#miniature eye portraits | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dcxdpdabbles · 6 months

Text

Phantom's Number 1 Fan Part 3

John Constantine calls a joint Justice League and Justice League Dark meeting.

It's not something he wants to do. He barely works with the LJD, but at least that lot understands his work and knows what to do and where to go.

The JL members always ask questions and forget proper manners when working with the paranormal- John isn't the most well-mannered bloke around, but even he knows to permanently say goodbye to ghosts so that they don't follow him home- and it's like trying to teach an intern while dodging bullets.

He prefers to avoid the whole origination, especially since Bruce's death; everyone has been walking on eggshells, and there is a sense of disorganization drenched in grief that John breaks into hives just thinking about, but this is big.

Bigger than he can handle it on his own or with just the JLD. Even if the whole group gives the bats not-so-stable glances as they filter in.

John notices that one of Batman's brats is missing- the smart one- but he has heard that the kid suffered some kind of psychotic break from his father's death. It's sad, really, mainly because John used to believe that the third Robin was the one with the good head on his shoulders.

What's worse is that the Third Robin up and ran off, having gone off the grid when he refused to accept Batman's death. The boy hadn't said anything besides, "The portraits told me!" after having a miniature breakdown in his home.

It didn't help that around this time, the boy teammates had all dropped like flies except for one. So yes, John knows it wasn't a big surprise that he lost it, but it was still sad to see. Kid is only seventeen.

He hopes they find him soon to give him the help he needs. John would offer a spell to try and find him, but he needs to learn about the kid better, which means his spell can only point in a general direction.

Nightwing looked downright ragged, but losing a father on the battlefield and a younger brother to his grief did a number on anyone.

John hates himself just a little for dragging the grieving family here. He does, but again, this is bigger than all of them. This is a matter of life and death- literally.

"Listen up. We have a bloody level ten on its way to Earth if it's not already here." His words cut through the muttering crowd, shutting everyone up. A level ten makes even the big, lousy Superman sweat. He snaps his fingers, allowing his magic to shift into the image of a King Phantom sitting on his throne- painted in the early 1200s and the picture that can be used to identify him.

The art style would have been almost modern if it wasn't for the unease that the painting could cause due to the glowing green from his majesty's portrait. They say the green was ectoplasm from the king himself- and that alone should warn others to not mess with him.

Everyone Justice League Dark member hissed through their teeth, sitting up straighter and a few even pale. John is once again grateful that they understand just how deep in shit they genuinely are.

"This is the Ghost King. He is not to be confused with a god or king of gods. He's something else entirely because he makes gods nervous. He is on his way here to kill whoever is dumb enough to threaten his pregnant fiancee, and I fear the rest of Earth will be collateral if we don't prepare-"

"That's Danny Phantom," A young voice cuts John off. He is surprised someone would talk over him in a level ten briefing. All eyes turn to Robin- er, the new Robin.

The kid is frowning at the image, his signature scowl already deeper than usual. He's also heard the new Robin was a spoiled boy who was not a team player.

"You know King Phantom?" John asks.

Robin nods. "Placeholder is obsessed with him. Half his room is covered with King Phantom's heroics."

"Do not call him that.," Nightwing hisses a second later. He frowned when Robin ignored him but returned to the room without further comment on the boy's cheek. "Danny Phantom is a low-level search and rescue hero. He pops up around the world but only sometimes interacts with people. Robin- Young Justice Robin- was obsessed with him."

The room gains an awkward weight as no one is willing to bring up the mentally unsound MIA teenager.

It's too bad for them. John has never cared about making anyone comfortable. "You said his room is covered in images of King Phantom?"

From the corner of his eyes, John catches sight of Zatanna's face. She's pale white, with a horrified expression as if though she was standing before the grim itself. Every other member of the Justice League Dark is in a similar state.

"Yes, he has a whole wall of posters and stuff." Nightwing conforms, and shit John knows who Phantom's after now.

The thing is, one just doesn't have pictures of King Phantom. No one knows why, but the Ghost King can not be documented. Not without having some kind of connection to the King.

Throughout history, the only ones who have ever had even one solid picture of the king- John's magic doesn't count cause he can't well hold the thing up forever- usually meant that the King would appear before them at one point.

There is also a myth if one could beat a member of the royal ghost family, then one wish is granted to them. If one can kill a royal ghost member, death can be overturned.

It's not true, obviously, for death is not easily beaten like that, but John knows that as an expert, would a mentally unwell teenager know the same?

It was also known that if the King appeared before you, something terrible would happen. The sighting of King Phantom often came as an omen and usually right before a terrible disaster.

In the last disaster, they lost Batman, and if King Phantom had shown up, where the Third Robin have spotted him? Where the Third Robin have thought the King could return the dead?

Not to mention the rumors!

King Phantom was hunting down a group of humans known as "The Bats." John hadn't put that much stock in that rumor simply because it could have been anyone- hell, when he looked up the bats seven different groups appeared, varying from boy bands to zoologists.

But if he placed the name "The Bats" next to the Third Robin's psychotic break, his obsession with King Phantom, and his intertwined fates...well, shit.

There is a slight chance that the Third Robin's fate could be intertwined with the Ghost King in a positive light, but John has learned to not be optimistic in his line of work.

"I think the Third Robin is gunning after the Ghost King's fiancee and unborn child in a misguided attempt to bring Batman back to life. He may have kicked started a war that humanity can not win," He announces. He hates to say. hates to even suggest it, but the needs of the many outweigh those of the few. "We have to find the Third Robin and attempt to stop him. If we can't reason with him, we must put him down."

Wonder Girl gasps a sob, pressing her hand against her mouth.

John hates himself a little more as she sobs; a few rushes to confront her, but no one is unaffected by the news.

"I'm ordering a hunt for the Third Robin," Wonderwoman speaks up to her steady leadership, returning everyone from their despair. "Every available hero will help. Do not use lethal force unless there is no other choice. We may be able to find him before King Phantom's armies arrive."

John just hopes they are not too late.

Meanwhile, across the plane of existence, unaware of the manhunt for his head, Tim Drake is trying to stare down a Yeti, attempting to put him in silk clothes that are just fabrics held together by strings.

"No."

"But-But- but you have such a flattering figure! You must flaunt it! The Great One will barely be able to contain himself if he sees you in this!"

"No. It looks like something you wear on a honeymoon to seduce your spouse. I'm not walking around in that."

"Well, you don't need to bewitch his majesty. You already have a child on the way." The Yeit mutters, considering the fabric in his claws with a frown. He is Frostbite's royal tailor and has been attempting to dress Tim for over an hour. Everything he's suggested so far looks like it came from those romantic fantasy games.

It's like they want to make him a sexy consort or something.

Tim's teeth grind against each other. He hates how often his role is reminded, how casually the yetis mention that Ra's expects a child from Tim.

He doesn't even know how that child will come to be, and it makes him sick. He's been bidding his time, waiting for his wounds to heal and to find a weakness in the frozen fortress, but so far, he is unsure how he will escape.

And Bruce is still out there, waiting for Tim to get him. He can't waste any more time here.

"How about this cloak?" The Yeti offers, holding up a dark metallic fabric that reminds TIm of his Robin cape. "If we are going for a more conservative look, something that screams power is just the way to make the masses wild!"

Ugh, he really needs to think of a plan soon.

#dcxdpdabbles #dc x dp crossover #Phantom's number 1 fan #Part 3 #The Justice League made the wrong conclusion #Or John made the wrong conculsion #Tim is still being pampered but now they want to show him off like a trophy husband they think he is #Danny is vibing while new Ghost King Lore is dropping

1K notes · View notes

lostinforestbound · 6 days

Text

Oh boy howdy I've been thinking about the wizard a lot so here we go! I'm aware this is out of nowhere but I got inspired after reading some of his dialogue in-game!

My General Rolan Headcanons

Touched-Starved. If you searched up the word touch-starved and look at the photos, it would be this man's face. He hasn't experienced a kind touch outside from his siblings in a very long time.

Rolan is a lip biter! When anxious or frustrated, he bites and chews at his own lips, sometimes to the point of bleeding. He never realizes it until he tastes blood on his tongue.

When Rolan isn't biting his lips, he's for sure biting his nails. It's mostly chewing, but if he's under a lot of stress, he'll bite them off.

He has chronic nightmares, specifically about Cal and Lia's his mother. It stems purely from his survival's guilt after she passed away, and he was left to take care of Cal and Lia by himself. The nightmares had a period of getting significantly worse during and after Lorroakan's abuse.

Speaking of their mother; they have miniature portraits of her. Cal gave him one a very long time ago, but he hasn't been able to look at it after her death. In his dreams, he never sees her face, but he sees her eyes. (I touched on what the nightmares would look like in my own fic)

His tiefling traits are very sensitive. His horns, upper tail, ears, everything. He allows no one to touch them at all (except a few trusted people, which includes Tav if they are together and his siblings)

To those who enjoy the headcannon of Tieflings purring: I would say Rolan's purr is pretty high in register, mostly noise than vibration. It's high in his throat rather than in his chest.

Tieflings run hot, but I would say Rolan runs a little colder than most tieflings. It's why he hates the cold so much, especially when it snows. He has to bundle up and it's incredibly irritating. Not to mention the cold already brings bad memories of he and his siblings struggles during the winter months.

He absolutely has a whole morning routine that he never changes after he gets settled in the tower. It's his one chance to pamper himself and feel good for a little bit. He'll clean his face, putting a form of moisturizer on and letting it sit as he brushes out his hair. He already has his outfit for the day set on the bed and waiting for when he gets out.

I definitely think Rolan developed some depression and/or a panic disorder after, well, everything he's been through (Or he's already had it and it got so much worse). At first he tries to get through it by himself, but unsurprisingly, it made it worse. After some stubbornness, he lets himself be helped by either Cal, Lia, or his partner.

The king of overworking. He'll wear himself down to the bone before he accepts going to bed and relaxing. He can't accept rest, not until he's done with this one last thing-

In general, Rolan loves fiercely. He loves Cal and Lia to death, and he would do anything for them. Gods forbid someone hurts them, the hells would rain fire that day. This goes the same for whoever his lucky partner is.

(If you have your own headcanons, please please please share them! I would love to hear them!)

#I'm feeding y'all until my fic drops later #forest-writes #rolan bg3 #rolan #bg3 rolan #holy rolan empire #rolan x tav #rolanites #rolan brainrot

167 notes · View notes

rrxnjun · 11 months

Text

portrait of a blank slate. huang renjun

pairing: huang renjun x fem! reader genre: college au. fluff, smut, and the tiniest bit of angst. warnings: swearing, alcohol, angry man renjun, very bad dialogue, this is the most un-renjun fic i've ever written, dry humping, a heavy makeout session, unfinished blowjob word count: 5.8k playlist: no specific one this time but i listened to a lot of keshi while writing this, so have this playlist of mine to fit the vibes a/n: inspired by that one tweet describing how someone's art professor met his wife the same exact way, lost the screenshot and also the og post im so sorry!

turns out all it takes to save a life is a bad, bad college party, a few shots and a weird, magical coincidence back in a girl's dorm room.

It’s hard to believe that Huang Renjun is currently finishing up the art portfolio he needs for his summer internship program after procrastinating and angrily stomping at every single bad stroke of his paintbrush for the last few months.

Because he’s not.

He’s looking at the canvas with stern eyes, the smudges on the white linen so messy he could cry just by looking at them, and the more he tries to save the disgrace currently scribbled in front of him, the worse it gets and makes the levels of frustration in him turn into rage and fury, because let’s be honest– what is Renjun’s primary emotion if not anger.

And he tries hard to fix it again, he really does– he sighs heavily while doing so as he takes a smaller brush and tries to paint on a few hairstrokes to the portrait of Frida Kahlo he wants to execute– and in honest reality, it doesn’t even look half as bad as it does in the poor boy’s eyes when he takes a step back after holding in his breath and carefully piercing together the artwork. Maybe if there was someone else in the room– everyone but his annoying roommate Donghyuck, because that fucker always manages to make things even worse– they could talk him out of it, offer some words of consolidation, even, hype him up and tell him that with outsider’s eyes, the canvas looks beautiful and very well put together. But the truth is that there’s no one present right now, not a single soul in what feels like the whole campus right now, that could ease Huang Renjun’s frustration from what seems to be art block, when he throws the paintbrush to the wall (he’ll worry about the stain of acrylic paint later, when he gains consciousness) and puts a fist through the middle of the painting.

If he was a character in a comic book, his hand would go through the canvas and create a quite satisfying hole. He’s a real person, though– a weak one as well, to be quite honest– and his fist is stopped by the stretched-out fabric, making his hand bounce back, but now stained with all shades of brown and tan, which somehow only makes him even more mad and turns him into a furious animal roaming around free and causing uttermost chaos in his all true sense.

Nothing can stop Huang Renjun when he opens the drawer he keeps all his artwork in, taking out all the graphite sketches and colored pencil drawings, and then the next one containing the watercolor paintings and various other acrylic paintings done on expensive sheets of paper, stacking all of those onto one pile in the middle of the table. Not one thing is safe– except from the digital artworks he keeps in his iPad and his big A4 sketchbook he forgot about in the heat of the moment, since he keeps it on his nightstand– when he takes the big, heavy stack of art and runs, chimes towards the entrance of his and Donghyuck’s miniature dorm room, luck only standing by his side once in this whole evening when his said roommate opens the door and clears the way for him, looking at the poor boy with mouth agape in a slight shock.

“What the fuck are you doing right n–”

Donghyuck doesn’t get an answer. When he asks stupid questions, Renjun doesn’t tend to pay him much mind, settling on not engaging with the discourse if it doesn’t make much sense, so Hyuck should be used to the ignorance– he thinks this was a very valid question to ask at this moment, though. If he was curious enough, he’d even follow his roommate down the hall and watch him in his endeavors only to find out what’s the intention behind his angry stomping and the fierce look on his face. The truth is, though, he doesn’t care all that much.

That doesn’t stop Huang Renjun, though, as he chimes down the hall of the boy’s dormitory, kicks the glass door open (thankfully not the actual glass part, because that would for sure be expensive) and practically runs the rest of the way towards the bins at the end of the street, dumping the papers into the bin (forgive him for not recycling in his current state of mind) before he angrily kicks the poor object twice for good measure and turns on his heel, slowly, but still as angrily making his way back to his dorm room by stomping all the way up until the entrance.

The dorm guard doesn’t even ask for his dorm ID like he usually does– Renjun must have been quite memorable as he ran out of the building with 5kg of artwork of various sizes in his arms– but the truth is, the man isn’t as old and he saw the boy going out just a few minutes ago, so he doesn’t think it’s necessary. Renjun would appreciate the memo, although, when he remembers that the man always asks for the dorm ID, especially on the nights out when he comes back slightly intoxicated and too disoriented to look for the little slip of paper in his pockets, and on the nights when he forgets his dorm ID as well– the man was set on letting him sleep on the front porch of the dormitory once and it took Renjun 15 calls to get ahold of a sleeping Donghyuck and another 15 of him walking down the hall in slippers and pajama bottoms with his roommate’s dorm ID in hand before he could warm his bones from the cold slowly seeping into his bones on the January night– and that whole thing makes Renjun somehow even more angry at the whole situation.

And so when he comes into his room again, Donghyuck now sitting on his bed still in his outside clothes (something Renjun hates and would murder for), and his eyes land on the damaged canvas still waiting for him in the corner of the room, he wastes no time in opening his window and throwing it down from the second floor, not really caring where it ends up or if he’s gonna get a fine for violating one of the dormitory rules– to never throw stuff out of the windows..

“Dude, what is–”

“Don’t ask.” Renjun huffs as he closes the door and peels his clothes off, taking a towel that’s still hanging from the top bunk of their bed and aims towards the bathroom door. A true tantrum can only end in a cold shower, and that’s what Renjun’s gonna do as he washes his dreams down the drain and ends up silently crying himself to sleep tonight in agony.

It’s hard to believe Huang Renjun is currently at the best college party since the days of ‘megaparties’ of Johnny Suh, the senior that’s slowly halting his party performance due to stilling in life. Renjun was dragged to Lee Jeno’s party by his roommate Donghyuck after he mourned in his bed for approximately two days before it got too much for the poor gemini, promising and honestly thinking that alcohol is truly the best solution for the poor boy’s misery. Again, it’s hard to believe Huang Renjun is currently at the best college party of the year when he listens to the loud EDM music piercing through his eardrums and he swears he catches a glimpse of a couple dry humping on the couch.

Because he’s not.

He’s at a college party, sure. He’s also getting some alcohol into his system– because why not, am I right? He’s not the one paying, and that’s always enough of a reason to drink. Is it the best college party he’s ever experienced, though? Absolutely not.

It’s quite literally the worst party he’s ever been to. The music is too loud and the whole house smells of cheap vodka, people are pushing each other around and with the amount of alcohol in his system, the whole room feels like he’s on a boat, his stomach weak and his eyes hazy. Renjun must admit Hyuck’s therapy skills are kind of paying off– because at least now he’s not thinking about the wasted opportunity of a summer scholarship and is instead looking into the eyes of his cute classmate from History class across the room– but at the same time, he’s not thinking much of anything in this moment, and the glint of your eyes is the only thing he can focus on when you get closer.

That might be a good or a bad thing– depends on how the encounter goes. There’s a fine line between the amount of alcohol that’s just perfect for Huang Renjun to get rid of his usual shyness and speak to other, much more attractive human species, and the amount of alcohol that’s just perfect for Huang Renjun to black out and puke on the floor, efficiently making it impossible for him to chat up the cute classmate he’s been eyeing the whole semester and ruining his chances of ever being seen in a good light in front of the said person ever again. He prays intensely that he hasn’t crossed the line yet when you open your mouth and speak to him in the crowded kitchen.

“Renjun!”

“Y/N!” he tries to mimic your tone, a flashy grin settling onto his face when you approach him first. You two aren’t strangers, after all– you’ve sat together in class during various exams and also accidentally bumped into each other in the cafeteria, but what were your courageous attempts in making conversation with him and efficiently trying to make him more interested in you didn’t lead to your desired goal of getting invited out by him, instead leading him to think you’re just that friendly to everyone and not just him, making the chances of him taking the next step that much slimmer. Not tonight, though– he really must have had too much to drink.

“How are you?” you ask, clearing your throat as you bump into someone and decide to shift closer to Renjun, making the boy’s breathing hitch in his throat.

“Wonderful,” he gasps, and for some reason, the response laced in irony makes an excited laugh escape your throat, and the more he listens to your bubbly giggle, the more he wishes he did music instead of fine arts, because maybe if he was competent enough, he could mimic the sound in one of his songs and replay it over and over even when you’re not around.

“That sounds very genuine,” you note, which makes the boy laugh in return, making him wonder if maybe he could have the same effect on you– if you’re smiling wider now because of the sound of his laughter, or if you’re just amused at something completely else.

It’s pathetic, really– the gloomy boy that was trailing to this party behind his roommate Donghyuck is nowhere to be seen now, instead replaced by the cheap imitation of a ray of sunshine that you brought out of him only with the magic of a few words and the few drops of alcohol on his tongue.

“Oh, trust me, it was genuine,” he teases, and you only nod to his attempt at masking his obviously saddened composure from before.

“Having a rough week?” you ask, and you sound truly interested– something Renjun hasn’t found in the tone of his roommate when he insisted on dragging him here– and maybe that’s the reason why he just shrugs and decides to come clean and be honest with you. You seem like that kind of person that wouldn’t make fun of his troubles, the kind of person that would genuinely want to help– although he’s not seeking counseling tonight, he figures he can talk a bit about his shitty mood if it means that it gets the conversation flowing.

“A rough life, actually,” he snickers before he sees you eye him with a concerned look, “just joking,” he adds before he retracks back and fixes his initial answer. “Some things didn’t work out the way I wanted them to, so I’m kind of moping around for a bit.”

You seem to feel empathetic towards the boy, nodding and pouting at his confession. “Well, I hope things get fixed for you, Jun,” you mumble, tone of voice encouraging– and maybe he could dwell at the caring nature of you a little longer, only if it wasn’t for your use of a nickname for him that just oh so sweetly rolls of your tongue and Renjun wishes he could legally change his name to the nickname so he could listen to the way it sounds forever– scratch that, to the way it sounds from your mouth forever, which means he won’t change it, just so it’s reserved for you and only you to say.

“What about you, though?” he finds himself asking in the midst of his inner screeching.

“Me? I’m great, totally fine, having the time of my life,” you emphasize, the over-the-top expression on your face making the boy burst into laughter as you wave your arms around as if to show him your surroundings. “I am a party person for sure, you know, so this is perfect,” you joke, and Renjun seems to get the memo. If he’s being honest, he’s not sure he’s ever seen you at a party before– not that he goes to many himself, which might honestly be the reason, actually– you could just be at different parties in different times that hadn’t overlaid, but by the way you’re currently tensely sipping at the alcohol in your hand, he figures you’re not too familiar with the scene of college partying.

“Who forced you to go? Was it your roommate?” Renjun remembers the girl from another one of his classes– you two were always walking around together and often got to class at the same time. Figuring out that you two lived together wasn’t as difficult, and she surely seems to be the more extroverted one.

“No, actually,” you say, eyes glimmering when he seems to remember the girl you share a room with, “to my surprise, honestly. It was another one of my friends– Na Jaemin, not sure if you know him– but the moment we got here, he disappeared and left me alone to deal with my thoughts,” you click your tongue and Renjun finds himself totally mesmerized with you– amazed with everything about you; the way you talk, the way you lean on the counter and watch him with stars in your eyes (which might just be the reflections of the kitchen lights, but don’t tell him that), the way you slightly lean into him when he cracks a joke and earns a laugh out of you…

“They always do that,” Renjun scowls, “they drag the introvert in and then force them to survive on their own…” he shakes his head in disappointment, clearly distraught over the situation.

“Exactly! But if you ask them to come with you to a picnic, or to the library, they decline the offer. So much for being good friends,” you roll your eyes. Renjun finds himself smiling, and although he must admit that as every other college student, he himself would decline an invitation to a library if anyone asked, he’s like 99% certain that if it was you uttering out the question, he wouldn’t miss a heartbeat before joyfully jogging there with you.

“Ask me next time,” he blurts out, a poor attempt at flirting, “I wouldn’t say no.”

And it seems like tonight is the night where you suddenly get the last kick of courage needed when you talk to Renjun– maybe fueled by his coy smile when he said the previous comment, maybe just acting out on pure hormones– tonight's the night where he breathlessly takes your offer, still not thinking much of it, but igniting a curious spark in his own heart nonetheless, when you scratch the back of your neck in the last residue of anxiety, scrunching your nose at him and mumbling under your nose, barely heard above the loud music resonating through the living room. “Do you wanna sneak into my dorm room, then?”

Renjun almost chokes at your question– visitors in the dormitory are only allowed until midnight and as far as he’s aware, the clock is well after 2 AM right now, and he’s a male visitor, which is even more off the bounds in the eyes of the fierce woman guarding the entrance of the girl’s dormitory building. The more he stares at you, the more you seem to translate his silence into disagreement, which you panically try to undo with even more rambling. “I- I mean, since we both kind of hate this party and I think that if I drink more, I’m going to puke all over myself, so… My room is on the ground floor, so you can just climb in, if you wanted to. My roommate went home for the weekend, so there’s no one there, and we could– I mean, we don’t have to, honestly, but it’s kinda cold out and I thought we could both use a place more silent, ‘cause I really wanna head back now, but I don’t want to stop talking to you, y’know, and I don’t know if–”

“Okay, I’m down,” Renjun nods, efficiently shutting up your rambling, and when there’s a very apparent relief flashing over your face, he finds himself smiling in endearance at your antics, going as far as ruffling a hand through your hair in whatever kick the alcohol mixed with adrenaline gave him before you have him dragging his feet out of the house, both of your feet shuffling towards the campus.

The walk isn’t long, but he finds himself enjoying it. The condensation coming out of your mouths at the chilly weather serves more to the atmosphere when the both of you giggle out at absurd jokes and gossip, your voice breaking into soft hums when you sing a song under your breath in moments of silence that somehow feel both kind of awkward, but also kind of pleasant. He drags you by your hand to the other side of the sidewalk when a car passes by and you jump in surprise, eyes wide and glossy, mouth a little agape in an open-mouthed grin when his fingers stay intertwined with yours and you adjust your purse on your other shoulder, clearing your throat before you try to nonchalantly continue on with the conversation.

“I’ll go inside now,” you announce when you get to the girl’s dormitory building, breaking apart from the eager boy and coming closer to him when you confide the secret, “I’ll turn the light on in my room when I get there, so make sure to look out for the window. I’ll help you in, don’t worry,” you smile at him, and before he has a chance to reply, you disappear behind the glass door with a pep in your step.

Renjun finds himself sighing– now is the moment when he should realistically get relief, the moment when he’s supposed to relax for at least a second and prepare himself for whatever might happen in your dorm room– but when he slowly walks over to the left wing of the building and squints at the dark squares of windows, he wonders how in the hell he’s gonna climb in. Escaping out will be an easy task– the windows aren’t that high up– but coming in will be the problem. He guesses it’s the same with the whole situation– he bets the easiest part of the whole evening will be jumping out and running to his own room– how to survive the night in your presence and not go completely insane, he doesn’t know and wishes he had a manual to before he agreed to do this in the first place.

When the light goes on in one of the rooms and you wave at him from the inside, he finds himself involuntarily jogging towards the window, gears in his brain turning faster than the speed of light when he reaches the wall and you grin at him, opening the window and offering him your hand.

“If you grip the edge of the window and give me your hand, you can get in easily,” you say, watching as the boy cautiously looks around himself and scratches the back of his neck, mentally calculating his next movements.

“Have you done this before?”

“No,” you bashfully shake your head, “but my roommate did it twice, so I don’t think it’s that hard,” you note and nod at him, waiting for him to finally take action.

Renjun finds himself doing what he’s been told– and even though he huffs and almost falls over to his back (which would kill him, he thinks, since his physique is very close to a turtle’s), victory fills his veins when one of his legs finally ends up in your window, his body stumbling forward and almost toppling you over when the warmth of your room welcomes him as he lands on top of your desk.

“Welcome,” you laugh at him when he shakes his head in disbelief and takes off his coat, dropping it on top of the wooden table and watching you close the window behind him, so the cold doesn’t get in.

“That’s one way of inviting guests over, I guess,” he teases you, watching as you roll your eyes at him and go over to one of the beds. Renjun notices the room is different to the one he shares with Donghyuck– you and your roommate have two beds instead of a bunk one, the table is right under the window and you get a little more space over-all. You turn on the little lamp kept on your bedside table, and the boy watches you with interest as you cautiously walk around your own room as if it’s your first time seeing it, reminding him a little of a deer in the headlights, clueless and suddenly out of ideas.

Renjun finds himself laughing at your behavior– he finds himself endeared by it, the way you play with your fingers in nerves and try to think of anything to do in the intimacy that suddenly envelopes you when you invite someone over to your dorm room in the middle of the night– and when you aimlessly end up standing in front of him, your big eyes even bigger and glossier than before, he snickers at the state of you and shakes his head.

“Okay, so I know I was the one who invited you over, but now I’m kind of helpless in what we should actually do and all…” you giggle, a little embarrassed when you bear your eyes into his, your body subconsciously slotted in between his legs, his position leaning on the edge of the table allowing you and inviting you to do so.

“You’re cute,” he laughs at you, and before you have a chance to question him about the compliment, he has you silenced abruptly by his next actions.

“What do you–”

His hand is gripping your jaw and he leans into you, the newly found courage and affection towards you having him drunk on more than the alcohol, but also your whole presence– the way your hair smells when he’s this close to you, the way you pull the sleeves of your sweater further down when you don’t know what to do with your hands, the shyness in your gaze now that you have him in your cage– and his lips act on themselves when they press themselves against yours, soft but firm, tasting the strawberry juice mixed with vodka off your mouth, a surprised gasp against his lips more than enough to invite him even further in.

He feels your fingers tugging at his shirt and your skin growing hot under his touch, leaning back from you a little and finding you looking at him with a thousand different galaxies in your eyes, enough of a confirmation to him, but he’s a man– he still needs it vocally, when he grins lazily at you. “Was this one of the things you thought about when you invited me over?”

“Maybe…” you tug at your bottom lip with your teeth, a clearly battled grin trying to settle its way onto your lips.

“You should’ve just said so, then,” he smiles when he leans into you again, a little more confidently this time and kisses you again, again and again.

You stay under the window for a while, lips pressed hard against each other as you try to learn the curves of each other’s mouths by memory, lazy hands threaded into his hair and an arm around your waist now, steadying you in place. Foreheads pressed against each other when you break away for air, giggles resonating through the room when his lips make their way towards your neck and the softness of his hair tickles your skin, fingers threaded when you tug him towards your bed and you watch him kick his shoes off before you follow him onto the soft mattress.

His head falls into your pillow and you straddle his lap, your hair falling into your face when you look down at him from your position, the newly found dominance in your position charging you with unexplainable energy, and Renjun can’t help but smile at you sweetly when your eyes meet and you eagerly lean down towards him, fingers once again intertwined with his, hands laying next to his head. Your breath fans his swollen lips that you once again find yourself attacking, the contact overwhelming you and making it hard to breathe. Who knows how long the both of you have wanted to do this but never had the courage to– it’s a miracle that it’s even happening tonight.

And with the built-up desire, you act instinctively– hands breaking away from his when you grip his cheeks and give him one last peck, lips now traveling down his jaw and neck instead, having the boy shivering under the contact, your actions slowly but surely driving him crazy when you find his sweet spot and you get a satisfied gasp from him, a reward for your tonight’s efforts.

His hand grips your hip, and something about the burn of his fingers even through the fabric of your jeans makes you move on instinct, earning yourself a sharper hiss this time that doesn’t make you stop, however– quite the opposite, actually– as you break into a wide grin at the very evident effect you have on him, your movements slow and painful, but still having him harden under you.

Goosebumps appear all over your skin when his cold fingers capture the skin of your stomach when he aimlessly tries to find a place in your body to ground yourself, but the more he answers to your movements, the more encouraged you get. He tugs you back down so you’re facing him, which does nothing to halt your painful pace as he drags out yet another kiss from you.

“If we don’t stop now, it’s gonna be really hard for me to do so later,” Renjun huffs into your ear, which only gets you more excited.

“Who said I want to stop?” you ask him, fingers trailing up his side over his shirt, yet still making him fire up and flush in his cheeks. “Do you want to stop?”

“Do I look like I wanna stop?” he snickers, shaking his head in utter disbelief, hand traveling dangerously close to the cup of your breast.

“Let’s continue, then,” you muse, peeling yourself off him only the slightest amount, hands dragging themselves down his body until you reach the waistband of his pants, gently dragging the fabric down until he’s left in front of you only with a tent in his underwear, big eyes curiously and breathlessly watching you in your actions. He could be a gentleman and tell you you don’t have to, tell you to stop and come back up and that he will pleasure you first, but the more he watches you as you palm him over the thin fabric of his boxer briefs with the dangerous doe eyes of yours, the less he wants to do just that. In all reality– who is he to deny a blowjob from you? Or anyone, for that matter?

His whole body shudders under your touch, actions careful, but so painfully satisfying. Renjun watches your face with his bottom lip trapped between his teeth, the reality of it all sobering him up and making him aware of each shift of your body, each centimeter your fingertip travels against his skin, each motion that slowly makes a bundle of nerves appear in his stomach. It only gets too much for him when you lean on your elbows, nails gently pricking the skin of his thighs as your mouth hesitantly greets his dick, and he feels like a virgin again when his eyes peel off you just in case he finishes just by watching you blowing him off like a highschooler at his first blowjob, forcing himself to watch the ceiling instead.

Eyes traveling all over your room– the closed window opposite of him, the bed on the other side of the room, the walls above your bed– he gets lost in the galaxy drawn on a piece of paper that’s plastered right above your pillowcase, and another graphite sketch of eyes bearing right into your soul, as if they were watching him in the act, and another one, of a deer that looks through the shade of the trees, before it hits him.

“Oh my god what the fuck–” he gasps, and his tone must have sounded too different to the satisfied moans that have been spilling out of his mouth up until now, because you abruptly stop your movements and your gazes lock, your eyes completely mortified.

“Am I doing something wrong?”

“Oh– Oh god no, fuck, you’re doing amazing, trust me,” apologies spill off his tongue at your distressed state, “it’s just– where… where did you get these?” he asks, pointing towards all the drawings taped all over your walls that he failed to notice in the heat of the moment before.

“Oh,” you cluelessly hum, eyebrows furrowed, “I found them spilling out of a trashcan close to the boy’s dorms when I was walking to class one morning, and they were so pretty I had to take them.”

“I– you like these?” Renjun asks, full of strange surprise and genuine curiosity. You’re now sitting back on your heels and looking at the boy with big eyes, still slightly clueless and very much in a weird state of distress– because why would a man ask you about the random artwork on your wall in the middle of a mindblowing blowjob?– before you nod with a slight pout, agreeing.

“Well, I wouldn’t have decorated my room with them if I didn’t like them, y’know… Why are you… why are you asking?”

“Oh,” Renjun repeats again, a dumbfounded look taking over his soft features before he sits up on the bed and scoots closer to you, a weird sense of euphoria spilling out every vein of his body when the held-back dopamine is released into his system. A wide grin appears on his lips before he stares into your eyes with a milky way mirroring behind his eyeballs, glittering orbs haphazardly gliding over your face before he reaches your lips again, pecking them one, two, three times before you break away and look at him with furrowed eyebrows, a slight crease right in between them.

“What are you–”

“I think I’m gonna literally cum just at hearing those words, Y/N,” he blurbs out before he kisses the tip of your nose again, completely endeared and close to a happy boy under the Christmas tree, and while you may enjoy that look on him, you’re still slightly confused. Huang Renjun sighs almost a little too dreamingly and smooths the wrinkle between your eyebrows with a careful swipe of his thumb, still not giving you any explanation.

“Renjun, I’m afraid I’m not quite following why this is so important to you right now,” you mumble, having your partner laugh airly– just as if all his worries escaped through the window and you fixed his life with a few drawings plastered on your wall.

“Those, dear Y/N,” he points towards the papers stuck to your walls, eyeing the specific one he worked for 3 hours on and kind of mourned the morning after he realized he threw it away, months of practice and art that maybe wasn’t even that bad in the first place ending up in the trash because of a fit of rage, “are all mine. Mine as in, I drew them… And then threw them out in the middle of a slight mental breakdown.”

You look at him for a few heartbeats, eye contact never breaking before you avert your gaze towards the artwork on the walls– it takes you a few seconds before it hits you– and you gasp, hurriedly looking back at the artist in front of you, stars glimmering in your eyes now as well, matching his excitement. “Oh my god, are you for real?”

“Yeah.”

“You drew all of these?”

“Yeah,” he nods again, breathless.

“This is an insane coincidence,” you snicker, and Renjun didn’t know he had it in him– maybe it’s still the effect of alcohol that slips off his tongue when he speaks– but he cages you in his arms as he kisses you again, a whole new world appearing in front of him when the cheesiness meets the comfort of your walls.

“You’d call this a coincidence?” he hums. “Maybe it was fate.”

Earning himself a sharp laugh, almost mocking him as you swat his shoulder, you fall back with him towards the mattress, and while the heated moment might be gone, you don’t mind at all. Renjun looks at you with a certain softness in his eyes, a pride swelling in his chest, and for a moment, it’s true and you truly did open up a new reality for him and changed his life forever, fixed all of his problems, if you will, because the appreciation it takes for a girl to tape up at least 20 of his messy artworks onto her wall after finding the stash in the trashcan on her way to class might just be the encouragement he needed to keep going with the craft.

It’s hard to believe that this shitty party actually brought him somewhere– not only to your bed, but also to your life, to a beginning of something new and a restart in something he thought he’d forever be giving up on.

“So… Do you need those back? Because I kinda like them here,” you giggle, and the crinkle of his eyes is enough of an answer to you.

“You can keep them. I’ll just draw new ones you can look at,” he muses, stealing another kiss from you and squeezing your hip, having you squeal against his mouth.

“Now, to get back to what we were doing before–”

#nct #nct dream #renjun #renjun x reader #renjun fluff #renjun smut #renjun scenario #renjun fic #renjun drabble #nct dream scenario #nct dream reaction #nct dream smut #nct dream x reader #nct dream imagine #renjun imagine

900 notes · View notes

sapphire-writes · 1 year

Note

Idk if requests are still open, but if so...i have an idea that won't leave me alone: after being declared the 'realm's jewel', rhaenyra's daughter must travel to Kingslanding since Vyseris has requested a portrait of her. Cue her having to sit still for hours on end, which Aemond takes advantage of to engage in a duel of wits (I love me some banter and you always do it so well) and throughout the weeks their little squirmishes turn into something more. I just have the constant idea of her painting showing her with a mischievous glint in her eye and smile (almost like having a secret). Aemond of course is totally unaffected by her...totally...not a chance that he's falling in love with her. Wait, why is he secretly securing himself a miniature of the painting?

Portrait of a Lady in Love ~ Aemond x Niece!Reader

word count: 0.9k warnings: none! just fluffy banter! 💖 note: hope you enjoy! I didn't add the taglist to this request, might stop using it for requests? I think I may reblog later with HOTD taglist in case you miss it!

The journey to King’s Landing was a pleasant one. It was always a treat, to fly across the bay of the Blackwater atop your dragon. Watching as her wings dipped to skim the waters, sending salty spray flying and laughter to pour from your lips.

Soon, the towers of the Red Keep became visible, and Dragonstone was a distant memory. King’s Landing, the place of your childhood, welcomed you home once again.

You dismount your dragon at the Dragonpit, and she cries eagerly, happy to be reunited with Dreamfyre. You leave her there and proceed to the castle.

“My king,” you call when you enter his chambers.

King Viserys’ condition has worsened since you were small, and he struggles to turn his head toward you.

“My darling jewel,” he says softly smiling, revealing several missing teeth, “Issa jorrāelagon.”

“I am here, grandsire,” you tell him, sitting on the bed and taking his withered hand in your own.

How it pains you, seeing him like this. Knowing your mother worries about him so often sends a pain piercing through your heart.

“How lovely you are,” he tells you through shaky breaths.

The room smells like death, it hangs in the air like cobwebs unable to be ignored.

“I have only just arrived,” you tell him, “I must look disgraceful coming from dragonback.”

“You must rest,” he insists, patting your hand. You hold onto him tightly.

“I must stay with you,” you tell him, forcing a smile.

You stay by his bedside until the sun sinks low in the sky and Queen Alicent comes to escort you to your chambers. You’re missed supper and shall have some delivered to your quarters.

The artist has you seated below the Iron Throne. Several flowers have been draped across you, and spill down the steps, twirling through the swords that are melted to the floor.

Aemond walks in, expecting supper, and finds you instead pretty and posed in the golden afternoon light.

“Is there to be a feast?” you ask, trying not to move your lips as you speak.

“There was,” Aemond answers, glancing around the room, “the king suggested it, to celebrate your arrival.”

You do not answer, trying to stay perfectly still. Aemond walks away to the side of the room.

“Perhaps they’ve forgotten,” Aemond tells you.

“Perhaps they have.”

His eye flickers to where you sit, chin tilted toward the sky. The Iron Throne frames your head as though a crown. Your dark eyes move toward him, a slight smile on your face, revealing your jest.

Aemond clicks his tongue.

“Did he suggest the color?”

“Grandsire?”

“Your grandsire, not mine,” Aemond corrects.

“He did,” you confirm, lips barely moving, “he quite adores me in red.”

“The realm’s ruby then,” Aemond comments, referring to your grandsire’s pet name for you.

“Would you prefer another?”

The comment is tantalizing. Aemond cocks his head at you. You’d heard the rumors of course, of the jewel that lies behind the patch he wears at court.

“Perhaps emerald,” he says suddenly.

“Hmm.”

“Not what you were expecting?” he asks.

“Emeralds are lovely.”

“You sound displeased,” Aemond probes.

Your mouth twitches into the familiar smirk, as though you are guarding a secret.

“Of course not, my prince.

The days sitting posed are long, and your muscles ache from sitting so straight. The artist has promised it should take a week, and two days have passed already. Though the hours pass quicker when Aemond makes an appearance.

“It truly is magnificent,” Aemond murmurs, as the artist applies finishing touches to the piece.

“Is it?” you call from across the room.

“Well, you’ve ruined it now. Your chin is all wrong.”

“Ha ha,” you tell him, but you blush scarlet at the jest.

“Careful princess,” Aemond says, watching you, “he’ll have to add some color to your cheeks if you continue like that.”

“I am hot, tis all.”

“Would a break please you, princess?” the artist says, flexing his fingers, and dropping the brush on the canvas.

“That would be lovely,” you tell him, letting your shoulders relax.

Aemond walks over to you, offering his hand. You graciously accept, wincing as you rise.

“Are you hurt?” Aemond asks, a hint of worry in his voice.

“Just stiff, tis all,” you tell him, clinging to his arm, “I should stretch my legs I suppose.”

“Allow me,” Aemond says, escorting you from the hall, “some fresh air will do you good.”

Aemond often accompanied you after that, spending time in the great hall while you posed, taking time to escort you through the gardens to stretch your legs. He found himself dreading the day when the portrait was finished.

The day came sooner than expected.

“It is lovely,” you tell the artist, admiring the portrait.

It feels rather strange to see a version of yourself smiling back, a subtle smirk on your face, a glint in your eye.

“Grandsire shall adore it,” you tell the artist, depositing a full purse of coins in his hand.

“And for you betrothed,” he says suddenly, handing you a small frame.

Your face creases in confusion.

“My betrothed?” you ask confused.

“Yes, Prince Aemond wished for a copy. For himself,” the artist tells you.

You hold the picture in your hand, lips parting in shock.

“He wished for a portrait of me? To keep?” you ask, and the artist nods.

Your cheeks bloom with color, matching that of the lady that sits in the portrait. You are one in the same after all.

“What are you calling it?” you ask him.

The artist smiles, as though he was waiting for the question.

“Portrait of a Lady in Love.”

note: hope you enjoyed it!

#aemond targaryen #aemond x y/n #aemond x fem!reader #aemond x reader #aemond x you #aemond targaryen x you #aemond targaryen x y/n #aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen x fem!reader #aemond x targaryen! reader #aemond fic #aemond one eye #hotd aemond #aemond fanfiction #aemond targaryen imagine #aemond targaryen oneshot #aemond targaryen one shot #aemond targaryen fic #aemond targaryen fanfic

715 notes · View notes

acommonanomaly · 26 days

Text

Caranthir for @feanorianweek.

Inspired by a scene from my fic What Fades Away.

Excerpt:

“What is it, Moryo?” Maitimo finally asked, when Carnistir showed no sign that he would continue on his own.

“It is not fair that grandmother Miriel cannot return,” his said, his voice faltering as though he was admitting something very grave. The source of his solemnity was revealed when he continued, “If grandfather Finwë had not married Indis, then she could be with us.”

Makalaurë sucked in a sharp breath, and his eyes were heavy when they met Maitimo’s. Neither of them spoke at first, for each of them had their own conflicting emotions to sort through at the raising of this issue. But when Carnistir shrank down on the stool as if fearing their censure, they pulled themselves together.

Maitimo’s voice grew delicate, each word formed with care. “Although you may find them tiresome at times, would you wish that your uncles and cousins did not exist at all?”

Carnistir’s flushed cheeks paled. “No, I wouldn’t wish that.”

“So some good did come of it, you see.”

“But we will never meet our grandmother Miriel.”

“Oh, Moryo,” Makalaurë said tenderly. “It seems strange to miss someone you have never met, but so it is, and we miss her, too, and long for what might have been.”

Maitimo nodded in agreement with Makalaurë, but he was troubled. He could not help but feel as if he had been dishonest with Carnistir, somehow.

Although he did not regret that his grandfather had been allowed to remarry, allowing their family to grow and become enriched, he felt it an unnecessary cruelty that his grandmother should be forbidden to return because of it. The Valar claimed it was the will of Eru, and though it was not Maitimo’s place to gainsay them, he did wonder how this could be true because of the grief it caused.

It was while Maitimo stood lost in his thoughts that Carnistir finally unburdened himself.

“I did something very wrong.” Carnistir would look at neither of his brothers, dropping his head again as he stroked the cat.

Maitimo raised his eyebrows at Makalaurë, who only shrugged. He tried to keep his trepidation out of his voice when he spoke.

“What did you do?”

At the same time, Makalaurë asked, “You mean, to those children?”

Carnistir shook his head. “I took something from Atar’s study.”

Maitimo’s eyebrows rose even higher, and Makalaurë gaped in surprise, but as it was obvious that Carnistir meant to go on, they said nothing.

Carnistir sighed and shifted on the stool, careful not to tip the cat off his lap as he reached into one of the pockets stitched onto his loose tunic. He pulled out a silver chain, lifting it until a large oval locket slipped out of the pocket and hung spinning in the air.

“Oh,” Makalaurë said.

They knew this locket well. They had all seen Atar holding it in his study when the occasional quiet, somber mood came over him. At some time or another, each of them had opened the locket to see for themselves what it held, or asked Atar to show them. It contained a miniature portrait of Miriel and a twisted lock of silver hair that glinted like starlight.

“I just wanted to feel closer to grandmother Miriel. But now I am worried that Atar will notice the locket is gone before I can put it back, and he will be angry with me.”

“I don’t think Atar will be angry with you for taking this, especially once he understands why you took it,” Maitimo hurried to reassure his little brother. “You must give it back to him as soon as we return home, of course, but I will talk to him first before you go to see him.”

Maitimo would have to decide how much to tell Atar, because he did not wish to upset him any more than he had to.

He didn’t think the children who had questioned Carnistir meant any harm, likely only curious and repeating things they had heard adults say. It was unfortunate timing that their questioning had come while Carnistir was struggling with personal issues.

Makalaure seemed satisfied with this, and he stood, gesturing for Carnistir to stand as well. “I think Nelyo is right. Atar will be pleased that you wish to feel closer to grandmother Miriel. Perhaps you could take up embroidery, and learn the skill that was her delight.”

Carnistir stood and set the cat on the floor, where it wound around his legs and meowed in complaint. Determination burned in Carnistir’s eyes now, and he said, “Yes, I would like that.”

#Tolkien #the silmarillion #feanorianweek #caranthir #carnistir #feanorianweek 2024 #my art #my fic #favorite elves #elves who deserved better #still trying to catch up on posting after that damned migraine lol #i have one more drawing at least #i don't know that i'll have the energy for more sadly #next time i'll start drawing more in advance #and hopefully have drawings for the whole week #feanorian for life

82 notes · View notes

queenalicentofravka · 7 months

Text

missed opportunities HotD edition 2:

-Alicent visiting the sept in King's Landing, pregnant for the first time, praying to be spared the fate of Aemma

-highlighting that Daemon married Laena even tho she was younger than Rhaenyra & he wanted to "spare" his niece bc she was "still a child". Well, so was Laena.

-a dragonegg actuay hatching in a cradle (I dc which one)

-Rhaenyra's way back to the castle in the dark in Fleabottom, half-naked with ripped clothes, after being abandoned by Daemon. They should've shown how creepy that would've been for a confused, drunk teenage girl

-What became of the Runestone debacle? Did Daemon actually get the inheritance of the wife he murdered? Did Jeyne Arryn (Lady of the Vale) complain to Viserys about her vassal, a female heir (something that literally was Jeyne's own past identity) being murdered & usurped?

-Why did Luke never apologize to Aemond for taking his eye?

-Vaemond's widow &/or children coming to court demanding money for the murder of their husband/father & an explanation why he wasn't given the choice to join the Night's Watch & instead got sliced through the head from behind when Viserys made it clear that saying Rhaenyra's children are bastards will cost you your tongue, not your life. So Daemon broke the law in front of the entire court & wasn't held responible for it either.

-Rhaenyra commitioning a painting showing herself, her parents & her children

-someone mentioning Daeron/Alicent exchanging letters with her uncle or aunt in Oldtown with updates about Daeron (Is he eating well? Has he recovered from the cold you mentioned last month? Pls send me a miniature portrait so I can see how much he has grown. Love, Alicent)

-Was Baela shocked when she realized she'd be sidelined in her inheritance by a bastard who's not even related to her or anyone in her immediate family & that the only way for her to have a title was to marry his older brother who's also a bastard? At the behest of THE female heir of the country?

-Team Green while Helaena gives birth: Alicent sits on the huge bed next to her daughter & mops the sweat off her brows with reassuring murmurs, Otto pacing around the corridor outside, Aemond going berserk on Criston in the trainyard bc he feels so helpless, Aegon getting drunk bc he can't bear to hear the screams, ...

-what is the relationship between Rhaena & Baela with Rhaenyra, their step-mom? Did they have problems with her (at first) taking their mother's place since the Daemon-Rhaenyra wedding was soon afyer Laena's funeral?

-Aegon and/or Helaena bonding with their dragons

#house of the dragon #alicent hightower #daemon targaryen #aegon ii targaryen #helaena targaryen #rhaena of pentos #rhaenys targaryen #baela targaryen #rhaenyra targaryen #rhea royce #laena velaryon #jeyne arryn #daeron the daring

230 notes · View notes

songsofadelaide · 1 day

Text

There was a travelling market selling foreign goods in your city. The little corner of festivity was brought along their prince's journey to this land.

Apart from your city's trade, the streets were bustling with activity from the travelling market too, so much so that the kingdom had to station local guards in the area to keep the peace and order. Upon hearing your family's maids' excited chatter about the place and all of the outlandish things for sale there, you couldn't help but want to go, too.

But a lady of a noble house should not be there. It was against your better judgement, but there must be some curiosities there that would sate your growing, thriving pursuit of knowledge— before your parents decide to give you away to some stranger from a strange land.

"My l— I mean, miss! Look over here, they have tomes that might be of interest to you!" One of your maids gently pulled you by the arm, causing you to bump into someone in the crowded street.

"Ah—"

The man with the piercingly haunting bright blue eyes turned in your direction, catching you before you could hit the ground.

Even dressed in a more subdued manner, someone with an eye for fine things will notice that you aren't like the ladies who accompanied you.

"Oh, my apologies, good sir, I—" Shoot. Your manner of speech—

"The way you carry yourself gives you away, my lady. What's a noble girl like you doing here?"

The man was dressed in Imperial garb, a lovely fur poncho over his fine clothing, his silver hair tousled by the pleasant breeze that swept through the busy streets. He was a foreigner, but strikingly handsome.

"Shouldn't you be preparing to meet the Imperial Prince Satoru?"

The tender smile that graced your face left so easily following that question. You scoffed at the stranger before allowing a small laugh to leave your lips. "I don't want to try so hard to please someone I've never met."

Oh, there you go again with your mouth. But oddly enough, the smile found its way to the handsome stranger's face. "Is that so? I suppose you'll have all the time in the world to get to know him..."

"Personally, I am more interested in whatever books this caravan brought along with it. If you aren't busy, good sir, might you accompany me and my, um, fellow ladies for the rest of our excursion? Surely you know the best places to purchase items..."

He chuckled, evidently amused by your sudden request. He tenderly took your gloved hand in his larger one and brought it to his lips. "Gladly, my lady."

The man patiently answered your every query. When you passed by a stall selling lovely miniatures of Imperial tourist spots and sceneries, you related to him how you had to pose for an uncomfortable amount of hours to have your own miniature portrait painted, only for it to be shipped off to the foreign Empire without a word of thanks from the Imperial family, or whoever received it. Not that you really cared.

He seemed to be so amused by your every quip judging by his gentle laughter. "I'm sure whoever received your portrait was truly pleased."

The man escorted you and your ladies back to your estate and bid you farewell, but not without a promise of meeting once more. How, you didn't know and did not bother thinking too much about it at all.

And when the day the eligible women of the kingdom were set to meet the Imperial Prince came, every other lady's graceful smile faded the moment he stepped down from the king's side and took your hands in his.

You were right about one thing. The moment your eyes met the silver-haired foreign prince's bright blue eyes.

You didn't have to try so hard at all.

#songsofadelaidewrites💛#mari's prompts 🎠#jujutsu kaisen #jjk au #jjk x reader #gojo satoru #gojo satoru x reader #gojo satoru x y/n #gojo satoru x you #this is so bridgerton core lol #bridgertoncore #bridgertoncore or something similar #royalty au #jjk royalty au #starry divider by @/cafekitsune

68 notes · View notes

ideas-on-paper · 3 months

Text

The mystery of P's skin

If there's one thing the entire Lies of P community can agree upon, it's probably that Pinocchio looks very, very handsome. Many people - including me - were enamored by his looks from the moment they first saw him in the trailers, by his soft locks, sweet freckles and big blue eyes.

However, even early on, I couldn't help but feel like there was something... odd about his features - more specifically, his skin. For a puppet whose outer shell usually consists of porcelain, wood, or some other artificial material, it looked almost too realistic.

Of course, it could just be very realistic looking faux skin (which, given Lies of P's 19th-century technology, would be kind of impressive), but after some careful observations, I get the feeling there actually might be more to it. And given some of the things I learned in my research about real-life automata, there might be a grisly, sinister secret behind P's innocent face.

[Massive spoilers for Lies of P]

[CW: skinning, violence to children]

The Lies of P character cards

The first time I noticed there was something strange about P's skin was when I was looking at the character cards Neowiz released back in 2022, as promotional material for Gamescom.

These cards feature high-resolution renders of the main characters, showing a lot of structural details of clothing, hair, and skin.

As for P's render, it looks like this:

One thing that confused me from the start was just how perfectly normal his skin looks. Most of the other puppets have porcelain skin, which creates a very distinct reflection when light falls onto it, as we can see with Polendina:

For P, however, we see no such effect, implying that his outer shell is not made of porcelain. Also, seeing how he occasionally squints his eyes on the character screen and how his skin squishes and stretches as a result, I think it most definitely consists of something else - because if I know one thing, it's that porcelain does not physically behave that way.

Instead, a lot of people (particularly fanfic writers) have come up with the headcanon that P has really realistic-looking faux skin. However, if that were the case, I would find it really puzzling just how many small impurities there are on his face. You would probably expect synthetically manufactured skin to look very smooth and clean, but in case of P, if you pay close attention, you can spot tiny irregularities giving the impression of skin pores, and even a bump above his left eye.

In comparison, P's skin actually looks surprisingly similar to that of the human characters from the game. For reference, here are the portraits of Sophia, Venigni and Eugénie:

See what I mean? There is virtually no distinction between the structure of P's skin and that of the human characters (to be fair, Eugénie's even looks a lot cleaner). Adding to this, these close-ups of P's face during the ending cutscene make it apparent that these small blemishes certainly, most definitely are skin pores.

Considering all of this, I've come up with a somewhat eccentric theory - that P's skin is neither made from porcelain nor some other kind of faux material, but real, actual skin.

Automata with animal skin and Vaucanson's "Flute Player"

Some of you may wonder: "But P is a puppet! How could he possibly have real, human skin?"

Well... this is where the disturbing part begins.

First off, we have to take a quick dive into the history of automata, the real-life clockwork machines providing the basis of Lies of P's lore. Originally, clockwork mechanisms took up an enormous amount of space, being used for huge clock towers in cities and large-scale moving sculptures. Over the centuries, the mechanical components became smaller, enabling clockmakers and artisans to produce more intricate crafts, including miniature reproductions of people and animals.

Clocks and music boxes featuring birds with real feathers were extremely popular, but there were also other automata coated with real animal skin: As early as the 17th century, we have a drumming bear with actual bear fur (located in the Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon, Dresden) and a pair of lion table clocks (located in Skokloster Castle, Sweden) coated in the hide of lambs. From the 19th century, we know of a toy mouse by Gustave Vichy as well as a toy rabbit by Nicolas Théroude, both covered in real animal fur. In addition, there were various 19th-century dolls with leather bodies, and the company Jérôme Thibouville-Lamy even produced an miniature ensemble of monkey musicians with heads covered in soft leather, which could could move their lips to show their teeth.

However, we don't have any accounts that skin was used for human automata - except for one extraordinary case from the 18th century.

In 1738, the French inventor Jacques de Vaucanson presented an automaton called "The Flute Player". It was the size of a real-life human, and in contrast to all other automata of the time, it didn't use some kind of sound box to produce its music, but actual air flow. The inner mechanism consisted of a system of nine bellows, divided into sets of three, which were each controlled by a weight to regulate air pressure. Each set was attached to a pipe, three in total, which all joined up into a single one, similar to a trachea. This singular pipe continued up the throat, widening at the top to form the mouth cavity where the air flowed out. To correctly play the flute, the automaton was equipped with lips which could not only open and close, but also move back and forward to cover the holes. To better control the air flow and create pauses between notes, the automaton even possessed a movable, silver tongue.

Despite this virtually perfect imitation of the action of flute playing, Vaucanson had to realize that the automaton's metal fingers weren't pliable enough to cover the holes of the instrument correctly - so, for the automaton to be able to execute its task, Vaucanson had to glove the hands in real, actual skin.

It's speculated it was human skin, although I couldn't find any source decisively confirming this. Either way, despite Vaucanson being a quite controversial figure among his contemporaries, he was a fascinating personality: He was one of the first to construct automata that were not meant to serve as mere toys, but which could do labor, being credited with the invention of what we today would call household androids back in 1727(!), and chances are he was neurodivergent as well (coming from my own observations as a neurodivergent person).

However, as much as I'd love to write an entire essay about Vaucanson right now, let's get back to our actual topic.

The procedure

To put it bluntly, what I think actually happened is this:

Geppetto took the skin of a dead boy, treated it in some way so it wouldn't rot, and then draped the skin over a wooden puppet frame.

I think from a moral standpoint, Geppetto would definitely be able to do this - however, it would require him to have a good deal of experience with human anatomy. As someone who builds humanoid puppets, I think he would at least have a theoretical understanding of it, but still, he's an engineer, not a doctor.

There is, however, one group with excellent medical knowledge who certainly wouldn't shy away from dissecting a human being: the Alchemists. Although Geppetto's dislike of the Alchemists is well known, he himself admitted that "in desperate times, I broke my own rule" after the disaster at the Grand Exhibition, and I assume Carlo's resurrection would be more than good a reason for that as well. Basically, my suspicion is that Geppetto had help from the Alchemists - maybe even from Simon Manus himself. If this was the case, I imagine Simon probably demanded some kind of favor in return - perhaps Geppetto and Simon struck a deal, with the Alchemists giving Geppetto free rein to execute his little experiment with the Puppet Frenzy, while he agreed not to interfere with their own. This would support the Mad Donkey's statement that Geppetto and the Alchemists were "scheming together". (Also, if they were actually working together, I think things already started with the Nameless Puppet, Geppetto's first attempt at resurrecting Carlo. In the cutscene before the fight against the Nameless Puppet, we can see that Geppetto's left hand has been fitted with implants, having the same bluish complexion that is typical of people who have been "enhanced" by the Alchemists.) However, I don't think Geppetto ever really trusted the Alchemists, so he probably planned to betray them at some point - at the same time, I think Simon knew Geppetto was deceiving him (reading thoughts is such an op skill), so he didn't fully rely on him either.

Regardless whether Geppetto had assistance or not, completely skinning a human without damaging the skin requires an immense amount of care. Looking at P's skin (or at least what we can see of it), there are no visible seams anywhere, which would mean Geppetto did his best to keep it intact, probably including the hair as well. (As we all know, P's hair looks very soft and natural, and you can't see any outlines where it was glued on; therefore, I believe it was left rooted in the skin.) Nevertheless, if you want to skin a body, you have to make a cut somewhere. One possible option would be the hole in P's chest (where the P-Organ is inserted), as there would later be an opening anyway; also, given that the Legion Arm would later replace the left one, there would naturally have to be a cut at the left upper arm. However, both of these openings would most likely be too small to completely remove the skin. Due to this, my suspicion is that Geppetto made a third, larger cut down P's back. It would be big enough to take the complete skin off, and it would also be convenient if P had something like a cam storage in his back, similar to the Jaquet-Droz automata. (This has been a headcanon of mine for a long time, since these cam discs act as an analogue storage for a clockwork automaton's movements, which are engraved into the edge. Given that P's combat moves are quite complex, he'd need a lot of space for those; btw, my theory is that the amulets from the game are actually interchangeable cams, because they have "information and memories that are useful for movement" imprinted on them.) I would assume both the openings at the front and at the back are usually covered with skin, with a small seam being visible where the original cut was. Whenever Geppetto needs to do maintenance, the skin would be peeled back to give him free access.

As for the rest of the process, I suppose it would be kind of similar to taxidermy. As it happens, the Victorian era (which is around the same time period the game is set in) was actually the golden age of taxidermy, when mounted animals started to become more lifelike - there was even a trend among pet owners to let their deceased pets be stuffed, as a way to "resurrect" them. (Just why do I always manage to stumble upon the most cursed parallels?) Once the skin had been taken off, any remains of fat and muscle tissue would be removed, after which it would be either tanned or treated with preserving chemicals. Following this, the skin would be mounted on a mannequin, in P's case probably a standard puppet frame made from wood and metal. Of course, you need to take precise measurements of the original body beforehand, and since this is about his darling son, I imagine Geppetto would put extra care into the modeling. At the end, all you'd have to do is add glass eyes - and well, there you have it: a perfect, biomechanical imitation of a human being.

However, we do know there were some unexpected changes in P, even physical ones like his hair growing. Presuming that he indeed does have real skin, I wonder if this may be due to the Ergo "recognizing" the organic material in some way, causing these lifelike reactions. I could imagine a puppet with human skin is quite unprecedented, so this would likely be a first time occurrence - in that case, it might potentially give a whole new meaning to Sophia's statement that P is a "special puppet". (I could go into even more detail regarding my theories about Ergo and P's transformation into "another kind of human" here, but frankly, I think this topic deserves its own post.)

I think P is far from Geppetto's first attempt, however: We do know from the description of the Nameless Puppet's Ergo that the Nameless Puppet (which presumably is a Frankenstein version of Carlo) was the first to be equipped with a P-Organ, but after it turned out to be unstable, it was left abandoned and locked away. In that sense, I imagine Romeo was something like a "field test" - I don't think turning Romeo into a puppet was something Geppetto planned from the start, but when he came and asked him, he presented Geppetto with too good of an opportunity to pass up. When the transferring of Romeo into his puppet body, all memories and personality intact, turned out to be a success, Geppetto decided to take the next step with P. I assume he designed multiple versions of P until he was satisfied, which might mean that the broken puppet in the swamp (which also seems to possess a P-Organ and isn't bound to the Grand Covenant) is actually one of P's predecessors.

Still, as interesting and disturbing all of these speculations are, there is one question that remains: If P really does possess real human skin, who was the original owner of it?

The origin of P's skin

The first, most logical assumption would probably be that Geppetto used the skin of Carlo. Back in 2022, when everyone hypothesized Geppetto had a son but no one could confirm it, I also assumed he took the skin of his deceased son.

Now that we know the game's story though, we have a bit more information. First off, it's heavily implied that the Nameless Puppet is actually a Frankenstein version of Carlo, which would mean that the weird organic-looking parts - specifically the upper body, right arm and face - originally belonged to Carlo's body.

Given that they have the appearance of decaying tissue, it seems like Geppetto did his best to save as much of Carlo's body at first, but ultimately was unsuccessful in bringing him back to life. Considering this, it seems quite unlikely that Geppetto would remove the skin from his son's body if he intended to preserve it. Also, you can actually see a nipple on the right side of the chest, which probably wouldn't be there if the skin was taken off.

There's another thing that doesn't quite fit into this: When looking at Carlo's portrait in the game, he looks strikingly similar to P at the first glance (so much, in fact, that I was afraid my wild fan theory might turn out to be true after all). However, upon closer inspection, one can make out a few subtle differences in Carlo's and P's appearances: Carlo lacks P's trademark freckles, and instead of Carlo's doe-brown eyes, P possesses light blue ones.

Granted, Carlo could've gotten the freckles later during his life, and the blue eyes might be due to the Ergo's influence (which I also assume to be the reason for Sophia's blue colored hair). However, when Carlo gets revived during the Real Boy ending, the differences are still there, as his outward appearance is not identical to P's:

If the Arm of God has the ability to restore things to their original state (which is how I interpreted it), that would mean Carlo looked different from P at the point of his death, meaning that P's skin can't be Carlo's.

Of course, if Geppetto did use human skin for P, but not Carlo's, that would make things quite complicated, as it would be extremely difficult to find someone who looks almost exactly like Carlo. Nevertheless, there's one fan theory I'd still like to talk about: Someone on Reddit actually proposed that Carlo might have had a twin brother once, whose soul got transferred to the lamp by Sophia.

I actually had a similar theory about Gemini before the game came out, although I never shared it publicly because I couldn't find any support for it other than Gemini's name and his death in the original book. Basically, the gist of it was that Gemini is the soul of Geppetto's dead son, which got separated from its body and somehow encased in the lamp.

Although this assumption is definitely outdated since we now know that Carlo is Geppetto's son, we do have many left-over questions about Gemini. (Some character development for Gemini is actually one of the things at the top of my wish list for the DLC; as far as characters go, I felt like Gemini was the game's single weak point, and I wish they would've utilized him more.) In fact, it almost seems like there was originally going to be an amnesia subplot for Gemini, judging by some of his comments. For example, we've got the remark about the fairy tale book at the Hotel, but despite remembering there was a person who particularly adored it, Gemini can't recall who it was. Then, we have this very interesting comment down at the Relic of Trismegistus where Gemini remembers that "someone was dragged away from here", but again can't tell precisely who.

Unfortunately, the game never builds upon these comments, and they're pretty much left standing as they are. In fact, I can't help the impression that this might be part of a cut storyline - even Sophia says that Gemini is "unique" and "more than just a guide", and Gemini himself states that he's a friend of Sophia's, and that she "woke him up the last time she was there" - although, once again, he doesn't remember the exact circumstances.

Now, I've noticed that "P is Carlo's twin brother" AUs are quite popular in the fandom, but I'd like to mention there's nothing from the game that hints at Carlo having a twin brother (at least, to my knowledge). Still, it is quite an interesting theory - if the assumption that it was Carlo who particularly loved the fairy tale about the wooden puppet is true (based on Geppetto's comment during the fight with the Nameless Puppet that he should've taken more time to read him from his "favorite book"), it would explain why Gemini, his former twin brother, knows about it. However, if it really was Sophia who transferred Gemini's soul into the lamp, it prompts the question of the exact circumstances of his death. Given that Geppetto was willing to murder an entire city just for Carlo's revival, I wouldn't put it past him to sacrifice his other, perhaps not-so-favorite son for his endeavor - perhaps that's why P looks very similar, but not identical to Carlo.

Still, it's probably best if you take all of this with a grain of salt, as even compared to my original theory that P might have human skin, it's pretty exotic at best. Also, given that Gemini is directly mentioned in a memory scene that presumably takes place at the Monad Charity House makes this even more questionable. At least, I think it's highly unlikely that Gemini is Carlo's twin brother if he accompanied the mysterious Stalker - on the other hand, it seems a bit strange that Gemini would know about Carlo's favorite book if they only knew each other what appears to be such a short amount of time, especially when their relationship didn't start on good terms. Again, nothing is for certain, as we don't see Gemini physically appear in the memory scene - the only thing that seems to be confirmed is that Gemini also was a human once (at least I can't imagine what a cricket lamp is supposed to do against two unruly school boys).

Other possible alternatives

So, let's say Geppetto didn't actually use human skin for Pinocchio (which, to be honest, would be a relief) - why would he decide to make P look slightly different from Carlo?

One reason I can think of is that he designed P as a kind of "idealized" version of Carlo - judging by his comment before the final battle, Geppetto seems to have been discontent with Carlo's "mischievous" behavior, so maybe he used that opportunity to make him the "picture-perfect son" he always wanted.

Then again, given how rarely Geppetto saw him, I wonder if he even knew what Carlo looked like at the point of his graduation. When he retrieved his dead body, perhaps Carlo's face was disfigured beyond recognition, and all Geppetto had to work with were some old pictures/photos and his own memory.

If that was the case, it would make sense that P's outer appearance slightly differs from Carlo. Still, Geppetto was confident his plan would work out, that the resemblance would be enough to trigger Carlo's memories - but for whatever reason, it didn't, be that because of physical discrepancies or because Carlo was already gone.

Conclusion

In the end, no matter what Geppetto did, the fact remains that it was an insult - not only to Carlo, but also to P.

From the moment he first opened his eyes, P was forced to live in another person's skin (perhaps even literally), with no other choice being offered to him. His entire existence is essentially a lie, being expected to fill the role of someone he just isn't. Moreover, in trying to revive Carlo, what Geppetto actually did was soiling his memory - the mere notion that a living person can be replaced is beyond disrespectful, and to let innocents die in pursuit of this madness is an atrocity I have no words for. Even if Geppetto did all of this out of regret for having neglected Carlo and not spending more time with him, let me spell out one thing Nick Carraway already said in The Great Gatsby: You can't repeat the past.

However, what was given to you at birth is not everything you have to be, and what others expect from you is not what you have to become. In my own way, I love Pinocchio very dearly, but that love extends far beyond pretty looks. I relate to his struggle, and I would do anything to aid him in becoming his own person. Whatever choice he makes for himself, I will support it, and no matter if human or puppet, I'm going to love him just the way he is.

Resources:

Anette Beyer's "Faszinierende Welt der Automaten - Uhren, Puppen, Spielereien" ("Fascinating world of automata - clocks, dolls, playthings")

About Jacques de Vaucanson

On clockwork automata in general

#lies of p #lies of p lore #lore theories #lies of p pinocchio #lies of p carlo #lies of p geppetto #automaton #I feel dirty just writing about this #but I had this fan theory for AGES and finally had to get it off my chest #then again it's just Geppetto being an obsessive creep so nothing new under the sun

83 notes · View notes

pwlanier · 8 months

Text

A Rose Gold Pearl and Turquoise Set Portrait Miniature ‘Eye’ Brooch

The reverse with a Panel of Braided Hair

Contained in Leather Box inscribed ‘Goldsmiths & Silversmiths Company Ltd 112 Regent St London by Appointment to the King’

Late 18th Century

Finch and Company

165 notes · View notes

petrichorium · 10 months

Text

the news comes to you by messenger.

it doesn’t come to you, exactly. it comes to the academy you’d been sent to, a week away from the royal palace but only a day’s ride to your family’s manor in the south. it’s announced suddenly at midday: the king is dead, and the crown prince assassinated.

your fellow students mourn, as is appropriate. more than a few had been potential matches—their visions of marriage and queenhood dashed in a moment, you find it difficult to relate. you mourn a person, you mourn your first love, you mourn your best friend; they find you pretentious, and conceited, and they make snide comments from the other side of your closed door, behind which you spend a week in your bed reading through the letters you never sent him, staining them with tears.

when you finally emerge it’s with a silver pendant around your neck, hidden beneath your gown. a token of affection from many summers ago, a miniature portrait depicting the vibrant, unmistakable eye of the spoiled prince who’d gifted it to you. it remains hanging upon your breast long after you return to the palace, older and wiser and more determined.

it remains there even when invaders storm the walls, even when that towering figure appears and those regal eyes fall upon you.

gojo wakes up in a strange estate located, as he comes to learn, just outside the border in a neighboring kingdom. his injuries are numerous. he’s in such pain he can hardly sit up for the first month. you are all he thinks about because you are all he has left; his parents gone, his crown and country stolen, yet you remain, waiting for his return though you don’t know it. the thought of you is what keeps him going—it’s the tether to his sanity when his rage threatens to consume him, the reminder that there is still something to live for, to fight for.

throughout the years he keeps up with your status, informed in more and more depth as time goes on and his gossamer thin web within the palace grows thick and sturdy. he knows when you return, knows when the queen first notices you, knows how you claw your way up to become her close friend and most trusted confidant. he’d give you help where he could, but you hardly need it, and his faith in your abilities is unending.

he grows dahlias in the gardens of the hidden manor, and he tends to them meticulously. each one, he imagines, must be perfect; he knows they won’t be the ones he uses to propose but he refuses to let even one wilt before it’s time.

they’re for you, after all, even if you’ll never see them.

usurper!gojo masterlist

#gojo satoru x reader #gojo x reader #jjk x reader #gojo satoru x you #gojo x you #jjk x you #gojo satoru x y/n #gojo x y/n #jjk x y/n #mine.🌧#char.🌧 gojo #usurper!gojo

337 notes · View notes

depraveddame · 6 months

Text

Lover’s Eye jewelry was popular in 18th century Europe, especially England. They were delicate miniature portraits of eyes painted on ivory and worn as brooches, rings, pendants, etc. They usually depicted the eye of a lover, and were worn by all genders. Perhaps Crowley and Aziraphale had them; maybe one of them even started the trend so that they could have a piece of their darling with them at all times.

Aziraphale even secretly had a larger one commissioned so he could also see that lovely crimson hair whenever he wanted.

#aziracrow #good omens #ineffable husbands #gomens #crowley #aziraphale #crowley x aziraphale #lover’s eyes #lovers eye #jewelry #antique jewelry #18th century #these are real examples of lover’s eyes; I edited the Crowley ones 💗

88 notes · View notes

boydepartment · 4 months

Text

MY ONLY LOVE: Jake Sim x Reader: Ch. 15

description- y/n is an upcoming soloist in belift, she was previously in a disbanded group and the company decided to give her a chance. one day she runs into ex-boyfriend, jake sim, in the canteen. it was awkward and embarrassing and for weeks she tries to avoid him. you can’t avoid people forever though, especially when the company who gave her a chance tells her she has to fake date her ex boyfriend publicly.

genre- exes to lovers, fake dating, idol AU, romcom, fluff, comfort

includes- enhypen, y/n (obviously), bahiyyih (kep1er), hikaru (kep1er), p1 harmony, different idol cameos (i.e probably mark lee, bangchan, new jeans, etc)

WRITTEN CHAPTER- 500+ WORDS

“YOU TAKE WALKS TOO?”

when you got to jakes house, arriving with him, you were taken back by his mom putting you in a bone crushing hug.

“Y/N! DARLING!” she laughed as she wrapped her arms around you, layla got up from her dog bed and started to wiggle at the commotion.

“hi again mrs. sim!” you hugged her back and knelt down to pet layla.

“she remembers you!” mrs. sim smiled down at you and the dog. jake just stood there awkwardly at this interaction, it was difficult to take in you guessed. i mean, it’s not everday that your ex girlfriend from trainee days is in your home again, and now she’s your fake girlfriend.

“and you! you need to try to come home more often!” jake’s mom hugged him after that and let you both farther in the house.

it was just as you remembered it, the family portraits, old trophies from school, even the décor was the same. it shouldn’t be surprising to you, it was more homey than surprising.

you and jake sat at the table as his mom started giving you life updates about the sim family, it was really nice to be around familiarity. you didn’t get that often anymore. what really scared you was that this felt right.

“sooo jaeyun told me about the contract.” she flipped around and leaned against the counter, “is it going okay? they aren’t being weird towards either of you right?”

jake’s mom always looked out for you when you were a trainee and it was refreshing that she was still looking out for you even now, “yeah… i am okay, the only really bad thing was the whole group drama and the fansign…”

from the corner of your eye you saw jake tense up. in fact anytime the fansign was brought up he seemed to become tense.

“i know honey, jaeyun was telling me that some stuff like that was going on with you.” she sighed and handed you a cup of water. you thanked her and took a sip, jake was silent and his ears were pink.

“jaeyun it is not embarrassing that you made sure she was okay!” his mom had a shit eating grin on her face, you couldn’t help but smile behind your cup.

jake blushed harder and groans throwing his head back, “mom stop! you don’t need to tell her!”

his mom started laughing, “anyways, i will leave you two be for a bit alright?” at that she walks off to another room of the house.

“so you kept tabs on me?” you asked, smiling. jake side eyes you and you start laughing.

“its not funny! i just wanted to make sure you were doing okay but i was too shy to approach you! i thought you hated me so anytime something bad would happen to you i would go walking because i was always so stressed because-“

you were smiling and jake stopped talking, embarrassed, “you take walks too? when you’re stressed?”

jake nodded silently

“maybe we should start taking walks together then.” you smiled at him, “if that’s okay.”

“YES- i mean yes, yeah that’s cool. we can do that!”

you took another sip of your water, “good, i’m glad. we should visit here more often too…”

jake’s mouth dropped before he smiled, “sounds good y/n… sounds good…”

___

MASTERLIST

taglist- open :)

@bloofairyfox @enluv @kaykay11sworld @tumblemumblr @haisuken @bluxjun @breadlover01 @ghostiiess @filmofhybe @yourmomscuntis2tighy @beomgyusonlywife @enhaz1 @surefornext @stellarpsh @peachyun02 @softiehee @miniature-tragedy @forevrglow @imsodazed @darlingz99 @isawritesss @xoxo-jeans @firstclassjaylee

comment, dm, or send an ask to be added

PLEASE only ask via comment to be on taglist on the masterlist chapter, or teaser

a/n: i am sorry this chapter took forever and the fact it is short af

52 notes · View notes

nitewrighter · 2 years

Text

Cindy Part 13

As always, for all parts, please refer to the masterpost.

This is it. Man I wish I could have something cool and goofy to say to offset all the emotions I’m feeling right now, but I’m gonna be honest, I’ve gotten really attached to this story, and I’m deeply touched by all of your enthusiasm and connection in reading it. This story was born out of frustrations of bad-faith readings of fairy tales, and... I dunno, over the course of writing it, it very quickly stopped being about frustrations with those bad-faith readings and more about telling a story because you love people. You love people because they’re messy and complicated and, like stories, they’ve got holes in them that make them all sorts of different things to different people depending on how different people in your life fill those holes. Does that make sense? I’m immediately realizing that that the ‘filling holes’ metaphor could be interpreted in a very interesting way but I can’t really think of a better metaphor but my point is... thank you all for staying with me this long. Love or hate the ending, I’ll see you guys on the other side.

Content warnings for major character death and... wait for it... eye trauma.

----

There is a royal wedding. You don’t throw the words “Intended Bride” around in a royal decree going out to the whole kingdom and not have a Royal wedding. Both the King and Cindy are absolutely delighted to plan the whole thing and admittedly they kind of butt heads over aesthetics and the menu at first but eventually they figure things out and my god the king adores her. The prince is a little embarrassed about the whole thing but oh boy he’s more than happy to have a couple extra dancing lessons with Cindy, parse out some event logistics with moving the wedding party from point A to point B and arranging for everyone’s safe exit from the party to local inns and estates and the appropriate after-parties with Brad and Gabe, as well as taste-testing some samples for the reception catering (THE PRINCE GETS HIS PIES, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN).

Eunice paints Cindy and the Prince’s new portrait in the weeks leading up to the wedding—it looks much better than his old one—some say it’s because he looks a lot happier in this one, others say it’s because he’s looking at his fiancee in the portrait, which gives a much better angle to his jawline. Cindy is smiling out at the viewer of the painting, a rat in a dapper miniature guard uniform jacket on her shoulder.

The wedding itself is a fascinatingly egalitarian affair, outdoors in the palace gardens. The official ring bearer is a rat, sitting on its haunches with a ring in its little rat hands, carried on a velvet pillow by one of the king’s younger grand-nephews. The reception is catered by both the palace and some of Cindy’s favorite food stalls in the market. Kids of all classes are running around barefoot on the palace lawns and polished little heirs and scrubbed-raw ragamuffins alike are shoving child-fist sized bouquets ravaged from the gardens at the happy bride and nicking tarts from the buffet table. The queen’s privateers show up to the reception with kegs of rum and cool-ass fire-breathers and acrobats from far-off lands and they break into a musical number as is their custom. The local cheesemonger is rocketed to widespread fame and fortune through the sheer force of their le chevrot and is honestly unsure how they feel about it. It’s such a perfect combo of joy and chaos that even the king’s hardcore party-planning ass gets caught up in all the fervor of the event and he goes nuts on the dance floor and pulls the queen into it, too!

Dutiful Wine daughter is there and she catches the bouquet! Good for her! And she goes on to be the royal sommelier so actually she and Cindy are good friends and they have girls’ nights and sleepovers and Cindy just adores all of Dutiful Wine Daughter’s siblings. Eunice hangs out with them too because she has an ongoing commission with the palace of painting rats in fancy outfits next to bonsai trees and honestly she didn’t get out that much either prior to all this shoe stuff and it’s cool having friends. Prints of her rat-and-bonsai-tree paintings are extremely popular as a status symbol with both old families and the nouveau riche. Eunice honestly wishes her gay-as-hell mythological nudes were her bigger artistic legacy, but hey, y’know that’s how shit works when you’re a creative. You take what you can get.

Now, could I have the stepfam crash the wedding with the intent of humiliating Cinderella and then have a flock of fairy-possessed starlings peck their eyes out to the horror of the entire kingdom? I mean honestly that would be fucking metal but I don’t think Cindy wants to see any eyes pecked out on her big day. And also everyone else was having a blast so that would be a real downer. Even if they are abusive assholes. And you KNOW my man Brad has security for the event locked down pat! Oh the stepfam tried, but they weren’t getting in. The stepmother even tried hitting Brad with “Let me speak to your manager,” which is when Gabe showed up like, “Oh hello, Madam. You may remember me, I’m the King’s Valet, and I had some questions about your deceased husband’s estate.” (Cue anime glasses glint). And that’s when the stepfam was like, “Actually we were just leaving.” So they go home to their increasingly filthy estate, growing piles of laundry, and absolute jungle of a garden.

Meanwhile, after a cozy little wedding night where they crack open a certain bottle of port with a unicorn on the label, Cindy and the Prince honeymoon at sea with the queen’s privateers. To put it mildly, it is a wild ride. And I could go into all the sword-fighting and musical numbers and rat shadow puppet theater and the prince wearing those slutty puffy shirts with the pec cleavage and also the passionate kisses next to sunsets on glittering seas, but we’re just going to shift the camera to the stepfam for a second here—I know, I know, they suck but don’t worry, Cindy and the prince are fine, and you gotta give a couple some privacy on their honeymoon, you know?

See, quality of life on the estate quickly plummets without Cindy doing… well.. literally everything. There’s no one cooking, no one cleaning, no one doing the laundry, no one gardening, and it doesn’t take long for the Stepfam to get at each others’ throats real fast. Their house is no longer in a suitable state for them to have anyone over—they have no one cooking to serve food to guests and the whole place looks like shit—one might say the garden got out of control with almost supernatural speed, and without anyone doing laundry, they quickly run out of clothes to make themselves presentable in public. By the time they actually miserably figure out laundry? Every family of fashion has spent the last two months talking about how the royal wedding was the most exciting social event of the season—or, in one case, about how their son eloped with a foxy acrobat that came with the privateers. The stepfam does two (2) loads of laundry and like… four miserable attempts at cooking and one wretched attempt at dishes before they go, “Okay fuck it, we’ll use the gold the palace gave us to hire a new servant.” So they put on their muddy, unwashed cloaks and put out fliers under cover of night. Eventually a handful of candidates show up to the house, but the conversation always goes the same—or at least some variation of it.

“I’m sorry, you expect me to do… all this… and you’re only offering me this level of payment?”

“As well as room and board!” The stepmother blurts out.

“…in the basement. It’s freezing down there—are you at least going to get thicker bedding?”

“There’s a hearth!”

“Well yeah, but you built the bed into an alcove on the far side of the room. What am I gonna do, sleep in the ashes? On the hearthstones?? Those are literal rocks!”

“But—”

“And you know this contract doesn’t say anything about overtime or weekends.”

“What the hell is a weekend?”

And the candidate would press their hands together like, “Look, lady, even if I was crazy and desperate enough to take this job, which I’m not, the conditions you’re outlining literally aren’t legal.”

“Luh… legal??”

“Yeah! Haven’t you heard about the DDWR?”

“The what?”

“The Decree of Domestic Workers’ Rights? It was ratified as soon as the prince and princess consort wed! Why do you think the whole kingdom was celebrating? Literally 75% of the shit you’re describing with this job is well outside of its parameters! 95% if you were really being serious about the basement shit!”

“P-princess… Consort…” the stepmother repeats.

“Anyway—like, for me it boiled down to this job or a leather tannery, and to be honest, you’ve made the leather tannery look way more attractive. But anyway, best of luck with revising your contract to meet DDWR standards. I’m out.”

And that happened about 5 times. Except replace “leather tannery” with “fishmonger’s underling who deals mostly in cleaning out the guts” or “dyer’s apprentice whose job more or less guarantees your arms will be a weird teal-y gray up to the elbows” or “Bog witch’s apprentice even though damp environments wreak havoc on my complexion.”

So once again the stepfam was up shit-creek without a paddle. Except the younger stepsister got a very bright idea of “Well, Cinderella did all that because she had nowhere else to go, right? All we need is someone we know has nowhere else to go! And if they’re young enough, they aren’t protected by that DD-whatever!”

And Stepmother is like, “Finally a decent idea!” And she looks at the elder stepsister like “Why didn’t you think of that? Did your brain bleed out of your toe-stubs?” So the Stepfam takes off for the local orphanage.

It’s not nearly as miserable and depressing as they were expecting. They can hear faint singing in one of the buildings, they pass by a classroom where a bunch of orphans are eagerly raising their hands at an arithmetic question, and out in the yard, one of the nuns is overseeing a bunch of cute grubby orphans working on the garden and congratulating them on cultivating excellent bean sprouts. The stepfam is steered to a directory office where they’re greeted by an unfortunately familiar face. The stepmother doesn’t immediately pick up on the rising dread at the stepsisters’ reactions on seeing a girl they had previously described to the prince as ‘looking like she was either going to cry or piss herself.’ Amelia looks fucking great—she’s a novice, not a nun yet, but it’s clear she’s found a really good environment for herself—all bright eyes and cheery smiles and the kind of customer service politeness you would find in a Waffle House waitress who has SEEN IT ALL. And there’s a flicker of recognition in her eyes at the stepsisters that tells the stepsisters, “Oh we’re fucked.”

“So!” Amelia tents her fingers, “You want to adopt one of our orphans. That’s great! Well, as soon as you pass our vetting process, we can set up meetings with children we think are best suited to your living situation.”

“V-vetting process?” The stepmother is remembering their house currently looks like absolute shit right now.

“Well, yes! Making sure the child is brought up in a clean, loving, and caring environment is first priority!” Amelia tilts her head cheerfully.

“We were hoping to just get an orphan as soon as possible,” the stepmother stammers, “You know how these children are so desperate for a home…Oh! And we’d like an older child—you know how it’s harder for the older children to get adopted—”

“But not too old,” the younger stepsister chimes in, “And strong, too.”

“Oh who doesn’t want a good home!” Amelia agrees, “However, with the OPA in place, there are ongoing vetting processes to make sure the children’s needs are being met.”

“The what?”

“The OPA? The Orphan Protection Act? It was ratified with the marriage of the prince and princess consort?”

“Her again…” the stepmother seethes.

“This act also granted massive amounts of funding to the support and building of orphanages so that we can provide the best possible environment until these children can find a home that truly loves them! Isn’t that wonderful?” Amelia’s shoulders bunch up all cute but the Stepmother is just bluescreening again with a high-pitched note screaming in one ear.

“So we can’t even get some useless gutter rat to do what needs to be done?” The stepmother huffs under her breath.

“I’m sorry, what did you call our children?” Amelia tilts her head.

“Nothing,” the stepmother draws herself up from her seat. “We were just leaving.”

So like, another couple months pass for the stepfam, and like… shit gets weird and resentful. I think the stepmother started blaming the elder stepsister for fucking everything up with losing her toes, but like… it’s not exactly the eldest stepsister’s fault her toes were the ones bitten off, nor that she kicked the shoe off and shattered it in response. The fairy godmother hated them all for what they did to Cindy, so any one of them would have gotten their foot mangled by the shoe if they tried it on. The elder stepsister was just.. the first. But you don’t think rationally when your heart is full of resentment. If your heart doesn’t know what it loves, what it’s fighting for, then it just… fucking starts eating itself and gnashing out at anything close to it. And that’s how shit was with the stepfam. They were able to support themselves for a while by extorting gold from the palace for the eldest sisters’ ‘Medical expenses,’ but eventually the eldest stepsister had enough, left the house, married some sideshow owner at the pier, and eventually sent a letter to Cindy saying, “Hey, I don’t live with the stepfam anymore, so if they’re asking for money on my behalf, they’re full of shit. Also sorry for forcing you to do literally all the work around the house while insulting you on a daily basis or something. I guess. I don’t care if you actually forgive me. Don’t bother writing back.”

Cindy does draft up several nice responses but eventually opts to just respect the ‘don’t write back’ wishes. The palace sends a polite letter to the stepmother congratulating her on her daughter’s wedding and saying they’re so glad she found someone to take care of her in spite of her medical expenses, and sending one final, decent-sized sack of gold as a ‘wedding gift’ even though they know the stepmother is just going to spend it on herself. Sometimes it’s not about forgiveness and redemption, sometimes you don’t know if this horrible person became a better person, sometimes you’re just glad they’re getting distance from a horrible situation.

And boy is it horrible.

The house is dilapidated as hell—we’re talking some Miss Havisham in Great Expectations shit. The Royal Restraining Order basically blocks the stepfam from attending crucial upper-class social events—aside from like, some horse races, and the regatta, and a good number of more middle-class social events, but they would never lower themselves to such sorry appearances!! To rubbing elbows with such riffraff! No sir! But eventually… it gets easier and easier for all the respectable families of the kingdom to just… stop inviting them to shit. So they’re in a filthy house, that’s basically rotting at this point for lack of maintenance, eating burned and undercooked and unseasoned or over seasoned food and regularly insulting each other over how they could stand to let them live in such a state. The older stepsister has already dipped but about a year later, eventually the younger sister can’t stand it anymore, scrapes up as much of her jewelry as she can sell, and takes off in the dead of night. I don’t actually know what happens to her. Like if you want to give her a whole redemption arc or whatever, go ahead, but all you’re going to get from me is a big fat question mark.

But the Stepmother? I can tell you what happens there, and I can tell you it’s not pretty.

Like, even if all of her interactions with her daughters were horrible arguments towards the end, like… at least that’s other people to like.. bounce off of, you know? At least there are other people around who, even if you’re all miserable together, give you a common sense of reality. When you’re all alone, and when you’re already miserable and bitter and completely convinced the world is punishing you and that has nothing to do with what you’re putting out into the world? Woof. Shit gets weird. Shit gets dark. I mean, the labor situation isn’t as bad when you’re just cooking and cleaning for yourself, but this is a big fucking house with a big fucking garden—it’s not designed for one person to live in and maintain. So whole wings of the house are closed off—furniture is covered with sheets—but more and more of the rooms are getting barer and barer as the stepmother is selling off furniture just to keep herself fed, hire drifters for one-off odd jobs, and keep up minimum appearances.

Maybe if the stepmother wasn’t so concerned about “riffraff” it might occur to her to lease out some rooms to tenants, but honestly the house is in such shit shape, it’s hard to imagine who’d really be willing to stay there.

The stepmother is pacing through the house, and every time she hears the wind through the hazel tree outside, every time she hears the chirps of starlings (and god, they’re getting louder) she swears it sounds like mocking laughter, or a coo of ‘Have you remembered to do the dishes?’ (The dishes are molding over in the sink—all the mold is probably not helping the mental health factor), or that it even sounds like Cindy’s goddamned singing.

And then, one night, when the stepmother is in bed, and the rain is pounding the half-rotted window frames, and there’s a cacophony of ‘tink tink tink tink tinks’ because the roof is leaking and she’s set out all of these pots and pans to catch the drips. The wind is howling through the hazel tree’s boughs, and it sounds like Cindy’s fucking singing again… and then, the Stepmother gets this grand revelation—The Hazel tree! That damned hazel tree that her stupid dead husband planted because he never actually loved her! He only ever loved the mother of that stupid little rat girl! The hazel tree is the ghost of that girl’s mother cursing her! It’s been so clear all along! So she springs out of her moth-eaten sheets and she races down the stairs, not even bothering to put a robe over her nightgown, out to into the mud of their fucking jungle of a garden which the semi-starved chickens now roam like mini-velociraptors themselves. The stepmother glares up at the hazel tree and then she furiously sludges through the mud over to the garden shed where she pulls out the axe she used to make Cindy chop firewood with. It’s very rusted at this point (and god her house is so fucking cold), but it’s good enough. It has to be good enough. Gripping the axe, snarling through her teeth, the stepmother goes to the hazel tree. She hefts up the axe for that first swing and hurls it down and THOK it bites hard and deep and cruel into the bark. Rain is pelting down on the stepmother and lightning flashes, but she doesn’t care. THOK. She strikes the tree again.

So like…you remember that whole bit I had about like, Fairy Godmothers being pretty dang strict about using magic to do ‘good’ and not focusing on curses and punishments? Like of course it was a whole thing because the Fairy Godmother herself emerged from a magic that was born from a very deep pain and grief—but Fairy Godmother actively chose to try and be a positive force in Cindy’s life because being a cruel fairy would just make things harder for Cindy. So even if she has to put up with lectures from other fairies, even fairy godmother’s vengeful, furious, bitter little ass is willing to try and be the bigger person for Cindy’s sake. So she really wasn’t doing anything to make the stepfam’s life harder—aside from the garden getting out of control really fast--but that’s more of a typical side effect of fae presence rather than an active act—but also she was mostly focusing on building back her juice after all the whizzbangs of the ball and the growing number of birds were more like a charging battery icon in this case. So she was literally minding her own business! But my point is—the Fairy Godmother code of “We don’t curse and punish people” goes right out the window when it’s a matter of self-defense.

And the stepmother was fucking with a tree she should not be fucking with.

The birds descended on her like a meteor shower. So many clawed little feet and beating wings and pecking beaks. The stepmothers’ screams were drowned out by cracking thunder and screaming birds and the boughs of the hazel tree moaning in the wind, and as a bit of a mercy by virtue of her own stress and malnourishment, the stepmother passed out at the peak of the worst of the pain. Rain still pounding down on her, her face staring blindly up at the sky, not even seeing the flashes of lightning. Pink water was crowning and overflowing out of her clawed out eye sockets. She was found moaning in the mud the next morning by someone duck hunting with their dog in the irrigation ditches nearby. She was carried inside her crumbling manse, dressed in the driest warmest clothes she had, her hollow, bloodied eye sockets covered with gauze, but fever had already well set-in, and her breaths were already shallow with pneumonia. I’ve mentioned before that this is a time when a cold at the wrong time of year can very much kill you—this is being out in the cold and rain with your eyes clawed out—open head wounds with the agony of exposed optic nerves.

A messenger was sent to the palace and, despite the prince’s assurances that “You don’t have to be there—” Cindy rushed over, along with the best doctors she could haul with her. And the prince followed after her because goddammit he worries about her! And he knows that whole situation’s fucked up!!

“I think you should hang back,” Cinderella pats his arm as they head up the stairs of her old house.

“But—” he starts.

“I… I can do this. It’s going to be okay,” she kisses him on the cheek, “I’m not scared.”

The prince presses his lips together with distress and Cindy goes, “Okay yes I’m very scared but… I’ll be okay.”

“Okay,” he says and he hangs back as she enters the room.

“Stepmother?”

The room is dimly lit. It’s overcast outside.

“Who is that? Who’s here?” The stepmother’s head is swinging around.

“Your highness, you should keep your distance,” the physician warns, his mouth and nose covered by a kerchief, “We don’t know if she’s infectious.”

“Highness?!” The stepmother squawks.

“It’s… me, stepmother,” says Cindy, maintaining a few steps away from the stepmother’s bed.

“Cinderella?”

Cindy feels like she’s really come to love her name in the two years she’s lived with it at the palace, but the way the stepmother says it still makes her stomach tighten.

“Yes, stepmother.” Cindy lets out a steadying exhale.

“I suppose I’ll be arrested now, as well, what with your 800 paces rule.”

“It’s been temporarily suspended, given the… circumstances,” Cindy fidgets with her fingers.

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” The stepmother scoffs a derisive chuckle.

“No, no it isn’t what I want at all,” Cindy pushes a stray hair back.

“Don’t you play coy with me, you little witch—you and your singing. You and your rats. You and your—your cooking and sewing. You and your fucking tree. You—” the stepmother breaks into a wet coughing fit and Cindy instinctively takes half a step back, “You… You’ve been planning this for years, haven’t you?! I bet you made my daughters abandon me as well.”

“I—I haven’t. In fact, I’ve sent a letter to the elder and we have several men looking for the younger, so if you just hang on, I’m sure once they find out what’s happened, they’ll come too, and—”

“They won’t come, you little fool, you wretched—” the stepmother moans and presses the heels of her hands to her forehead.

“Please don’t strain yourself,” Cinderella says gently.

“All those laws you wrote… don’t act like you didn’t write them to spite me.”

“I didn’t write them to spite you—I had a lot of advisors to help draft the specific—”

“I don’t care!”

“Ma’am—” the physician starts.

“Shut up! No one asked you!” snaps the stepmother.

“I didn’t write those laws for just you or just me! I wrote those laws because I realized… I’m probably not the only ‘me’ and you’re not the only ‘you.’ I know I won’t be able to protect everyone, but if I can make a difference for at least a handful of people…” Cindy furrows her brow for a second, because she feels like what she’s saying right now is making sense, but it doesn’t seem to be making any significant impacts on the stepmother. Man, shit hits different when you’ve been living with people who actually listen to you.

The stepmother’s lips curl back from her teeth. “So you were still thinking about me when you drafted it…”

“Yes. I did believe that what you did to me shouldn’t be done to another person, and I did everything in my power to stop that,” Cindy huffs a little and looks around the room, “I think a part of me assumed you would still be fine in spite of that.” She looks at one of the pots on the floor with rainwater still in it from the leaky ceiling.

“And now you’re here to mock me at my lowest point.”

“I am not!” Cindy’s touching on a vein of anger within herself that she’s kept at bay with just calming breaths and there’s this flare of adrenaline in her, because she could punch down. She has every right to punch down, but she’s remembering a glamorous woman on her father’s arm, with two pretty girls hanging behind her skirts, and seeing her father’s fragile smile for the first time since her mother died, and all that is boiling down into a mild feeling of nausea.

“So what do you want?!” The stepmother demands.

“I don’t know, I just—I just thought you shouldn’t be alone,” Cinderella folds her arms tight across herself.

“You were the one who did this to me you rotten whelp!”

“I just made it so you would leave me alone! I don’t know what you did to yourself after!” Cindy blurts out furiously, but catches herself, “I’m sorry—you’re in so much pain already.”

“Oh shut up with your stupid, pathetic little morality play. Don’t act like this isn’t what you always wanted.”

Cinderella pushes her lips together. “This is never what I wanted. When I first met you…you seemed… so powerful and clever and beautiful and confident…and…I think I wanted to be like that, but mostly… I just wanted a mother.”

“A mother…?” The words float out of the stepmother, and like, even though there’s a band of gauze where her eyes once were, she fixes those bloody patches on Cindy, and Cindy suddenly gets this stinging memory of every time she assumed something good happening to her couldn’t be real, couldn’t be true, had to be some cruel trick because it was what she had known for so long. Maybe the stepmother couldn’t see Cinderella as her daughter because that would be too easy, too good to be true, and therefore, her only defense against something like that was quashing Cindy down. There’s a flicker of understanding, in that look between them, and Cindy sees the person she could have become, the person shaped by injustice and cruelty, had she not held onto the loving memory of her parents—Had she not had her little rat friends to comfort her, or even the Wonderful Hypothetical Party she was constantly planning in her head, had she not been able to shed her tears on that hazel tree. A short, breathy sound falls out of the stepmother, and at first, Cindy thinks she’s going to cry, but… it’s a chuckle. Then it seems to deepen and ripple in the stepmother’s already drowning chest, “A mother!” She declares again, like it’s the funniest punchline to the world’s longest joke, and that chuckle bubbles up into a full-on laugh interspersed with wet, hacking coughs. She’s laughing hysterically, the gauze over her eye sockets is darkening with fresh blood at the force of her laughs.

“Ma’am?!” The physician is stepping forward and Cindy is backing towards the door, but still the stepmother is convulsing with laughter.

The physician is calling for laudanum to calm her down, but suddenly that long peal of laughter seems to spiral and tighten in on itself like a tetherball whipping around the pole.

The stepmother dies laughing.

Cinderella stares at the still form in the bed, the physician fussing over her, trying to shake her back to consciousness, but there’s something about the way the stepmother’s features are frozen that tells Cindy it’s over. She sways on her feet for a few seconds, then blinks, and staggers to the door. As soon as she opens it the prince is taking her up in his arms, (of course his protective, fussy ass has been eavesdropping but also half frozen unsure whether to interfere because on one hand she said she’s got this but also holy fuck there’s a lot happening in there) and he’s pulling her out into the hallway. “I’m sorry,” he’s saying, “I should have come in, but I didn’t know if I would make it worse—I—you shouldn’t have been in there alone—”

“I’m fine,” her voice is hollow and blank, “I’m fine.”

“Cindy—” And there’s that mental log jam again, he wants it all to come out but it’s stuck in his throat. You’re not a fool. You’re not wretched. You’re not a rotten whelp. You’re not a witch. Actually you might be a witch because there’s still a lot I don’t know, but I don’t care if you are because if you are, you’re clearly a very nice one. But his mouth is just hanging stupidly open and he’s stammering a little.

“Can we go home?” She’s almost limp in his arms, not looking at him, “Please?”

They head out of the estate of Cindy’s father for the very last time, and they’re about to get into the carriage but Cindy, in a daze, unlaces her arm from the prince’s and kind of dizzily makes her way over to the hazel tree. She runs a hand over the two deep axe marks in the wood, “Are you okay?” She asks gently, “Did she hurt you?”

“Cindy?” The prince is deeply confused and concerned but his head jerks up as the hazel tree’s boughs creak and leaves rustle in a wind he can’t quite feel.

“You… didn’t have to do that for me…” Cinderella’s voice is a bit distant, “I’m not mad, I just…”

The tree rustles again and the prince is looking at the other trees surrounding the garden like, please tell me they’re moving in the wind, too.

Cindy’s neck cranes up at the boughs overhead. “Okay,” she says, “I—I understand. Take care of yourself.” And she gently kisses the bark before pushing away from the tree and kind of lightly, gracefully making her way back to the prince. The way she moves reminds him a bit of the fog that seemed to hang around her that night of the ball.

“Your um… your friend?” He asks a bit helplessly.

“Mm,” she just gets into the carriage and the prince mouths ‘What the fuck’ to Brad who just kind of shrugs before taking his place on the driver’s seat next to the carriage driver.

They go home. It’s a weird couple of days after that—they never really get in contact with the stepsisters, they send out news of the stepmother’s death but get nothing back, and Cindy’s staying in bed until noon for a couple days, but eventually she’s pulling herself to the palace gardens and to the stables and also she’s made a point of rescuing her now feral-ass chickens from her old estate and making sure they get back to their fat, happy selves. When she’s asked about the state of the house the stepmother left behind, Cindy just kind of blankly says, “It’s not mine anymore,” and everyone eventually accepts that that’s the answer she has to that.

Another few days pass. Servants say that Cindy’s eating more again and she and the prince can be heard quietly talking long into the small hours of the morning.

Another two weeks pass and Dutiful Wine Daughter and Eunice motion to whisk Cindy away for a few days by the sea. The prince voices some concerns but the queen 100% supports this girls’ trip and they depart. About a week and a half later, Cindy returns seeming a lot more energetic than she was before. Also she has a handful of cute new outfits—Cindy keeps forgetting she can actually buy clothes now—and loads of recipes for wine steamed mussels and chowders and fish fried in breadcrumbs, and also they have a little bowl of the mother yeast of the local sourdough which Cindy is very excited about.

A few more weeks pass and Cindy’s more or less back to her earnest, kindhearted self, still making her bed every morning (and of course roping the prince into it because it’s his bed too, dammit) still poking around and sometimes backseat-driving the palace kitchens, and still insisting on embroidering cutesy things into the guards’ uniforms when she notices a loose button or thinning elbows, not to mention she has her chickens to fuss over and rats to make cute clothes for—she’s still finding that no-filter self she had at the ball, but every so often it comes out and the prince gets the stupidest, most lovestruck grin on his face. She has the strength to show up to council meetings again, and the king and queen are very relieved to see her there.

I feel like we all have a very weird relationship with the term ‘happily ever after’ because like, life isn’t like that—that’s the term that’s come to breach suspension of disbelief even in a goddamn fairytale. Cindy’s put on some pounds at the palace and she looks great—like she doesn’t get as cold as easily, she doesn’t have that ‘orphan hollow eye socket’ thing going on, she doesn’t get dizzy when she stands up too fast, plus, her boobs look amazing. Fairy godmother would be proud. It isn’t just endless bliss forever because if it was like that, shit would be really fucking weird—if bliss is all you know, then is it actually bliss? I think you need the odd pain and argument and frustration and maybe even heartbreak here and there to really appreciate what you have, and for the record, Cindy and the prince overall have something really good—but like… they have an awareness about it—they know it’s a thing they both have to actively work on and be conscious of, because that’s actually how this shit works. Love takes patience and attention and work, but at the end of the day, it should be work that makes you feel satisfied with, both with yourself and your partner. It doesn’t have to be happily ever after—it’s quiet afternoons of listening to rain on the window and your partner reading aloud to you while you work on a new dress with some cool fabrics your mother-in-law got you because she saw them and thought of you. It’s you and your friends trying to go all ‘incognito’ because your cool friend found a cool new cafe downtown but the captain of the guard still insists on coming along for security reasons and god bless him he is trying to look like a civilian to maintain your facade but the man is fucking huge and everyone keeps flirting with him. It’s your father in-law’s valet quietly slipping you his footnotes on the drier texts of the kingdom’s legal history to help you get up to speed for another council meeting and you smiling at his snippy sarcastic little comments in the margins. It’s even headdesking at said boring as hell council meeting and your father-in-law quietly sliding you a cup of tea with a warm smile because yes, this stuff is boring but he’s pretty sure you’ll still get your motion to fill those potholes passed, just hang in there, kiddo. It’s good things and bad things and sometimes long stints of crazy shit—but the only constant is that you’re with people who love you and care about your well-being, and you love them, and want the best for them, too.

Now you’re probably asking, “okay but do Cindy and the Prince have kids? Because that was a pretty big deal for the king.” And I’m gonna leave that up to you. All you really need to know in that regard is that there’s a healthy hazel sapling in the royal gardens, and the king isn’t pressuring them nearly as much for grandkids as he thought he would be since they opened up those really high-grade cozy orphanages. The king reads books to the kids there, every Sunday. I’m like 80% sure the kids there don’t even know he’s the king, they just like that he does the voices. The queen still gets up to her usual adventures and bullshit, but actually does make more of an effort to include her family now, to mixed reactions from everyone. She plans on teaching Cindy fencing, or maybe boxing—that’s therapeutic, right? She’s sensitive—she knows she is. She’s going to be the best mother-in-law ever, goddammit.

Meanwhile Cindy and the Prince will sometimes spend a day riding horses together, they go through fields and through the woods and cut crazy paths between village roads and farmland footpaths, and sometimes, they ride down a road where a while back, a pumpkin bounced along and exploded on, and they ride that road until they reach a big, familiar house, crumbling with neglect. There’s a hazel tree there, and it’s grown so big it’s practically growing on the house.

The tree looks like it’s eating the house.

The End.

#Cinderella #Cindy may have opened a Fae hellmouth but don't worry because Fairies only go after mean and naughty people! Good night kids!!#Oh fairies also go after people they arbitrarily don't like but i'm sure you'll be fiiiine... sleep well!#maybe TWO fae hellmouths #imagine....

1K notes · View notes