it, healways needed the extra help. He just wanted to meet this person, tell them hewas grateful for all they had done for him and the people of the Commonwealth. Hewanted to put a face to all the amazing acts the person had done.

Preston was visiting anearby settlement to check on things when he noticed a person walking towardsthem, another person walking by their side.

“You saved them! Thankyou!” a settler said, wrapping their arms around their returned friend. Solesmiled at them.

“Anytime,”

“It’s you isn’t it? You’re the one who’s been helping us,” Prestonasked in disbelief, looking at Sole, they turned to face him with a smile.

“I’m guessing you’veheard about me?” he nodded and Sole laughed, “It’s nice to meet you,” they said,shaking Preston’s hand. He had so many questions for them, but he didn’t wantto creep them out.

“Sorry, Yes, uh Preston Garvey, Commonwealth Minutemen. Likewise. I have somany questions,” She stuttered, making Sole laugh.

“Of course, what do youwant to know?”

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dinoswrites · 7 years

Text

Black Coral Chapter 19: Grief

Solavellan, Mermaid AU. Ongoing.

Masterpost | Read from Chapter One | Read on A03

There are two elves sitting on a fence next to the road, looking out over Crestwood Bay.

This would not normally give either of the Grey Wardens pause; the spot would, under normal circumstances, offer a pretty view over the sparkling water of the bay and the sprawling floodwall at its mouth, with a gentle sea breeze to keep them from growing too warm under the summer sun.

It is, however, the middle of the Maker-forsaken night, with rain falling like buckets from the sky, and, perhaps most importantly, there are thrice-damned undead crawling out of the water.

Not, unfortunately, Darkspawn, or they’d be duty-bound to do something about it, orders be damned.

As they draw closer, however, Emric can make out scattered bones on the path, seaweed tangled in some of them. And then he sees the spear resting on the fence beside the young lady—dressed in some appallingly waterlogged but mundane clothing, and those funny footwraps that elves sometimes prefer to boots—and that the young man is trying to keep a broadsword dry under the heavy cloak he’s got the good sense to wear.

Emric waves to the pair as he and his partner draw near, though he can nearly feel the man beside him rolling his eyes in frustration as he does.

“Hello!” he calls, when he is certain they are close enough to be heard above the awful wind.

He is close enough now to see the dark tattoos on the young woman’s face—Dalish then, he thinks, with no more than a quick glance at the man beside her to confirm he has those markings, too. A light colour, but that’s not all that uncommon.

The woman smiles in greeting, but the man only scowls at them, so Emric directs his question to her.

“Miss,” he says, “I’m afraid it’s not safe out here for travellers. There’s a village up the hill, and they can provide you with shelter.”

“We can handle ourselves,” the man says, his accent curiously Tevene for a man with Dalish tattoos, “though I thank you for the warning. I wonder at the quality of such shelter if neither of you will take advantage of it for yourselves.”

Emric tries to smile, but his cheeks are so cold it’s little better than a grimace. “Orders, I’m afraid. We’re to book passage West, once our business is concluded here. No delays.”

The woman kicks something—and Emren looks down to see it’s a skull, the front smashed open.

When he looks back up at her, she’s tilting her head, as if asking him a question. Her pupils are eerily green in what little light his lantern offers him.

“Does your business perhaps include these things rising from the water?” the man asks. “We’ve fought off our fair share, but they keep coming.”

Emren’s partner—possibly exhausted from carrying the extra weight of the water in his clothes—interrupts then. “We are looking for a rogue Warden, goes by the name of Stroud. Orlesian. Ridiculous moustache, impossible to track down. Either of you seen him?”

The young woman shakes her head, and her friend’s brow rises. “Curious,” he says. “How, precisely, does a Grey Warden go rogue?”

“Can’t say,” Emren answers, with a scowl directed at his partner. “But Warden-Commander Clarel has ordered his capture. If you hear anything of him, it would be appreciated if you could send word to the Wardens at Adamant Fortress.”

“Certainly,” he replies. “Thank you for the warning—perhaps we will head to this village then, if there are only more undead on the road ahead.”

Emric and his partner leave the two to their travels, though the elves do not get up and leave when the Wardens do. Before the road curves away, Emric happens to turn and glance back.

They are still there—two pairs of eyes gleaming like wild animals in the dead of night.

Though there are enough elves in the Grey Wardens for it to be a familiar sight, it still makes him shudder as he turns away.

“Adamant, then?” Hawke wonders as she comes out of the bushes behind Fenris, swinging her legs over the fence to perch beside him.

Varric is close behind her, but he simply leans on the fence between the two elves, glancing up at Aevalle. She seems to be focused on the large body of water that spits out walking skeletons every twenty minutes or so, which Varric supposes is fair. “I’ve heard of it,” he says, “but I don’t have a clue where it is.”

Stroud appears shortly after, pulling wet leaves from his apparently infamous moustache. “It rests on an island that rises out of the Abyssal Sea,” he informs them, “formed from a battle on a peninsula during the first Blight. It is at least two weeks’ journey from any settlement worth speaking of, due to the constant storms that plague the region.”

Varric whistles. “Curly’s not going to like that.”

“We can cut that time at least in half with the Keeper,” Bull interrupts, standing up where he had been couching before. Half a bush is stuck to one of his horns, its roots and mud dangling in the air, but he either doesn’t notice or just pretends not to.

Dorian finally emerges from the bushes, not a trace of leaf or twig on his person, to lean on the fence at Aevalle’s other side. “And then we would have no backup from the Inquisition’s formidable navy in case something were to go horribly wrong.”

“I’m not saying we take the whole thing by force,” Bull amends. “Just a quick recon mission—sneak in, confirm that Corypheus is behind the weird Calling, sneak out. No one has to even know we’re there.”

“Oh, that’s a lovely plan.” Merrill climbs up onto the fence beside Varric, casting a spell over their heads to keep the rain off. “It sounds much better than barging our way in through the front door and almost dying, like we usually do.”

Hawke bristles. “Well we can’t all have weird sentient submersible boats, now can we?”

Stroud gives Hawke an alarmed look. “What?”

“And who even says they have a side door,” Hawke continues, “huh?”

Stroud doesn’t look much like he understands, but he says, “The fortress rests at the top of the island’s sheer cliffs, and there is only one approach leading up from the sea.”

“See?” Hawke crosses her arms over her chest. “Your plan stinks. I vote we break it down.”

Aevalle is still staring off into space, so Varric gives her a bit of a nudge.

She startles, then looks down at him.

“You still with us, Drifter?”

She attempts a smile, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. She looks back out to the bay briefly, before turning back to Varric and signing, Something’s not right here.

“No shit,” he replies, deadpan. “And here I thought the skeletons were a tourist attraction.”

“Oh?” Merrill looks out to the water. “Is she talking about the bay?”

“Yeah, she’s had the brilliant idea that something fishy might be going on here.”

Someone groans. Hawke snorts.

She signs again, and Varric nearly rolls his eyes. “Sorry, I’ll clarify—she says the water feels wrong. Whatever that’s supposed to mean, I’m not entirely sure.”

Merrill only tilts her head curiously. “She’s right. I’ve been thinking the same thing ever since we got here—it feels sick, doesn’t it?”

“Merrill,” Hawke pipes up. “You are near and dear to my heart, and I will kill anyone who looks at you sideways—but it’s a giant lake. How can it be sick?”

“It’s not a lake,” Fenris interrupts, pointing to the long wall along the coastline that they can barely make out through the pouring rain. “I believe that is a floodwall, meant to protect this area from flooding during storm season.”

“And it’s doing a great job,” Hawke says. “Except for the giant saltwater lake it’s obviously let in.”

Aevalle shifts uncomfortably on the fence, still looking at the water with no small amount of concern on her features. I’ve felt this before, she signs, and Varric dutifully interprets.

“Where?”

Her lips twist, and she takes quite a while to respond. But she does, eventually, sign, This old ruin, where a piece of the sea was trapped, separated from the deep, and grew stagnant.

“Did skeletons pop out of it?” Bull wonders.

No. She looks very distant as she signs, But something very wrong lived there.

Dorian seems to know what she’s talking about, and reaches to touch her shoulder with a sympathetic wince. Varric glances behind him at Cole, who is still standing in the bushes, but the kid doesn’t give him a hint.

“I’ve felt this before, too,” Merrill says, a note of longing in her voice. “It’s very rare, but… sometimes bits of the sea get trapped by the land, and whatever else was stuck with it gets… well, strange.”

Dangerous, Aevalle corrects.

“Yes,” Merrill agrees. “So it’s odd, then, that they keep the flood gate closed, even though they could have drained it at any time…”

“It became damaged during the Blight,” Stroud informs them, back straight. “It flooded out the old town of Crestwood. Presumably, since the damage is constantly underwater, no one has had the ability to fix it.”

After a moment’s consideration, Aevalle hops off the fence, and starts stripping off her coat.

“Uh, Drifter,” Varric says, “little cold for a swim, maybe?”

She ignores him, throwing her rain-soaked jacket over the fence behind her. Then off comes her shirt—and, for once, she’s got some sort of breastband on underneath that looks like it’s made out of sealskin. Varric finds himself hoping that it’s lined with something soft.

“You are not swimming alone in undead-infested waters,” Dorian begins to argue.

Aevalle ignores him, undoing her belt and stepping out of her trousers. She’s wearing matching smalls as well, and she doesn’t bother taking off her footwraps.

“I hardly think she needs to go alone,” Merrill amends, resting her own spear on the fence so she can take her jacket off.

Varric stares up at her, aghast. “Daisy,” he says. “Don’t tell me…?”

She blinks down at him for a moment, curious. And then she seems to catch on, and laughs.

“Oh,” she says, “Oh Varric.”

“If you’ve been hiding fins on me all these years, I swear I will—”

“No!” she waves her hands in the air. “No! I just know a little air bubble spell! It’s one of the first spells I ever learned! In case someone ever needed help underwater. Really!”

As Varric squints suspiciously up at her, Fenris sighs.

“Stop shaking my arm, Hawke.”

The sound of wet leather creaking indicates that she has not, in fact, stopped shaking Fenris’s arm. “This is it,” she hisses.

Fenris only sighs again.

“In case no one has noticed,” Varric says, as loud as he can, “there’s currently a ridiculous storm blowing through.”

Merrill, stripped down to leathers a little similar to the ones Aevalle is wearing, ignores him, speaking to Aevalle instead. “Oh, before we go down—this,” she says, awkwardly signing, “is everything’s alright, yes? And this is up—and this is down?”

Aevalle impatiently nods to every gesture Merrill makes, walking backwards into the water.

“Look where you’re going for a change!” Dorian shouts, just as Aevalle finally turns and dives into the water.

Merrill follows a moment after—and as they all watch, a bolt of lightning bursts across the sky, catching the brilliant blue of Aevalle’s scales as she leaps once from the water, fully transformed, fins flaring in the air before she dives back under again.

“Subtle as always,” Dorian complains.

“Unbelievable,” Stroud says, his voice soft and full of wonder.

“Unbelievable,” Hawke grumbles, and Varric glances over just in time to see her slap a coin into Fenris’ waiting palm. Fenris has the good grace to only look a little smug about it.

“Did you make a bet with Fenris over whether or not I was just pulling your leg?”

“I absolutely made a bet with Fenris over whether or not you were pulling my leg.”

“You came out of hiding because you thought I was pulling your leg?!”

“And?” Hawke asks, looking genuinely baffled that he’s even asking.

“How is this achieved?” Stroud wonders. “Some—some great feat of magic?”

Varric catches Fenris send a wary glance Dorian’s way. For his part, Dorian doesn’t seem to notice.

“Apparently it runs in the family,” Varric says, making a placating gesture and giving Fenris a significant look. “Only your standard weird ocean shit here, apparently. No magic required.”

Fenris rolls his eyes, but seems to let it go for the moment.

When Varric looks back over at Stroud, he sees Bull leaning over from behind him and putting a heavy hand on his shoulder.

“Also,” Bull adds, “something not to go around telling everyone about. Yeah?”

Bull gives the Warden’s shoulder a friendly squeeze.

Stroud is still staring out at the water—but Varric can see him nod, very slowly.

“You know,” Hawke says. “I always thought Merrill was being metaphorical when she talked about this shit. But I guess, in hindsight, that time she got really drunk and told us all a story about how what’s-his-face landed in a boat with fins sticking straight up in the air probably should’ve tipped us off.”

“I thought she was so drunk she forgot the word for feet,” Varric admits, which makes Hawke laugh.

“A moment,” Stroud says, loudly enough that everyone turns to look at him. “Earlier, you said, submersible vessel. Am I correct?”

“Glad to see you’re keeping up,” Varric says. “Yes, we have a ship that sinks. Filled with air so we don’t drown, which is reassuring. And then it goes wherever Drifter there tells it to, and we all pop out and give everyone on shore a pleasant, not at all freaky, surprise.”

“Which is not a secret considering the entire city of Val Royeaux saw us do exactly that,” Bull adds.

Hawke laughs. “Bet that was a hell of an entrance.”

“Adamant once housed the Grey Warden’s gryphons,” Stroud says, “or at least most of them. To this day, the fortress rests on either side of a sheer chasm, where the gryphons roosted in caves carved out of the cliffs, all connected to the fortress above by tunnels that have fallen into disrepair.”

“Fascinating,” Dorian drawls. “And this is relevant because…?”

“Because,” Stroud says, “at the bottom of that chasm, enclosed on all sides, there is a massive reservoir of ocean water.”

No one says anything for a moment, as the realisation dawns on them, one by one. Hawke’s eyes light up. Just as she opens her mouth to speak, Cole, still standing in the bushes, says very softly, “A side door.”

When the sun rises, it does not sparkle on an inland sea.

Instead it shines down on ruined homes, on old bones that no longer rise or take up arms. Years of dirt and silt compacting as it dries out, and the corrupted seawater filters out into the bay.

Aevalle watches it as Bull guides the Mayor of Crestwood out of his home, his hands bound behind his back. She doesn’t look at him, even when Bull begins to walk the man down to the little town’s harbour, where the Keeper waits. She has the piece of black coral Hawen gave her in one hand and her knife in the other as she stares down at Old Crestwood, at sea-soaked timber and belongings scattered on the ground. Some of them catch the sunlight and glitter, though she knows some of it is the bodies of fish, not yet begun to rot.

She keeps turning the coral over and over in her hands. It’s too small, she thinks. Too small a thing, for all the death she’s seen.

They were sick, the Mayor had said. The Blight. Every one of them.

It had not been in his defense. As he said it, he looked relieved more than anything.

She turns the coral again. Again. It’s not—it’s not—

She closes her eyes. Breathes in, and out.

The caves had just been full of skeletons. Full of them. They’re still down there—unburied. Unburned.

In the distance, the tide is receding. Pulling the tainted water with it, back to the deep.

She wonders what will happen to it out there. To all that pain and misery, trapped in one place until it rotted everything it touched, washed away by clear water, pulled past seafoam and wake and out to depths too vast for her to ever dream of swimming.

Deshanna used to say that the tide pulled heartache out to sea, and when it came in again brought hope in its place. Breathe in with the rush of the waves, to gather all your sorrow in your chest—and then breathe out, and let the ocean steal away your sorrows.

Where does it take it all, she wonders. And how much can it hold, before it too bursts.

Solas probably knows, wherever he is. Or, at least, he would have something comforting to say. A story that sounds like old words of wisdom, told a different way.

She wishes she could ask him.

“A word.”

She opens her eyes and turns her head. Fenris is standing off to her side, his arms crossed over his chest. Scowling slightly, but she thinks he always does that.

She raises a brow at him, tucking the coral back into her pocket and sheathing her knife. She gestures to the fence she’s sitting on, but he only approaches a few steps more, and does not sit down.

He seems to be studying her face.

“In his letter, Varric said you were a slave.”

A poor one, she thinks. And she had fought it and railed against it all the while—but he isn’t wrong. She was at the mercy of Felix and Dorian’s kindness long after they became her friends. So she nods, once, eyeing him warily.

He’s still looking at her very intently—his eyes narrow, and she thinks that he’s not finding what he’s looking for. So he holds out his arm, and rolls back his sleeve so she can see the markings there. White lines in his skin, raised slightly, that look almost like vallaslin. Maybe if they didn’t have that odd, almost-shining quality to them.

As she watches, they begin to glow. Blue, and pale, their light catching shadows across his face like reflections off the ocean’s surface.

“My master gave me these,” he says, “and I used them to kill him.”

She watches the pattern of light moving across his face as his markings fade, and he lowers his arm once again.

“If your master followed you here, under the guise of friend,” he says, “I can do the same for you.”

It honestly takes her a minute to realise what he’s saying—and he watches her very closely while she processes it, so he very likely sees the precise moment she realises it. She almost laughs, she’s so surprised—and more than a little touched, at the offer he’s making.

She shakes her head, unable to hide her smile.

Fenris frowns at her a little, shifting his weight. “It occurs to me that I should have brought Varric along,” he says.

She does laugh at that. Silently, a hand covering her mouth out of habit more than anything.

When she looks back at Fenris, he is smiling too. “Hawke wants a drink before we leave,” he says. “You are welcome to join us—she wants to know why Varric is so fond of you.”

She nods to Fenris, and then gestures until he seems to gather that she’ll join him in a moment. She does not follow immediately. Instead, she looks back out to the bay—towards the old town before it, and birds flying through the open food gate in the distance.

She takes out the piece of black coral again, and studies it closely. There’s a bump on the bottom half—one irregularity on the otherwise smooth surface. She turns it over, looking at it from a different angle…

It looks a little like a dorsal fin. Like a halla, or a dolphin, or…

She uses her knife to score the coral, and then neatly break it in half.

It feels like an eternity since Aevalle last set foot in Seahold.

It’s only been two weeks. The longest she’s gone without walking the ramparts in the morning, or lounging on Solas’s couch in his study, or helping with the orphanage.

The change to the underground docks made in that time has been significant, however.

Lights have been brought down and placed throughout; powered by electricity, it seems, because she cannot make out even a trace of burning oil in the air. It is bright enough now that she can see the mosaics and murals clearly, though she can tell even at a glance that they have been damaged by time and the things that have lived down here, and she has to struggle to make out most of the shapes. As she climbs the stairs she thinks there are soldiers in gleaming armour lining the walls, or perhaps just people in beautiful scales, though she can’t tell which. She spies a figure slipping by in the background, and though she can make out a mouth full of sharp, sharp teeth, the figure is depicted in such a way that she’s not certain if it’s meant to be a shark or a wolf.

Both, probably.

Almost all of the lichen has been cleared out, she realises as she steps onto the cliffs above the docks and her feet touch only uneven, worn stone. She finds instead worktables, cables for the lights, piles of equipment and tools that she thinks are magical or alchemical, but she isn’t certain, and Cullen carrying an extremely heavy looking box while a dwarven woman directs him where to set it down.

“Oh,” she’s saying, “not there, there’s a drip coming from above and if the ceiling has any Stormheart in it, we might all explode and die.”

“Wouldn’t want that,” Cullen grumbles, his limbs shaking with the weight of the box. Then he spots Aevalle standing at the stairs, and he straightens a little. “Captain Lavellan,” he says, “you’ve returned.”

She tries not to make a face at the word Captain, but she’s not sure she succeeds.

“Good to see you’re well,” he continues, as he slowly toddles over to where the dwarf points next. “I trust your business in the Exalted Archipelago went smoothly?”

She can’t help but smile a little at the sight of him, essentially waddling because the box is so heavy. She nods, her hands behind her back, and manages to keep herself from laughing until his back is turned.

Behind her, the others are coming up the stairs. She hears Hawke whistle, high and long, and then the Champion of Kirkwall comes to stand beside her and sling an arm over her shoulders. “Damn,” she says, craning her neck to look up at the ceiling, which is still in shadow in spite of all the lights added on the ground. “I mean, I prefer things like windows and not underground, but for a place to park a boat it’s pretty nice.”

Cullen, half-bent over the box as he sets it on the ground, freezes in place.

“You dock a boat, Hawke,” Fenris corrects her, as Aevalle watches Cullen finish putting the box down, and then slowly stand up and turn around, “not park it.”

“Nuance. Oh, hey, look who it is. Cullen! Remember me?”

Cullen just stares at Hawke for a moment, looking more than a little shell-shocked. “Yes, Hawke,” he says, “I remember you.”

“Oh, the Knight-Captain,” Merrill says, coming to stand at Aevalle’s other side. “It’s been an awfully long time.”

“It’s Commander now,” he corrects, shifting his weight. “I’m no longer a Templar.”

“Oh, that explains why you look like you’ve seen sunshine in the past, like, year,” Hawke says.

Cullen only shakes his head at them before looking once more to Aevalle. “Captain,” he says, “this is Dagna. She’s an arcanist who’s volunteered her services—”

“Hello there!” the dwarf in question calls, immediately and eagerly approaching Aevalle, as if she has been holding back since the conversation began. “You’re her! The Captain! I’m Dagna, the—well, Commander Cullen just told you, I suppose. Is it here? Your ship, I mean. I heard about it in Val Royeaux and I just knew I had to come see it, but you’d already left by the time I got to the docks and—can I see it? The Commander told me you call it the Keeper, and someone else said that it speaks to you? Is it true? Am I rambling?”

“Yes,” Cole says, which makes Aevalle smile again. “But it doesn’t bother her.”

“You can go look for yourself,” Dorian says, drawing Dagna’s attention to him. “It’s not going anywhere. As for me, I am long overdue for a hot bath, and the most expensive bottle of wine I can find in this miserable pile of rocks. Are you coming?”

I have to report to Cassandra, she replies, watching as Bull leads the Mayor of Crestwood past them, his hands bound behind his back and his head sagging.

“Of course. You’ll know where to find me when you’re done,” he says, and saunters off towards the exit—which has had all the dirt cleared away, and a set of wooden stairs built up instead.

“If you’re to make your report,” Cullen says, “I last saw Cassandra in the training yard.”

Behind her, Varric coughs.

“I heard someone here wants to see our fancy boat,” he says, a little too loud, clasping his hands and rubbing them together. “I would love to show you every single thing I know about that boat. Right now.”

“Well hurry up then!” Dagna says, already barrelling right past him for the stairs.

Hawke briefly squeezes her arm around Aevalle’s neck before slipping away. “Well, I for one would kill for some fresh air. And sunshine.”

“You’re supposed to be in hiding, Hawke,” Fenris chides as he falls into step at her side.

“But it would be nice to hide somewhere sunny for a change,” Merrill pipes up, half a pace behind them.

All the way back by the stairs, Aevalle can finally hear Stroud’s voice drifting towards them. “I can’t believe this,” he is saying. “This is—truly—a hidden dock? Only accessible by a single vessel?”

Cullen looks to him, frowning—and then his eyebrows shoot up, and his hand goes to the place on his belt where his sword should be.

He glances once towards Aevalle, and she responds with the sign for friend. Hoping he understands that much, at least.

His shoulders relax a little. The next glance he sends Stroud’s way is assessing, but no longer alarmed. “Jim,” the Commander says, and the soldier next to him nearly drops the box to salute, before he remembers to put it down. “Have Cassandra, Leliana, and Josephine brought here immediately. I suspect we have much to discuss.”

Halfway through Aevalle giving her report, Dorian comes back down the stairs.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “this is—Aevalle, it’s…”

He’s holding a letter in his hand. Dorian’s standing next to one of the bright electric lights, and in its glow she can see the colour of the wax, and the shape of the seal.

House Alexius.

And just like that, she knows.

Dorian is taking her aside and he’s saying words, and telling her how and when, but she already knows. The Blight. Alone, without friends or family at his side.

Once they leave the undercroft, Dorian goes one way—to mourn as he knows best, and she won’t begrudge him for it. But she finds her steps leading her away from the tavern, this night. Down a path she and Solas once walked, down a long beach, to an empty stretch of shoreline where they had sat and she had confessed her failure.

I couldn’t protect them, she’d signed then.

Now, she stands, the waves lapping about her ankles, and she thinks, again, I could not protect him.

Is it irony, she wonders? Varric would know, if she asked him. That she was offered to Alexius as a cover to keep her close at hand until he could turn back time and fix their mistakes with their ritual. That, after failing so completely in keeping her clan safe, her next charge was a dead man?

And he saved her, in the end.

The months before finding Deshanna in that basement are a blur to her, still. A haze of pain and rage punctuated by single, bright moments of clarity. Of peace. Waking up, realising she had fallen asleep under a tree in the estate’s grounds—Felix reading, his back to the trunk. No beatings, when he discovered she’d woken. No anger. Only a smile as he looked up to find her glaring at him, marking his place in the book.

Sleep well?

A wave rushes past her, through her, up to her knees and she inhales with it. She’s crying, now—hot, angry tears spilling down her cheeks. As it recedes she can feel it pulling, hard, and she has to take a step forward to steady herself, so she doesn’t come crashing down into the undertow.

She digs her toes into the sand, and closes her eyes to steady herself. Even as the ocean pulls at that place inside her that always leaps to answer.

It’s not the first time she wonders what would happen, if she just let it pull her as far as it wants to take her. When she was with her clan still, she thought it would mean adventure—that the ocean pulled her to all the places it touched, the lands of the stories her father used to tell.

Now, she suspects that it would only drag her down to depths so deep, the pressure of the water would crush her bones.

As the tide rushes in, she stumbles up the shore, away from the water. Raking a hand through the mess of her wind-swept hair, she catches a glimmer of light on her wrist—and she glances over at it, frowning.

It’s the bracelet Solas bought for her. Moonlight catching in one of the blue, blue beads. The rope isn’t so stark white any longer—it’s been through everything she has since then. Through the flooded basement of Seahold, to fleeing a dragon in the storm-ravaged ocean, to battling a corrupted spirit in a circus tent as it collapsed around her.

The beads still shine, though. Clear, brilliant blue.

Find another clan, Deshanna had begged her. Protect them.

She closes her eyes, and just takes a moment to breathe.

She sits near the spot where Solas had held her, where she confessed her failures and he sang a eulogy for her clan in her stead. She reaches into her jacket and takes out the first piece of black coral, and her knife. There is more than enough moonlight for elven eyes to see, on a night like this, so she begins to carve. She works with the shape of the piece, making the body a little sleeker, carving out a long nose and making a hollow for horns off the back of its head. She carves into its body the whirls her mother used to etch into everything she crafted, as best as Aevalle can remember. As best she can imitate; she does not have her mother’s patience, nor her steady hand.

She has not carved like this in years. Not since she dragged her father’s body back to the clan, alone. It had been a smaller token—she’d nearly broken it in half a number of times. Cut her hands plenty, though she hadn’t felt it, numb with grief.

She finishes the halla before midnight, and she does not cut herself once. She holds it in her palm, and it seems… heavier, now that she is finished. Now that she looks down at it, at the moonlight in the lines she has carved, little flecks of coral dust lingering on the slope of its horns over its back.

It is too small, she thinks, for a whole clan and Felix Alexius. But there is not enough black coral in the world to contain her grief.

She washes the last dust from the carving in the ocean, lapping now at her toes. The tide will start to recede soon. She has no raft of driftwood to light aflame, no voice she can raise in mourning song, but she holds the carving in her hand and thinks, They were my clan. He was my friend.

Seawater drips from the little halla, and for now, that’s enough. So she tucks it into her pocket—and then, after a moment’s hesitation, takes the other half out.

She holds it up to the moon. Lets it illuminate the rough silhouette for a moment. She turns it over until the odd little bump is on the top, and tilts her head a little as she examines the natural curve of the coral. Almost twisting around her finger—a little like Wisdom had curled its great body in the air around her, as it sank slowly to the ground.

Her wrist is framed by the beads on her bracelet. The way they catch the moonlight, it almost looks like they’re glowing with a soft blue light.

She bends over, and begins carving black coral once again.

#black coral #solavellan #dragon age fanfiction #HEY TEAM #LOOK #IT'S AN UPDATE #:D

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its-an-isfp-yo · 7 years

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If anyone is having a hard time understanding ISFPs or the difference between ISFPs and INFPs, I thought this article was pretty good!

Pierce Presents: ISFP

By Michael Pierce

This stereotype implies that ISFP preferences make an individual fragile and sensitive, which is not necessarily the case. Furthermore, it implies that the ISFP is basically a simpler version of the INFP, which is like saying that the INTP is just an ISTP with more layers, rather than a very distinct personality with distinct advantages and disadvantages. The ISFP, like the ISTP, has an Se/Ni axis, which stands in direct contrast to the Ne/Si axis of the INFP.

As always, let’s break down what constitutes the ISFP functionally.

They are a Perceiving type, meaning that they prefer extroverted perceiving and introverted judging. This means that they base their judgment criteria on subjective, inner information, while simply observing and drinking in objective information and experiences. You could say that they are more receptive towards the outside world and more aggressive towards their inner experience.

Their preferred way of doing this is through extroverted sensation and introverted feeling. Extroverted sensation is photographic: It has the most direct relationship with objects of all the functions, giving them the clearest and most realistic perspective. Introverted feeling is individualistic: It has deep, personal passions and convictions that it holds to despite outside opposition, and it greatly values the right to individual freedom of expression and being true to oneself.

Third, ISFPs are very similar to the ESFP: Both prefer Se and Fi. The ISFP, however, prefers Fi more than Se. Nevertheless, they are in some sense the same type, or at least sister types. I personally like to call SFP types the “Aesthetes,” because they combine a sharp and vivid perception of the world with isolated and passionate subjective values, thus giving them a highly developed and individual appreciation for the aesthetic qualities of existence. Of course, “Aesthete” is simply a nickname to help me remember the SFP nature, and it is not meant to imply that all SFPs are natural artists or musicians, or even that they appreciate what you yourself may call art.

The ISFP, then, is an “aesthete” for whom their individual values and desires are more interesting and important than their objective observations. They are primarily concerned with developing, discovering and expressing their innermost feelings and values.

The word I like to use to describe the ISFP is “expression.” To explain this, I will need to describe the differences between the INFP’s Ne/Si axis and the ISFP’s Se/Ni axis: Ne looks at objects through a blurred lens for the purpose of imaginative association and pattern seeking. It doesn’t look at the object itself, but at what it could be or might be related to. In other words, Ne has an indirect relationship with objects. The opposite motion to this is Si, which has a direct relationship with impressions of objects, or the subject, giving it a strong and thorough subjective memory.

Conversely, the ISFP has a direct and clear relationship with objects, but in exchange has an indirect, associative, blurred relationship with their impressions of objects. Thus, while the INFP’s Fi dream world is clearer, more easily navigated, more tangible and solid to the touch, the ISFP’s Fi dream world is perceived through a blurred, imaginative lens, making it smoky, more intangible, and flighty; shrouded in mist, full of strange illusions and apparitions that appear for a moment and then turn back into smoke. The ISFP thus has an even more difficult time expressing the things they’ve seen in this realm than the INFP, and for this reason I use the word “expression,” because this is both the goal and potential talent of the ISFP; to creatively surmount this challenge and give real life and voice to their internal visions.

This is part of the reason why the ISFP is known for being quiet, because not only do they love to explore this dream world, but they have a difficult time describing their values and visions to other people. Words therefore become scarce, somewhat like the ISTP. The INFP is more often known for having an excellent way with words (though paradoxically, they may often experience their way with words as insufficient to describe the sentiments that they hold inside – ed.), and thus INFPs tend to have less of a problem using language to describe their ideas and develop meticulous and detailed descriptions of these realms where their values are exemplified. Once again, this is made possible because the INFP has a direct relationship with their inner world, so to express it purely is not as difficult. The ISFP, however, because of their indirect relationship with their inner world, must be similarly indirect when describing it. But describe it they must, for the whole purpose of Fi is to somehow exemplify and, as I said before, give life to their inner values, to more fully express them, and thus to become more like themselves, more authentically themselves without any external contaminants or concessions. They want to fully march to the beat of their own drum, so they must find a way to play the music and rhythm that they hear.

One way the ISFP very often does this is simply the way that they live. The INFP, too, along with expression through language, is interested in how to live in such a way as to express their values, but this is uniquely done by the ISFP, who seems to become the example of their own style, in their actions, in their clothes, in their interactions and even just the way they walk. There is a sense of unique but unobtrusive style to them.

This is another important aspect of Fi; it is not interested in changing things around it. It is focused on exemplifying its own values. What is outside of it (objective sentiments) are not its business and should not be its business. The ISFP and INFP do not want to interfere with anyone else’s expression of values; their only concern is how they themselves behave in response to them. But while INFPs have an easier time expressing their values with language, reasoning, or even stories, and therefore appear more like a champion of their values, louder and more outspoken, the ISFP finds language inadequate to express themselves, and thus appears much more unassuming in their expression, because they don’t directly express their values, but rather indirectly express them through their style of life, or their art, or other means. They seem like a leaf on the wind, a traveling minstrel or drifter of some sort, going very much their own way in life, preferring not to lead or command but simply to be themselves and go wherever they will, never imposing themselves on the world, but rather expressing themselves in ways that complement or properly adapt to their surroundings while still retaining their individuality.

To clarify, this adaptation is not an expression of Fe, but rather Se. The INFP has a more indirect relationship with the world, but the ISFP has a direct relationship, and therefore is more adept at complementing the objects around them. This is not to say that ISFPs are compromising their values to harmonize with those around them, but that they are expressing their values in such a way that they contribute to the direct aesthetic appeal of their surroundings, which is much less a concern or even talent for the INFP. As Hilary Clinton said about Jacqueline Onassis, “Unpretentious elegance characterized everything she did.”

Another example would be Thich Nhat Hanh, who said concerning the Vietnam war, “we young Buddhists … did not take a side even though the whole world took sides … we tried to tell people of our perception of the situation … We wanted to stop the fighting, but the bombs were so loud.” Thich Nhat Hanh attempted to express his concerns in a calm, unpretentious, unobtrusive manner, not because he was scared in the least, but because if people were unwilling to quiet down to listen to him, then it would be of no use to shout any louder to get them to hear.

Several more important characteristics of the ISFP can be found by comparing them with the ISTP: The primary difference between them is that while the ISTP primarily considers the world in terms of its cold properties, or rather, the properties of their impressions of the world, the ISFP primarily considers the world in terms of its value, or the value of the ISFP’s impressions of the world. Thus the ISTP forms a logical, systematic, level conception of reality, while the ISFP forms a valuated and therefore hierarchical conception of reality, with some things being simply better or more important than others, for instance, art, or styles of art, principles, people whom the ISFP enjoys specifically, and so on.

However, the ISTP and ISFP both share an Se/Ni axis, which has a direct relationship with objects and an indirect relationship with their subject, giving them a zeroed-in perspective and a very vivid, photographic and focused picture of reality, which is then examined through a blurry lens to see what other past impressions it can be associated with. This means they invest a lot of energy and thought into one area, which is usually whatever area provides the most output here and now.

So, while the INFP is more broad and multifaceted, the ISFP is zeroed-in and singular. The ISFP is particularly interested in the here and now, and whatever intuitive ideas and visions are obtained in the here and now. As such, the ISFP’s expression is in the here and now. For instance, Frank Ocean explained that his aim in songwriting was “to make something that represents where I am at that time” and “to make a photograph out of something you can never see.” Bob Dylan said concerning his songs: “I just write them. There isn’t any big message,” and Paul McCartney explained: “How I wrote depended on my mood.” The INFP tends to create an intentional continuity in their works and expression, because of Ne’s broader, more sweeping motion and Si’s memory and recording – for example, Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous authorship or J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth. However, the ISFP is not concerned with overarching continuity, but with intensity, with getting the most out of what is here right now. A compilation of an ISFP’s art would contain various disparate works that each represent very individual, immediate, unrelated feelings, meanings and ideas, but which have an overall style to them. Conversely, the INFP’s compilation would likely have more variation in style, but contain definite threads of meaning throughout the whole of them.

Furthermore, the ISFP often has trouble talking about their art or forms of expression, because the form of expression itself is the best expression they can make. As Frank Ocean said, “I’m trying to make a photograph out of something you can never see.” This is another aspect of the ISFP’s Ni. The ISFP talks through their art, and not about their art. Their art, as I’ve mentioned before, can be actual art, or even just the way they live or how they move their body, or even just their very presence in some cases. But the INFP is much more likely to talk about their art and explain the patterns behind it, because their focus is not the expression itself, or the art itself, but the overarching ideas behind the art. But for the ISFP, and often for Ni/Se types in general, the art is the overarching idea expressed in the best form the ISFP can manage. The INFP uses art to better communicate their ideas, but the ISFP speaks art as their first language. As David Gilmour said about Roger Walters, “I thought [his] songs were very wordy … the music [that he wrote] became a mere vehicle for lyrics, and not a very inspiring one.”

Finally, the ISFP, like the INFP, represses their Te function. One obvious effect of this is that the ISFP does not want to lead others or take control of things, but rather wants to leave their surroundings unaffected while they express their own values in such a way that it enhances the aesthetic around them. While this can be an advantage, one could easily argue that, for instance, Thich Nhat Hanh’s time would have been better spent actively doing something to stop the bombs, rather than just quietly protesting. This is similar to the INFP’s difficulty in going about clear, logical goals to accomplish their Fi desires.

Another effect is that the ISFP’s repression of Te also represses their inductive reasoning, meaning, as CelebrityTypes has put it, that “they sometimes fail to draw logical conclusions about their situation and act on them.”

So, in summary, the ISFP is occupied with self-expression of their Fi values, something made difficult by their indirect perception of their own subject through Ni, but overcome through creative outlets, from art to body language to simply how they live. Their Fi discourages them from trying to change or affect their surroundings, and their Se helps them express themselves with an unassuming, complementary elegance. However, they repress Te, which can make it difficult for them to form and accomplish specific goals, and can cloud their inductive reasoning.

Thanks for reading, and for all the ISFPs out there, thank you for the beauty you bring into the world through your devoted self-expression.

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