#is the true heir of these lyrics

[forbidden-sunlight]

yandere!holy knight with saintess!reader scenario [part one]

Warnings: obsessive behavior, religious themes, implied manipulation, brief mention of suicidal thoughts/ideation.

There may be possible triggers in this story.

If you do not feel comfortable venturing any further, please hit the 'back' button on your mobile device or computer and read something much more pleasant than a possible series of unfortunate events.

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MINORS DO NOT INTERACT!

Hey guys, before we get started, I’d like to address a couple of things.

First, the content here is a bit darker than my previous works, as stated in the warnings above. If you or someone you know is struggling, you aren’t alone. There are many support services that are here to help. I will leave a link to some of these sources in this link here. Tumblr also has their messaging system, Kokobot. I want you guys, my audience to feel safe when reading my stories. If you do not feel comfortable venturing any further, that’s okay. Please prioritize your physical and mental health, above all else.

Second, bullying is not tolerated. If I see any sign of it on here, I will have no choice but to take this story down. Finally, there will be some references in here from The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir, such as Harrowhark and Palamedes. I claim no ownership over this magnificent series as it belongs to the rightful creator.

With that being said guys, sit back, relax....and perhaps begin to pray for salvation. Because this is past the point of no return :)

Part Two

Part Three

Yandere!Holy Knight had always believed he was meant to serve a greater purpose. Not to accumulate wealth and power like his older brother, only to abuse his authority and hurt people who did not deserve a whipping for a cup of tea that was two degrees too cold to his liking. No. He wanted to help others in his own way, without expecting anything in return. Perhaps…that was why it had been so easy to leave his family and find his place here in the Holy Temple of Aesir. Or it was because he is the second son, the spare heir to the Emery viscounty, that his parents allowed him to leave without so much as a second thought. 

He had given up his name when he was baptized by the high priest, and was reborn as Sir Palamedes. Five years have passed, and he has ascended to becoming the vice commander of the Holy Temple’s paladins.He must protect the Holy Temple, its clergy, and the people of the Helux Empire. This is the oath he took, and is proud to uphold. Yandere!Holy Knight, however, wished the Reverend Sister would take better care of herself. 

The Reverend Sister is a title given to the child chosen by Aesir to deliver His message and protect His children from the wicked monsters who come forth from the swirling, black puddles of miasma. Only the Reverend Sister’s magic can purify the darkness of such an ancient evil. In his mind, there is no one more fitting to being the Reverend Sister than you. Harrowhark. 

God’s Beloved. 

The Possessor of Aesir’ All Seeing Eyes. 

The Holiest Woman in the World.

There are many monikers tied to you. All of them are true, and all of the rumors couldn’t be further from the truth when the bards sang songs of your innocence, your enchanting beauty and ‘swan like neck’. If you had ever heard these lyrics, you would promptly take off your shoe and throw it at them with a low, irritated hiss before stomping away in a huff. 

 Yandere!Holy Knight would probably try very hard to not laugh at seeing, or at least imagining, your annoyance. 

Yes, you were the Reverend Sister  but you were not a naive beauty as everyone believed you to be. You were grumpy, diligent, kind-hearted, and knew the world can be a dark, cruel place. 

The Holy Temple of Aesir had saved you in your darkest hour; instead of throwing yourself into the cold, murky river as a means to escape from the wretched place you had come from, a low-ranking priest had found you. He took you in, taught you everything there is to know about prayer, penitence, and how to embrace the worst part of yourself  even when you wanted to so badly rip it out because it is still part of you. What you had experienced, the hardships, the sorrows…that is life. And to understand that no mortal is perfect, to accept it and use the gifts Aesir had bestowed upon you to help others…that is when you will truly see how beautiful the world is through His Eyes. 

His Eyes that you now possessed. 

No one had dared to look upon them in fear of incurring Aesir’s wrath…yet Yandere!Holy Knight did when he was in the Holy Temple’s care for a year before you arrived, a young man at the age of fifteen. He saw them and thought they looked like a pair of jewels. Sapphires that glowed brightly under the sunlight, and could see everything. Past, present, and future for a brief time. Due to the physical and mental strain that these Eyes have placed on your body even when it was to create illusions or obscure the sight of magical beasts, you weren’t allowed to overuse them. That was why the High Priest insisted that you wore a veil over your face.

You opted to have the seamstress to make adjustments to your mother-of-pearl robes and add a hood to hide yourself from the world. You might have also bribed her to create a matching cloth to wear over your eyes, enchanted so that you could see through it without putting further strain on your vision. 

Rebellious. But you were perfect in Yandere!Holy Knight’s eyes. A Reverend Sister who cared for the congregation, the people, and his men far more than she lets others believe. 

He thought this peaceful life would continue as it had for the last ten years. To watch you from afar and know that you were safe so long as he still held a sword in his hands. But nothing lasts forever. 

One day, the High Priest had cloistered the clergy in the temple’s pews and announced that Aesir had shown him in a vision that the Reverend Sister who had been with them for these past ten years was not the true child of the Creator. It is in fact the young lady standing at his side. A dainty, beautiful lady with pale blue hair that fell past her back, gentle robin’s egg eyes darting from the carpeted floor to the clergy and then to the High Priest. She wore a  strapless white dress with matching gloves that stretched all the way to her elbows. Pear-shaped dangled from her ears, and black lace with a single blue rose attached to the side coiled around her swanlike throat.This stranger, this…noblewoman, is all but ready to accept her duties. From this moment forward, she would be known as Esther. 

“Let it be known, Brothers and Sisters, that the one known as Harrowhark shall be sent into exile for her sins against Aesir. That is the will of the Creator, so let it be so.” 

Yandere!Holy Knight’s heart plummeted into the pit of his stomach at the High Priest’s words. What? He thought. This cannot be true! You are the Reverend Sister, you are God’s Beloved! Why would this man (this fool a nasty voice in the back of his mind growled) deny it now? Ten years. For ten long years, you have been a faithful bride of the Holy Temple. Now, after everything you have down, the recklessness in trying to sacrifice your life for his men on missions, reaching out to the people and listening to them confess their sins in the prayer box because you did not wish to see them suffer and try to offer guidance without overstepping your boundaries….you would just be cast aside as if you were nothing to them? To the Holy Temple, to him?

No. Yandere!Holy Knight cannot and will not accept it. He knows the High Priest. He knows this man would never dare to do something so stupid lest he will incite the anger of the clergy, the people, and the Emperor himself, who is a religious man and knows the Reverend Sister. 

Something is not right. 

He was not the only one who believed it. You did too. You had told him as much later that night, when you found him at the training grounds, trying to relieve his anger by practicing his swings with his two-handed longsword. You were still here. You hadn’t left like the High Priest had ordered you to do so. Thank Aesir. 

If he were a lesser man, he would have scooped you up in his arms and laughed joyously, waking up everyone else in the barracks and gotten smacked across the face for pushing past your five-foot rule. But he didn’t.

You had not been blessed with His Eyes just to pretend that you will unconditionally obey the High Priest’s request to leave and be branded a heretic, a false Reverend Sister, for the rest of your life. No. The woman who will be baptized as Reverend Sister Esther and become God’s Beloved is not who the High Priest believes she is, regardless that this chain of events are happening because of a vision. 

All the sacred texts in the library, all the prayers you have had to learn by heart, not a single one of them contained the words Affection Level. It did not explain why those floated over this stranger’s head, why its dark-pink smoke was encircling the High Priest, a man who possessed just as much holy magic as you did, if not more due to age and experience. You had strained your sight,  vision becoming blurry just to see what was the thing under Affection Level. It was…a bar with lines? Measured in tenth percentiles, from ten to one hundred? What is this sorcery? It isn’t anything you have ever seen before, not even when you have visited monasteries across the Empire for yearly sabbaticals. How did this woman attain it? 

This magic did not possess the gentle warmth of Aesir’s touch, his love towards all creation without expecting anything in return. 

Take. Take. Take. Conquer. Move on. Take. 

That was what you could feel, and you had no doubt in your mind at that very moment, the High Priest’s words going from one ear and out the other. There is an evil presence in the Holy Temple of Aesir. This woman, Esther, is a harbinger. An anchor. She was tied to this evil and she was reveling in it as if she had finally, finally gotten what she desired without lifting a finger. And that terrified you more than anything, the possibility that this sorcery can brainwash the entire congregation and no one would be the wiser. 

Shit. What the fuck is going on? Forgive me, Aesir, for saying such vulgar words in your sacred House, but what the ever-living fuck is going on?

If the sight of seeing this Affection Level  and its abilities did not rattle your bones, it was seeing two tiny names hidden right under the meter. The High Priest…and Sir Palamedes. And inside tiny square boxes right, no, on the left side of their names were the words capture target. 

Yandere!Holy Knight stared at you in disbelief, your confession of what you had seen earlier this afternoon ringing in his ears. “You believe that this woman will bring harm to the Holy Temple, Sister Harrowhark?” He said. “If that is true, then why would the High Priest risk the safety of the congregation? Is it because of the influence of this…Affection Level? And why is my name there?” He was aghast. “How could anyone think of conquering someone if they do not consent to it or do not desire such a thing?”

Like the Brothers and Sisters of the Holy Temple, he had taken a vow of chastity alongside the oaths to protect them and the countrymen. Only clergymen or paladins who were high-ranking would be allowed to marry so long as the union was approved by both the High Priest and the Emperor. 

You blinked at him, jeweled eyes glowing in sympathy as you slowly shook your head. “I do not know, truly. But if Reverend Sister Esther is coming after you, then you must put your safety and well-being above all else. Even my own.” You put your gloved hands in your mother-of-pearls robes, digging around in the pockets before you pulled out a drop-shaped peridot on a silver chain. You placed it in his open palm, and pushed his fingers forward to clench the hand into a loose fist. 

Murky, violet orbs looked at you in confusion, astonishment, and fear. “Lady Harrowhark?” He whispered. 

“Keep this on you, Sir Palamedes. The holy magic stored in here should be able to protect you from whatever this evil is, or at least I hope so. I was able to persuade the High Priest to postpone the announcement of Reverend Sister Esther’s baptism and my exile until after the Festival of the Stars. That will give us one week, while the others are celebrating Aesir’s creation of the world, to find everything we need to know about the Affection Level and how to remove it from Sister Esther before it can corrupt anyone else in the congregation.” You then stepped away from him, turning your back towards Yandere!Holy Knight and throwing the hood of your robe over your head.

 “Recite your prayers, steady your hand, and for Aesir’s sake keep your distance from that woman.”

Then you left the training grounds, disappearing into the night and back towards the Sisters’ sleeping quarters, leaving Yandere! Holy Knight alone in his troubled thoughts. He knelt at his bedside that night, clutching the talisman you had given in his clasped hands as he dutifully murmured the prayers of Fidelity, Honor, and Strength. To protect him from evil’s temptation. 

May Aesir grant him the strength to remain pure of heart and mind before he succumbs to his unholy feelings towards the Reverend Sister Harrowhark, God’s Beloved and the woman he should not have fallen in love with.

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©️do not repost or use any of the characters depicted here without the author’s permission. forbidden-sunlight, 2024

#forbidden-sunlight #yandere x reader #yandere male #yandere manhwa x reader #yandere #ns.fw #yandere oc #yandere!holy knight #tw obsession #tw sui ideation #tw sui attempt #fem!reader #tw manipulation #cw manipulation #cw sui ideation #cw sui attempt #minors do not interact #mdni

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Now I’m Covered In You [Chapter 3: Blood Moon]

Series summary: Aemond is a prince of England. You are married to his brother. The Wars of the Roses are about to begin, and you have failed to fulfill your one crucial responsibility: to give the Greens a line of legitimate heirs. Will you survive the demands of your family back in Navarre, the schemes of the Duke of Hightower, the scandals of your dissolute husband, the growing animosity of Daemon Targaryen…and your own realization of a forbidden love?

Series title is a lyric from: Ivy by Taylor Swift.

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+), dubious consent, miscarriage, pregnancy, childbirth, violence, warfare, murder, alcoholism, sexism, infidelity, illness, death, only vaguely historically accurate, lots of horses!

Word count: 6.2k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Taglist: @borikenlove @myspotofcraziness @ipostwhatifeel @teenagecriminalmastermind @quartzs-posts @tclegane @poohxlove @narwhal-swimmingintheocean @chainsawsangel @itsabby15 @serrhaewin @padfooteyes @arcielee @travelingmypassion @what-is-originality @burningcoffeetimetravel @blackdreamspeaks @anditsmywholeheart @aemcndtargaryen @jvpit3rs @sarcastic-halfling-princess @flowerpotmage @ladylannisterxo @thelittleswanao3 @elsolario @tinykryptonitewerewolf @girlwith-thepearlearring​ @minttea07 @trifoliumviridi @deltamoon666 @mariahossain​

Let me know if you’d like to be added! 💜

“I wish you could join us,” Nico says, almost sulks, snow catching in her hair. She’s riding a gorgeous white mare that the Duke of Hightower purchased for her. He’s in no hurry to gift you a horse. King Viserys—epochs ago, on your wedding day, on the blood-orange July afternoon when you looked into Aegon’s glassy, shadow-ringed eyes and knew exactly what sorts of demons you’d be sharing your life with—once promised you an Andalucian for each child you gave your husband. He hasn’t mentioned it since. It’s slipped his mind, most likely; that’s what happens to the king’s notions that concern the Greens. They stumble around in his skull for a while, find a window, jump from the ledge and free-fall into oblivion.

You smile up at Nico with your feet planted firmly on the ground like fertile roots and a hand resting on your belly. Five months along, over halfway there, farther than you’ve ever been before. The season is winter, but you feel like spring. You feel like blossoms unfurling, like ivy scaling walls of frozen stone. “Next year, with any luck.”

“But what if I’m with child by then?”

“Then you’ll get to return the favor and gallantly wave me off as I gallop into the distance, a vision of Boudicca herself.”

“Didn’t that story end with mass murder and suicide?”

“Nico, not everything needs to be said out loud.”

She laughs, raucous and jarring. Horses’ ears go back; crows take flight from stripped trees. It’s Christmas, and that means it’s also boar hunting season. The feast tonight will require a boar’s head to be served—a tradition that dates back to ancient Norse pagans, to faiths of earth and thunder and sea—and the court has assembled to procure one, the men armed with spears, the women riding along to cheer them on, hounds braying and circling agitatedly, servants sprinting around with jugs of wine. “Alas,” Nico says. “I cannot help it. I am Italian.”

Then she reels her mare around and trots off to join the hunting party. Once not so long ago, you had no true friends here. Now you have at least one. Two, if you count Aemond…although you can’t decide if Aemond is a friend. Sometimes he feels like less, other times much more. He grows close and then is far away again, a tide that’s always a few hours from receding. You watch Nico depart with hardly any heartache. Your relative incapacitation will be finished soon enough, your position vindicated. The clock is ticking.

Daeron compliments you as he canters by on Tessarion, heavy hooves leaving impact craters in the snow: “Princess, that’s a lovely gown.” Lavender, purple, the color of royalty, a declaration of your own worth. That’s not something you can rely upon others giving you. You’re between worlds at the moment: neither fully Navarran nor English, not an outsider nor a future queen.

“Thank you, brother. Good luck!”

Daemon reins up beside you, peering down with glittering dark eyes. When anyone ventures too close to Caraxes—whether horse or human—he snaps at them like a wolf. Surely there is no beast better suited to its master. “I think you’d look better covered in red. Isn’t that the color of your people, Navarre?”

“Prince Daemon,” you purr, one hand still on your belly, your victory in progress. “Enjoy the hunt. I know you get restless when you haven’t murdered anything in a while.”

He should quip back, but he doesn’t. He just grins, his gaze locked on yours; and his grin stretches wider until it sends a bolt down your spine like cold lightning. You have the sudden, dreadful impression that there’s a joke you aren’t in on. “You have no idea.”

Caraxes squeals and jerks back his head as Vhagar shoves between you, massive withers and haunches making space where none existed before. Caraxes nips Vhagar’s shoulder, drawing blood; Vhagar snorts in reply, a low rumble like a storm. Caraxes retreats, ears flattened, but Daemon pitches you one last crooked smirk as he leaves, a threat, an oath.

“Perhaps we should serve Daemon’s head at dinner,” Aemond says.

“He certainly looks like a pig to me.”

“You aren’t too disappointed, I hope. To have to stay behind.”

You smile, petting Vhagar’s silky muzzle. She has a white blaze down the front of her face, white stockings like patches of snow on rich spring soil. “It’s temporary.” What was Aemond like on my wedding day? You try to remember. All you can conjure is a vision of him staring at the floor as you linked your trembling hands with Aegon’s and the priest spoke, as if the match was so ill-fated he could not bear to witness it. It took you a year to learn that he didn’t disapprove of you after all. Something else weighed on him that day, something else dragged down his eyes like an anchor moors a ship.

Aegon passes you both on Sunfyre. “I’ll bring you back something, wife!” he vows, swaying drunkenly in the saddle, his chaotic silver hair shagging in his eyes. Fortunately, Sunfyre seems aware of his rider’s limitations; his steps are lithe and cautious, almost timid. His coat is a river of gold beneath grey skies. When Aegon urges the horse to go faster, Sunfyre ignores him.

You turn back to Aemond and raise an eyebrow. “Make sure he doesn’t break his neck?”

“As always.” And then Aemond is gone too.

The king will not join the hunt. He is getting too old for it—although no one would say that aloud—and Queen Alicent, ever-sacrificial, is staying behind in the palace with him, overseeing preparations for the feast. The other royals vanish into the forest: Daeron and Nico, Aemond and Aegon, Daemon and Baela and Rhaena, Jace and Luke, trailed by the rest of the cast of characters, Blacks and Greens alike. Joanna Montford was replaced by Agnes Stafford, who was replaced by Sibylla Beaufort, who was replaced by Cecily Chaucer. There is no shortage of young women whose fathers are rabid to push them into the bed of the man they call the heir to the throne. A servant brings you a cup of apple cider, and you sip it as snowflakes melt into the fur of your coat.

“It’s not personal,” Rhaenyra says. You whirl to see her and Syrax; they have appeared like ghosts, both pale and ethereal, both fearsome without being malevolent. “Prince Daemon’s taunts, I mean. Any of our antagonism. Distrust that swells into hated.” Her hair is long, loose, strands of ivory in the wind. Her eyes—clear water, cool and stoic—flick down to your belly and then back up to your face. She’s a lot like Aemond, you think, seeing the extent of their resemblance for the first time.

“It feels very personal.”

“I could have liked you in a different life,” Rhaenyra counters, like parrying swords. “You have just enough ruthlessness in you. A river, but not a sea. You thirst for freedom. You wear chains called obligation. But when my father named me heir, he painted a target on my back. Even if I renounced my claim, there would always be men willing to take up arms for me. I would always be a threat to Alicent and her children. Just by breathing, just by having blood hot in my veins. Either I will be queen…or I will forever be at the mercy of the Greens. Would you trust your life to the Duke of Hightower, if you were standing between Aegon and the throne?”

“No,” you admit. You can barely bring yourself to trust the Duke now…and you’re on his side.

“And so we are destined to be mortal enemies.” Rhaenyra shrugs; no great loss, she means. “I only wanted you to know that it would have been just the same if you had been sent to England from Portugal, or Sicily, or Castile, or Bohemia, or Genoa, or Naples, or France, or anywhere else for that matter. It’s not about who you are. It’s about what you’ve married into.”

And then she takes off on Syrax, joining her uncle-husband and her eldest sons in the forest, dissolving into a gnarl of branches like tangled threads. You retreat back inside Westminster Palace to do what you do best: watching, wondering, waiting for the future to decide to arrive.

~~~~~~~~~~

When the hunting party returns hours later, Prince Aegon is empty-handed. He’s also soaked to the skin. Water drips from his face, begins to freeze in his hair. He shivers and gripes as servants throw blankets over his shoulders and usher him away towards his bedchamber to be warmed in a bath cloudy with herbs and steam and rose petals. Cecily Chaucer hurries after them, her lovely brows knitted together with girlish concern. Of all Aegon’s mistresses, you like Cecily the best. She’s insatiable; she keeps him so busy that he rarely totters into your bed to paw at you before being reminded that you have been temporarily exempted from your marital duties.

“He fell into a stream,” Nico informs you, in equal parts disapproving and amused. “Aemond and Daeron fished him out like a trout.”

Your eyes scan the group: shaking snow from their hats and their coats, congratulating each other on obstacles jumped and animals killed, Prince Daemon accepting applause from his fellow Blacks for being the attendee to slaughter the requisite boar. A good omen for their side, surely. Servants carry the gigantic, bloodied carcass off to be prepared by the cooks. But one face is missing from the crowd. “Where’s Aemond?”

“Oh,” Nico recalls as she yanks off her gloves by the fingers. “He has something for you.”

“For me?”

“In the courtyard,” she says. Daeron approaches to collect her, taking her hand and kissing the back of it, his large blue eyes bright and adoring. He’s gentler than his brothers, more content, less complicated. And he’s proud of being a Targaryen. He’s growing out his white-blond hair; it’s already longer than Aegon’s. “I think you’ll find it…” Nico grins mischievously. “Perfectly bearable.”

You trudge out to the courtyard through the mounting snow, cold wind tearing at your hair and clawing pieces of it out from under your hat. Aemond is the only other person there…and he’s elbow-deep in a colossal black-furred monster. There is a pile of entrails on the snow beside him glistening like rubies, garnets, rosalines, wine. Servants ferry away bowls full of offal: a lung here, a rope of intestines there.

“What is that?”

Aemond stands and waves at it cavalierly, drops of blood flinging from his leather gloves. “A bear.”

“What am I supposed to do with a bear?”

“It’ll make a fine rug for your bedchamber. You can place it by the fireplace and lie on it on cold nights. Read your books, do your embroidery.”

“It was bold of you to assume you’d be able to find me a Christmas present on Christmas day. Not much room for error.”

“This isn’t your Christmas present.”

“Then what’s the occasion?”

“Congratulations.” He glances at your belly, rounded out like ripening fruit with his brother’s child. A stain of blood like fever rushes into his cheeks. He blushes very rarely, and only ever around you. No one else seems to know that he’s capable of it. “For being over halfway there. It must bring you great relief.”

“Yes, I suppose the Duke of Hightower won’t get to ship me back to Navarre now. In a crate, like an animal that couldn’t be tamed.”

“What a waste that would be.”

You shrug, stepping closer, though mindful not to squash any bear organs beneath your shoes. “I wouldn’t mind being sent home if there was anything for me to go back to.”

Aemond stares at you, alarmed. “You haven’t grown attached to anything here? In nearly a year and a half?”

“Well…there are a few things,” you say, smiling at him. Aemond smiles back. His long silvery hair is secured in a single thick braid, his gaze curious. You try not to imagine what is under his eyepatch; that strikes you as something he wouldn’t want you to think about.

“Vhagar,” Aemond teases.

You laugh. “Yes, mostly Vhagar.” You look up at the grey sky, thick with clouds like steel. “But I miss my family. I miss the heat, the mountains, castles and cathedrals the color of golden sand. I miss riding horses and sparring with my brothers. I miss being understood, being loved. In Navarre I was alive. But in England…ever since I arrived here…it’s like I’m locked up waiting for someone to let me out. But the prison is my own flesh.”

Aemond studies you. “It’s not for much longer,” he says at last, soft and solemn. “And I would change it if I could.”

“In any case, I really can’t go back, I think. It wouldn’t be like it was before. My siblings are marrying and spreading out across Europe. My parents are getting older. And if my husband discarded me for being incapable of producing children, no one else would ever want me. I’d never have my own household. I’d be doomed to be a spinster, forever dependent upon the charity of my parents or my siblings. Either that or in a nunnery. Although, truthfully, Navarre has some beautiful nunneries.”

“You’d make a terrible nun.”

“Because I’m too vicious or too lustful?”

“Vicious, without a doubt. Lustful…I don’t feel qualified to speak on.”

“Depends on who’s in front of me, I suppose.”

You contemplate each other across the gutted bear carcass, snowflakes filling up the space between you instead of words. Again, Aemond’s cheeks flood red. When he wrings his hands together, you notice that they’re shaking. His hair is sopping; beads of melted snow pool along the edge of his jaw, slither down his throat. He could catch his death out here.

You go to him, pull off a glove, and press your bare palm against his forehead and then his cheek: the scarred one, the ruined one. “You’re burning up, Aemond,” you say, worried. “Are you alright—?”

“Fine.” He shies away from your touch. But then, without thinking, he moves to tuck an escaped lock of hair back underneath your hat. As his thumb grazes your face, you feel the warm stripe of bear blood that he inadvertently marks you with. “Goddamn, I’m so sorry—”

“No, that’s perfect.” You smile up at him. “You know I secretly favor red.”

“Princess?” Nico calls from the doorway, and you cross the courtyard to meet her. “You’re still out here? You’re missing a riveting game of Tric-Trac—” She cuts off, her eyes going wide as they skate across your cheeks. “Sweet Jesus, how’d you get blood all over your face?”

You glimpse back at Aemond as you answer. “Carelessness.”

~~~~~~~~~~

You’re weaving ribbons the color of evergreens into Nico’s hair when he comes into your bedchamber, carrying a long thin box made of pink ivory wood.

“Oh, marvelous!” Nico trills, clapping her hands. “What’s inside?”

“Poems, I hope,” you say.

“I hate to disappoint you,” Aemond replies placidly. Half of his hair is pulled back from his face, the rest flowing freely. He’s wearing a dark, rich, jade-like color, just like Nico is, just like the Duke of Hightower and Alicent and Daeron will be. Someone has probably even stuffed Aegon into something green. You are the lone nonconformist in a deep purple like the skin of a plum. In truth, you can’t win. People will gossip no matter what you wear. Red makes them think of what Daemon calls you, of the wasted blood you’ve spilled. Green makes them speak of how you’ve yet to serve their faction properly. Black is out of the question. At least when they see you in purple, your name gets to live in the same sentence as the word royalty.

“Well?” Nico prompts eagerly. “Open it!”

You look at her, apologetic. So does Aemond.

“Oh,” she realizes, then sighs theatrically. “Alright. I understand. I’ll deport myself now. Ciao.”

Only when she’s closed the door behind her does Aemond open the box. The lining inside is crimson velvet. It cradles a sword. You gasp and lift the weapon out of the box by its hilt, then pull off the scabbard. It is lightweight, silvery, perfect. You can see your own reflection in the polished steel. There are shallow engravings down the length of the blade: mountain ranges, twisted oak trees, bridges and cathedrals, the flag of Navarre. You can only see them when you tilt the sword to catch the rage-orange glow from the fireplace.

“I had it custom made for you,” Aemond says, abruptly nervous. “So it wouldn’t be too heavy or too long. The hilt should fit your grasp precisely. I took one of your gloves for measurements.”

“A thief.” You marvel at the sword, twirling it a few times. The blade cuts through the air, soundless, seamless. “Aemond, this is…this is so far beyond what I deserve. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

“It’s part pleasure, part necessity. You might actually need to protect yourself one day.”

“It’s a shame I’ll only be able to bully you with it under the surreptitious cover of darkness.”

“Just until Aegon is king. He wouldn’t care, I don’t think. He wouldn’t forbid you from training.” He gestures to the blade. “And the engravings are—”

“All things from home.” You beam at him. “From Navarre.”

“That’s what the common people call you, you know. The Princess from Navarre.”

You glide the sword back into its scabbard and return it to the box. “They must hate me. For failing to secure the succession.”

“I wouldn’t assume that.”

You take the pink ivory wood box from Aemond’s hands and place it in the chest at the foot of your bed, your preferred spot for squirreling away valuables. And then you lift out Aemond’s present: a vast tapestry that he helps you unfold to reveal the design of.

“It’s incredible!” he exclaims. “It must have taken you ages!”

“Well, all I’m allowed to do currently is needlework, so I’ve done a lot of needlework. I made one for Aegon too, although I’m not sure what his hobbies are besides drinking and fucking Cecily Chaucer. So his tapestry is mostly landscapes.” You point to various scenes on Aemond’s. “There’s King Arthur and Guinevere…and Sir Lancelot, arriving to ruin them. There’s Beowulf battling Grendel’s mother. There’s Robin Hood…there’s the Rollright Stones and Stonehenge…and in the middle is Saint George slaying a dragon. I made the dragon black, with little white whiskers if you look very closely. And I’ve named him Daemon.”

“They’re from the stories I told you,” Aemond says quietly, examining the tapestry. “On that afternoon back in July. When we took Vhagar out together for the first time.”

“It must have been memorable.” You smile. “And then the border is ivy and roses, mostly green, of course…except for one little red rose I added down here in the bottom corner. And that’s—”

“That’s you,” Aemond says. “Red like Navarre.”

“Yes.” Your voice is suddenly wistful, a little sad. “You’ve made me like the sound of that word again.”

“What? Navarre?”

You nod. “Hushed, gentle…” Reverent? Awed? Protected? Cherished? “Like a prayer. Like a poem.”

You help Aemond refold the tapestry, avoiding his eye. The only sounds are the crackling of the fireplace and the muffled echo of violins and lutes through the palace halls. Outside the window hovers a blood moon, a ruby in onyx, a drop of fury in an ocean of void. He takes his Christmas gift back to his own bedchamber, and then he returns to escort you to the feast.

“Oh, darling,” Alicent says when you sit down beside her at the high table. There are sprigs of holly in her hair, but her dark eyes are glazed and melancholy. They often are. Sir Criston Cole—a knight whose family are vassals of the Duke of Hightower—is her shadow, peering watchfully around the Great Hall. “Be sure to eat plenty of boar…and bread…very good for the baby. But no fish! And not too many vegetables. Here, let me get you some of your apple cider…” Alicent waves to a servant, and they promptly fetch you a full cup.

King Viserys gives you a distracted nod but no other acknowledgement. He is deep in conversation with Jace; Luke is gawping, mildly disturbed, at the severed boar’s head that adorns the table, cherries shoved into the sockets where its eyes were this morning. Rhaena offers you a kind, demure smile. Baela glares at you as she sips her wine. She’s the most war-worthy of any of the Black children; you imagine that Daemon will have a sword and armor waiting for her when the bloodbath begins. Surely she’d inflict more damage than either of Rhaenyra’s docile, dark-haired sons, like skittish lapdogs always looking around for someone to tell them where it’s alright to sit. Baela’s Arabian, Moondancer, is small but remarkably swift and agile. She’s the best jumper of any of the royal horses.

Far from the table, in the midst of dancing nobles, Daemon and Rhaenyra are enmeshed in whispers and caresses: he tilts up her chin, she grasps the small of his back. You feel a yearning, a hollowness beneath where your ribs circle your heart and lungs like a halo. Without thinking, you glance to Aemond. He’s been looking at you too; he pretends he wasn’t and begins sawing through a slab of boar meat with a serrated knife. Daeron is asking him about sparring techniques. The Duke of Hightower is parading Aegon around the hall to pay his respects to the nobility of Southern England, men who will kill and be killed for him one day before too long. Aegon is bleary-eyed and bungling, tripping over his own feet; the Duke is practically dragging him around from his scruff like a kitten.

“Sweetheart, will you dance with me?” Queen Alicent asks Nico, who immediately leaps up from her chair.

“Of course, Your Majesty! It would be my pleasure. It’s a shame that the king cannot join us. It must be difficult having a husband so much older than you are. Nearly your father’s age!”

Everyone at the table stops what they’re doing and gapes at her.

“Oh,” Nico begins haltingly, mortified. “Oh dear. I should not have said that. I cannot express the depths of my remorse.”

King Viserys booms out a laugh, and then Nico is smiling again. “Go on,” he tells her. “Enjoy the festivities. Keep the queen entertained when I cannot.”

As Nico and Queen Alicent descend to join the dance, you remain where you are, where you always are: on the outskirts, inside the glass bowl. But not for much longer, you think gratefully, running your palm over the swell of your belly. You eat as much as you can, but you don’t have much of an appetite. Your hips and ankles ache, your body forever adjusting to a never-before-known burden; there is torsion like a sailor’s knot in your lower spine. When the discomfort refuses to abate, you excuse yourself from the table and make slow, meandering laps around the fringes of the Great Hall, draining cup after cup of apple cider as servants bring them to you. The Duke of Hightower casts you a stern warning of a frown before he resumes wrangling Aegon. Aemond, still at the high table talking to Daeron, follows you with one intent blue eye.

“You can’t honestly believe he’d make a good king,” Daemon says, materializing out of the crowd like a bat at twilight. Enormous Scottish deerhounds—Christmas gifts from King Corlys and Queen Rhaenys beyond England’s northern border—trail after him, growling at you. Daemon flicks his strange, deep-set eyes towards Aegon. “He’s a drunk. He’s an embarrassment. He has no athletic prowess whatsoever. I’m sure you can confirm that from firsthand experience.”

“I can confirm that he hasn’t murdered his first wife yet, surely an attribute by anyone’s calculation.” You watch the Duke tow Aegon from one exchange to another, and for the first time, you wonder what sort of man Aegon would have been without the weight of the throne on his back.

“But of course, it wouldn’t actually be Aegon ruling if the Greens won. It would be Otto…and Alicent…and Aemond.”

Daemon puts great emphasis on this last name. You turn to him, startled.

“Oh, forgive me, have I said something that gets under your skin? Or…rather…into it?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Daemon grins, baring his teeth like fangs. “Of course you don’t,” he says. “Tell me, would you happen to know who Otto is planning on marrying him to? I’ve heard rumblings.”

“Someone with parents who have ample soldiers and equipment with which to mutilate you, surely.”

“Helene of Austria.”

“Helene?” The breath evaporates from your lungs, vanishes like brief winter daylight. “The daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor?” It’s an immensely powerful match. It’s a match so ambitious it has rarely even been suggested. You summon triumph to your voice, an arrogant glint to your eyes. “This is very bad news for you.”

“And for you too, I think.”

He knows, you think, terror-stricken, aware you aren’t doing enough to hide it. That I desire my husband’s brother. That I want Aemond. That maybe I even love him. You try to fling some flippant retort at Daemon; you cannot find one, it’s like scratching your fingertips along the bottom of an empty box. Victorious, he swigs his wine and begins to saunter away, panting Scottish deerhounds on his heels. And then you call after him: “It didn’t get you far, did it?”

Daemon halts mid-step and slowly—very slowly—turns back to you. “What?”

“All that Targaryen blood. All that bone-white hair and ferocity, charisma and swordsmanship. King Viserys still chose to reject you as his heir. He still doesn’t trust you to advise him. He still denied you his daughter’s hand in marriage, and you were spineless enough to let him. You left her alone to suffer first. With a husband who couldn’t satisfy her, with a lover who could only give her bastards. And now you expect the world to forget who you’ve always been: reckless, savage, deeply selfish. All those things you stalk around here so proud of are worthless, because you’ll never have what you really want. You’ll never have the throne. And neither will Rhaenyra. You are the same as I am, Daemon. I am an asset and yet a curse to Aegon; you helped win the North for Rhaenyra, but the South will never yield to you. They will fight you with everything they have, every man and horse and blade. But there is one difference between us. When I bear Aegon a son, my curse will be lifted. You will never stop endangering Rhaenyra, her cause, her inheritance, her children, her life. And if she burns, it will be at least half because of you.”

You’ve never seen him truly angry before, you realize now; you’ve never seen him without the undeniable upper hand. His grip rests on the hilt of his sword. “I should—”

“Go on,” you dare him in a fierce whisper, your fingers closing around his wrist. “Slay Aegon’s wife and child in front of all the court. It’s the kindest thing you could do for the Greens. Make yourself more enemies, win us more friends. Everyone suspects that you are a beast already. Prove them right.”

Daemon rips his hand out of yours. “Happy Christmas, Navarre,” he hisses. “If fate is just, it will be your last.” And then he storms away from you, Rhaenyra meeting him at the other end of the hall and speaking with him there—conspiring? inquiring? scolding?—in urgent whispers.

Nico pushes through the throngs of dancing nobles to reach you. “Are you alright?” she asks, a palm laid on your shoulder.

“Fine.” Helene, you think, rubbing the aching curve of your back with one hand, sipping apple cider with the other. They’re both trembling. Beautiful, wealthy, coveted Helene.

“Are you sure? You don’t look good. What did that bleached weasel have to say…?”

But you can’t hear her, because the pain in your spine is now reaching like poison through veins to spread across your belly, to tighten, to clamp down, to gnash with steel teeth like needles, like knives. Your cup tumbles out of your gasp, spilling apple cider across the floor. You yelp in pure shock at how unexpectedly the pain comes. And then you begin to understand what it means. “No,” you plead in a whisper. You stagger backwards until you hit the wall. “No, no, no…”

“What?” Nico asks frantically. People are beginning to notice; heads spin in your direction. Tears are springing from your eyes. Blood is snaking down your legs, slick and hot on the velveteen inside of your thighs. Soon they’ll all be able to see it: your agony, your ruin. The Greens, the Blacks. The Duke of Hightower, Prince Daemon.

Nico doesn’t understand. You don’t know how to tell her. I’ve killed another child. I’ve failed again. You can feel Aegon crawling back into your bed. You can see letters from your mother—so proud at last, so full of praise—shredding themselves into dust. And then it flashes like cannon fire in your mind, not just the loss of an heir but the loss of a life: a name that will never be given, a voice that will never be heard, steps that will never leave imprints in sand or soil or snow.

I have to get out of here. How am I going to—?

An arm circles around your waist, strong, shielding, taking as much of your weight as it can. “Walk with me,” Aemond says. And then he half-carries you through the nearest door and down a passageway, Nico struggling to keep up, chatter exploding at the feast you left behind.

As soon as you cross the threshold into your bedchamber, as soon as you are out of sight of ill-intentioned observers, you collapse to the floor. Your palms and knees bruise against wood; a wail tears from your throat. “Not again,” you sob. “Aemond, I can’t do this again, I can’t—”

Nico says: “Are you sure it’s a…?”

Aemond is kneeling on the floor beside you. He’s helping you pull back the hem of your gown. You see it on his face before you see it on your own skin: there’s blood, a lot of blood, too much for it to be anything but lethal to the child. It’s all over his hands and his clothes; it’s all over the floorboards.

“Oh God,” Nico moans, covering her mouth with both hands. “Oh…oh my God…”

“Get the physicians,” Aemond tells her. “Speak to no one else. Go now. Go!”

Nico rushes out of the room. You can’t stop sobbing. The pain is excruciating, not waves but one continuous, saw-toothed twisting, a feeling like being gutted, like you’re a slaughtered bear and someone has their fingers raking around inside your womb.

Aemond is trying to pull you to your feet. “Come on, I’ll help you get into bed—”

“Aemond, I can’t.”

“Yes you can—”

“I can’t!” you cry out, weeping helplessly. Then he stops trying to lift you and instead sinks down to join you on the floor. You clutch wildly at him—at his forearms and his shoulders and his long silvery hair—and he doesn’t flinch away. He draws you into him, his hands staining you with blood everywhere they land. You don’t care; you don’t want him to stop. You bury yourself in the warmth of his chest, his arms around you like the border of the moon, like a ring.

“Shh,” he soothes through your hair. “Shh, shh. I’m here. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Please don’t leave me. Please stay.”

“I’ll stay,” Aemond says, his voice hoarse. “Of course I’ll stay.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Scenes like fragments of a dream, things that later you aren’t sure were real:

The physicians and midwives delivering your dead child, Aemond tilting a cup of strong wine against your lips. Your ladies washing blood off you with dripping rags as Aemond stands with the physicians in the doorway. They think you’re asleep, but you’re not; you’re not awake either. You’re halfway here and halfway not. Parts of the room are foggy, others are as clear as glass, as still water. A physician is telling Aemond that the child was a boy, perfect in every way except the one that matters most. He doesn’t breathe and never will. Too early, too small, beautiful and doomed.

“Don’t tell her that,” Aemond is saying. “Don’t tell her anything unless she asks.”

Now it’s later—two minutes, two hours, it doesn’t matter—and he’s dragging someone into your bedchamber. They’re fighting him, they’re trying to cling to the doorframe so he can’t force them inside.

“Get in there,” Aemond growls.

Aegon replies: “I don’t know what to say to her, what the hell do I say—?”

Your husband is at your bedside, undoubtedly miserable but not in a way that makes you feel like he sees you. There is the scent of wine and sweat drenched with perfume, lemon and lavender. “I’m sorry,” you murmur like a faint wind.

“It was not your fault, wife.” Aegon’s eyes are bloodshot, his shoulders hanging low and limp. “It is a great tragedy, but it was not your fault.” And then he glances at Aemond to make sure he’s done the right thing.

Now your husband is gone, and Aemond is holding a cool cloth to your forehead. He speaks in little more than a whisper. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“Just send me back to Navarre,” you say weakly. “I can’t do this. Talk to the Duke. He’ll get the marriage annulled. I know he will. He can find another wife for Aegon, another alliance. He’ll be glad to be rid of me.”

“You aren’t going anywhere.”

“I’m ruined. I’m worthless. Just send me home.”

“You are home,” Aemond insists.

You watch the firelight as it flickers over him, smooth skin, brutal scar. “What happens next?”

“You’ll try again.”

“There’s no point, Aemond.”

“Look at me,” he commands, cradling your face with his hands. “You’ll try again. And again, if you have to. But you will have children. I know you will.”

His voice is breaking. His eye is glistening, tortured. This is how the father should be. This is how Aegon should be. “Aemond, why are you so hurt by this?”

“Because you are suffering,” he says. “And because they’re pieces of you.”

You lose sight of him, float for a while, return again thinking of Aegon and the Duke of Hightower and Daemon and Rhaenyra. “No one here really knows me. No one loves me.”

Aemond is standing beside your bed. “Nico loves you.”

You gaze listlessly up at him and say nothing.

“Aegon loves you, I believe,” Aemond continues, but he won’t meet your eyes. “In his own way.”

Still, you look at him. Still, Aemond doesn’t look back.

Say it, you think, desperate, aching, tears biting in your eyes. Say that you love me too. Even if it’s just as a sister, an ally, a friend. Please, Aemond, just fucking say it.

He doesn’t say it. Maybe he leaves, maybe you are submerged in unconsciousness, maybe both. The memory dissolves around the edges until it is a pool of star-flecked obsidian like the night sky.

But this next part you know with certainty was real, because it is something you can touch, like a millennium-old relic from Egypt or Athens or Babylon. You wake in the morning to find three items on your nightstand: a cup of apple cider, a cup of strong bitter wine for the pain, and a single piece of parchment folded and tied with a red ribbon. You blink confoundedly at it for a while as muted winter sunlight seeps in through the windows, not being able to make sense of it. And then you open the parchment. Aemond has written at the top of the page in his hectic, uneven letters: Ivy. You read his words and all the anguish that went into them—smudges from his own fingerprints, wayward drips of black ink—like falling down the rungs of a ladder.

Scream into me, I’ll be the jar for your fury; I’m starving

for anything that tastes like you. I’ve been counting the lines

on your knuckles, the boards of the floor, wondering if you’ve

figured out that I’d wear fractures and bruises like amethysts

if it means you’d touch me. For seventeen months you’ve been

the ivy on my walls, vines like the needle-width legs of a spider

carving out my past, every last notch and shadow—splitting ribs,

scraping marrow—until there’s no part of me left that can remember

a time other than this, your voice and your wit and the scraps of you

I’ve stitched into me. Ask me what I burn for and I’ll whisper like

the dawn: you growing over my skin until I’m covered, tendrils

twisting down to the bone, everything I was before

ash and myth beneath your hands.

#aemond x you #aemond x y/n #aemond targaryen #aemond one eye #aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen x you

[pookacangetit]

Disney Song! Yuu [Disney Songs Edition: I Lava You]

What's this, a special performance by the Ramshackle prefect at Monstro Lounge?

Featuring the daily shennenigans of the cult; an ukelele-wielding Kalim; and geological disturbances; and a flustered birthday boy.

☆HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAMIL VIPER☆

MASTERLIST

"... when you told me you had something planned for Jamil's birthday, this is not what I'd imagined." Azul grumbled, pushing up his glasses as he stared at Yuu.

"I'll perform at the lounge for the rest of the month." Yuu replied as they adjusted their microphone.

"Thank you for your patronage, kind customers~" Azul merrily chirped, eyes closed as he put on his 'benevolent scammer' smile and skipped away.

Kalim had been acting strange for the last month before he suddenly dragged Jamil to Monstro Lounge. The guy had disappeared after shoving Jamil into a chair and left without answering his questions, on Jamil's birthday no less! The second year grumbled as he adjusted the sleeves of his jacket.

The last time Kalim acted so strangely, he smuggled a tiger into his room. The tiger was being spoiled rotten back home of course, but Jamil wouldn't put it pass Kalim to smuggle another tiger with the help of the Octavinelle trio.

Before Jamil could descend further into his panic the announcer gleefully announced the next act.

"- and now, a special performance by Scarabia's dorm head and the Ramshackle prefect!"

... what?

Jamil blinked, wondering if Jade managed to feed him another hallucinogenic mushroom as he stared at the pair onstage. Kalim waved at him excitedly as he held a yellow ukelele while Yuu grinned with a microphone in hand, the two of them wore red floral wreaths and necklaces over a matching pair of aloha shirts and board shorts.

Jamil ignored the delighted screams and curses of several cult members as he stared at the stage.

Kalim launched into a cheery tune as Yuu swayed to the music onstage, their bright smiles never dimming as they stared straight at Jamil.

A long long time ago~

There was a volcano~

Living all alone in the middle of the sea~

Did they planned this? Jamil pondered as his heart betrayed his deadpanned face, swelling up with a fond ache at the sight before him.

Kalim's bright eyes beamed even brighter with happiness as he strummed the ukelele while Yuu sang the lyrics with joyous delight, neither of them broke eye contact with Jamil as they performed.

I have a dream~

I hope it will come true~

That you're here with me~

And I am here with you~

Jamil felt his cheeks heat up as Yuu crooned the last few words, their voice sounded as sweet as curry as the lounge turned into an open ocean with vast blue skies above. If he paid closer attention, he could smell the fresh sea breeze and hear the sounds of the seagulls' call- it sounded like freedom.

For a moment his heart panged with painful guilt at the memories of his overblot, about the wistful dreams of travelling the world and escaping the shadows of the Al-Asim family.

He shook his head, remember, compromise.

I wish that the earth, sea, and the sky up above~

Will send me someone to lava~

Jamil jolted out of his memories as Kalim started to sing, with Yuu grinning mischieviously as they held the microphone for Kalim.

Behind him, several gasps were heard before students started whispering, "A-are they performing a duet?!"

"Not any duet, a love duet!"

More scandalous gasps were heard.

"A love duet??"

"My god's dating the Al-Asim heir?!"

"Aren't they serenading-"

"SHUT UP-"

No longer are they all alone~

With Aloha as their new home~

And when you go and visit them this is what they sing~

If possible, the red flush on Jamil's face darkened. Azul watched as the man resembled a bright red tomato while the pair onstage took turns singing, all the while giving Jamil their full attention which embarassed him even further.

I have a dream~

I hope it will come true~

Jade hummed, eyeing the performance and a pouting Azul, "Why does Viper resemble the older Shroud right now?"

Azul huffed, arms folded against his chest as he glared at Jamil, "With someone like Kalim and the prefect dedicating a love song to him, I would hide my face in my hoodie too."

"I see, are you sure you're not jealous that the prefect is serenading to Viper and not you?"

"... no."

Behind the two, a couple of crashes were heard alongside hushed swearing as several Diasomnia students dogpiled a Savanaclaw.

"Give us those recordings Pete!"

"Over your dead body-"

Jade's smile widened a couple of centimeters as he fixed his gloves, "Enjoy the prefect's performance, Azul. I have to deal with some ruffians."

That you'll grow old with me~

And I'll grow old with you~

We thank the earth, sea, and the sky we thank too~

I lava you~

Breaking news, two volcanoes appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the ocean!

Sudden appearance of volcanoes spell the end of the world? Find out more-

Jamil stared at his phone, blinked, then stared at it again before he concluded it was too early to deal with it and went back to bed.

His door slammed open with a bang as Gene stormed in, "DID KALIM AND YUU ACTUALLY PERFORMED A LOVE SONG FOR YOUR BIRTHDAY-"

"IT'S 3 IN THE MORNING LET ME SLEEP DAMMIT!"

Yuu: let's perform a love song >:3

Also Yuu: *creates two volcanoes*

Jamil: stop breaking the world goddammit

Yuu: IT'S ALL FOR YUU, and Kalim of course

#twst #twst imagines #twst scenarios #disney song yuu #twst jamil #twst kalim #twst yuu

[calliesmemes]

DISNEY’S FROZEN FRANCHISE

SENTENCE STARTERS FEATURING THE LINES AND LYRICS OF VARIOUS WORKS SET IN THE UNIVERSE OF DISNEY’S FROZEN.

CHANGE gendered words and in-universe phrases as needed.

SPECIFY muse for multimuses.

I. FROZEN I (2013)

“   Fear will be your enemy, and death its consequence. ”

“   Listen to me — your power will only grow. There is beauty in it, but also great danger. ”

“   Getting upset only makes it worse. Calm down. ”

“   Don't touch me. Please!I don't want to hurt you. ”

“   They say have courage, and I'm trying to. ”

“   Make one wrong move, and everyone will know. ”

“   Be the good girl you always have to be. ”

“   At least I’ve got a chance! ”

“   It's agony to wait. ”

“   You're gorgeous. Wait, what? ”

“   I'm so sorry. Are you hurt? ”

“   The only frozen heart around here is yours. ”

“   I've never been better. This is so nice. I wish it could be like this all the time ”

“   I would never shut you out. ”

“   Will you marry me? ”

“   You can’t marry a man you just met. ”

“   I can't live like this anymore! ”

“   What did I ever do to you?! ”

“   Please, just stay away from me. Stay away! ”

“   Are you sure you can trust her? I don't want you getting hurt. ”

“   She's my sister, she would never hurt me. ”

“   The fears that once controlled me can't get to me at all. ”

“   It's time to see what I can do, to test the limits and break through. ”

“   What are you so afraid of?! ”

“   Oh, it's just you. What do you want? ”

“   I don't trust your judgment. ”

“   Sometimes I really don't like you. ”

“   Nobody wants to be alone. Except maybe you. ”

“   How do you know my name? ”

“   I'm so sorry about what happened. If I'd have known... ”

“   I never knew what I was capable of. ”

“   We were so close. We can be like that again. ”

“   I’m just trying to protect you. ”

“   You don't have to protect me. I'm not afraid! ”

“   You don’t have to live in fear. ”

“   Just stay away and you'll be safe from me. ”

“   I can't control the curse! ”

“   I know we can figure this out together! ”

“   Okay, relax. Just calm down. Calm down! ”

“   You are a sight for sore eyes. ”

“   Love's a force that's powerful and strange. ”

“   People make bad choices if they're mad or scared or stressed. ”

“   Don't be the monster they fear you are! ”

“   Oh, no. What have I done? ”

“   You cannot risk going out there again. ”

“   If only there was someone out there who loved you. ”

“   I was wrong about him. It wasn't true love. ”

“   Love is putting someone else's needs before yours. ”

“   I tried to save her, but it was too late. ”

“   You sacrificed yourself for me? ”

“   Come on, you can do it! ”

II. FROZEN: THE BROADWAY MUSICAL

“   That’s what I’m talking about! ”

“   There’s just some things we can’t do in public. ”

“   I see the fear in their eyes. ”

“   It’s all because of me. ”

“   They look my way and see a monster. ”

“   I’m doing everything you said! ”

“   You must be prepared for everything. ”

“   It’s getting stronger! I can’t laugh, I can’t cry, I can’t dream, I can’t live without it bursting out! ”

“   Come here, my poor child. ”

“   Don’t touch me! I don’t want to hurt you! ”

“   I’m proud of you. ”

“   I’ll try not to let you down. ”

“   I’m just wondering how you’ve been. ”

“   They say have courage, and I’m trying to. ”

“   Are you ready for tomorrow? It’s your big day. ”

“   I mean — I’m not the heir; I’m the spare. ”

“   You don’t have to be embarrassed; I am someone even more embarrassing to me. ”

“   Nobody quotes what comes out of my mouth — thank goodness! ”

“   I can’t be what you expect of me. ”

“   I practice every single day for this, so why is it so hard? ”

“   There are things you cannot know. ”

“   It’s dangerous to wish I could make choices of my own. ”

“   I’m dangerous just standing here for everyone to see! ”

“   If I let go of rules, who knows how dangerous I’d be? ”

“   Father, I did it! ”

“   We’re lucky he came along in our time of need. ”

“   For once, just try to trust me — I’m begging you now! ”

“   You don’t know the things that I can do. ”

“   Everything’s different now that I understand. ”

“   You live life fearlessly, braver than the bravest of us do. ”

“   My time’s running out. ”

“   I have to stay alive to fix what I’ve done. ”

“   No time for crying now. ”

“   Can’t hope to fix this mess, but somehow still I have to try. ”

“   Get back into the cage! ”

“   I’ve unleashed a monster; I cannot stop the monster! ”

“   There’s so much I’ve longed to say. ”

“   It’s like a dream I thought could never be. ”

“   Show us what you can do. ”

Iii. FROZEN II (2022)

“   Some things never change. ”

“   Where are you going? Don't leave me alone! ”

“   You've been hearing a voice and you didn't think to tell me? ”

“   We're calling this, "controlling what you can when things feel out of control". ”

“   I know it sounds crazy, but I believe whoever is calling me is good. ”

“   Well, never a dull moment with you. ”

“   I hope you're prepared for what you have done. ”

“   When one can see no future, all one can do is the next right thing. ”

“   Promise me — we do this together, okay? ”

“   What are you gonna do with that? ”

“   They're all looking at us, aren't they? ”

“   Are you okay? What were you doing? You could have been killed! ”

“   Just when you think you found your way, life will throw you on a new path ”

“   Why do lullabies always have to have some terrible warning in them? ”

“   Please tell me, you are not about to follow them? ”

“   Ah, I can't stay mad at you, you're so cute! ”

“   You are not responsible for their choices. ”

“   Don't do this alone. Let me help you, please. ”

“   You have every right to to be very, very mad at her. ”

“   I can sense you there, like a friend I've always known ”

“   It feels like I am home. ”

“   Are you the one I've been looking for all of my life? ”

“   I have always been so different: normal rules did not apply. ”

“   I've never felt so certain. ”

“   Fear is what can't be trusted. ”

“   She may have gone too far. ”

“   I'm sorry. You're gonna have to do this next part on your own ”

“   The life I knew is over. ”

“   You are lost, hope is gone. ”

“   You must go on, and do the next right thing. ”

“   I don't know anymore what is true. ”

“   The only star that guided me was you. ”

“   I'm here. What do you need? ”

“   I'm sorry I left you behind. ”

“   It’s okay. My love is not fragile. ”

“   I thought I lost you. ”

“   You did what was right, for everyone. ”

“   Is putting us in dangerous situations gonna be a regular thing? ”

“   You are the most extraordinary person I've ever known. ”

#askbox meme #askbox prompt #rp ask meme #ask box #roleplay sentence meme #sentence starters #roleplay prompts #roleplay sentence starters #* sentence meme #disney rp #disney rpc #indie disney rp

[wilhelmsbee]

Okay honestly? I'll just take you up on that offer because I'm obsessed with your edits in general, but if you ever feel like talking some more about that Wilhelm edit you did to the song Ribs by Lorde??? Would love that because that edit lives rent-free in my head! (no pressure though, I just like the idea of like... director's commentary or something for edits haha)

I HOPE EVERYONE IS READY FOR ME TO BE INSANELY DEEP ABOUT THIS EDIT OH MY GOD

preface: i talk ab why i chose each scene for the lyrics, then colouring/font, idk if this is the directors commentary you wanted but like this is how I think about all my edits

We're reeling through the midnight streets- initially, I actually wanted to start it on the this dream isn't feeling sweet line but it just didn't fit in instagrams 1-minute time frame ANYWAY This scene has always been the most painful to me. Wilhelm realises at this moment that he's truly, undeniably alone in his life. Everyone he trusts (or is supposed to trust) has left him, and he has nobody left to go to. He's alone, going through his own personal hell, finding out his only family cares more about public perception than him as a person. It's like the beginning of the worst spiral we see from Wilhelm. Its quite a literal scene-to-lyric moment, but also the we're part feels (to me) like him-as-well-as his public self. Crown Prince Wilhelm and Wille are such separate parts, and its all he has left.

And I've never felt more alone- The THERAPY SCENE! Specifically this is the I think it's better not knowing how it could feel scene, because that truly is the most heartbreaking viewpoint I've ever seen from a character. It was better not being in love because I couldn't miss it. He might be getting closer to the other boys in the secret society, as well as Felice, but he's not really breaking past the surface level with anyone. Not even Felice knows the depths of his pain, he keeps it all to himself. The loneliness crushes him, he wishes he didn't know how love felt. As far as he's concerned, he's never loving someone else again (true) and he's never going to be able to love Simon again (false). In this moment there's this feeling of emptiness. He has nothing he actually cares about, and he wishes that he never cared in the first place.

It feels so scary, getting old- He wasn't supposed to fill this role, giving a speech as the Crown Prince of Sweden about his brother's passing. Wilhelm's character (obviously) fundamentally switches after Erik's death. He used to be a lot sillier, more reckless and more willing to fight back against his parents. But now he's got every single eye on him, watching him. Put into an adult role at the age of sixteen, forced to carry the burden of spare his whole childhood, then suddenly forced to be the sole heir. Even if he had planned to maybe one day be the heir (which he didn't, judging by the he should be here instead of me comment) it wasn't supposed to happen until he was older and wiser. He stops acting like a kid because he can't be a kid anymore. The cuts between the frog/getting the frog/breaking the globe aimed to emphasise this. He's lost all connection to his brother, he's in a place he didn't expect to be until he was extremely old (if ever), and he's lost control of his own life.

We can talk it so good, we can make it so divine, we can talk it good how we wish it would be all the time- I wanted to frame Simon in this as a sort of healthy distraction for Wilhelm. He was the only person in his life who actually looked out for him and cared. They're happy and they're smiling, all the clips are intimate even if there's someone else there. It highlights how they care. It's good, it's divine. It's what kept him happy after the hardest thing in his life (so far). In this edit, he desperately wants it back because he knows how much it helped. It was the only bright thing he had. The cutting to Wilhelm alone in s2 after how we wish it would be all the time just aims to really enforce that he wished it was still like that, wishing for someone who truly cared and loved him. It's all yearning, pining, wishing things were better. Every single clip is a clip in which Wilhelm has been pining over Simon. There's an ache he expresses that was just so, so important to this edit.

This dream isn't feeling sweet- Lots of clips of Wilhelm trying to process things. He's been forced to change his entire life, after all being a prince is a privilege, not a punishment. The 'dream' of being royal crushes him, despite the fact he can't ever voice it. Walking down the halls of his castle, sitting in his private boarding school therapy session with an actual therapist, being driven home in a private car from the party where he was filmed fighting. These luxuries juxtaposed with his actual circumstances hurt. He can't complain because he's got it best in the country, but it isn't a system designed for him, it doesn't want to help him, it wants to make him conform. It isn't fair, but he can't say that.

We're reeling through the midnight streets- He's forcing himself to try and fit the mould while also being himself, and all it causes is pain. He's actively fighting against the institution he was raised in simply by existing. The panic attack from being perceived holding Simon's hand. Deleting his contact after his mother told him 'no more mistakes.' Trying to play nice at the dinner table even though his whole life was crumbling around him and the institution was failing everyone even though nobody believed him. The panic attack/anxiety vomit from Simon going public, against Wilhelm's institution, knowing that he might not be able to protect him. He's got no control in any of these scenes, its a desperate fight against himself. He's a publicity risk to his own family if he is true to himself, and he's a risk to himself if he isn't.

And I've never felt more alone- Desperately trying to comfort himself when nobody else can (or wants to) comfort him. After the fight at the party all his family cared about was the PR response. When August said that Simon would take the fall for the drugs, all he cared about was getting Alexander back. During the uniform tailoring, all Jan-Olof cared about was tradition and making Simon as background as he could. When Wilhelm gave up meditating to soothe his anxiety, he was upset at his inability to calm down, despite the fact he's never been given an opportunity to be calm. Nobody really knows about his mental health struggles, he just has to fight through them and desperately try to self-soothe. Nobody else will comfort him after all.

It feels so scary getting old- Each of these scenes show Wilhelm being viewed as his role instead of being viewed as a person. He clearly struggles with being viewed as just the Crown Prince of Sweden, especially since that was never supposed to be his role, so of course it hurts when he's viewed as just a pawn in the Royal Family. Especially from people he loves. Yes, it was undeniably hard when he first became the Crown Prince, and it absolutely would've crushed him to know that when he had a panic attack he couldn't be alone. But these scenes are interlaced with him being viewed as a political pawn by Simon and his mother. People he loves, people he trusts. He's just a public statement to his mother, and he's just a human representation of the Crown to Simon (in these scenes not in general ofc). He's never going to be able to be his own person again, because he's got a country to run when he grows up and a public image to form between now and then.

This dream isn't feeling sweet- The lyrics are now getting more compounding, it's louder and it's closer. He's fighting to be heard, he's being ripped off of his desk, he's forcing down a panic attack because he needs to be happy for Simon. His emotions aren't allowed, he can't feel anything negative so he won't feel anything at all. Nothing in his life feels good anymore, so he's fighting the losing battle to just try to break even. Nobody would dream of this, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. He can't even voice that, though.

We're reeling through the midnight streets- Now he's reminiscing about when things were easier, but they weren't, really. Yes, the placard was there the night he first kissed Simon, but that was also the beginning of the horrific realisation he wasn't built for the world he is forced to live in. His mother says 'no more mistakes' and he already knows it means he has to leave Simon. When that doesn't work and it all falls out, he's left to try and clean his own image up by nailing the closet shut with every fibre of his being. His life wasn't better, he's grasping for anything to show him life will be okay again. Everything has crumbled and now he's got nothing, so he yearns for when he had something, even if it was just something to lose.

And I've never felt more alone- He is constantly left. Something that isn't brought up enough is how often he's just abandoned. He has no one to talk to, he's forced to work through his struggles alone because his existence is political and any sign of weakness being public could reflect badly on his family. He becomes the embodiment of the Prince he could never be. Walking to the lake and reminiscing about when he would be happy there. Being left alone by his brother, who didn't even reply to him asking to say hi to his mother and father, who he then never sees in person again. Then wearing his brother's jacket. He's alone, and all he does is pine for a time when he wasn't. All he wants to do is go back and do it all again, and he can't. But he also can't move forward, he doesn't want to, he doesn't know how.

It feels so scary- Only two scenes so I'll discuss 'em one by one: -At Erik's funeral, there's a more literal fear of getting old. I don't want to repeat myself more than I already have but obviously, that forced Wilhelm to grow up and be more mature, and act like a Crown Prince instead of just the Prince. More attention, less room for error. He's terrified of fucking it up, and there's nobody who can help him. -The breakup scene is more metaphorical. He has to grow up and figure out what he wants to do with his life, while also having to grow to understand what he actually has the ability to do with his life. He's not ready to do this because he wants things to be good and happy but it was ripped away from him. He can't just pretend everything is alright anymore, but the amount of maturing he needs to do seems impossible at this moment, especially knowing he was in love with a boy when he wasn't allowed to be. He tries to be both a Prince and Wilhelm and all it did was betray his boyfriend's trust.

getting old- Wilhelm shutting his computer and pressing his hands to his eyes. It's exhausting. He's exhausted. Constantly working to try and be who he's supposed to be as well as being himself and trying to navigate his emotions in a vulnerable state is just too much. He can't carry it all, so he just gives up for a moment. It all goes quiet, but not in a good way. When you're that overwhelmed, the lack of anything just leaves more room to spiral.

FONT CHOICES

Intro: literally my handwriting. I wanted this to feel personal and almost like a desperate written plea to go back to when it was good, and what's more personal than my own handwriting am I right!!!

First chorus loop: Magazine font, it's in pieces and it doesn't match. There's a sporadic chaos, like he's beginning to feel it but it isn't there yet. The text isn't fully opaque, it's in front of him. We're seeing it before he does in this context. Trying to reflect how the media knows things before he does, like his brothers death, the tape leaking, all that good stuff.

Second chorus loop: Big, Bold, Unavoidable! I rotobrushed Wilhelm in every scene so that the text could be intertwined with him. He can't escape the reality of his situation, he is getting crushed by these feelings. The song gets louder and more claustrophobic, the text is in the scenes with him. It haunts him, it's everywhere. When he closes the laptop and it all goes silent, its not relaxing, it just makes you anxious in a different way.

COLOURING

I actually chose the blues from the intro scene, mainly in the night sky bit of the frame. Also! All the happy Wilmon scenes have a higher saturation, though you can't tell because of how I did the colouring. It just results in them being a little bit brighter, because things were good then and I believe it should feel good then, too.

#ellieoughposting #ellieeditrambles #new tag for if anyone else asks me ab any of my edits #cannot stress enough ill write one of these for any edit you want #just ask #anyway #edit analysis #wilmon edit #no beta we die like erik #wilhelm x ribs #also idk how else to mention this but this edit was a vent edit #like yes i think this hard about vent edits i have autism i cant not think

[abyssal-ali]

Gold Rush

Ship: Timari

Rating: G

WC: ~1.0k

A/N: this was written probably two years ago (?) and kinda rushed, so it's not my best work. I did edit a bit and any mistakes or bad plot is mine and not my lovely beta-readers', @kitsun369 and @mothofhearts

Constructive criticism accepted (but please be nice) and any feedback is great!💜

Inspired partially by Taylor Swift's song, Gold Rush. If you recognize little nods to certain lyrics, congratulations! My symbolism didn't go to waste.

For @the-coffee-fandom, @velveteenshadow, @forgottenfriends, @timinette-is-best, @miraculousmelodies and all the other Timari Coven fiends.

Marinette eyed Lila over the rim of her punch glass. She was talking flirtatiously with the host of their trip to Gotham, Wayne Enterpsises' CEO Tim Drake.

Marinette had hoped that he'd use his internationally famous genius to see through Lila's facade, but it seemed like the liar had another victim of her honeyed tongue. At least this time she wouldn't be lying when she bragged about knowing the Timothy Drake (even though everything Lila said after that probably wouldn't be true).

Marinette and Tim had met at the pre-party meet-and-greet, where their hosts formally introduced themselves to their Parisian guests. Marinette had met his eyes as they shook hands and promptly fell into his sparkling ocean-blue eyes that twinkled with amusement at her flushed face. She furiously willed away the heat creeping up her neck and into her cheeks, hoping it wouldn't come back every time she looked at him.

He was quite charismatic and she knew he was one of the most sought-after dates, a handsome heir to two multi-million dollar companies....handsome? She thought beautiful fit him better, with his expressive eyes and lean yet muscled build and hair casually falling into place over his eyes when he shook his head, laughing at a guest's joke.

No, bad Marinette. She had an online boyfriend, and they were going to make it official when they met in person. She was not going to do anything more than admire her host's looks.

Between the meet-and-greet and dancing/socializing part of the party was a fancy dinner, where Marinette sat opposite Tim and they had a delightful discussion.

It kind of reminded her of her DMs with her gaming partner/online boyfriend, RRBurgers (she called him RR). They typed about anything and everything and often debated random things just for fun, to test their wits.

Tim had said something—she was sure it was purposely controversial—and she'd ached to begin a war of words, but responded more mildly than she liked. He had looked surprised, then thoughtful, when she refused to verbally spar with him.

They'd brushed fingers as they crossed paths, completely by accident, and Marinette promptly increased her speed, heading to the powder room to silently talk to herself (and Tikki).

She was in love with RR and didn't need to fall for gorgeous eyes and perfect smiles.

Now, she was seeing red—or at least a shade of rose, the colour of Lila's surprisingly unostentatious dress—as she spied on Mr. Drake and Lila's flirting.

She drained her punch in an annoyed swig, moving to the balcony, and looked at the stars until her jealousy cooled. If Mr. Drake couldn't see Lila for who she was, he deserved her, she told herself.

With a sigh, she leaned on the railing and pulled out her phone to play a round of her favourite game.

She stiffened when Mr. Drake appeared at her elbow. How had she not heard him approach? Then again, the ambient chatter and music were noisy.

“You play well."

“Thanks.” She finished her round (a win) and returned her phone to her purse.

"You play Knights of Mirreile?” Mr. Drake obviously wasn't taking her silence as a hint, or else he was outright ignoring her body language.

“Yes. You know it?”

“I joined to practice my French with native speakers. I'm on the Parisian server, actually—my handle is RRBurgers.” He looked at her curiously.

She took a step back. “RR? I'm LadybugandtheTramp!”

He held out his hand. “Hi, Lady. I'm RR; thrilled to meet you in person.”

She shook it, willing her returning blush to retreat. “Wait a minute...tell me three things only RR and Lady know. Just to be sure.”

Tim grinned at her. “You're wise; this is Gotham, after all.

"Uh, une: I contacted you first, to ask you to teach me some hacks.

"Deux: You have PTSD from Hawkmoth and often can't sleep, so you game, because you don't like sewing as much anymore.

"Trois,” he lowered his voice and stepped closer. Marinette could feel his body heat, even though the air was crisp. “We're a couple in Mireille and when we are planning to meet and date in person. You told me you were in love with me twenty-two days ago, and I replied that I was in love with you too.”

Marinette could barely breathe when she saw the intense look in his eyes. “Uh...I guess you are RR...I'm so glad to finally meet you in person, although it's sooner than I was expecting! You're even cuter than I imagined.”

She enjoyed the pink on his face instead of hers more than she should have.

"Will you go on a date with me tomorrow, Lady?”

"I'd love to!"

" But until tomorrow, would you care to spend our time together dancing?"

The red on Tim's neck spread and Marinette giggled. "Who taught you how to be so smooth? I almost fell for you all over again."

Tim winked at her, took her hand, and led her to the dancefloor. Marinette silently thanked Chloe for insisting on teaching her how to properly waltz, at least.

As they swirled around the room, he complained in her ear. “I talked with Lila. You're right—I can't believe what she made up! When I asked for clarification, the lies got more outrageous! I am so sorry for your suffering.”

Shyly, she admitted, “I was a little jealous of the attention you were paying her. I thought your smarts could see through her but it didn't look like it—you're a good actor."

“Thanks, I have to be.”

At her puzzled look, he explained, “In business meetings, you've got to keep a poker face, especially when you're a young businessperson like me.”

“Oh,” she nodded. “I understand that."

She relished in the angry look Lila sent their way as they twirled past her. Maybe Tikki's powers did rub off on her, building up to this moment. For some reason, she felt secure in the knowledge that she was safe and could be herself.

When she had first met RRBurgers online, she was prepared to keep her distance from him emotionally. It had been just after Ladybug and her team defeated Hawkmoth and she was depressed and suffering PTSD, gaming when she couldn't sleep or had nightmares. But RR had somehow wormed his way into her good graces with his nerdy jokes and similar lifestyle and whacky stories about his family, and the next thing she knew she had a big crush.

They gradually grew closer, DMing every day, and RR had really encouraged her in a way her old friends hadn't been able to do. She had changed a lot after being Ladybug, but they still saw her as Past Marinette. RR was a virtual friend, a blank slate, and knew Present Marinette.

He'd encouraged her to stop sewing if she didn't have a passion for it anymore and not be bound by people's expectations of Past Marinette, but show them Present Marinette.

She hadn't been brave enough to completely act like Present Marinette, but with Tim encouraging her from her side instead of over a screen, she thought she could try now.

Tonight was as good a place to start as any. She approached Lila, Tim's arm around her waist. "Hey, Lila, I see you've met Tim's brother, Dick. Have you told him about that time you heroically saved Jagged's kitten yet?"

~~le fin~~

#Mlbxdc #Dcxmlb #Maribat #Timari #ali writes #Fic #I hope y'all like it!! #Inspired by Taylor Swift

[trash-llama]

Lyric: I won't tell you how to be heir, but I will tell you to trust in yourself. As long as you're true to yourself, you're true to the legacy.

Tippy: Thanks daddy. I never knew how much I needed to hear this from you.

Lyric: That's what ghost daddies are for!

#ts4 swans #ts4 legacy #swan g10 #tippy swan #lyric swan

[gautierprotectionsquad]

All of my Favorite fanfics

Fandoms: DCU, Ace Attorney, ORV, AFTG, FE3H, TMA, Junoverse, SOC

Ace Attorney

A Boy at the Airport : AU where Phoenix runs into a tiny Apollo Justice who just immigrated from Khura'in and takes him in.

The Phoenix, and Other Early Birds: AU where Apollo watches the Enigmar v state trial and insists on helping Phoenix get his badge back

A Crack in the Marble : AU where Miles Edgeworth is the prosecutor for State v Wright (with Dahlia)

And If My Wishes All Come True : Apollo adopts a cat, Klavier pines, and they make a lot of divorce jokes

The Complete Turnabout: Phoenix sent to an AU where he's a prosecutor

Burning on in my heart: Klapollo sickfic that explores their insecurities and internal struggles.

Exorcism: AA4 rewrite. Serial Killer known as the Devil has killed every innocent defendant from Klavier’s cases.

Dirty Paws: Crack taken seriously: Larry Butz writes Warrior Cats fanfiction to cope.

Sharing A Dream: Klapollo bodyswap highschool au

Gonna Make this Place Your home: Klapollo fic. Apollo and friends and love and home

His Highness the Second: AU where the Revolution happens early and Apollo gets to grow up in Khura’in. Apollo has a loving family.

In lipstick on the mirror are the lyrics to my obituary: Klapollo bodyguard AU.

Man of Mist: AU where Kristoph adopts Apollo. A dark story about a toxic familial relationship between a serial killer and the boy he loves.

Miles von Karma: Gregory Edgeworth Lives AU and Gregory Edgeworth POV where Miles is sent back in time and to an alternate universe. Miles has lost his memories and works as a detective.

The Legacy of Gregory Edgeworth: AU where Raymond Shields adopts Miles

The Infernal Prosecutor vs The Defense Heir: Narumitsu Role swap AU

Revival: Dual Destinies rewrite

Alt (better) ending for AA5

Soleil and the Demons: Apollo finds his bio family but when the family falls apart after his step father's disappearance, Apollo embraces his performer side and joins a band

It Never Rains but it pours: Apollo joins Wright and Co early

DCU

Gotham by Messier_47: Superbat Identity porn. Clark hates Gotham but meets a man who IS Gotham and learns to see the city in a new light

Jason Todd's terrible, horrible, no-good very bad Week: Jason gets captured by the Justice League and his brothers sneak into the Watchtower to save him

Loading and Aspect Ratio: Batfam wings au (kinda) with Superbat

Plagiarism is Not a Joke, Batman: Batman reveals his identity to the Justice League. He is far younger than they thought.

Smoking in the Boys Room: Superbat identity porn. Clark finds Bruce injured in a bathroom stall

Space Cellmates: Identity porn Superman and Bruce Wayne are kidnapped by aliens

The Man Behind the Curtain: Superbat identity reveal. Superman slowly learns more about batman.

The Mask Behind the Mask: Justice League learns about Brucie's reputation

The Waynes, Damsels in Distress: Batfam lets themselves get kidnapped bc they think it's funny (it is)

thirteen: Clark/Bruce. Clark Kent is hired as Bruce Wayne's nanny. All the batkids are close in age and Clark is not Superman.

The Longer You Stay: Domestic Selina/Bruce. Selina pov. A retired vigilante and retired thief live a quiet life and adopt three children.

Trust through the ages: De-aged Bruce Wayne. The Bats and the Flashes are close friends.

In Love with Justice: The Justice League think Batman and Nightwing are dating. they are hilariously wrong.

a heart just can't contain all of this empty space: Young Justice Team are tired of Bat secrets

Sneaking out for superhero teenagers: Tim needs to go to Central City without the rest of the family knowing so he comes up with a plan to sneak out. He runs into some superheroes on the way

through different colored glasses: It all started when Jason was trying to rescue his rocket launcher. (this fic is for me specifically bc of my experience with broken door handles.)

Two Sides: Jason meets Damian in the League of Assassins.

Equal Magnitude: The Robins' favorite superhero.

Batman, go grab your Robin... Wait, wrong Robin!: Tim goes trick or treating only to get kidnapped!!...By Batman?

In this Town We Call Home: The Drakes use Batman as a boogeyman to make their son behave...it didn't work out how they expect.

I wish I was: JayRoy no vigilantes au/romcom au. Jason and Roy have a meet-cute at a bookstore and then keep running into each other. 5 times Jason accidentally turns Roy down and 1 time he says yes.

In Your Pocket: JayRoy no vigilantes romcom au. For the dramatic irony enjoyers. Wrong numbers.

Familiar: JayRoy. Romcom with a vigilante twist. Contains fun banter, fluffy fluff, Austen levels of slowburn, Roy and Jason being dads, and heartbreak.

Cause You Mean More than Anything: Series of fics about the justice league's dramatic theories about batman's love life.

Life After Life: Thomas and Martha Wayne Beetlejuice AU

Lighting Bolts and Breaking Clouds: Jason and Roy adopt Billy Batson

tribute: Billy Batson dresses up as his favorite hero for Halloween

Dangerous and Noble: The Bats investigate their missing neighbor. Tim and Cass meet in the LOA au.

Things My Heart Used to Know: Jayroy. Jason Todd has been missing for 6 years and there's a 5 million dollar reward for anyone that can bring him home. Roy finds someone who happens to look a lot like Jason and they're both desperate for money. Inspired by Anastasia.

farthest you've ever flown: Robin!Tim gets kicked out of Drake manor. Red Hood finds him. Alternate first meeting.

No Strings Attached: Boostle no capes/powers au. Friends with Benefits to Lovers. Superhero groups are bands in this universe

In This or any Other Universe: Nightwing ends up in Battinson universe.

The Bachelor: Robin Edition: Batman needs a Robin. Tim knows just the plan. Kidnap several black haired blue eyed children to train and test them to become the perfect Robin until only 1 remains. He doesn't know how to test for "lovable" but he'll figure it out.

Come Alive: Dick went to Infinity Island on a mission to rescue three and ends up with Jason and Damian, too. 3x06 of Young Justice AU.

Now you will not swell the rout: Tim wants to be Robin but Batman is too overprotective and won't let him out into the field. So he tries street fighting to prove to Bruce he can take a hit and train himself. He meets a vigilante in a red helmet, too.

Little Bird's Wings: Jason comes back to Gotham only to find Batman and the Joker missing. He wants answers and instead he finds a few teen vigilantes running around.

break: Tim retires from vigilantism. If only Gotham would let him stay retired.

Working With Professionals Once: Red Hood has a plan. That plan backfires when his goons kidnap Bruce Wayne

Forecast: Red Hood pulls Dick's body out of the water. ANGST hurt/comfort. Jason coming home/identity reveal

False Words: One of the best handlings of Dick during RR/Dick and Tim's reconciliation after RR. (specifically chapters 3, 8, 12, 13, 15, 16)

(Honorable mention to Either Side of the Median by CaffienatedCopyeditor which is no longer on AO3.)

FE3H

Keep Him Safe: Sylvix adopts a son

the courage to love, a guide to fatherhood by felix fraldarius: Felix adopts a daughter

TMA

(i don't read tma fic much)

Rather Interesting: Crack treated seriously. jonah magnus/elias bouchard. canon compliant somehow. Elias is able to regain consciousness whenever Jonah smokes weed.

AFTG

(there's not that many here bc i didn't start keeping track till later)

Love Hurts: Aaron/Katelyn before the start of TFC

Red Right Hand: Au where Nathaniel Wesninski works for the Moriyamas and has been assigned to collect Kevin Day.

This was Home: Someone's OC joins the foxes

Pie Another Day: Pushing Up Daises AU

TPP

(there's not that many here bc i didn't start keeping track till later)

up the wolves: A nine-year-old juno stumbles into one of jet's post-heist hiding places

Six of Crows

(i don't read soc fic much)

The Meadow: Kaz dreams of his brother while finding himself past the age he thought he'd die at, and feeling stuck while all his friends have changed.

ORV

A Circle to Your Square: ORV rewrite where Yoo Joonghyuk and Kim Dokja were dating before the scenarios started

Ascension, Love, and the Ever Present Push and Pull: De-aged Dokja

Rendezvous: ORV in Yoo Joonghyuk's POV

and at the very least, the wall will change: No Scenarios Soulmate AU

World's End Rhapsody: After the epilogue, there is love.

how the mighty fall (in love): Yoo Joonghyuk can't stop thinking about Dokja. Eventually decides to settle the matter. (it's horny with no sex)

Knight in shining (plot) armor: Kim Dokja gets isekaid into Ways of Seduction, a smutty stallion novel. (spoilers for tls123's identity)

All the things we didn't say: ORV rewrite where Kim Dokja writes letters to Yoo Jonghyuk

Down: 1863 Yoo Jonghyuk meets a stranger. A thief. An uncanny man with all-knowing eyes and a too-clever tongue. A man of harsh words. A man of soft touches. The Wall tells him a story about this man and another version of himself and he listens.

#fanfiction #fanfic #ace attorney #batman #orv #penumbra podcast #aftg #soc #FE3H #TMA #romanticsap #long post #rom's fanfiction collection

[sasaofastora]

As I’ve been setting up for the past few weeks, I’ve created a new Legacy Challenge based on my childhood favourite- The Urbz. All the rules and details are under the cut!

For each generation, try to stick to the aesthetics of each district as much as possible- and for some added fun, I also recommend trying to name your sims with puns or references that fit the area. The Urbz wiki page has all the existing characters to give you some inspiration.  

Generation 1: Central Station

You are a new arrival in the city, with no place to call your own and no place to go. So you stop at the first place everyone in this city comes through, Central Station. It doesn’t take long to make friends with the punks who make the subway station home. They’re passionate and angry at the status-quo, just like you, and for maybe the first time, you begin to find your place. 

Rules:

- Start with $0 

- The Curator Aspiration

- Must have the Hot-Headed trait

- Politician Career, Charity Organizer Branch

- Get in a fight every day

- Have at least one child (your heir should have the Bro trait)

Generation 2: Kicktail Park

Your parents were always so angry and ready for a fight, it made you want to find a place to just chill out, dude. You find your way to Kicktail Park, where you find other skater bros like you who just want to take life as it comes. Because hey, you only get one life, so why not live it to the max, man? Gnarly. 

Rules:

- Extreme Sports Enthusiast Aspiration

- Must have the Bro trait

- No career, do odd jobs only

- Master the Fitness and Snowboarding skills

- Do graffiti at least once per week

- Have at least one child (your heir should have the Snob trait)

Generation 3: The Foundry

The graffiti covered walls of the Park inspired something in you from a young age- a passion for art that was simply never understood by your laid-back parents. So you made your way to The Foundry, where the people appreciate art the way you do and take life more seriously. Also, they’re pretty into robots around here... 

Rules:

- Painter Extraordinaire Aspiration

- Must have the Snob trait

- Work part-time as a Barista, then become a Freelance Artist

- Master the Painting and Robotics skills

- Build Servo 

- Have at least one child (your heir should have the Dance Machine trait)

Generation 4: Neon East

Stuffy. Uptight. BORING. That’s how you would describe your parents. Where’s the life, the excitement, the colour? And so you find yourself in Neon East where the techno-technicolour rave never ends! Here you know you’ll never be bored again. And don’t forget to try the sushi!

Rules:

- Party Animal Aspiration

- Must have the Dance Machine trait

- Work part-time as a Fast Food Employee

- Master the Cooking, Video Gaming, and Dancing skills

- Find all Food Stall recipes from City Living

- Have at least one child (your heir should have the Music Lover trait)

Generation 5: Cozmo Street

Although you could appreciate your parents party-hard lifestyle, you always felt that the vibes just weren’t right for you. You wanted something a little more grounded, and a little more focused on the best part of those parties- the music. On Cozmo Street, you find your people, where a late night round of drinks and an impromptu jam session are never too far away. 

Rules:

- Musical Genius Aspiration

- Must have the Music Lover trait

- Culinary Career, Mixologist Branch

- Master the Mixology and Singing skills

- Do karaoke at least once per week

- Have at least one child (your heir should have the Freegan trait)

Generation 6: Skyline Beach

You grew up surrounded by musicians, whose talent inspired you every day. However, you always knew your true passion was in the words - the lyrics, the poetry. You find exactly where you want to be with the rap loving crowd on Skyline Beach, where rhymes fly from the rooftops all day long. Plus, they’ve got some interesting pets around here...

Rules:

- Neighborhood Confidante Aspiration

- Must have the Freegan trait

- Work as a Freelance Writer

- Master the Writing and Charisma skills

- Have a pet raccoon (since there are unfortunately no ferrets in the Sims 4)

- Have at least one child (your heir should have the Maker trait)

Generation 7: Gasoline Row

It’s all well and good spitting poetry all day, but where’s the grit? The grime? You need somewhere you can get your hands dirty. You find your place to do that on Gasoline Row, where mechanics and speed demons rule the streets. Around here, it’s all about head-banging to classic rock in the garage, and maybe taking a break for some hot dogs once in a while. 

Rules:

- Nerd Brain Aspiration

- Must have the Maker trait

- Work as a Freelance Crafter

- Master the Handiness and Fabrication skills

- Eat only BBQ foods and snacks

- Have at least one child (your heir should have the Kleptomaniac trait)

Generation 8: South Side Bridge

The gritty garage your parents loved so much just never seemed to inspire anything in you. You longed for something with a little more class, and a little more... dangerous competition than their motorcycle races. South Side Bridge is where you find what you were looking for. Get ready to cozy up to the local family- they might have some work for you in their fireworks business. Just don’t look into it too much. 

Rules:

- Public Enemy Aspiration

- Must have the Kleptomaniac trait

- Criminal Career, Boss Branch

- Master the Mischief and Juice Fizzing skills

- Set off fireworks at least once per week

- Have at least one child (your heir should have the Self-Absorbed trait)

Generation 9: Diamond Heights

The criminal dealings of your parents gave you the opportunity to rub shoulders with some of the most rich, famous, and glamourous of the city. And so of course, you wanted so badly to join them. You make your way to the celebrity studded and gold-covered runways of Diamond Heights, hoping that one day, you could be just as famous a fashion icon as some of them. Now vogue, darling. 

Rules:

- World-Famous Celebrity Aspiration

- Must have the Self-Absorbed trait

- Style Influencer Career, either branch

- Master the Photography skill

- Get involved in a Love Triangle

- Have at least one child (your heir should have the Overachiever trait)

Generation 10: Darius’ Penthouse

All the generations before you found one part of the city where they really belonged. You, however, never want to choose! You’d rather be a part of everywhere at once, and get to know as much about this wonderful city as you can. One day, you might even rule it all, looking down at the skyline from your penthouse apartment. Maybe you could even get a pet monkey? Or is that too ambitious...

Rules:

- City Native Aspiration

- Must have the Overachiever trait

- Any skills and careers you choose

- Live in a penthouse

I really hope you try out this legacy challenge, it was a lot of fun to put together! I don’t know yet if I’ll share my own gameplay of it or just keep it for myself, but I’d love to see what others do with it. Thanks for reading!! 

#sims 4 #ts4 #the urbz #legacy challenge #urbz legacy #simblr

[quodekash]

im already about to cry and the episode hasn't even started yet, so that's a nice sign that'll probably foreshadow how tonight is gonna go

PLS I LOVE HER SO MUCH

SHE ACTUALLY LISTENS AND TALKS TO KANGHAN

SHE IS MY GODDESS

MY QUEEN

MY MILF

9GO3U4ERHDSGN9P8IO4EURBDGN980OEUVDS

I KNEW SHE WAS CAPTAINING THE SHIP BUT HOLY FRICK NUGGETS

GUEOJRKBGNUOERJDFBGEUOR

IM SOBBING SO HARD RN

lmao nice joke

based on this scene being right at the start here, this episode is definitely gonna be the one where he properly realises his feelings for sailom (if he hasn't realised them already, which I dont think he has. he hasn't accepted it, at least)

AND BASED ON THAT LOGIC, generally the way these writers and directors etc base these ones, they fully lean into the fell first / fell harder dynamic, and almost immediately after the second person realises, they kiss

SO im very much hoping for a kiss at the end of this episode (but it also might not be til next episode)

WE'RE WHAT, ONE MINUTE INTO THE EPISODE?? AND WE'RE ALREADY GETTING TO THE INTIMATE STARES????

OH BOY IM SCARED FOR THE REST OF THE EPISODE

I THINK MY GAY LITTLE HEART MIGHT ACTUALLY EXPLODE

oh yup, oh yup, we've got the heartbeat sound in the background. kang's feelings are coming to lightttt (PLEASE LET THEM KISS TODAY)

AAA

IM SO EXCITED FOR WHATS GONNA HAPPEN BC OF THIS

my theory that they're gonna run away during school hours is still going strong

NOOOOO THE SCENE WAS SO NICE AND HAPPY AND FLUFFY WHY ARE YOU HERE TO RUIN IT YOU BASTARD???

yup okay so that theory is definitely right

(the theory that saifah's gonna like steal from kang's house, and his dad is gonna get shot in the process. not my own theory, it's from @ respectthepetty and it's such a good theory, I love it so much)

OML THIS IS SO FUNNY

I CANT WAIT FOR MORE BATHROOM SHENANIGANS, THIS IS GONNA BE WONDERFUL

awh is he lonely?

he needs a hug

from kang

all through the night

it'll be insane if they do tho, its literally night one, there's no way

I TAKE IT BACK, APPARENTLY IM WRONG????

OKAY NVM APPARENTLY I WASNT WRONG

im half convinced kang is gonna walk in or smth tho

YALL IM SCREAMING, HE FULL-ASS JUST HEEHEED

THEY ARE FRIENDS

AAAA THE LYRICS

I JUST LOVE THEM SO MUCH

THEYRE SO PLAYFUL WITH EACH OTHER

WHAT THE HELL

what I wouldn't give to be that driver rn

THE ARM OVER THE SHOULDER???????

THEYRE LITERALLY SO IN LOVE?????????

OMG

PIMFAH

MY WIFE

I rly wish that screenshot was better but the wifi is being stupid for no reason (which isn't surprising since this is Australia and we have the shittest wifi there is)

anyway IM SO SURE JUNE IS GONNA SHOW UP TODAY

GIVE👏US👏LESBIANS👏

DID I NOT SAY IT?

I WAS RIGHT YALL

AAAAAAAAAAA

LITERALLY IMMEDIATE

AS SOON AS THE OTHER MAJOR FEMALE CHARACTER WAS INTRODUCED, B O O M, LESBIANS

I VERY MUCH APPRECIATE THIS

although I wasn't expecting it to be teacher/student

she is just a trainee teacher, but its still a bit ick

idk tho

I guess we'll see what they do with it

gay panic in real time

ooh yes ive been waiting for the familial need for an heir thing to crop up, yesyesyes

making me think of drarry now

OKAY SO MAYBE I WAS WRONG

MAYBE HE DOES LIKE HER

but the things I said are still true

the evidence we've gotten before just now havent really felt solid enough to argue that kang likes pimfah

but now... I guess I have to agree

pimfah knows/suspects/ships it and no one can convince me otherwise

IM WHEEZE-LAUGHING THIS IS HILARIOUS

THE MUSIC PLAYING IN THE BACKGROUND?????

I CANT RN

SO THIS IS DEFINITELY A DREAM SEQUENCE, RIGHT?

I wasn't expecting imaginary scenes from this series but I deeply appreciate it

I CANT STOP LAUGHING

THIS IS SO EMBARRASSING, SAILOM

YOU SHOULD BE EMBARRASSED

BUT ITS ALSO SUCH A MOOD

also I like kang's shoes

Y E S

I WAS HOPING FOR OPEN HOUSE VIEWJUNE

again, I wasn't expecting it to be teacher/student, but anyway

OH YOU LESBIANN

G3I4ORENHGKLS

I would do the same tho

June is so pretty

and so is view

and so is chimon

and so is Perth

(and so is satang)

(no I will not shut up about my satang and perth siblings agenda, its too good to keep to myself)

NO IM OUT OF IMAGES

on the bright side, it took a lot longer to run out today than it did last week

#quodekash disregards sleep because of dangerous romance #dangerous romance #dangerous romance series #dangerous romance the series #kanghansailom #kangsailom #sailomkang #sailomkanghan #perthchimon #chimonperth #chimon wachirawit #perth tanapon #view benyapa #june wanwimol #viewjune #juneview #pimfahnabdao #nabdaopimfah

[songsofeternity-if]

Warning : This IF will include descriptions of death, kidnapping, abuse, plagues/disease, and other potentially disturbing content.

Life as a simple merchant in a city as large as Yaafena, the capitol of Syleric, was never easy for you, but it becomes much harder when you find an ancient artifact that once belonged to your grandfather, an artifact which defines you as the sole survivor of not only your bloodline, but your entire race. Accompanied by a mercenary hired for your protection, a wandering dancer, your estranged childhood friend of regal descent, and a tavern owner with suspicious ancestry, you embark on a dangerous journey through your nation to find the true abilities your ancestors provided you with.

The Mercenary: Nasiphe (F)

A young woman graced with significant talent in battle, well-known throughout Syleric as a ruthless and loyal member of The Forsaken Brotherhood, and the only woman among their ranks. Rumor has it that any humanity she previously possessed was beaten out of her early in her childhood, and she has since become a stone-hearted warrior who swiftly ends anyone who gets in her way. Don't get too close to her, many terrified citizens warn, for she is a vessel of destruction and malice.

The Musician: Faelyn (Gender Selectable)

Once a petty theif, they were born in the nearby city of Monadh, but fled their land of birth in their youth to avoid being prosecuted for their crimes. Playful and bubbly, you'll rarely see Faelyn without a smile on their face. They have recently become quite a popular musician in Yaafena due to their incredible gift in both lyricism and playing many instruments. They travel often and have been to many other nations to perform, but, in their opinion, none can measure up to the great land they are so proud to call home.

The Laird: Elsare (Gender Selectable)

Your childhood best friend and the heir to the throne of Syleric, a kind and gentle soul known for their wisdom and compassion, Elsare has always been the perfect child, and will soon become the perfect ruler. You haven't spoken in over a decade, but, from what you can see, they are still the same curious and hardworking person as they were when the two of you were just children. They can often be seen in the palace library, perusing through the various books they have most likely read many times over.

The Proprietor: Levias (M)

The owner of a small underground tavern named The Sleeping Nomad, he was reportedly born to a noble family, but rejected their lifestyle to make a name for himself. Levias is notoriously handsome and flirtatious, and has women and men alike falling prey to his sweet talk and tempting offers nearly everywhere he goes. Some speculate about his ancestry, as he tends to be incredibly secretive about his lineage. Many note his humanoid appearance, but he has many strange features that make some question what he really is.

Demo

(my second if tehe)

#the songs of eternity #tsoe #interactive fiction #game development #amateur writer #nasiphe #faelyn vespertine #elsare pharele #levias aubenet

[aromanticbuck]

Please tell me about arrows in action and mouse

Happily!

I have talked about how Mouse-coded Over It is before, because *gestures to the lyrics and all my headcanons* they wrote that about him, hope that helps. I know I talked about Put You Through Me in the context of Moustead, specifically. I have so many of their songs on Mouse's playlist (both of those, Forfeit, Learned My Lesson is a personal favorite, etc) and today's release, Cold, just got added to his playlist so fast because oh my god...

First of all, it opens up with the lyric tell me I'm worth it but don't scratch the surface, I'll break, which is a concept I write about often. Just the idea of someone being genuinely kind to him in a way that he is not at all familiar with, and he doesn't know how to handle it. Because of the mommy issues, obviously. I think about it constantly.

And then there are a few lyrics that make me think of the spoiled rich boy backstory I created for him? In the first verse, there's I lace your perception of me with deception so you stay, which I think applies really well to how he was raised, and specifically when he came out to his parents. Mouse knows he lost that relationship because of his queerness, and that directly led to him not coming out to Jay. He plays into how people see him to keep their approval, even if it's not entirely accurate to who he really is. He just doesn't want to lose another strong connection, or any one in his life, and he doesn't feel like the real version of him is enough to make people genuinely like him enough to stay.

The other lyric that makes me think of my beloved spoiled rich boy is in the second verse. I never meant to be someone's masterpiece, your pretty prodigy. He never asked to be Gregory Sebastian Gerwitz IV, the only child of one of Chicago's biggest tech moguls, the automatic heir to so much, with all of that pressure on his shoulders. He didn't want to have his entire future laid out for him, with his mother introducing him to eligible women every weekend so he could find a wife and get married and have children - preferably a son to be Gregory V - and it's just... not him.

That theme of not showing his true self on the outside, craving that genuine affection but not able to have it or, even if he could, not able to process it or accept it. So, maybe in his attempts to hold everyone at arms' length so he doesn't get hurt again, he can come across as, well, cold.

Oh, no Spiritual, chemical low Won't feel it 'til I overdose Slow down I'm spinning out of control Seeing double I'm two-faced but subtle So cold

#answered #anon #anonymouse #alex says things #greg gerwitz #mouse gerwitz #greg mouse gerwitz #cpd #chicago pd #one chicago

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Now I’m Covered In You [Chapter 4: Midnight]

Series summary: Aemond is a prince of England. You are married to his brother. The Wars of the Roses are about to begin, and you have failed to fulfill your one crucial responsibility: to give the Greens a line of legitimate heirs. Will you survive the demands of your family back in Navarre, the schemes of the Duke of Hightower, the scandals of your dissolute husband, the growing animosity of Daemon Targaryen…and your own realization of a forbidden love?

Series title is a lyric from: Ivy by Taylor Swift.

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+), dubious consent, miscarriage, pregnancy, childbirth, violence, warfare, murder, alcoholism, sexism, infidelity, illness, death, only vaguely historically accurate, lots of horses!

Word count: 6.1k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Taglist: @borikenlove @myspotofcraziness @ipostwhatifeel @teenagecriminalmastermind @quartzs-posts @tclegane @poohxlove @narwhal-swimmingintheocean @chainsawsangel @itsabby15 @serrhaewin @padfooteyes @arcielee @travelingmypassion @what-is-originality @burningcoffeetimetravel @blackdreamspeaks @anditsmywholeheart @aemcndtargaryen @jvpit3rs @sarcastic-halfling-princess @flowerpotmage @ladylannisterxo @thelittleswanao3 @elsolario @tinykryptonitewerewolf @girlwith-thepearlearring @minttea07 @trifoliumviridi @deltamoon666 @mariahossain​ @darkenchantress​ @doingfondue​ 

Let me know if you’d like to be added! 💜

It paints you like a canvas: sunlight, candlelight, sunlight again.

Two days after the miscarriage—the stillbirth, actually, the delivery, the beginning and the end all at once—you are searching the halls of Westminster Palace, the train of your gown dragging on the floor. It’s just a little too long for you now; it had been tailored to accommodate the additional weight and inches of pregnancy. And the court is just like they were before. They gawk, they jabber amongst themselves, but they can’t seem to think of a single word to say to you. Well…there is one exception.

“Sweet Jesus, what are you doing here?!” Nico exclaims when she rounds a corner and spots you. She rushes over and takes both of your hands in her own. “You look awful, you must be ready to drop over and sleep wherever you fall. Come on, I’ll walk you back to your rooms—”

“I can’t stay in bed for another second. I’m losing my mind. I’m just lying there, useless, staring up at the ceiling thinking about...everything.” The baby. The throne. Aegon. Aemond.

“Oh,” she says, sympathetic and yet proud. She sweeps back loose strands of hair from your face. “You have too much fire in you for that, I suppose. I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s a shame you were born a woman, you could have ridden into battle and butchered people and put all that ruthlessness to good use.”

“Being a woman didn’t stop Boudicca.” And she wasn’t just a woman. She was a wife, a mother.

“And where did that get her?” Nico retorts with raised eyebrows. “Nowhere enviable.”

You can’t think of a clever response. “Would you happen to know where Aemond is?”

“Not presently. He’s been looking in on you, you know.”

You do know: you’ve glimpsed him in the doorway, caught his whispers with the physicians and the midwives and your secretless English ladies. “I need to speak with him about something. To…” You pause. You can’t tell Nico about the poem that’s now hidden in the trunk at the foot of your bed; but you can tell her something else that’s true. “To thank him.”

“He’s been distraught,” Nico says, her voice low. “Quiet, secluded. Even more than before.”

As usual, she sees too much. “Yes.”

“He cares for you. Quite a lot, I think.”

“I’ll check the courtyard,” you say, hoping to change the subject. “Maybe he’s training there.”

“Do you want me to go with you?”

“No, I think I can manage.”

“What if you pass out and end up out in a field somewhere covered with snow? What if you find a boat and row yourself back to Navarre? What if you’re eaten by wolves?”

“Send out a search party if I’m not back in an hour. But don’t invite Daemon. He’d drag me headfirst into the lair.”

“Alright,” Nico relents, touching your hair fondly again. “One hour. And I’ll chew my nails to bits the whole time.”

“As long as they’ve grown back by the wedding.”

She beams, white teeth and starry eyes. When she at last marries Daeron in August she will be another princess from the Continent, another thread in the Greens’ tapestry. She will be a lot like you…except that she will be in love with her husband. And she will be able to give him children.

But Aemond’s will come before them in the line of succession, you think, with a mournfulness that shocks you. The sons he has with whoever he ends up marrying, Helene of Austria or Beatrice of Naples or Anne of Bohemia. Some other woman, some other future, parts of him I’ll never know.

“I want you to help me choose every detail,” Nico says. “From the food to the fashion.” This is how she plans to distract you from your own misery. And the Duke of Hightower will indulge her: with every pregnancy you lose Nico becomes more relevant, and in any case Milan is a greater ally than Navarre. If the Holy Roman Emperor’s daughter ends up crossing the English Channel, she will eclipse you both.

“I’ll endeavor to not be eaten by wolves until August,” you tell Nico, and then head outside into the courtyard.

Aemond isn’t sparring there with Sir Criston Cole; with the exception of a few amorous couples strolling through the powdery white snow, the courtyard is empty. You pass next through the palace gardens, frozen and naked, their treasures—angelica, feverfew, St. John’s wort, betony, chamomile, rosemary, pennyroyal—long-since plucked and dried and stored away for winter. Aemond isn’t there either, and he isn’t in the royal stables when you enter them, horses chomping noisily on oats and hay.

You go to Vhagar’s stall and she pops her great shaggy head out to greet you. “Hello, you big monster,” you murmur, smiling. You run your palm down the white stripe of her blaze. She’s killed people, and everyone knows those stories; she stomped one man to death and kicked another in the jaw, trotting away and leaving him to drown in his own blood. That was before Aemond tamed her when he was still a boy. He mellowed her, or she mellowed for him, and however it happened they’re both better off for it. She’s a weapon, the same as his sword or his strategies. She has a role to play in the Greens’ battle for the throne as well.

There’s rustling from Sunfyre’s stall, too loud to be a rat or a bird. You cross the aisle and peer inside. There on the floor, half-covered in straw, is sprawled your husband. Sunfyre looks passively down at him, stems of hay sticking out like porcupine quills from his muzzle.

“Aegon?!”

“Shh!” he pleads, waving one hand drunkenly. His white-blond hair falls over his face like a veil. “I’m hiding.”

“From who?” But the answer to this is obvious; you know before he says it.

“Grandsire. He’s furious, he’s a demon. He’ll have me drawn and quartered.”

“What’s he so upset about?”

“Oh, the same old thing, I’d imagine,” Aegon says vaguely. His shortcomings, his embarrassments. Then his murky ocean-blue eyes focus a bit and his voice goes tender. “Are you in pain?”

“I’ve had a lot of wine. It helps some.” Takes the edge off, smooths down the fangs, dulls the knowledge that parts of you are still collapsing down to fill the space where your child once lived. Blood drains away, blood fills up again, blood readies itself for the inevitable next attempt.

“Good,” he says, though uncertainly. His sentiment is clear, but he doesn’t know how to express it.

“Have you seen Aemond?”

“Not today.”

You sigh. “Never mind, then. I’ll keep looking.”

“Should you be running around the palace like this?”

“I haven’t done any running in a very long time. And I’m confident I can find my way back to bed when I need to.”

Now Aegon is gazing up at the stable ceiling, studying eaves and bird nests like constellations. “It should have been him,” he exhales like a confession.

“What?”

“Aemond. It should have been him. The one to shoulder the responsibility, to reign. I don’t belong someplace where people watch me. I have nothing to show them that they want to see. I belong someplace warm and wild, someplace I can disappear. Is it such a crime to not want to be held to a higher standard than an inconsequential man? Is it such a crime to not wish to be remembered? I never asked to be the heir. Not even the king wants me to be the heir. How am I the one in the wrong here?”

“I think many of us wish for things we cannot have,” you reply morosely.

“We could have them,” Aegon counters. “If we ran far enough.”

“That’s a coward’s way out.”

“I’d rather be a free coward than a jailed prince. Or a dead one.”

As if to emphasize his point, you spy something odd about his saddle, hanging from a massive iron hook on the stable wall. You move closer to scrutinize it. Then you return to Sunfyre’s stall. “Someone cut your stirrup,” you say, frightened. “Before the Christmas boar hunt. It’s sliced clean most of the way through and then the rest of it must have ripped as you were riding.”

Aegon squints up at you. He’s mystified. “Why would someone do that?”

Your exasperation—your contempt, not for him but for his failings—must show on your face.

“Please don’t look at me that way,” Aegon says. “Not you. Mother always loved Aemond more, Father always loved Rhaenyra, Grandsire loved the throne. You are the only thing I’ve ever had that’s supposed to be mine.”

And now you’re the one who is imagining a traitor’s death: hanged momentarily, cut down and thrown onto a table, drawn open like a gutted animal as the crowd’s screams mingle with your own, dissected into quarters once your belly is sufficiently emptied. Because surely you’re the worst sort of traitor there is. “You must be more careful,” you implore Aegon. And he smiles; he takes this as a token of affection.

You finally find Aemond somewhere you should have suspected. It’s where people go to find peace, solitude, wisdom. He’s sitting in a cascade of kaleidoscopic light pouring in from the stained glass windows, scenes of King Arthur and Saint George, lovers and swords and dragons. You slide into the pew, cool austere wood. The small private chapel is abandoned except for the two of you. On the altar is a cross: blood, pain, sacrifice, redemption. Aemond has his hands folded and propped on the back of the next pew. He stares straight ahead, grim and silent. He must know you’re there, but he doesn’t make any sign that he does.

“I don’t mean to interrupt,” you say.

“You’re not interrupting. I was just speaking to God, but I’m finished now.”

“Do you believe he can hear us?”

“I used to.” Still, he keeps his eye on the altar. Flecks of luminance pepper his skin: gold, ruby, emerald, sapphire. “You’re wearing green,” he marvels. He can see you well enough for that, a blur on his periphery.

“Yes. Like ivy.”

And only now does he look at you, afraid and yet with fragile hope.

“Aemond,” you say softly. “I didn’t know.” I longed for it, but I didn’t know.

Long seconds tick by, ten, twenty, a hundred. “I have envied Aegon my entire life,” he says at last. “I have felt that I was more suited to be the firstborn, to be the heir. I have watched him squander opportunities and defile morality and bring nothing but heartbreak to my mother. I have worked myself to the bone to prove myself worthy of what he was freely given. I carry scars in the shape of his absence. I have always envied Aegon. But never more than the day I watched him marry you.”

You move without thinking, reaching for his hands and interlacing them with your own. “Please don’t hide from me anymore. I can’t endure it. Not added to the weight of everything else.”

He feels your cheeks and forehead, his brow crinkled with hushed concern. “You’re in pain.”

“I was alright when I left my bedchamber. Now…” Now the cramping is very bad again, and the strip of thick linen folded between your legs is nearly soaked through with blood, and your mood is sinking; you feel shaky and insurmountably sad, like you could rupture into tears at any moment.

He is distressed. “Why did you exert yourself like this?”

“I had to find you.”

He stands and offers you his arm. “Then now that you have, allow me to escort you back to bed.”

“And you’ll stay for a while?”

He smiles, warm, a flicker of candlelight in a dark room. “I’ll stay for as long as you’ll let me.”

You walk very slowly together, you clutching his forearm, Aemond distracting you with English legends: myths, monsters, men. But he does not speak of children. Westminster Palace is frenzied when you step inside, courtiers rushing around and hissing gossip back and forth to each other. Greens and Blacks appear to be equally scandalized; you wonder what has happened. As you and Aemond make your way down a hallway—your steps halting and dizzy—Prince Daemon sails by wearing a cruel smirk, sharp, delighted, Scottish deerhounds loping alongside him. And then you peek into the Great Hall and you see them: the Montfords, Lady Joanna’s parents and uncles and her handsome, ambitious brothers. They’re all beaming and radiant, though they really have no reason to be, now that Aegon is long past bedding Joanna and the Montfords can no longer call upon the Duke of Hightower for any exceptional favors. Come to think of it, you haven’t seen Joanna since around the time Nico arrived in London, since August, since you discovered you were pregnant again. That was five months ago. The Montfords are passing around an infant swaddled in green cloth, showing him off to the other powerful families of Southern England, accepting compliments and proposals of betrothal to wealthy newborn daughters. From what you can tell, the child is fat and mewing and…and…

You gasp, and Aemond swiftly directs you farther down the hallway before anyone notices you watching. He says nothing, but you can read the shock and fury on his face. Because Lady Joanna Montford’s infant is a healthy living boy with silvery white hair just like Aegon’s. Because her child is a Targaryen.

There are yelps and whimpers coming from Aegon’s bedchamber. Somebody must have found him hiding in the stables after all. The door is open. Inside the Duke of Hightower has backed Aegon into a corner and is slapping him: his head, his face, his hands when he tries to shield himself. Aegon’s pale skin is freckled with angry pink welts, his hair in disarray. There are still bits of straw knotted in it.

The Duke of Hightower seethes: “To do this, to have a bastard before you’ve secured the succession! It’s a disgrace! You have muddied the waters yet again, you have undermined certainty when we so desperately need it, when all of our lives depend on it! You should be putting every last ounce of the miniscule effort that you possess into producing a legitimate son with your wife—!”

“Grandsire, she’s not capable of it!”

Then they see you, and Aegon has the decency to cover his face in shame; but the Duke just glares at you, as if he wouldn’t mind hitting you too, as if you are dangerously close to becoming an enemy.

~~~~~~~~~~

Two weeks after the miscarriage, the royal family has gathered for a private dinner. The occasion is Daeron’s sixteenth birthday, although the king mentioned it once and then seems to have promptly forgotten again. He is admiring a collection of tiny woodcarvings of horses that Joffrey has made, praising them as if they are great treasures, handmade tapestries or poems or blades. Alicent, much to the contrary, fawns over her youngest son. She frets with his curly white-blond hair—trying to make it lie neatly, a pointless aspiration—and asks Nico about wedding plans. Nico is effervescent, bubbling over with enthusiasm for fabrics, colors, cakes, flowers.

Aegon sits to your right, Aemond to your left. Your husband is drowning himself in wine and peering blearily down at the trappings of the table: duck, mushroom pasties, spinach tarts, salmon pie, bread, and makerouns of course, Daeron’s favorite. Aemond doesn’t say much, but he ensures that your cup stays full of apple cider and your plate piled high with winter delicacies.

“I can’t,” you complain when he serves you another spinach tart. You’re still bleeding, although it has lessened considerably. You still have very little appetite. Weight has fallen off you like leaves from autumn trees since you lost the baby, a fact that no one seems to have noticed except Aemond.

“Try,” he replies, and slices you a portion of duck too, the browned skin crackling and shiny with grease. Across the table, Daemon and Rhaenyra exchange fleeting caresses and gazes warm with desire. Jace chats politely with Baela, Luke giggles with Rhaena. They all wear lustrous black like a uniform. Even the king wears it, accented with maroon the shade of dried blood.

“We must get you a real horse,” King Viserys is telling Joffrey, who smiles adoringly up at him. The king coughs into his sleeve and then continues. “Would you like a Marwari, like your mother has? They’re nimble, gorgeous creatures, and with such peculiar ears! They’re very rare as well, only bred in North India. Seafaring traders can bring some here for you to choose from. They come at a great cost, but you are worth it, don’t you agree, Joffrey? You know, India was once partially conquered by Alexander the Great. He…”

Aemond glances longingly at the king; it’s a split second, and then it’s gone. You are well aware that Aemond knows very nearly everything about Alexander the Great. The king never speaks to him about it. He rarely speaks to Aemond at all.

You lay a hand on top of Aemond’s. “Will you tell me about it later?” you ask him. “Alexander and India?”

He smiles, his cheeks blushing pink. “Of course.”

The Duke of Hightower clears his throat loudly. “I have some happy news to share.”

King Viserys looks up, as if suddenly remembering that the Greens are here too. “Oh? Do enlighten us, Otto.”

“After much negotiation, the Holy Roman Emperor has formally agreed to a match between his daughter and Prince Aemond.”

“Very impressive, Otto!” The king claps politely. He’s already resuming his conversation with Joffrey, a six-year-old.

“Wonderful!” Nico heralds cheerfully. “Lose a Helaena, gain a Helene!” She holds her cup aloft in a toast, then lowers it as she observes the awkward atmosphere of the table. You and Aemond are so determined not to appear heartsick that you can only avert your eyes, Alicent frowns anxiously, Daeron is bewildered, Aegon drinks. Rhaenyra forces a stiff smile; Daemon watches you, deep-set eyes gleaming with dark mirth.

“Well…” the Duke says. “Perhaps I should have started with the unhappy news. Princess Helene is dead of fever, God rest her soul.”

“Oh, the poor girl!” Alicent laments, crossing herself. “And poor Frederick and Eleanor.”

“Fortunately, Frederick still has one daughter left—only one—and he is willing to send her to us.” The Duke doesn’t have to say what this means aloud: that the Greens have risen ever-higher in the Continent’s estimation, that their allies grow mightier and more numerous by the day.

“How fortunate,” Daemon quips. “Always a wise idea to have children to spare.” He winks at you, swigs his wine, licks red drops from his lips. His Scottish deerhounds, which follow him everywhere, sniff around the table for scraps. “And who is the lucky bride-to-be?”

The Duke of Hightower is glowing. “Kunigunde.”

“Kunigunde?!” Aegon blurts out, then drops his head back down when the Duke glowers fearsomely at him. “Jesus Christ,” he mutters, staring into his wine cup. “What the hell kind of a name is Kunigunde?”

“She sounds…” Daemon raises his white eyebrows, choking back laughter. The Black children are following his example and snickering derisively, even little Joffrey, who doesn’t have the slightest idea what this marriage represents. Even the king smiles. “Germanic.”

“You’ll like her,” the Duke informs Aemond, ignoring his detractors. “You should be crawling on your knees to thank me for this match. You think I’ve taken no notice of your hard work, of your sacrifices, but I have. Kunigunde has received an extraordinary education for a woman. She studies astronomy and mathematics and history, not just languages. She practices archery. She is a renowned horsewoman and hunts often. She is intelligent, and she is bold, and she is precisely the sort of woman you would choose for yourself, is she not?”

“She is,” Aemond admits gravely.

“Kunigunde,” Aegon mumbles again, incredulous.

The Duke continues: “And so when she arrives you will wed her and bed her and I will hear not a single word of complaint about it. You will like her, or you will grow to like her, or you will endure it with grace if by some miracle you don’t like her. Is that understood?”

“How romantic,” Daemon chuckles. “A toast? To love?” He lifts his wine. Only the other Blacks join him, their cups clanging merrily against each other.

“I’ll be delighted to make a new friend, at least,” Nico says. “And one from so distant and vast a kingdom!”

Alicent nods distractedly. “Yes, we’ll have to ask her all about what it’s like there.”

“Hmm.” Daemon bites into a halved pomegranate, spilling juice like rubies, like blood. “Now my curiosity is aroused. Tell me, Navarre, what is your homeland like this time of year?”

“That depends on which region you have in mind,” you say frostily. Aemond is glaring at his uncle, measuring him, waiting, coiled. “The mountains are cold and snowy, the valleys are more temperate, the deserts are stark but still golden. Navarre is beautiful, even in January. It might be the most beautiful place there is.”

“You don’t find it to be…rather…” Daemon grins, pieces of pomegranate seeds caught between his teeth like bits of organs. “Barren?”

The table goes silent. Time slows until it stops. You should have a barb of an insult to hurl back at Daemon; you open your mouth to loose it like an arrow. But nothing comes out. Instead, hot sudden tears brim in your eyes and begin to spill down your face, your skull filled with flashes like white lightning: What would we have named him? What would he have been like?

Aemond bolts from his seat and goes for Daemon, fists swinging. Everyone is yelling; chairs are tipping over as people leap to their feet. Nico is shrieking and swearing at Daemon as her betrothed holds her back, his hands linked around her waist. Aemond’s knuckles crack across Daemon’s face as guards flood into the room and struggle in vain to separate them; Daemon strikes out, scratches, bites, yowls like an animal. Rhaenyra is pulling Rhaena and Joffrey away to safety. Unprovoked, Aegon pitches a handful of salmon pie at Baela, then screams and flees when she scrambles over the tabletop in pursuit. Alicent intercepts her, pinning Baela’s hands to her chest where they pose no threat. Jace and Luke try to join Daemon, but the Duke shoves them aside, bellowing ferociously, words you are too panicked to register. In the melee, Daemon snatches up a fork, turns to Aemond, and aims for his remaining eye. You dart beneath the table and knock Daemon off his feet, catching him unprepared. He whirls to you with his back against the floor, eyes glittering savagely, and, roaring, stabs at you with the fork. You duck, but the metal skates across your cheekbone, drawing a thin stripe of blood. The Scottish deerhounds are snarling and snapping at you. Aemond yanks you away and drags you to the other side of the room as Daemon follows, reaching for the hilt of his sword.

“Enough!” King Viserys thunders, and the turmoil dies. Alicent flies to him—attempting to pacify—but he ignores her.

“He must pay!” Aemond shouts, pointing at Daemon, whose nose is bloodied from his blows. “He must pay for what he’s said, for what he’s done!”

“It looks to me that he already has,” the king replies impatiently. He grimaces at everyone present, with no lines drawn between the blameworthy and the not. “This rivalry, this petulance, this bitterness, it must end!” He turns to the Duke of Hightower. “You must restrain your branch of the family, Otto, just as Rhaenyra must gain better control of hers—”

“Viserys, Daemon has ceaselessly antagonized the princess—!”

“I am not Viserys!” the king booms, then pauses to cough. “I am the king, I am your king, and since there seems to be enduring confusion, allow me to clarify some things, some exceedingly fundamental things. I have already chosen an heir, and it is Rhaenyra.” He looks to Daemon. “You have nothing to fear from Alicent’s children. You have no cause to provoke them. It is a waste of your many talents.” Now the king addresses Otto. “You can glorify your house however you see fit, but remember where this all ends. Rhaenyra and her heirs will inherit the throne upon my death. It stays with her, that is my most ardent wish. It is treason to undermine it. By all means, increase the wealth and status of your dukedom. But never forget who gave it to you.”

The king sweeps out of the room, Rhaenyra and her children following closely behind him. Alicent stands there helplessly, abandoned, forgotten. Nico and Daeron comfort her instead. Aegon meanders back to the table, sighs deeply, and pours himself a fresh cup of wine. Aemond examines the shallow gash across your cheek. Daemon watches, a dozen guards stationed between you and him. Growling Scottish deerhounds flank him like the train of a gown.

“I’ll kill you one day,” Aemond says calmly, matter-of-factly.

Daemon shrugs. “You’re welcome to try.”

And then he’s gone.

~~~~~~~~~~

Two months after the miscarriage, the physicians say it’s time to try again. They are the ones who decide: not you, not Aegon, not either of the people whose bodies are requisite to the task. Just old men in the service of another old man: the Duke of Hightower. Men who have never had to feign pleasure as they were groped and invaded. Men who have never felt a child tearing from their own flesh, nor the cramping and blood that follows, reminders that are impolite to speak of.

Aemond keeps you company; you don’t even have to ask him to. Your ladies are no longer surprised when they walk into your rooms to find him there. He, Nico, and Daeron are frequent visitors, far more frequent than your own husband. You read together, or Aemond reads and you embroider, or you play card games, or you simply talk until the stars have rolled by overhead like a wheel and the first golden bars of daybreak spill in from the windows. Tonight, as you wait for Aegon to arrive—full of anxiety and impatience and hope, full of dread—you are embroidering a pillow with Vhagar’s silhouette. Aemond is sitting beside you on the bearskin rug and reading a book about the kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula, including Navarre. The fireplace pops periodically, heat and red-golden light, sparks and shadows. Aemond is dressed in his usual dark green attire, but you’re only wearing a white nightgown. Once someone has seen you sobbing on the floor and coated with the blood of failure, it seems useless to try to reclaim your modesty.

“Does this look like a horse?” you ask Aemond doubtfully, showing him the pillow.

He blinks at it. “It certainly looks like…a large land-dwelling creature. Of some sort.”

You sigh defeatedly. “I’m so damned nervous. My fingers won’t cooperate, I can barely feel them.”

“I’d still enjoy the pillow. Even if Vhagar looks suspiciously like one of Hannibal’s elephants.”

You laugh. “Yes, that nose…a travesty, surely.” You set aside your embroidery. It’s a lost cause this evening. You stare into the fire, feeling warmth like the sun on your face, so hot it nearly burns.

“Why are you still nervous?” Aemond asks gently. “After all this time?”

“Will you be nervous when you’re expected to fuck Kunigunde?”

“Yes,” he says, a bit startled.

“Only the first night? If she never stops feeling like a stranger to you?”

“No,” he admits. “Perhaps not.”

“That’s why I’m still nervous.”

Aemond closes his book and studies you pensively, firelight dancing on his face. Several miles away in the Tower of London, the bells toll twelve times: midnight.

“He won’t be here,” you say, relieved and yet broken, no end of your prison in sight. “Not tonight. And why would he be? Who would want this, the way it is between us? He’s fumbling and drunk, I’m a resigned liar, both of us trying our best but just waiting for it to be over. Rhaenyra gets to enjoy lying with her husband, Nico will enjoy it when it’s her turn, but I don’t. I never will. I’ll never know what that’s like.”

Time slinks forward. It seems like an eternity passes before he speaks, dust to pyramids, castles, cathedrals, civilization and then back to dust. “I could show you,” Aemond says, so quietly you might have imagined it.

You don’t understand. “Show me what?”

“How good it can feel.”

You gape at him, stunned. “I can’t lie with you.” And then you think immediately, like a traitor: Can I?

Aemond shakes his head, staring down at his open palms. “Only my hands.”

You should say no, here in your bedchamber waiting obediently for his brother to arrive, here on the skin and fur of a beast Aemond killed for you, here with sweltering flames inking you both with amber-rust light like sunset, like dawn. But something stops you. It’s the fact that Aemond knows you somehow, all of you, or very nearly all; and when he stumbles into one of your rare secrets like an unfamiliar room he wants to get down on his hands and knees and memorize every floorboard, every fleck of paint. You nod, moving towards him, your nightgown whispering against your bare skin. “Just this once?” you ask.

“Just this once,” Aemond agrees.

You can already feel yourself aching for him, muscles and nerves waking up, violent red craving. You press your left palm cautiously to Aemond’s chest. “How…?”

“It’s alright. You can lean against me.”

Your right hand travels up to rest on the back of Aemond’s neck; you can feel his long silvery hair ghost across your knuckles. You inhale him: leather, smoke, musk, darkness and possibility all tangled up together like the two of you are now. One arm circles around your waist, drawing you in even closer, until your thighs are touching. You wonder what his bare, defenseless skin would feel like on yours; you wish the clothes between you were in a pile on the floor. But that is far, far too risky. You could not remedy that instantly if there was an unexpected knock at the bedchamber door.

Aemond’s pale blue gaze—rapt, intense, starving—stays on yours as his other hand settles on your ankle. His fingertips move slowly upwards, tracing your skin lightly, slipping beneath your nightgown: calf, knee, thigh. He hesitates there: one last chance for you to stop him.

“Yes,” you murmur instead, resting your head against his chest, listening to the pounding of his heart. And already, you know this will be different; everything about it feels different. Because Aemond is the one here with you.

He reaches between your legs and finds warm, slick folds that are already wet for him. His breathing hitches, then quickens, his ribcage rapidly expanding and caving in again, a cycle like the moon or the seasons. He drags his fingers through your wetness and then places them on a spot that Aegon always paid great attention to, although to little effect. But when Aemond touches you there—experimenting with different pressures and motions—you are swept up in a euphoric riptide that can only carry you higher, higher, higher still. You’ve glimpsed this feeling before, but you’ve never been able to get lost in it. You are gasping, restless; your hand on the back of his neck wanders and inadvertently knots in his hair. “I’m sorry—”

“No,” he says, low and husky, meaning: no, don’t apologize, no, don’t stop.

“Aemond, something’s happening…”

“I’m here. I’ve got you.”

His fingers circle more quickly, more powerfully. You moan and bring your lips to his throat, delicious heat and salt flowering there. You fight the instinct to bite down, to leave bruises, to mark him as your own. He’s not yours and he never will be, and no one can know all the irrevocable ways he has written himself into you like the ink of a poem, words scaling the scarlet walls of arteries and veins, rhymes in your bone marrow. The pleasure keeps mounting; every time you think it can go no higher, you climb to a new height like the steps of a staircase. “I can’t stand it—”

“Almost there,” he pants, and pushes a finger into you, the heel of his hand still grinding against the place where the sensation is greatest. Your hips move in time with his thrusts.

“More,” you beg helplessly, and Aemond glides a second finger inside. You twist your grip into his tunic, into his hair. You meld yourself into him, never feeling close enough. Now he’s nipping at the line of your jaw, his free hand against your face, his whispered voice telling you to relax, to breathe through it, that it’s alright to give in. And then your eyes flick down and see the outline of him through his trousers—how large he is, much larger than his brother, thick and long, perhaps even too much for you to take—and it is this, the thought of having Aemond completely, of him spilling himself into you in body as he already has in soul, that sends an indescribable wave jolting through you: heat, ecstasy, contracting muscles, bursts of color.

“Stop, stop, stop,” you say in a rush when it ends and you’re too sensitive to be stroked. Aemond’s hand stills, but he keeps his fingers inside you, feeling your walls throb around him for what he undoubtedly fears is the first and last time, resting his forehead against yours, trembling all over.

Your thumbprint skates across his parted lips, and then you cup his face with both hands and kiss him deeply, soft and slow. It might as well be your first kiss, your only kiss. It blows the past out of you like stormwinds ripping up homes and centuries-old roots.

You tell him when it finally breaks: “I wish it could be you.”

Aemond searches your face, then kisses you again, fiercely this time, with an unspeakable desperation. Then he rises to his feet and leaves, no goodbye, no plans, no promises.

And when Aegon does stagger into your bed the next night, you’re able to nudge his hands into the perfect position and close your eyes and think of his brother, and for the first time you reach a shuddering, breathless peak with him. You try to stifle the sheer intensity of your pleasure, the arching of your spine and the way your fingernails bite into his skin, leaving dark pink blooms like roses. But he knows this time is different.

“Well, wife,” Aegon says, grinning roguishly. “I think we’re getting better at this.”

~~~~~~~~~~

In the morning, Aemond fetches you without a word of explanation. He leads you to the royal stables, where the last of the winter’s snow and ice is melting away, dripping from the eaves like rain.

“Are we going to take Vhagar out walking…?”

But Aemond breezes right past Vhagar, who watches you both with large, intelligent eyes as she crunches on a mouthful of oats. He stops at a stall that has always been unoccupied, ever since you first arrived at Westminster Palace over a year and a half ago.

“What—?” And then you see her: pure glossy black like onyx, long mane and tail, intrigued ears pricked forward towards you. She’s heavy with muscle, bigger than Sunfyre or Caraxes, almost as large as Tessarion. “Oh, Aemond…”

“She’s an Andalucian,” he says, anxious, hoping you’ll approve of her. “I wrote to your brother Alonzo and arranged for her to be shipped over from Navarre a month ago, but she’s just arrived today.” He smiles faintly, wistfully. “So don’t think she is a gift for services recently rendered.”

You smile back. “I don’t recall having the opportunity to serve you.”

He flushes, but tries to ignore it. Still, his eye traces the curves and valleys your emerald green gown, all those places he never got to see, to taste.

You pet the Andalucian’s inky muzzle and she consents, nickering contently. “I never thought I’d have my own horse here,” you say. “Not unless I gave Aegon a son. Maybe not even then.”

“What will you name her?”

You look at Aemond as you answer, your eyes dark with craving for him, a curse you can’t break, a spell you’d cast over and over again. “Midnight.”

#aemond x y/n #aemond x you #aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen #aemond one eye #aemond targaryen x you #niciy

[captain-writes]

🐝 Mirror, Mirror on the Wall (True Hope Lies Beyond the Coast)

(Bonus points if you recognize the lyric!)

I didn't know the song before your ask, but now I've listened to it and it sounds awesome!! Here's the summary that the title you've given inspired, it gave me Pirates SMP Owen vibes:

Before Owen came to the Faction Isles, her relationship with with her family had been more akin to shackles pinning him to the walls of the home he grew up in.

She had always wished to escape her home and set sail. Now that Owen has managed to escape the coast of the island that had been his home, she hoped to never have to worry about her blood family again.

Unfortunately, it seems as though his family wasn't quite so ready to let go of their prized heir.

The reappearance of people she had escaped brought the question of the ages to Owen's mind: Who was he really? A pirate of the free and open seas? Or a rich heiress of her family's design?

#psmp #psmp owen #scurvyblr #pirates smp #pirates smp owen #captain’s asks

[beetlewine-art]

"i But wait, if I could shake the crushing weight of expectations

Would that free some room up for joy or relaxation, or simple pleasure?

Instead, we measure this growing pressure

Keeps growing, keep going

'Cause all we know is

Pressure like a drip, drip, drip that'll never stop, whoa

Pressure that'll tip, tip, tip 'til you just go pop, whoa, oh, oh

Give it to your sister, it doesn't hurt, and

See if she can handle every family burden

Watch as she buckles and bends but never breaks, no mistakes"

-----------------------------------------------

Moodboard for my Remarried empress OC: Junia Elise Clifford, Baroness of Valei, Empress of the Eastern Empire and Emperor Sovieshus third wife.

Junia is the final wife of Sovieshu, she is the eldest daughter of her family and a Baroness. She and Sovieshu meet after Junia becomes a Lady in Waiting for Empress Rashta and later she becomes Rashta's closest female friend. Years later after certain events of the TRE novel, she and Sovieshu get married and Junia becomes Empress. Their relationship is complicated to say the least, since Junia married him for the sake of elevating her family and doesn't really trust him, seen how he treated his first two wives.

Meanwhile Sovieshu didn't wanted to marry her either, since he still regrets what he did to Navier and while he understands that she moved on, he still misses her deeply. Sovieshu only remarried because of pressure from his advicers and as a final try to get an heir, but they never had any children. He and Junia do fall in love later in their marriage and Sovieshu moves on from Navier, but it takes years for it to happend. She is an okay empress, not as bad as Rashta but nowhere near Navier's level since she didn't have the education Navier had for the role.

Junia has two younger sisters: Ada and Fausta. I'll post about them later.

-----------------------------------------------

Honestly, is been a while since i wanted to create and OC for The Remarried Empress. I haven't seen a lot of OC's for this fandom so i tougth that it would be interesting to create one. I mostly wanted to create a character that could be a true friend for Rashta, i specially wanted a female friend because she doesn't really have the best relationship with women in general (i am pretty sure that there isn't a single women in this story that doesn't have some beff with Rash or doesn't fear her, let alone respect her).

So while i am presenting her as Sovieshu's third wife, her story is way more interwined with Rashta than with him. Sovieshu doesn't have any business being married for a third time but i wanted to explore how he would deal with a new relationship after the fiasco that his two marriages were. Also, i don't really like the idea of Sovieshu eternally pinning after Navier, i like the idea of him moving on and leaving her alone better. I will probably post some comics with Junia and Rashta when i have the time, to show a bit of Junia's personality but i guess that the lyrics i add already gives an idea of her personality.

#my post #remarried empress critical #the remarried empress #remarried empress #beetlewine #beetleposting #beetlepost #beetlewine oc #the remarried empress oc #rashta iska #emperor sovieshu #sovieshu #rashta #junia clifford

[egonspenglerishot]

Something about Young Nihil after he’d just become Papa maybe? 😊

Thought this gif was fitting

“Pretty Boy? Me?”

.

.

.

.

Nihil groaned as he opened his eyes. His father hadn’t been lying when he said rituals drain you of energy. His facepaint was faded from him just collapsing on the bed. He got up and did his usual routine of washing his face, styling his hair etc.

After he was dressed he headed downstairs to be greeted by a very unhappy Imperator and a few ghouls. He rose a brow at them, clearly confused.

“So? You found someone last night?”

Imperators words were harsh and cold. He’d only been Papa for a day, if that. He looked at her confused and reached for her. He understood despite being so young she’d been hurt before. She pulled away and the hurt was evident on his face.

“amore what are you talking about? Last night after the ritual I came straight back here and collapsed, I didn’t even have time to wipe my makeup off”

Imperator looked at him confused for a second before Nihils father walked in. Nihil bowed slightly to his father, realizing that the woman he was suppose to call mother, was clinging to his arm. His true mother, his fathers prime mover, had long left the ministry after Nihils father didn’t let her see Nihil after birth.

“Papa, do you remember what happened last night, Imperator seems to think I’m cheating”

The father looked over and shook his head in disbelief.

“No, you haven’t cheated. If she’s talking of the woman that brought you home, that was your…birth mother.”

Nihils eyes widened. His fathers voice held such venom speaking of his ex prime mover. He felt a squirm in his stomach and looked at imperator with a faint smile. She was always so cranky before coffee, but he loved her. Or…he thought he did.

Later that day Nihil was writing lyrics when Imperator came in and sat with him. Not unusual, in his Cardinal days they would have done….less appropriate things, but he knew she was tired.

“Amore, I’m glad to see you! I was thinking the next concert we could do-“

He was cut of by a sniffle. Looking over Imperators eyes were full of tears. His heart beat quickened and he held her face, scanning for injuries.

“T…tesoro! What’s wrong? Did my father say anything?”

Imperator looked at him so upset. It broke his heart, and angered him. It was obvious his father was behind his dearest’s pain.

“Your father said you have to have a prime mover a…and it can’t be me”

His heart dropped further. But she was the love of his life. He didn’t want to part from her at all. He brought her into a sweet kiss and kissed all over her face.

“I promise amore that when my father kicks the bucket, we can have children, though you know him I’ll have to produce one heir before he dies…”

Imperator nodded smiling at the idea of carrying Nihils child, she knew how rowdy he could be when sexually aroused, and that she wasn’t always available but the fear of him cheating was next to none.

For now.

Fin

#the band ghost fanfiction #the band ghost fic #the band ghost #Nihil X imperator #only slightly tho #probs gonna make this a series