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vashtijoy · 7 months

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haru: "we'll just take him out again"

Ah, this 1/10 line of Haru's, about what they should do if Akechi betrays them all a second time.

I've talked about Haru and Akechi before—she is overwhelmingly compassionate towards him. She shows him understanding he has not earned and does not deserve. She contrasts, in fact, with Futaba, who takes a consistently harsh tone with him—and well may she do so.

Haru is done dirty by the bulk of the fandom with this flanderised crazy axe mean girl schtick, and this translation does not help. So it's time for another big red....

Let's take a look.

tatakau: "to fight or battle"

Haru また裏切るようなら戦うだけだよ。 mata uragiru you nara tatakau dake da yo Plus, if he does betray us again, we’ll just take him out too.

mata uragiru you nara—"if he betrays us again, then we'll...". tatakau dake da yo—"we'll just tatakau him". But what's that verb; what's tatakau?

戦う tatakau means to fight, or do battle, or to make war on someone, or to oppose them. It's a common word. ALC has a number of examples:

戦うか逃げるかの反応 tatakau ka nigeru ka no hannou, "fight-or-flight response";

戦うことを諦める tatakau koto o akirameru, "to give up the fight";

戦う必要なく tatakau hitsuyou naku, "without even having to fight".

It is excessively common in P5:

Ryuji (before one of the robot minibosses in Okumura's Palace) こりゃもう戦うしかねーな! korya mou tatakau shika nee na! Looks like we're gonna have to fight. Haru (when you try to switch her into the party too early) 私も戦えるよ! watashi mo tatakaeru yo! I can fight too! Haru (before a robot miniboss) こうなったら戦うしか⋯! kou nattara tatakau shika...! It looks like we just have to fight!

tatakau is the word we translate as "fight"; "a fight" is often tatakai, from the same root verb. When the PTs fight in the Metaverse, they are tatakau-ing. And when they fought Akechi in the engine room? They tatakau-ed him:

Ann 同じヤツを憎んでるのに、なんで戦うの!? onaji yatsu o nikunderu no ni, nande tatakau no!? We both hate the same guy! Why do we have to go against each other!? Morgana 戦う前に笑ってたの⋯あれ、本心だろ? tatakau mae ni waratteta no... are, honshin daro? That smile before we fought… Isn't that how you really feel?

See? Let's look at Haru's line one more time:

Haru また裏切るようなら戦うだけだよ。 mata uragiru you nara tatakau dake da yo Plus, if he does betray us again, we’ll just take him out too. And if he betrays us again, we'll just fight him again.

the phantom thieves' ghost murder victim

The other key point is this: though this isn't present in the Japanese, the localisation still says "too". "we'll just take him out too". Who's that "too"?

They're not killing Maruki, despite Akechi's efforts. They didn't kill any of their targets. They didn't even kill Shido, who they all held responsible for the murder of Haru's father, and Futaba's mother, and who knows how many others.

In short: nobody is getting murdered in this line—except Haru, by the localisation.

"take him out"

In fairness to everyone who fast-forwarded all of Haru's dialogue and so thinks she's even worse than Akechi, cold-bloodedly planning murder as a form of revenge, "take him out" is a confusing choice of words.

"take him out" means to disable a target. This is how it gets its primary meaning of "kill him". It means to get something or someone out of your way, in a way that corresponds with its death or destruction—or, as in this case, with extreme violence; remember they KO Akechi in the engine room, just like every other boss.

This is why it's common in so many contexts—sport, business, politics. You take out targets in many fields, but you don't kill them! In the same way, Haru intends for them to eliminate Akechi as a threat, if he ever makes it necessary again.

Futaba makes this explicit to him the next day, on 1/11:

Futaba けどまた裏切ったりしたら、絶対許さない。 kedo mata uragittari shitara, zettai yurusanai BUT if you ever betray us again, we'll make sure you regret it.

Futaba says this right to his face: "if you betray us again, don't think you'll get away with it"; "if you betray us again, you're done for." She tells him this is his one and only chance.

(That zettai yurusanai, of course, is the same wording she uses about the men in black suits, and the men who killed her mother—it's fighting talk, blood debt talk. And it's interesting that she has clearly not yet put Akechi into that category. yurusanai is also the word Haru uses to him in the engine room, often translated as "I can't forgive you".)

context matters

Many common misunderstandings of P5's characters and plot boil down to something like this: an overfocus on one memorable line, at the expense of the bigger picture. Again, in fairness, P5 is a huge game, which makes this very easy to do.

But the fact that the Phantom Thieves have chosen not to kill comes up over and over. It is absolutely fundamental to them: their justice does not include murder.

Again: the fact that they don't go in for vigilante killings is what makes them better than Akechi! Part of the essence of their conflict is that Akechi has made bad choices that the PTs avoided—such as Ann's fateful choice to let Kamoshida live:

Just as with Ann and Kamoshida, I don't think the Thieves would stop Haru or Futaba, if they decided Akechi should die. But I also don't think it would pass without question, as Haru's "take him out" line does. Even if nobody else said a word, Makoto would say something. Because the Phantom Thieves are not murderers.

when someone shows you who they are, believe them

On top of that, if you want to read Haru's "take him out" as meaning she wants Akechi dead, you have to ignore everything else she says about him—and, frankly, every other time she's onscreen. Because Haru oozes kindness, compassion and thoughtfulness from her every pore.

Remember, Haru expresses compassion for Akechi, not hate. Here she is on 12/25:

Look at that. Commit it to memory. Show all your friends. Haru is glad Akechi is alive. She's glad he turned himself in and thinks he should pay for his crimes—but she didn't want him dead, and she certainly doesn't want to kill him.

In the engine room, when he's at the point of death, she's afraid for him. She runs forward to call to him; note that Futaba does not, and is at the back of the group, furthest from Akechi.

Even when Haru judges Akechi for what he took from her, she is sympathising with him:

When Cognitive Akechi arrives, Haru isn't just trying to stop Akechi turning on them to save his own skin. She empathises with him, and understands how complex his feelings towards Shido truly are—and why that puts them all in so much danger:

Say it again and say it loud: Haru understands Akechi.

but how does she really feel

Haru tells us her secret feelings in the safe room:

See? Just like Futaba, she doesn't want to be around him; she doesn't want him as part of the group. But she doesn't want to kill him.

That's not her nature. Haru is not a murderer. I'll say it again for the kids at the back: Haru is not a murderer. Her compassion is what makes her unlike Akechi. It's what makes her so much better than him.

She doesn't need to be his best friend to understand him. She doesn't need to hang out with him to see herself in his situation—because the two of them have so much in common. She can acknowledge that he wronged her without secretly (or not-so-secretly) wishing him dead. Haru is a better person than most of us, and her feelings about Akechi are complex.

what is the line actually about?

The sad thing is that Haru's "we'll just take him out" is a beautiful line.

Remember, Haru could be justifiably afraid of the prospect of being around Akechi. He's not safe. He's responsible for one of the greatest traumas of her life. But she shuts that fear down: "if he betrays us again, we'll just fight him again".

She removes his power over her—power to control her, to intimidate her, to make her afraid. Haru can stand up to Akechi and look him in the face, because she's surrounded by her friends. And her friends will stand with her. They prove it over and over in the third semester, when they repeatedly prioritise her feelings and Futaba's. It's made clear repeatedly that if either of them have a problem, Akechi will not be on the team.

So Haru is prepared to work with the scorpion by the river. She understands what made it how it is, and that it can only act according to its nature. But she'll be watching—and she'll be ready. Just like Akechi, who steps forward to fire on Maruki when the rest of them are paralysed.

It's just that Haru's bag of tricks doesn't include murder. Akechi has kept that in his back pocket—but Haru never had it in hers. It's a shame that Haru's clearsightedness here, and her readiness to act—something else she shares with Akechi—is so badly misunderstood as "lol funny murder psycho girl".

Akechi's second betrayal looks like them beating the shit out of him. I'm sure Haru would shoot him in the face a second time, and good luck to her. I'm sure the Phantom Thieves would, each and every one of them, make him deeply regret it before he was again turned in—voluntarily or otherwise.

But murder? No. That's never on the table. That's not Haru, and it's not the Phantom Thieves. And, ultimately, that's why they're the good guys, and Akechi is not.

revision history

Click here for the latest version.

v1.0 (2023/10/13)—first published.

#persona 5 #p5 meta #japanese language #haru okumura #goro akechi #long post #justice for haru

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asocial-skye · 1 year

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This is probably elaborated on a lot more in detailed meta, but for all of the shit that Lucas has pulled and all of his questionable decisions, Palpatine is probably his greatest triumph as a villain within narrative. Yes, he is absolutely a cartoon with no redeeming qualities, and Anakin definitely has a more dynamic character arc, but it's still incredible.

Star Wars as a franchise is associated with war and wartime: laser sword battles, epic forbidden romance, last stand trench runs against powerful enemies. It's all action, stylized violence and "rule of cool." There is good character writing and plot of course, but the public perception of Star Wars as a whole is about the cool space wizards and laser guns.

So it's absolutely curious that Lucas, in a trilogy that he said was geared towards children, had his villain do none of the things that made Star Wars so famous. Palpatine never fought ever. Except in Revenge of the Sith, Palpatine's horrible crimes all stemmed from his politics, and his cunning. Part of the Jedi's blindness to Sidious was that he was playing them on a field that they didn't expect: politics.

The Jedi are not politicians, nor have any interest in politics; the movies make this painfully clear. (The fact that the Council just goes and attempts to execute Palpatine, a popular leader who was "democratically" elected-I will give the Jedi credit; Palpatine is a monster, and killing him then and there was probably necessary- shows that there aren't the most politically minded) Palpatine literally does more damage to the entire galaxy that has repercussions for a generation- seriously, people like Biggs probably lived and died within the Empire- than Anakin could ever do during Operation: Knightfall or even as his tenure as Vader. And the Jedi can't do anything to stop it because they refused to play the game. In fact, one could make the argument that refusing to play only meant that Palpatine could carry out his agenda even faster.

It's almost like the bad guy won because any damage wreaked by an army of space wizards can be done a thousandfold by one politician. And it's like the lesson is that if you turn a blind eye to the injustices in your government, the corruption festers until it turns into something unspeakably horrid, and by then it'll be too late.

That's something to think about.

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streets-in-paradise · 8 months

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Third Fate - Achilles x Fiancee!Reader

Requested by Anon

" Hey, I found your tumblr and I'm loving what you do here, mostly troy. I don't know if you're getting requests, but if you are, you can make one for Achilles based on that scene where he's told he can go and win glory in battle and have his name spoken for centuries or he can stay and be loved, have children, wife? I would love to see Achilles receive more love, with a wife and children. Feel free to make any changes you want, thank you very much in advance."

Hi, anon! I got this way sooner than what i expected because I was really in the mood to write it. The bittersweet mix of angst and fluff was exactly what I wanted to get into this week. Hope you will enjoy it :)

For a lenght concern i kept it in a pre war, pre marriage discussion of the prophecy. If once you read it you happen to like what i wrote here let me know and I can post a continuation showing what happens next ( i originally planned to do so, but it became too long so i prefer to save that for a second part)

Word Count 3.200

Warnings: Standard Achilles sexyness ( no smut, but if you watched the film you understand what I mean with this.) Some aspects of both, the canon of the film and the source material it is based on, were changed to fit the request in my envision of the story.

Summary: Terrible news disrupt the eve of your engagement to Achilles. He is called to fight in Troy and the spectacular war that the gossip foretells seems to be the destiny of greatness he had always dreamed with, but the price he has to pay for it is his happiness with you. The three days ultimatum Odysseus gave him is his moment to decide, but he won't do it without you.

Note: Inspired by two prompts by @creativepromptsforwriting

Prompt 1014 - " Well, the prophecy was a bit unclear about this part."

Prompt 1010 - " Let's not worry about the future. Let's just take this one kiss at a time."

"I like how that sounds."

Tags: @mysticaldeanvoidhorse @helie-brain

There was no easy way for him to explain to you what he had just found out. After Odysseus arrived bringing the news of the war in Asia you were already sad thinking of the distance that would keep your fiancé far away from you for an uncertain amount of time, but the real hardships surpassed your expectations. The whispers of fame claimed the conflict escalated enough to become the greatest war your world had ever seen, but you still imagined it as one war like many others he fought before. No matter the challenges found in battle, Achilles would always return to you.

Except that he wouldn’t,not from Troy. His mother told him of an old prophecy announced before his birth assuring that war would be the peak of his consecration as a hero, but the price for this glorification was his death. From this fact fate allowed him only two options of choice. He could either stay in Greece and be loved during his lifetime knowing history would forget him, or go to Troy to make his name immortal facing his doom.

To the end of his tale all you could do was cry, convinced that you were losing him forever. All your plans faded in just one instant, the life you dreamed together was gone.

“ I’m not dead yet, look at me.” He sweetly mocked you. “ How can you be so sure already that I’m here to tell you I’m abandoning you to get myself killed?”

You could tell he was trying, but that wasn’t making it any better.

“ If you don’t go, you will regret it. “ Was your dry comeback. “I know you, Achilles. You live to fight, staying away from the battlefield feels to you like a punishment. I can never keep you for long, not even when war calls you to fight other greeks. Why would it be different this time? You were born for this war, not to labrate the fields and raise goats. If Troy is the fate of greatness that you deserve, I can’t ask you to abandon this life purpose for the sake of our wedding.”

Despite how much he loved to see people worshiping as a hero, he was very aware to be a man in your eyes. Your approach was realistic and showed how well you knew him, much better than some of the men bleeding with him in war. If you fell for him, you did it knowing what to expect. Begging him to change his nature to fit the requirements of peaceful domesticity was never in your plans and you wouldn’t try it even if you were desperate.

That didn’t mean he wouldn’t be able to surprise you on occasions, exactly as he did when he proposed to you freshly arrived from the victory against King Triopas and his giant Boagrius.

“ Do you think I wouldn’t give it all away for you? Then I guess you don’t know me as well as you claim. “ He teased you with insistence. “ I can do well raising horses, I have some magnificent ones already. Do you know that horses are one of the most remarkable exportations of the trojans? If their city gets sacked by greeks and I manage to buy a few of theirs to mix with mine we would get an excellent rare breed. “

You cleaned your face and warned him against the mockery.

“ Don’t play with me! With the memories of your proposal still fresh, fate demands me to let you go. Being your wife is my dream, but I can’t have you knowing I would be destroying everything you worked so hard for. The immortality of your name is a cause bigger than me, the happy marriage we could have had or the children I could have given you. It can’t be a coincidence that this war gets unleashed precisely now, just as we are taking the first step to formalize our union.”

“ They are pressuring me to choose, it’s true, but the load of this decision lies in the fact that I want both more than anything.”

Achilles interrupted himself to take your hand, inviting you to abandon the distance you were forcing ever since he began to explain the situation.

“ I need you by my side, it’s the only vulnerability I have ever allowed myself. A glorifying death doesn’t scare me, but surviving far enough without you would be torture.”

Your lips parted in sincere amazement for that confession, so unusual of him.

“ A slow agony. If the war doesn’t kill me first, lovesickness will.” He continued. “ The comfort of lonely men fighting in foreign lands is dreaming with their distant wives at night, the hope of returning to them makes life bearable. I would not have this, from the moment I would board my ship I will be aware you are lost to me. All I would have is the wound of my pierced heart still bleeding love for you and plenty of time to wonder how wonderful it would have been to make you mine… Sooner or later I would lose my mind. Knowing glorious death would be the only comfort already promised to me, I would roam the battlefield searching for it. It’s most likely I would perform incredible acts worthy of being remembered, but I would do it as the insane man who is desperately looking for the warrior meant to kill him. The poets would write for centuries about the madness of Achilles.”

“ Aren’t they singing that already? Many people have described you as a madman.” You teased him, unsure of how to comfort him. “ Not that I mind, but that is a fact.”

“ They have no idea, unfulfilled passion would consume me in such an incredible way that Paris would feel a reasonable man hearing about me.”

He dragged you even closer so he could hold you in his arms and you fell for his touch chuckling sweetly.

“ Would you be competing against both princes at once while fighting the trojans?”

“ The warrior prince and the lover boy wish they could compare to me, I win in each one of their expertise areas. “ He followed your provocation, then whispered at you. “ I fight as fiercely as I love. “

You bit your bottom lip to avoid an audible response, but your flustered face was speaking for you. For an instant you felt as if nothing had changed between you and you have never heard the terrible omens.

“... Maybe that’s why no woman is meant to have you, the great goddesses would be jealous. “ You theorized out loud while caressing his cheek. “ It’s too much, like Icharus flying too close to the sun… Although I would be lying if I deny I would gladly burn and fall for you.”

Achilles stopped the flow of words taking your breath away with kisses that numb your senses, but not your mind. He had the habit of expressing important things in short, ambiguous phrases or not saying anything at all. When the hungry kissing began to escalate and you felt his hands roaming the sides of your body you understood that was his answer. If he would be saying goodbye, he would at least try to keep himself distant to make it easier for both of you. Given that his involvement on the war would ruin your chances to formalize, he would be encouraging you to find someone else.

He was pulling up your skirt slowly, evidently searching for the heat underneath. The opposite of what you would need from him if he would be about to leave you, so you stopped him right away because you realized what that meant.

" This isn't the time to act impulsively. I know you love me as strongly as i love you, but you have to choose what truly matters the most to you. If you decide to stay, others will be making history and maybe the pleasures of the thalamus will not be enough to cure the resentment for what you will be missing. Think carefully, hearts can change and the future wife you adore now can one day become the load that brought you down. "

Although a sensical objection, that didn't seem to preoccupy him much.

" Never, you were made for me. The omens were very clear, staying grants me a blissful life with you for the price of letting my name fade. I have only two options: be loved and forgotten or waste my life following the fool's orders until death will reward me with immortal glory. Between spending the rest of my life with you or with Agamemnon, I think it's clear where I would rather be. "

The sacrifice was too great, ultimate proof of his love for you. Behind that relaxed phrasing Achilles attempted to de-dramatize giving up his biggest personal dream for the one you shared, what you still considered wasn’t fair.

Responding with an equal offer was not only what your heart began to crave, but an alternative solution neither of you had considered.

“ There has to be another way, your mother never said what I must do in all of this.”

He wasn’t sure of where you wanted to point, but began to suspect it.

“ Well, the prophecy was a bit unclear about this part.”

The mischievous happiness renewed in your eyes let him know you had just found hope in the most insane of places.

“ Don’t give me that look, this is what happens for leaving you a while alone with Odysseus! Now you think you can outsmart destiny and find me a third end.”

You smirked with pride before presenting your idea.

“ I can’t interfere with yours, only my own. If no part is clearly stated for me in this sacred command sent to you, then nothing stops me from choosing one. Instead of having you abandon your dream to stay with me, I’ll follow it with you.”

His eyes were wide open staring at you, disbelief making him feel you were then playing with him.

“ Are you telling me we could just get married and board the ship to Troy the morning after our wedding night? What kind of honorable nuptials would that be? When all the wives of the country would be giving their farewell to their husbands, would you follow me like slaves are meant to? War holds no virtuous position for a woman to occupy, it would be a stain to your reputation your parents would curse me for. “

“ If your baby cousin can go, so can I.” You justified yourself.” To stop me you will have to stop Patroclus and we know that is not going to happen.”

The exactitude of your threat made him feel frustrated. Not because he wouldn’t love having you with him, but since he was refusing to publicly humiliate you like that. All Greece would know you were going to be the only wife following her husband to Troy for unexplainable reasons and they could judge your morals. Decent wives were meant to wait for their husbands and take care of their homes, not let passion distract them from their social duties. War camps were masculine places meant to be despised by the women, since their only female presence was typically in a state of degradation. Besides, Helen had already caused a moral breach shaming the greek concept of marriage and that was the reason pushing the fight. People would be judgemental of your relationship, they would question you for immorality and him for lacking authority to make you stay like a normal wife should.

He wasn’t thinking about him anymore, of protecting his name and the weight of his masculine prestige. He was extremely worried about you and the consequences it could bring when he wouldn’t be there to protect you.

“ Do you sincerely want to go to Troy and watch me die?”

“ It’s still better than watching you sail knowing you will never come back.” You terminated in response . “ I have heard the city is built to withstand a ten year siege, enough time for us to have a life together before destiny will reclaim you.”

Arguing with you was hard, even if the idea was insane you would find ways to make it sound logical.

“ A camp on the trojan beach is no place to start a family. “ He replicated softly, just letting you know he was trying to make you understand you couldn’t ask that. “ What are we going to do when the children come? Because they will, eventually. If you become my wife no omen of death is going to stop me from making love to you.”

You smirked innocently, ready to deliver a justification.

“ I'm not naive, Achilles! Do you think I don’t know what happens in those camps? Captives get pregnant all the time, so it's not impossible to go through it there. It may not be ideal, but I can make it. If you would leave me here and break our relationship to protect me from your fate, you could still put a baby inside your finest war trophy girl.”

“ And who said I’m leaving?” He questioned you. “ I’m not doing it and I am not breaking up with you. Now stop with this nonsense, my wife can’t be giving birth surrounded by death.”

“ But trojan women can? Because births aren’t going to stop there. “ You insisted, sitting near and acting as if you were two civil parts on a trial. “ Hector has a baby boy, if he can be a father in this mess so can you.”

The provocation made him hold a groan, but he turned back and kicked the nearest surface as a frustration release outlet.

“ It’s different for him, his wife is a princess and they have a city to defend. “ He tried to articulate in fast speaking, doing all he could to not show signs of anger growing because of your stubbornness. “ I don’t want you to have the life of a war captive, to denigrate yourself for me.”

It was very sweet, you were feeling his pain but he had to understand yours too.

“ As long as you are still breathing I will not accept a life without you. When the time comes I will embrace grief, but I’ll cry for you as your widow. In the meantime I don't want no one else, I’ll have the ground of your tent as thalamus and I’ll have your children.”

He gave a few steps towards you, presenting one more solid concern.

“ What will be of all of you when I'm gone?”

That should have been a strong preoccupation making you desist, but it didn’t.

“ We will be alright. They will inherit your share of the sacking, we know your death is linked to the fall of Troy so I can assume we will win something. Given that the House of Aeacus would possess fresh new heirs to renew the bloodline, I may even be able to bargain with Agamemnon the throne of Phthia for one of them. He hates you, but he would not be politically capable to refuse if you become the maximum fallen hero of the war he just won.”

At that point he felt true powerlessness because he just couldn’t convince you out of it for your own good.

“ They can’t grow in a warzone, think of the ruthless people they will become. Those kids would not know any better until it would be too late for them. I don’t want a soulless soldier as heir, people saying Achilles’ son has surpassed the brutality of the father.”

“ Let our little monsters run free through the camp, they will turn out fine if we guide them right. “ You imagined out loud, not scared at all by the dark warning. “ I can’t wait to see them messing around, you will be in tears the first time one of them will grab a wooden sword trying to copy their father.”

Illusion was starting to make his negative stance harder to maintain, he loved what you were saying. It sounded so wonderful that he couldn’t help find some sensical feeling in it. There was only one detail you haven’t solved for his resistance to fall completely.

“ How would I fight the enemy worried for you? You will be the only married woman around thousands of men and although I'm terrifying to most of them, I can’t keep control at all times. Some of those men will not be myrmidons, they will not know who you are.”

“ That’s the best part: I’ll keep Patroclus bussy.” You announced with excitement, knowing well he wouldn’t resist it. “ I know you don’t trust him in an open battleground yet, but he would not accept being left behind so you have to take him or he would never forgive you. With me on board you have a safe mission to give him that would keep him away from combat but still make him feel a hero. By the time you will judge him ready to charge into battle my presence will be naturalized and his vigilant eye won’t be needed anymore.”

Hope was truly hitting him because he started to feel as if the crazy plan could work if you all would make it work out. Most of the persons he loved the most could be with him for the rest of his lifetime, making the surviving gap before the consecration worth living. His little cousin, his best friend and his wife along with his future children all gathered like some warrior family.

A taste of happiness before the end, walk the two roads simultaneously into a third fate.

“ Blessed be your stubbornness, you wonderful woman! “ He praised you, surprise making his attitude switch as he rushed towards you. “ How can you be in every detail? You are insane, but I love you. I don’t deserve you, I can’t believe this.”

He made you smile and by that point you knew you were about to win.

“What exactly? My incredible ingeniousness, my gorgeous looks?”

“ That you love me so much, '' He admitted, then picked you up bridal style. “ That you will be my wife and I will brag about having you to both greeks and trojans. I will not rest until you will be the most honored person in that camp alongside me, your sacrifice will be part of my legend and maybe that will be my start to repay you. “

His immense gratitude was making you chuckle due to the unusual intensity, but he wouldn’t stop.

“ I’ll love you to my last breath, I promise you that.”

You were all smiles while caressing the strands of hair falling at the sides of his face.

“That’s all I want. No other payment you can offer matters to me because my will for sacrifice comes from love, just like yours.” You purred blissfully. “ Let’s not worry about the future, let’s just take this one kiss at a time.”

Mesmerized as he was, he replied against your lips.

“ I like how that sounds.”

#troy 2004 #achilles #brad pitt #achilles x reader #brad pitt x reader #troy #troy (2004)

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bethanythebogwitch · 22 days

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Shimo's Story

Godzilla X Kong from Shimo's POV

I am alone in the pit. My world is tiny, three walls of rock and one of lava. The heat pains me. I was born to wander the fields of ice and bask in the freezing air and instead I am trapped here in the heat and stone. I cannot leave. The lava would wound, maybe kill me, but I cannot even reach it. The harness around my neck, crafted from the spinal cords of titans I have forgotten, binds me, giving me only enough room to lie down. I do not know how long I have been here. I have slept for many millennia. It is better that way. When I am awake the boredom and continent claws at my mind. Sometimes I claw at my own scales in despair. Other times I pull at my harness, even though I cannot escape it. So I sleep and do not know how long I have been here. But I know why.

The tyrant ape stole my prime crystal. Plucked it from my head while I was asleep. While he holds it, I cannot resist him. He forced me to slaughter many titans and tiny ones. I do not like violence. All titans must fight to live, but that was no battle for survival. It was senseless murder. And when the tyrant and his apes were imprisoned by the lord of titans, he locked me in the pit, where I have been ever since.

The lava is blocked and I can see beyond my pit. The tyrant does this sometimes. Uses me to scare his subjects, or kill them. I see another ape, a challenger to the tyrant. The tyrant orders me to kill this challenger. I do not want to. Could the challenger win? Would he free me?

The tyrant uses the crystal and my world turns to pain. Resisting the crystal is wrong. Every nerve fiber in my body screams at me to obey and when I do not, they burn. I cannot take the pain, so I obey. I open my mouth and winter itself flows from my jaws. I was born of the cold and the cold is within me. I can command it to come forth and turn the world to winter. Now I use it on the challenger. He is hurt and tries to flee. Another ape helps him escape. The tyrant’s prince. The tyrant is angry but I do not see what happens next. The lava flows again and my world becomes tiny again.

The lava parts again and the tyrant’s subjects remove the harness from my neck. I want to run away and be free again. I want to attack the tyrant, freeze him from the inside out. But while he holds the crystal I will never be free. He says we are going to war. The same war he fought before I was confined to the pit. Maybe he will die this time. Maybe I will.

The tyrant rides on my back as we march to a vortex. His touch is repulsive. My scales feel like they wish to rot away. I hardly notice. I am out of the pit and back in the below world. I can feel the wind on my scales, smell the pollen of countless plants, gaze upon the ground above. I could barely remember what it was like to be out of the pit, but now the memories come rushing back. They are cruel memories. They remind me that I am not free.

We are at the vortex. It is next to a city of tiny ones. I can tell they are afraid of us. The tiny ones revered titans when I was free. We have enemies here. The lord of the titans, the queen, and the challenger and prince. I have to fight, even though I do not want to. The pain of disobeying is worse than the wounds of battle.

The tiny ones did something with their pyramids. We can all fly now. I have never flown before and don’t know what to make of it. I have no time to think about it. The lord of titans wants my head and I have no choice but to fight him. We fall and the tyrant orders me to enter the vortex.

The tyrant and I are on the surface now. I came here once and brought winter to the world. The tyrant does not let me look at the sky. He tells me to freeze it, to bring winter again. The pain makes me obey. We are next to another tiny one city. Bigger than the one below. The tyrant orders me to freeze it. I kill so many tiny ones.

The lord of titans and the challenger are here now. I am charged with facing the lord. Our kinds are similar, but mine were of the ice and snow and his were of the sea. We crash through the tiny ones’ building. I freeze him, but he breaks my ice with atomic fire. This fight will be a hard one and I do not know if I can win. I do not know if I want to.

The tyrant’s whip is broken and the crystal lies on the ground! If only I could reach it, reclaim myself. But the tyrant’s last orders still echo in my nerves and the lord of titans will not relent in his attack. Do I dare to hope? It has been so long I fear I have forgotten how. And if I hope and the tyrant reclaims the crystal what will I do? Is it worth hoping if it turns to despair later?

The prince has come to the surface, carrying the challenger's weapon. He brings it down on the prime crystal and it is destroyed. I am free! I can think for myself again, act on my own again! Beneath my joy, there is anger. The tyrant must pay for what he did to me. The challenger lifts the tyrant up and I unleash winter onto him. He freezes, veins bursting and bones breaking, and the challenger crushes him to dust and gore. I should roar in triumph, but all I feel is relief. It is over, my tormenter is dead and I am free.

I now feel gratitude. It is thanks to the challenger that I am free. He declares that he will free the other apes just as he and the prince freed me. I have been watching the challenger. He is wise and kind. I am honored to give him my allegiance. I bow to my new king, to King Kong. Together we will lead the apes out of their prison and into a new future. Someday soon I will once again wander the ice fields and bask in the freezing air. My world is no longer tiny.

#godzilla #godzilla x kong: the new empire #godzilla x kong spoilers #shimo #titanus shimo #kong #suko #mothra #skar king #fanfiction #fanfic #writing #monsterverse

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wizardbracket · 1 year

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Round 5: Match 1 of 4

(Battle of the German mud wizards)

PROPAGANDA UNDER THE BREAK

Why they deserve to be the ultimate wizard according to YOU:

Caleb:

Vanquished (so far): Essek Thelyss, Adaine Abernant, VR-LA, Will Byers

"consider: Caleb said 'you were not born with venom in your veins. you learned it.'"

"Caleb is a disaster bisexual middle aged ginger with mud in his pockets and an emotional support cat who is also an octopus at times"

"he's literally a little german boy."

"he's an angry ape he's got zero muscle tissue on his body he's a professional diplomat he smells like literal shit all the time."

"There will never be a better wizard than Caleb Widogast"

"Caleb deadass planned to rewrite time to fix his childhood mistakes"

"He is peak sad wizard boy energy, but also has that little bit of flair that is essential to any wizard"

“Caleb just has that je ne sais quoi”

"Caleb has a cat!!!"

“Dedicated his life to learning the ultimate magic to change reality & fix his mistakes, and also opposes the magic CIA.”

“Chaotic bisexual snarky powerful wizard who married a war criminal and killed a living city”

Mud Wizard:

Vanquished (so far): NZ/Aotearoa Wizard, Amaury Guichon, Orb Wizard, Vermin Supreme

"Actual real-life wizard beats out any fantasy/literary/tv wizard"

"he fought the police while being knee deep in mud"

"i just learned about german mud wizard but i respect his field tactics"

"Mud wizard has field experience ... mud wizard is the one you need on a battlefield"

"I'm sure the other dude is very cool but throwing cops in the mud >>>>>>"

"my boy mud wizard getting the recognition he deserves. there is a mud wizard in all of us. and it says ACAB"

"absolutely german mud wizard its not even a question"

"German mud wizard uses his powers for good"

"Mud wizard is objectively cooler"

"Mud wizard takes direct action against cops. He's doing good old fashioned wizardry ... mud wizard embraces the chaos of magic"

“Outplayed cops with mud magic.”

#wizardbracket #polls #tumblr polls #critical role #caleb widogast #german mud wizard #germany

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psychosith · 6 months

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Talk to Me

Din Djarin x Jedi!Reader

summary: You, Din, and Bo have been asked to “take care” of the malfunctioning droids on Plazir-15, and the Mandalorians don’t know much about the Jedi’s involvement in the Clone Wars.

warnings: mentions of trauma/ptsd, panic attacks, child endangerment(?), mentions of war, mild injuries/blood, i can’t think of anything else but lmk if i missed something

a/n: this is based on a request from @otter-nonsense620! it’s been a hot minute since i’ve watched the Mando so this might not be totally accurate but… wtv. when i was writing this i was imagining the characters had feelings for each other but hadn’t confessed yet, but you can read this as platonic or romantic. Anyways, enjoy!

“Our constables are unequipped to confront battle droids,” the duchess said.

“Ah- former battle droids,” the duke corrected, looking pleased with himself. “They’ve been rehabilitated.”

You glanced nervously between Bo and Din. You wanted to be helpful to them and their cause, but hearing the words battle droid again for the first time since the war caused an unexpected spike of panic in you. The rest of the conversation with the duchess was muted in your ears, your mind running a mile a minute. Din’s husky voice in your ear brought you back to the present, “We’re leaving.”

You figured that Bo and Din had accepted the duke’s deal and your anxiety could only grow as you speak to the security officer and then the Ugnaughts. In the hyper loop on the way to the loading docks, you’re bouncing your knee and worrying the inside of your cheek when Bo takes notice.

“Hey,” she says, resting a hand on your knee, “what’s up, y/n?”

You look up from the ground to meet her eyes and find genuine worry, but dismiss her concerns nonetheless. “I’m fine, Bo. Don’t worry about me.”

She pulls her hand back and nods her head, yet you can still see a hint of concern as she resumes conversation with Din, who has paid no mind to your conversation.

You try to control your breathing as you walk through the loading docks, recalling your time in the Order. Battle droids of all kind are working various jobs on the docks, and you can recognize almost every model, having taken many down in the war. You’re following a line of centurion droids when you come to an access point headed by a B-1 model. It’s almost identical to the models that fought in the war, and you find yourself spiraling into a memory from years ago…

You knew a war was coming, but you didn’t know this was how. You, your master, and many of the other members of the Order had gone to Geonosis to rescue Obi-Wan Kenobi from Count Dooku. You remember being excited, as you were barely a teenager and this was your first official “battle”. The arena was packed, and you knew Jedi were scattered secretly throughout the stands.

When you finally ended up on the field, surrounded by droids, you began to grasp what was going on. This was war. You stood frozen as your friends and colleagues dropped dead in the sand. Dust was filling your lungs and blood covered every surface in sight.

A hand grasped at the bottom of your robes, and you looked down at the body. It was your master, collapsed at your feet with a nasty blaster wound in her side. You dropped to your knees and tried to stop the blood flowing from her wounds, the substance thick and warm on your shaky hands. A sharp ringing in your ears blocked out your master’s final words before her eyes glazed over. A large shadow loomed over you and you followed it to where a B-2 unit stood with a blaster aimed at your head. A scream was caught in your throat, unable to escape from the pure shock coursing through your veins. A green saber slashed through the droid just in time, and the jedi wielding it offered a hand to help you up. Your master’s blood coating your hands and robes, you ignited your lightsaber and moved to a proper fighting stance.

You were ripped from your memory when Din was thrown across the docks, likely by the centurion with an extended fist. The droid breaks out into a run as Bo starts firing at it. Your heartbeat rises in a crescendo as scenes from the war replay in your head and you are left useless to stop them. You’re struggling to breathe and sobs are shaking your entire body. Though you can hardly move, you begin to stumble back to the hyper loop and to the rooms provided to you by the duke and duchess.

Your hands are warm and you keep seeing your masters eyes in your head, staring dully into yours. Violent tremors rack your body and your skin is burning hot. You can almost feel phantom blood soaking into your robes, and you tear and paw at your sleeves.

You’re hysterical when Din finds you curled up against the wall. Tears stain your cheeks and you’re muttering hopelessly to yourself about “i wanna go home,” and, “i’m sorry i’m so sorry.”

For a long moment, Din doesn’t know what to do. He stands there feeling helpless as he watches you suffer. His body moves of its own accord when he crouches next to you and places a warm hand on your arm. Your gaze finds him with a sense of numbness in your eyes. “Hey,” he says softly, “I’m here.”

You say nothing in response but tears come back into your eyes and he buries you in his arms, letting you cry into his shoulder as much as you need. Din is the one to break the silence.

“What’s wrong, y/n?” he asks.

“It’s stupid,” you say.

“It’s not stupid, he says, “talk to me.”

So you do. You tell him everything. Your master, your many battles in the war, every time you brushed with death. A weight was lifted off your shoulders, and he was the one to hoist the burden. Din held you the whole time, rubbing soothing circles into your back. Then you told him why you were crying now.

“It’s just, seeing all those droids again…” you start.

“Y/n,” he says sorrowfully, “if I had known.”

“It’s not your fault, Din. You couldn’t have known.” you reassure him.

“I should have. You shouldn’t have to bear that all by yourself.” He thought for a moment. “I’m always here, you know. Whatever you’re going through, you don’t have to go through it alone. You can always talk to me.”

You touch his arm softly, “I know that now, Din.”

Slowly, he starts to stand up and offers you his hand. “C’mon. Let’s get you in bed.”

He leads to to your bed and as you’re getting settled under the thick blanket, you feel the bed dip beneath you as he sits next to you.

“Scoot over,” he says, and you oblige. His arms go to wrap around your waist, and he pulls your body towards his in a comforting manner. He holds you this way for the rest of the night, and as you feel yourself drift into sleep, you know you are loved.

a/n 2: lowkey i hate this but i had no motivation also sorry to the person who requested this i reread your prompt and it said “trauma but hidden really well.” … oops. it’s already written so so sorry js message me if you hate it i’ll rewrite😭

#star wars #star wars x reader #din djarin #din djarin x reader #the mandalorian #grogu #pedro pascal #pedro pascal x reader #comfort #clone wars #attack of the clones #hurt/comfort #idk what else to put

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pastanest · 1 year

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Jon Snow x she/her!reader

warning: brief reference to attempted SA

part one can be found here

Yours - Part Two

Tension rose between the two hot-headed siblings as they discussed the plan for their future, where such a plan would take them. Sansa was set on starting a war with Ramsay Bolton and taking back their home, saving you in the process, but having already been aged by the ways of war, Jon stood to his feet.

“I am tired of fighting. It’s all I’ve done since I left home. I’ve killed brothers of the Night’s Watch, I’ve killed wildlings, I’ve killed men that I admire, I hanged a boy, younger than Bran! I’ve fought, and I lost.” He was exhausted, in mind, body and soul.

But when Sansa stepped toward her brother and held his gaze, she knew exactly what she needed to say.

“You have not lost, because she is still waiting for you. She will believe until the day she dies that you are coming to save her, because that is who you are to her. You’ve fought, and now you must fight for her.”

Something flickered in Jon then, a spark that only you could ignite. “I have always fought for her.”

“Then do it once more. This time, knowing she is on the other side. If we don’t take back the north, we’ll never be safe. I want you to help me, but I’ll do it myself if I have to.” Sansa raised an eyebrow, seeing the fire in her brother’s eyes and knowing that you have succeeded, as you always have, in bringing Jon Snow back to his senses.

It was only then, Sansa chose to disclose the nature of your capture. With every detail, Jon’s blood boiled in his veins. Chained by one wrist to the leg of a bed, forced to live each day and night on the castle floor, in complete darkness, save for when Ramsay Bolton decided to pay you a visit for a regular beating. That particular comment made Jon visibly flinch, fists clenching at the thought of getting his hands on the man that thought he had any right to touch you. While Sansa tried to free you, the door to the room you were trapped in was locked and she did not have time to search for the key, you would not let her, instead you had been shouting for her to go, to escape to the Wall, to Jon.

In that moment, Jon Snow knew he was ready to beat Ramsay Bolton to death. And that was only exacerbated by the raven he decided to send to the wall, addressed to Jon, regarding his sister and younger brother, Rickon, with disgusting threats. There was no mention of you in the letter, but Sansa assured Jon this was a good thing, because it meant Ramsay did not intend to use you as a bargain, he did not think you were important enough, so he would keep you alive as his plaything. Jon did not find that as comforting as Sansa had intended.

Following Sansa’s advice, Jon arranged a meeting with Ramsay Bolton upon gathering his forces. By no means did they have enough men to truly beat Ramsay, but Jon was certain that he alone could blaze through an army, knowing you were on the other side of it.

Naturally, Ramsay arrived late to their meeting, leaving Jon, Sansa, and their accompanying party of Lords and Ladies from the northern houses that had rallied behind them, waiting in the clear field that surrounded Winterfell until Ramsay Bolton approached on his horse with his own display of Lords.

Smiling at Sansa on his arrival, Ramsay addressed her first, then looked to Jon, seemingly bemused by the sight of him as he greeted him with far less respect, if that is what his greeting to his wife could be deemed as.

“Come, bastard, you don't have the men, you don't have the horses, and you don't have Winterfell - why lead those poor souls to slaughter? There’s no need for a battle, get off your horse and kneel. I am a man of mercy”

Jon smirked at him. “You’re right, there’s no need for a battle. Thousands of men dont need to die, only one of us. Let’s end this the old way - you against me.”

And Jon so wished the bastard opposite him would be foolish enough to agree. He could be the greatest fighter in the history of Westeros, and Jon would fancy his chances, for you.

Unfortunately, Ramsay laughed at that suggestion. “I keep hearing stories about you, bastard. The way people in the North talk about you, you’re the greatest swordsman who ever walked. Maybe you are that good, maybe not. I don't know if I’d beat you, but I know that my army will beat yours. I have 6,000 men, you have, what, half that? Not even?”

Jon was thoroughly enjoyed taunting such a petulant child. “Aye, you have the numbers. Will your men want to fight for you, when they hear you wouldn't fight for them?”

Ramsay pointed to Jon, laughing. “He’s good, very good. Tell me, will you let your little brother die because you’re too proud to surrender?”

It was then, Sansa spoke up. “How do we know you have him?”

And with a nod from Ramsay, one of his men threw the severed head of Rickon’s direwolf in between their respective parties.

Trying her best not to show any kind of reaction on her face, Sansa nodded. “And what of my maid?”

Ramsay shrugged. “Well, dear wife, with you gone, I will have no choice but to turn to the others at my disposal, to…serve me.”

It took more strength than Jon Snow had ever had to conjure up for anything, to not launch himself from his horse and tackle Ramsay from his, beating him into the earth below. With everything he had, he held onto what was at stake, what Sansa had advised him would keep him safest, and held his ground, restricting his visceral response to Ramsay’s words to the slightest clench of his own horse’s reins. “I wonder, will your men want to fight for you when they find out the only women you can keep at your side are your prisoners? A man who cannot please a woman is hardly one to inspire the heart’s of men.”

Ramsay tilted his head to the side, his ego clearly pricked by the notion of being undesirable. “Do you mean to tell me, bastard, that you broke your sacred Oath as well as deserted your post?”

At that, Jon scoffed. “No man would ask such a question, but a boy would. Killing your father does not make you a man, neither does forcing yourself upon a thousand slaves.”

Ramsay composed himself, Jon only picking up on the tiniest flash of a tantrum behind his eyes. “I have heard of your righteousness, bastard. That, I suppose, is the one thing you must have received from your father, and look where it got him.”

Oh, Jon Snow knew he was going to enjoy dragging out Ramsay Bolton’s death for as long as possible.

For the rest of the day, following the conclusion of their meeting, Jon’s mind was spinning with the threats Ramsay Bolton had made against you and your virtue. He hoped to the Gods he had not given himself away in his fists clenched the reigns of his horse, but that was the most he could do to conceal the fury that raged within him. Even during the continued discussions of the battle plan he had formed with his men, thoughts of you tugged at the back of Jon’s mind constantly. Having once again butted heads with Sansa, she began to take her leave from the tent Jon was situated in.

Turning to face him one last time, she held his gaze. “If Ramsay wins, I'm not going back there alive. Do you understand me?”

Jon’s heart sank in his chest, immediately understanding what she was insinuating. “I won't ever let him touch you, or (Y/N), again. I’ll protect you both, I promise.”

In her angered, traumatized state, Sansa seemed almost offended at such a sincere promise. “No one can protect me. No one can protect anyone.”

He dared not argue with her, but he knew that she was wrong. Jon would protect her, and you, even if it killed him. To die for someone he loved would be a better demise than his first.

That night, Jon Snow laid in the bed of his tent and stared up at the ceiling. He knew he needed the rest, but could not quiet his mind in the wake of what the dawn would bring. A war like none he had ever faced, with you on the other side. Reaching into the shirt pocket that sat directly above his heart, Jon retrieved the folded, aged piece of parchment that was worn and faded by the countless instances of him rereading it. Huffing beside his bed, Ghost nudged the back of Jon’s hand, bringing a soft smile back to his face as he tore his gaze from the page.

“We’ll get her back, Ghost, we have to.” He whispered, and Ghost breathed deeply in response, agreeing in his own way.

Following suit, Jon took a deep breath of his own and closed his eyes, folding the parchment back into a neat square and slotting it back into his pocket, feeling a piece of him returning as he did. He envisioned himself as the boy he once was, lying in the godswood, under the weirwood tree, with his head on your lap as you ran your fingers through his hair. If he focussed hard enough, he could almost feel your fingertips against his scalp. That was the only sensation that could bring rest to his racing mind, on the eve of war.

The next morning, the sun rose high, illuminating the field of battle as Jon rode his men to their frontline. Seeing the army that stood between himself and you, Jon began to doubt whether he really could make it to the other side. That was, until a raven flew from one side of the field to the other. Upon one of the wildlings shooting it down, Jon was handed a small scroll of parchment tied with a torn black cord, a slightly crooked sword charm hanging from it, and a strand of your hair that fell with a wind that slowed time to a stop as Jon untied it with trembling hands. Seeing red, his eyes scanned the page, the words that were written on it, and the heart that he firmly believed still resided with you dropped to the field below him.

“She screamed terribly for you when I tried to take this from her. The bastard’s common whore screamed loudest for me, in the end. But fear not, she won’t be making a sound like that again, or any other for that matter.

I’ll let you watch her rot, if you like.

Come and see.”

The parchment fell from Jon Snow’s shaking fists, landing on the ground atop the hair that Ramsay Bolton had ripped from your head, but the necklace stayed clenched in Jon’s fist. It couldn’t be true, he told himself, he would feel it if you were no longer there, if you were not waiting for him anymore. As hard as it hammered in his chest, his heart felt the same way it did before, that it was not truly with him. It would have returned to him, were you not there to take care of it anymore, he thought. But deep within his soul, Jon knew that his heart would stay with you long after yours had stopped beating, for his heart had been with you when it had stopped beating in his own body. He truly believed that you were what had brought him back to this life in that sense. What would be the purpose in bringing his greatest motivation for winning such a battle, leading him to the field of war and then taking you from him. It did not make sense, Jon thought, and used that to rationalize to himself that Ramsay Bolton was simply lying for the sake of distracting him. Little did Ramsay know, Jon’s mind was solely on you regardless of such a threat.

And as he unclenched his fists to tie the black cord at the back of his neck, icy gaze fixed on the form he recognised on the opposite side of the field, Jon Snow knew that he would make it through any number of men to punish the one that dared to take a single hair from your head.

The short lived hope of being able to save his younger brother, Rickon, only set Jon’s resolve further into stone. Through a sea of arrows, Jon Snow rode his horse until he was thrown from it, and then he stood. Arrows at his feet that stuck upright, having failed in harming him in a way that reassured him the Gods were on his side once more. And as he faced the army that charged towards him, a single man serving as the front line, Jon’s life flashed before his eyes. He saw your smile, and over the sound of horses and men, he heard your laugh, your call of his name. For the briefest moment, Jon swore he could see you standing at one of the windows of Winterfell in the distance, but the version of you remembered so fondly was years younger than the one that he was here to save. The emotional weight of the sword charm at his chest and your first letter to him folded in the pocket over his heart, made it difficult for him to breathe, and he knew that this was it. Nodding to himself, he unclasped the belt of his sword and unsheathed it, standing to face the wall of men that charged for him, knowing that regardless of whether Ramsay Bolton was telling the truth, you were still on the other side. If Jon Snow could not save you, he would still fight for the right to rescue what was left of you and ensure you were laid to rest in the way you deserved, with his journey’s end being at your side when this was all over. The fury with which he would fight for you was unchanged, because it was still you he was fighting for, it would always be you.

And he fought harder than he had ever fought in his life, ending more lives than he could count without any regard for the men they were, whether he had known them once. If they were standing on the path that led to you, Jon Snow did not know them anymore.

Before long, the bodies had formed a wall at his rear and a living blockade of flayed-man banners at every other side began closing in on Jon and the men that had followed him into battle. His mind raced, every step and every swing of his sword accompanied by the mantra of your name, his very reason for being. For a fraction of a second, suffocating beneath the weight of his own army, he wondered if dying for you then was the best outcome, if you truly were not waiting for him in the land of the living, it would be his one means of returning to you at long last.

And then, the Eyrie’s horn sounded, with Sansa watching on from afar as they rode into battle for her, for you, for Winterfell. Many had told her the field of battle was no place for a woman, but Sansa would never sit back and let Jon fight for you on his own. She said she would finish this herself if she had to, and she did.

Bursting free from the trap that had been set by the enemy, with WunWun the giant on his left and his dear friend Tormund on his right, Jon Snow charged the field on foot with one deserter in his sights.

At the gates of Winterfell, WunWun took arrow after arrow, but crashed through the only barrier remaining between Jon and his home. Defeated and exhausted, the giant collapsed to his knees with a mighty yell, sharing a long glance with Jon at his side before falling forward. Wildlings rushed to surround him, protecting the giant from any further harm, and the blood soaked Snow stood before his greatest enemy.

“You suggested one-on-one combat, didnt you? I’ve reconsidered! I think that sounds like a wonderful idea.” Ramsay taunted, readying his bow.

And Jon lunged for a shield on the ground, raising it just in time to take the impact of the first arrow Ramsey fired, then the second and the third. None dared to break Jon’s stride before he reached Ramsay and slammed the shield into him, knocking him to the ground. Like a feral animal, Jon Snow jumped on him, the fury of an ancient dragon awaking from an age-old sleep burning in his veins, vision crimson with rage, knowing nothing except for your name, again and again and again, with every crunch of his fists against the red of Ramsay’s face.

It was only when Jon glanced up at Sansa that he was able to regain some composure, his chest heaving as he rose to his feet and stood over the sputtering Bolton bastard.

“You will never touch my sister again. And if you have harmed (Y/N) in the same way, if you have done her any disservice, if there is a fingerprint of yours on her, I’ll know, and I will relive the joy of your death in every dream I have for the rest of my days.” Jon Snow seethed, the flayed-man banner falling from the walls of Winterfell as its children finally returned home.

Running to his side, Ghost began licking at Jon’s palm, and Jon turned to him, crouching down and staring into the direwolf’s eyes.

“Find her, Ghost, take me to her.” He pleaded, not truly understanding how much his companion could comprehend, but knowing the second the beast took off inside the castle that Ghost understood exactly what had been asked of him.

With the spark of you reignited within him, Jon hurried after the white, blood spattered direwolf, your voice in his head calling out to him, growing more urgent with each whisper.

In the darkness of your cell, you rock yourself, your arms wrapped around your knees, attempting to tune out the noise from beyond the confinement of your cage. A large thud against the door sends a shock through your shivering form and you suck in a sharp breath, squeezing your eyes shut and focussing on the first memory you can grab at, deep in your subconscious.

“It was only a dream, (Y/N), it’s alright.” Jon’s hushed whisper reaches you, both so much younger than you are now.

“The fire, it was so-” Your younger voice was panicked, sobs catching in your throat as Jon’s arms squeezed you.

“You are safe, I promise. I’ve got you.”

Another thud at your prison door pulls you back to the present and you shake your head rapidly, desperate to lock yourself away in the memory of being in your best friend’s arms again, the safest place in the world that you had come to know. If you focus hard enough, you can almost feel them around you. Almost hear his soft voice in your ears, comforting you, lulling you back to sleep.

A final thud against the door sends burning light into the room and you squeeze your eyes shut harder, shaking your head and burying your face in your knees.

“It’ll pass, it’ll pass, it’ll pass.” You whimper to yourself, over and over again in an attempt to reassure yourself.

Large hands on your shoulders cause you to snap your head up, eyes wide and wild with fear and anger, but no tears blur them, you refuse to give him the satisfaction.

“LET GO OF ME, GET AWAY!” You scream, trying to back away from him, but already having your back to the wall beside the leg of the bed that you are chained to.

The hands leave your shoulders and raise in surrender, either side of a blurry, bloody face that your terrified eyes can’t yet focus on.

“(Y/N), (Y/N), it’s me, look at me, it’s your Jon.” A familiar voice reaches your ears, and your wild mind halts to a sudden stop, the fog clearing and allowing you to see the face before you.

Jon watches your rigid, frightened expression falter, before it softens completely, his fractured heart at seeing you so afraid, healing at the recognition now in your eyes.

Very slowly, he takes ahold of your hands and brings them to his blood spattered face, gently holding them there and staring into your eyes.

“It’s your Jon, it’ll always be your Jon.” He tells you, relief flooding through him at being able to say such a thing to you, alive and safe again.

And after everything, after the countless days and nights spent surviving in darkness, locking yourself away in memories to avoid being mentally present in the regular acts of torture you were forced to endure, only when holding Jon Snow’s face in your hands and knowing you are truly safe, do you finally let the tears you’ve been burying fill your eyes.

Without sparing a second, Jon shuffles forwards and pulls you onto his lap, wrapping his arms around you and softly shushing you as you sob into his chest. Covering your ears to shield them, not wanting to scare you, Jon yells out for someone, a ginger haired wildling running into the room with wide eyes at the sight of his friend, reunited with the love he had only heard him mention in moments when it wasn’t too painful for him to do so. With a nod, Tormund leaves the room and passes the order given to him by Jon amongst the wildlings, and between them they turn Winterfell on its head in search of the key for your chain.

For the time it takes them to find it, you stay safely nestled in Jon’s arms, cries slowing to a stop, allowing you to listen to his heartbeat, a sound that you had not realized just how much you had missed.

“D-Did…” You sigh, humiliated by your loss of ability to talk after being silent or screaming in an act of survival for so long. Jon squeezes your form gently in his arms, encouraging you to try again, he’ll wait, he’ll wait forever if he has to. Taking a deep breath, you clear your throat.

“Did you kill him?”

Jon takes a moment to reply. “Very nearly. Had Sansa not stopped me, I think I would have broken every knuckle I’ve got before I could have stopped myself.” He pauses. “The two of you should decide what to do with him, but you don’t need to worry about that now.”

Removing his arms from you briefly, Jon moves his hands to the back of his neck to untie the necklace. At the loss of contact, you lift your head from his chest to meet his eyes, and upon him opening his hand out to show you the necklace that had been so cruelly taken from you, you gasp, holding the base of your neck where it had previously resided. Turning away from Jon, he smiles softly and moves the necklace to your front, carefully tying it at the back of your neck. Feeling it back in place, you breathe deeply and settle back into Jon’s arms.

“That was all he took from me, you know.”

Jon frowns. “What do you mean?”

“He tried to take more, but I bit him through his trousers, so he has been…out of commission, shall we say, ever since.” The subtle tone in your voice is one Jon is so certain he recognises as smug.

Kissing your temple, he can’t wipe the smile from his face. “I am sorry that you had to do such a thing, but I am so proud of you, all the same.”

Sansa enters the room then, Ghost at her side and key in hand. She gasps at the sight of you, running to you and falling to her knees. Taking ahold of your hand and passing the key to Jon, she closes her eyes in a pained blink.

“I am so, so sorry that I left you here, (Y/N). Can you ever forgive me?” Her eyes open then, searching yours and seeing only a smile on your face.

Freeing your other wrist from the chain it had been confined in, you twist and stretch it before placing your other hand over hers.

“There’s nothing to apologize for and nothing to forgive.”

Sansa shares a look with Jon, both of them with knowing smiles, as those had been his very words when Sansa had been apologizing for her treatment of him as a child when she had not long arrived at the Wall.

“You really are the best of us, (Y/N).” Sansa chuckles in disbelief. “It’s about time we got you cleaned up and out of those rags, too. I’m sure Jon will see to that, and I’ll get a room ready for the two of you.” With a teasing smile, she rises to her feet and all but floats out of the room, leaving you and Jon with flushed faces.

Busying yourself with greeting Ghost and rubbing behind his ears, you try your hardest to distract yourself from the butterflies that have burst to life in your stomach after so many years of dormancy.

Clearing his throat, Jon taps your leg. “She’s right, y’know, we’d best get you cleaned up. There’s someone I’d like you to meet, when you feel up to it.”

Raising an eyebrow at him, you shakily bring yourself to stand, Jon’s hands holding your waist to keep you steady. “Who?”

At that, Jon Snow gives you the first dazzling smile that you have seen in Gods only know how long. “All in good time, my Lady.”

In your attempts to take your first steps on wobbling legs, Jon swallows the lump that forms in his throat, seeing the strong person that he adores more than any other, reduced to such physical weakness. If his hands were not on your waist, they would be returning to Ramsay’s face in several more punches for good measure.

Sensing your frustration and embarrassment at your own lack of mobility, Jon doesn’t hesitate to swing you up into his arms, carrying you like the bride he had always wished was his.

“I take it I don’t have to ask you to retract the bedding ceremony from our marriage at this time?” You tease in reference to the thought that the two of you share in being carried through the castle in such a way, bringing a laugh from Jon that he feels he hasn’t heard from himself in as long as you have.

“Even in more ideal circumstances, I’d never let that happen. Wouldn’t be right to break a man’s jaw on our wedding night.” He says, eyes never leading yours as he traverses the winding staircases of the castle he has not ventured since he was a boy, but are etched in his memory regardless.

Giggling and patting his chest, you shake your heard bashfully. “Good to know the Night’s Watch didn’t remove your chivalry, Lord Jon.” You gasp. “Gods! That really is your title now, as Lord Commander, isn’t it?”

Having not had a smile on his face for this length of time in many years, Jon feels an ache forming in the corners of his mouth, but doesn’t care at all. “Aye, I was, for a time, but my watch has ended.”

It’s then, a confused frown that Jon remembers well returns to your face, years older than he had last seen it, but no less endearing to him. “But...your watch only ends as a dead man?”

Jon nods as he descends the final staircase and kicks an all too familiar door open. “It’s a long story, one for another time.”

You want to question him further, but when your peripheral vision registers where Jon has carried you, you turn your head to look around, your jaw dropping.

Though the room is dark, you recognise every corner enshrouded in the shadows. The large and ancient communal bath that sits atop the hot spring that is Winterfell’s source of heated water, that none use in favor of their own personal baths, but had been your preferred method of cleanliness ever since you and Jon had discovered the dark and “secret” room when you were children. Placing you back on your feet gently, one of his hands on your waist and the other cradling your elbow to steady you, Jon’s gaze stays locked on your expression at his side, remembering this place with as much fondness as you do.

“This is about to be a bath for the ages. I will stay in this water for a week, at least, ‘til I am but a shriveled prune and you will have no choice but to drag me out against my will.” You tell him, tone so serious and words so humorous they pull another hearty laugh from Jon.

“We’d best get that week-long-bath started, then. I shan’t keep you and your heart’s true desire apart any longer.” He plays along, making you smile as you step in front of him, nodding to yourself.

Taking his cue, Jon lets go of you and turns around, expecting to give you the privacy to strip free of the filthy rags you have been kept in and stepping into the water to conceal yourself, until he hears you hiss in pain.

“Jon, I…I don’t intend to make you uncomfortable, but I do not think I can take this off without help.” You admit, embarrassed for too many reasons to list.

“It would cause me no discomfort at all, but are you certain you are comfortable with me…assisting you?” Jon asks in a soft voice, careful with his choice of words.

“Of course. You could never make me uncomfortable, Jon.” You respond without delay.

Needing no further instruction, Jon Snow takes a deep breath and turns around. With your back to him, you raise your arms and wait for trembling hands to lift the hem of your dress - if you could call a ripped potato sack such a thing - up and over your head. Dropping the fabric to the floor, Jon immediately turns around again, face burning.

“Thank you.” Your voice is meak, filled with shame over your true love seeing you bare for the first time, filthy, bloody and bruised.

All the while, Jon Snow is trying to remember how to breathe while the mental image of your naked form imprints itself into his flailing mind. The dirt had not even crossed his mind. Your injuries, of course, brought him sadness and anger, but the triumphant emotion was one he is not willing to admit, even to himself.

Taking slow and careful steps, you reach the water’s edge and lower yourself to sit on it, slipping your legs into the water and breathing a sigh of relief as the heat envelopes you immediately, inviting you in until your body is completely submerged and at peace. Every ache within your beaten body is soothed and you are quick to scrub the dirt from yourself, to be clean of your days caged and the memories that clung to your skin like the dried blood of your wounds.

Hearing the gentle slosh of the water, Jon settles as he realizes you are no longer standing behind him. Standing up straight, he fixes his gaze on the closed door and decides that he will keep watch. As you raise your head from the water, you see his silhouette standing at the door and smile, unable to withdraw the connection your mind makes between this picture and the one you saw so many times as a girl, of a much younger Jon Snow standing as he is now, shorter then, but just as determined to keep watch while you were vulnerable in the water.

“Y’know, you could do with a wash, yourself.” You note aloud.

Jon chuckles airily. “Aye, you’re probably right.”

Smirking in advance of your devious plan to make Jon blush again, you glide over to the edge of the water and rest your arms on the cold stone. “Join me then.”

And you watch in absolute glee as Jon’s form turns rigid at your suggestion. He does not answer.

“Jon?” You call in a singsong voice.

He clears his throat. “Hm?”

“As grotesque as my body is in its current state, I did not imagine you would ever reject an offer to join me?” You tease, only half joking.

Jon’s reaction is visceral. In a second, he is standing over you with a harsh frown, having had no thought in the effect the sight of you below him in such a way would have on him, too focussed on his emotional response to the ridiculousness in what you had said.

“I cannot even bring myself to say such a word in association to you, the thought alone would be criminal. Do not allow yourself to think that I could see you as anything less than the most beautiful person to ever exist, as you have always been and will always be to me.”

You have never heard Jon so serious in all your life. His words and the sincerity with which they are spoken renders you speechless for a moment as you stare up at him.

“Won’t you let me share such a view, of you, then?” You ask, voice barely above a whisper.

And after a moment’s eternity of silence, as though practicing some ancient dance, the two of you step apart from each other and turn your backs, neither of you able to face the tension a moment longer.

The sound of Jon’s armor hitting the stone floor sends goosebumps erupting across the tops of your shoulders that peak above the water, your heartbeats ringing in your ears almost in unison. Even when you hear the splash of his body entering the water, you do not dare turn to face him. As quickly as he can, he fully submerges himself in the water and scrubs the blood and dirt from a battle won. Then, Jon Snow stands, slowly wading through the water until he stands behind you. It is your turn to take a deep breath as you turn to face him, your eyes drinking in the sight of his clean face, the scars on his chest sitting distorted beneath the water, and to take his mind away from the pain of what you assume are his battlescars, your hands lift from the water to trace the line of his beard with an admiring smile.

“I always knew you’d suit a beard.” You compliment him, easing his nerves as he laughs, gracing you with another charming smile.

Your hands continue their journey around the back of his neck, feeling the wet, inky curls of his hair there and sighing deeply.

“Truly, you have the best hair in the seven kingdoms.”

And Jon laughs the hardest he has in longer than he can remember, throwing his head back and shaking it as though emphasizing the hair that you have never failed to shower in praise, making you laugh with him.

Taking ahold of your hands at the back of his neck, Jon brings them to his lips and places feathery light kisses against your knuckles, holding your gaze.

“I have missed you more than words can say.” He whispers.

You raise an eyebrow at him. “Is that your excuse for not writing me any, then?”

Jon sighs, closing his eyes and hanging his head in shame. “I am so sorry.”

Chuckling, you lift his chin with your finger until you can see into his eyes again. “Considering you won a battle for me today, I think I can forgive you for not having time to read my letters.”

Jon smiles at you gratefully. “I read them all before coming to get you, I swear it.”

“And I believe you, as I always have. I believed you’d read them, I believed you would rescue me, and both rang true in the end. It seems my faith is safe.” You beam up at him.

“Your faith in what?” He questions.

“My Jon.” You tell him, like it’s the most obvious answer in the world, and the moment he hears it, he agrees that it is.

Unable to resist you a moment longer, Jon’s arms wrap around your waist and pull your body flush against his, lips falling on yours in a kiss softer than a summer breeze. Briefly, he falters, wondering if perhaps he has acted on his instincts far too soon, but then he feels your fingers running through his curls, pulling him into a deeper kiss than he had assumed you would be ready for, but you have been waiting far too long for this.

Only when the two of you recall the human need to breathe do you have the strength to pull away from each other. But Jon’s lips chase after you, leaving a trail of kisses from the corners of your mouth to your chin, your cheeks, your temples, your neck, with pleading whispers in between.

“Will you be mine, my wife- my queen, should the north call for a king? I cannot lose you again, I cannot deny myself the dream of us anymore.”

And in equally flustered, desperate whispers, you answer. “Yes to all and yes to any. I have always been yours, Jon.”

For a time, it feels like the two of you are the only people in existence, the world having stopped around you, the Gods having paused time to allow you to hold each other for your own eternity. It is not the time for love beyond a passionate kiss, both of your bodies need to heal and rest after the battles you have fought and won, together, to get back to each other. To simply hold each other, after so many years apart, is the greatest joy either of you can ask for.

But, time cannot be slowed forever. Soon enough, there is a knock at the door of the bath and in a wild panic that has you in fits of giggles, Jon scrambles from the water and grabs his armor, holding it over himself to answer the door to the young squire that has kindly delivered fresh clothes and towels for the two of you to dry yourselves with. Nodding and thanking the squire, Jon takes the pile from him and closes the door, turning back to face you with a sheepish expression and only seeing the humor in it when he finds you wheezing against the side of the bath.

Once dry and dressed, the two of you make your way to the door, pinky fingers intertwined between you out of habit. Until your boot steps on something that does not sound like the stone floor and you frown, bending down to pick up a folded piece of parchment, worn at the edges and ink fading in the handwriting that you recognise to be your own as you unfold it. Turning to face Jon, you meet his gaze and know you do not need to say anything as you fold the parchment back into the neat square in which you had found it and slot it the pocket of his new, clean shirt. Holding your hand over it, you lean up to kiss his cheek and, intertwining your pinky fingers again, you ascend the stairs together and step out into the courtyard of Winterfell. There, your eyes immediately lock onto the sight of the immense form of the hunched over giant, sitting against one of the stone walls as some wildlings watch over him. The child within you gasps, your hands covering your mouth in delight as you look between Jon and the giant frantically.

Laughing endearingly at you, Jon gestures to the giant and walks you over to him. “(Y/N), I’d like you to meet Wun Wun.”

Unable to tear your gaze from the giant, you approach him slowly. “Hello, Wun Wun, it’s…it’s been a dream of mine to meet someone like you, ever since I was a little girl.” Looking over him and his injuries, tears immediately sting your eyes. “I am so sorry that you got hurt, are you in pain? I can fetch you some milk of the poppy, if you like? Or fix up some stew for you?”

Wun Wun watches you with a frown that seems to be etched into his features, curious of you. Taking a few seconds, the giant processes what you have said, looks to Jon and then back to you.

“Snow princess.” His voice is like a tumbling boulder, thunderous and without the human pitch-difference that is associated with asking a question, but Jon understands what he is asking.

“(Y/N) would be my queen.” Jon clarifies, and Wun Wun blinks slowly.

“Snow Queen.” He attempts to maneuver his large form, but roars in protest at his own injuries.

Raising your arms, you attempt to stop him. “Please, don’t hurt yourself further!”

Jon remembers how Wun Wun had acted towards the Princess Shireen and takes a step forward. “You don’t need to kneel to us, Wun Wun, you are our friend, our equal. You bow to no-one, not anymore.”

Your eyes widen in realization of what the giant had been trying to do as he slumps back down with a large thud against the ground.

Breathing deeply, Wun Wun looks at you. “Snow Queen.” He looks at Jon. “Snow.” Then lifts an arm and loosely gestures to both of you. “Friend.”

Jon scoffs playfully. “So (Y/N) is Queen, but I am just Snow?”

You grin at the giant, who acknowledges your expression with a thunderous laugh that is so loud it would hurt your ears, were you not enamored by the creature it comes from.

“If she is not my queen, who’s queen is she?” Jon asks, bemused and hoping to catch out the giant, who considers the question for only a second before responding.

“Wun. Weg. Wun Dar Wun’s.” And despite how long it takes the giant to speak his full name, the impact of his own punchline hits just as hard, sending you into another wheezing fit of laughter while Jon shakes his head in disbelief.

“Well, it seems both Wun Wun and I are yours, now.” Jon throws up his hands in dramatic surrender, causing you to laugh harder, the giant smiling at you fondly and Jon watching you with an adoring gaze, so relieved to see you relaxed and safe enough to laugh again.

When Jon asks you if you feel ready to eat, you nod, but request that you eat together, with Wun Wun, to ensure he eats and gains some energy to help his body heal, too. Naturally, Jon does not deny you of the endearing request and the two of you return to the giant with your own bowls of fresh stew and an extra large one for your new best friend. The three of you sit and talk, taking time to listen to Wun Wun’s responses, which take a lot longer than general conversations with a human would, but you don’t mind one bit. With every word he speaks, you are utterly mesmerized, having already pinned the creature as every bit as incredible as the giants from your favorite tales as a child.

Though it is not late in the evening by the time you finish your supper, you are too exhausted from the events of the day to stay awake much longer. Having not walked around for any length of time in so long, your limbs are too weak to stand on your own again, Jon having to help you back to your feet with an arm around your waist.

Waving to Wun Wun, you give him a tired smile.

“Goodnight Wun Weg Wun Dar Wun, I wish you pleasant dreams.”

The giant gives you a smile that Jon has not seen him give anyone else. “Friend. Sleep good.”

With that, Jon begins leading you back into the warmth of the castle, walking you along the path to what had been his bedroom as a boy, without thinking of what the room could be now, his direwolf trailing behind the two of you. Thankfully, it seems that Sansa was thoughtful in the room she requested be prepared for you all, as Jon’s old bedroom door is open, displaying the candlelit room and the freshly made bed. The two of you share a chuckle in disbelief as you enter the room, Ghost instantly finding a patch of rug on the ground to curl up on and Jon walking you over to the bed to sit down on it before he leaves you to close the door and draw the curtains.

Falling against the mattress, you groan.

“I think this ordeal has aged me 20 years and perhaps it is time we retire. I could finally let Sansa teach me to sew and you could herd sheep with Ghost, what do you think?”

At the mention of his name and in confusion at your suggestion, Ghost lifts and tilts his head to the side.

Jon laughs as he joins you, landing on his back beside you, the mattress bouncing slightly beneath you. “I think that sounds like a wonderful plan. Only, I’m afraid, my Lady, there is another war to be fought.”

You turn your head to face him, seeing the simultaneous amusement and seriousness playing in his eyes. “Surely, you jest. Against who?”

Jon sighs. “An ever growing army of the dead, unfortunately.”

Throwing your arms up and against the mattress above your head in a dramatic display of defeat, you scoff. “But of course! Winter is coming, I should have known.”

Jon smiles at you, having never felt so at ease when discussing the threat that looms over the entire world as he knows it and marveling at the wonder that is you. “Aye, but for now-” He stands to his feet, swings you up in his arms, kicks the bedcover from the mattress and lays you down on the sheet. “-we are free to rest.”

Shuffling to remove your boots and watching as Jon removes his to nudge them under the bed, you use the last of your strength to move over and allow space for him to slide in beside you.

Turning to face each other, you snuggle beneath the bedcovers and share a smile, like the giddy teenagers that had been lost in your memories until now.

“When is the wedding due, then, dear almost-husband?” You ask, amused but genuinely curious as to when the two of you will have the chance to arrange such an event.

“Whenever you like, dear almost-lady-wife.” Jon laughs airily, taking hold of your hands beneath the covers and staring into your eyes. “How do you feel?”

You take a deep breath, knowing that the time to set aside your humor would come soon enough. “It is…difficult to put into words. Deliriously happy to be with you and Sansa, to have our home back and to be safe again, of course, but there is still a dark cloud that looms over me and I cannot ignore it. At any moment, I feel as though the rain could start to pour and I could drown in it, lose myself to the fear. In truth, the thought of trying to sleep is terrifying.”

Jon nods slowly, understanding you completely, as he always has. “However dark that cloud gets, however hard the rain falls and however scared you are to sleep, I will be here. To show you the sun again, shield you from the rain and guard you through your dreams, I will be right here, and I will never leave you again. I swear it, by the old Gods and the new.”

Tears threaten to blur the perfect vision of the candlelit Jon Snow, but you are quick to blink them away, removing your hands from his to run your fingers through his hair and pull him closer, until his forehead rests against yours. “And in return, I swear to protect you from whatever horrid memories plague you from the time when we have been apart, to hold you through them and remind you that no matter what, you are a good man, the best man, and the man that I love more than anything.”

Closing his eyes, Jon Snow takes a deep breath, and you do the same, sharing the silence and darkness in a peace that neither of you ever thought you would find again.

“Can it be that this night, I’ll dream of you and wake to find you here?” You whisper.

Jon sniffles, having not let his relief and love for you truly overwhelm him until now. “Aye, this night and every night thereafter.”

Gently tracing the line of his jaw with your thumb, you lean forward to close the space between your lips. “To be yours is to live nothing but a dream, Jon Snow.”

And for the second time since reconnecting to the rest of his soul, Jon Snow loses himself to you, falling into you and cradling every part of you with such care, having craved every second of these moments with you that he never thought he could have beyond the land of dreams. The two of you had lived separate lives for long enough, the Gods had no choice but to force you back to each other in an act of fate that defied everything Jon thought he could believe in, except for you. Every foe he fought, every task he took on, his first thought would be that in some distant way, he would be saving you from something, because he would be doing so from the frontline of your heart. To be yours was the only victory he truly felt.

——————

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gothicflowers · 1 month

Text

Alex Keller X GN!Reader

Field of Flowers

Warnings: Fluff.

“We’ve been inseparable for almost eight years. For some reason I just assumed I’d always have you around. I don’t wanna face that reality but I have to now. Saying goodbye completely ends the story.”

“New chapters mean you get to keep on writing the story. Why would it make you scared?”

“I’m terrified honestly. I want a life outside of all this, to be able to lay in a field of flowers and rest.” Motioning to your ballistics vest and the gun on his hip. “But ive been doing this for so long it’s almost like I have to completely hit reset on my life. I can’t tell anybody about any of this. About what I’ve done, the places I’ve seen. Hell, I can’t even tell them about you. It all dies with me.”

Over all these years with Alex you never told him your feelings. Too afraid to lose the only person who’s stuck by your side. Every mission, every wound, every sunrise and sunset he was with you. Learning to live without him was going to be hard. It was going to be even harder trying to start the life you envisioned without him.

Alex leaned against the hummer next to you trying to find the words to say. He hated that you were leaving. But he couldn’t ask you to stay with him. Not when he just abandoned the CIA for farahs army. But he loves you too much to tell you his feelings. He wants you to be happy, not to go to bed wondering if he’s ok or when he’ll return to you.

“I hope you find peace and get everything you want out of this lifetime. You deserve it.” His words felt heavy leaving his chest. “How about instead of goodbye, I’ll see you around.”

Tears welled up in your eyes. Biting your lip to try and stop a choked sob from leaving your lips. Nodding and looking at the sunset. “I’ll see you around Alex.” You look up at him, just as pretty as the day you first met. Only couple more scars and some lines around his eyes changed him. His eyes still sparkled when they looked into yours. A single tear falls down from your eyes taking in the sight of the man you’ll never see again.

His hand comes to rest on the nape of your neck as the other wipes away the single tear. Pressing a kiss to your forehead he takes in this final moment. His forehead rests against yours knowing he has to let go now or he won’t let you go. “I’ll see you around.”

And he’s gone. Gone from your life. You’re left watching the sun disappear over the mountains wondering why it is to be like this.

It’s been a little over three years since that day. You opened up that company you always told Alex about. Got a car and even purchased a home. Everything on paper looked like you had become quite successful. Your family was excited to have you home. But with all good things considered it didn’t feel how you thought it would.

The house was quiet. Making friends in your late twenties proved to be difficult. And every date you went on couldn’t compare to the man you left in a war zone. You thought about him often. Was he doing well? Was he making sure to eat enough? Was there someone that could cut his hair as well as you could? And the scariest thought, was he still alive?

Your dreams were fleeting with memories of your time together and the battles fought. Often times waking you in the night too scared to fall back asleep. Even though you were happy to be away from it all you still thought about it, if you hadn’t left. Stayed and told him that you loved him. Or should you have just told him before you left. At least then you’d have had an answer of some sort. Never to be left wondering like you still do. The waves of regret consumed you from time to time.

Today was a slow day, as most Mondays are for your company so it was just you today. You sat behind your computer finishing up this months paperwork. The front door bell chimed upon someone entering. Since it was just you, you headed to the front to greet the customer.

“Hello, how can I-“ you stopped dead in your tracks in disbelief when your eyes noticed the man standing there. Soft eyes, strong arms, and a smile like no other.

“Hi” he could barely make out that single word. Just seeing you took the breath out of his lungs. “I said I’ll see you later, not goodbye.” His mustache covered lips turned up into a smirk.

You run up to him wrapping your arms around his neck in a hug. His warm embrace welcoming you into his arms. His arms wrapped around you felt more like home than anything has the past three years.

“I can’t believe you’re here” your hands cup his face, thumbs caressing his cheeks “What are you doing here?”

“Laswell got my name cleared, thought about lying in a field of flowers like you said.” His arms still wrapped around you not wanting to let go. “And there was something I didn’t tell you before you left, I’m hoping I’m not too late.”

“What didn’t you tell me.” Your arms unraveled and your hands rest on his strong chest. You could feel his heart beating fast.

Taking a deep breath he looks deep into you. “That I’ve been in love with you since the moment I met you.”

Your voice weakened with the joy of hearing his confession. “I wanted to tell you I loved you before I left but I was scared you didn’t love me back.”

Alex looked down at you with a look you had seen glimpses of but never fully. It was love, joy, excitement and more passion than anyone had ever looked at you with in your lifetime.

Without words you both embraced in a passionate kiss making up for all the lost years. His hands pulling your hips into him closer desperately wanting to keep you close. Your hands traveling from his chest to his neck. Clinging to each other fearing separation. After what felt like eternity your lips departed one another.

“So since the moment you met me?” How could you have not seen? Was that truly what all those intense moments of eye contact meant? The fighting over each other going into something far too dangerous. Love?

His bright goofy smile was uncontrollable “Yeah”

You couldn’t help but laugh recalling that exact moment in time. “Alex I had a gun to your head because Laswell didn’t tell me I was gonna have a partner that mission. I was seconds away from killing you”

“Can’t lie it was definitely intimidating, but oddly attractive.” He smirked knowing it was the honest truth.

You give his chest a light hit at his comment “Shut up and kiss me again.”

“Yes ma’am.”

#call of duty #alex keller #cod #cod alex keller #alex keller imagine #alex keller call of duty #alex keller x reader #alex keller x y/n #alex keller x you #cod x you #flowerwrites #call of duty x reader #call of duty x y/n #call of duty x you #john price #captain john price #simon ghost riley smut #soap mactavish

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 11 months

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Now I’m Covered In You [Chapter 10: Chronology] [Series Finale]

A/N: This is a fic that was never supposed to exist. It yanked me out of my (ridiculously short) retirement and I was SO NERVOUS about diving into another series so unexpectedly! Thank you for giving NICIY a chance. I go back and re-read old messages, comments, and reblogs ALL the time when I’m feeling doubtful about writing, and my fics are only made possible by the support of awesome people like you. 💜

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

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

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

Word count: 6k.

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

Taglist: @borikenlove @myspotofcraziness @teenagecriminalmastermind @quartzs-posts @tclegane @poohxlove @narwhal-swimmingintheocean @chainsawsangel @itsabby15 @padfooteyes @arcielee @travelingmypassion @what-is-originality @burningcoffeetimetravel @randomdragonfires @aemcndtargaryen @jvpit3rs @sarcastic-halfling-princess @flowerpotmage @ladylannisterxo @thelittleswanao3 @libroparaiso @tinykryptonitewerewolf @girlwith-thepearlearring @minttea07 @trifoliumviridi @deltamoon666 @mariahossain @darkenchantress @doingfondue @atherverybest @namelesslosers @skythighs @moonlightfoxx @partypoison00 @bellameshipper @coffedraven @greenowlfactif

Rain from the sky, blood from the earth: skulls and femurs crush beneath Vhagar’s hooves. Daeron and Tessarion stride alongside Aemond, always on his left where he was blinded. Daeron is different now. He’s not broken, no—and Aemond would recognize it if he was—but there’s something older about him, something severe and world-weary. One of Aemond’s hands holds the reins while the other swings his sword, though his attackers grow few and penitent. The Greens and their allies have beaten back the usurpers. The field is strewn with dead Scots and Northern Englishmen. Behind Aemond are soldiers—from the South, Milan, Castile, the Holy Roman Empire, Navarre—bellowing triumphant howls that meld with the thunder. They strip enemy bodies of rings, necklaces, coins, swords and daggers. They slice off fingers and scraps of skin to bring home with them as keepsakes. Look, wife, here is a piece of a man who fought for Daemon and Rhaenyra. Look, son, see what becomes of those who align themselves with kinslayers.

Behind the Blacks’ forces, on horseback and shouting to each other in frantic words that Aemond cannot hear over the cannons and the storm, are Rhaenyra and King Corlys of Scotland. Corlys is shaking his head and pointing back towards the direction they came from. He is advising Rhaenyra to retreat, Aemond knows. He is impelling the stark realities upon her: that her soldiers are fleeing in great numbers, that her cause is lost, that she has nothing to gain by remaining here except more deaths. Jace and Vermax—a bay Marwari who has always been dutiful yet placid by nature—are galloping at a dizzying speed towards his mother to join her in the now inevitable withdraw from the field of battle. As the would-be prince evades sword-wielders and axmen, an arrow loosed by a Navarran archer pierces him through the throat. He sways drunkenly in the saddle and then tumbles to the mud where he is immediately descended upon by Green soldiers like vultures on carrion.

“No!” Aemond can hear Rhaenyra wail, a sound like the shattering of glass. She is stopped by Black loyalists when she attempts to ride to her eldest son’s body, an instinct that in the haze of her grief she cannot understand is suicidal. They eventually resort to dragging her off Syrax, throwing her into the back of a supply wagon, and ferrying her away from the battlefield as Corlys directs their remaining forces to fall back.

Aemond spies Luke—untalented and doomed, yet brave—on Arrax and stabbing Milanese men who are clawing at him like a cat guts mice. Aemond sheathes his sword, wheels Vhagar around, and races for Luke, calling for the soldiers to disperse. They run from Vhagar’s immense, drumming hooves. Too swift for Luke to resist, Aemond grabs him by one arm and wrenches him out of the saddle; he can hear the bone pop from its socket. Luke drops to the drenched earth and lies there muddy, condemned, his sword knocked from his grasp.

“Go, Arrax!” Luke commands his horse. Tears stream down his face, indistinguishable from the rain. Lightning flashes. But Arrax does not obey. The small dun Marwari stands over Luke, his head shielding his fallen rider, until Daeron and Tessarion—who easily outweighs Arrax by a thousand pounds—force him back.

Aemond dismounts from Vhagar, his boots sinking into deep mud. He walks to where Luke lies helplessly in a sea of rain and earth and blood.

“Mercy!” Luke cries, shielding his eyes from the torrents of rain that blow into him. His hair hangs in dark, sodden curls against his boyish face. “Please, Aemond! I’m sorry for what happened when we were children. I was wrong. I was trying to protect Jace and I struck out without thinking. I did not intend to maim you. But then it was too late to take it back. It’s not too late to stop this bloodshed now. I was wrong. I beg you to have mercy upon me, mercy that the Blacks never showed you. I want to live. I want to see my mother again. I want to marry Rhaena someday, as I have sworn to. As I have dreamt of more times than I could number. I beg you for mercy.”

Aemond looks to Daeron. And it takes several long, slow seconds for Daeron to understand why. He is being given the choice. He is the man who lost Nico. Daeron says softly: “He’s not the one who murdered her. I have no use for his blood.”

Aemond nods. And then, as the wind tears dripping, silver strands from his long braid, he offers his hand to Luke. Luke seizes it with his good arm, sobbing openly with relief.

“You were in London when the princesses were slain,” Aemond says.

“Yes,” Luke replies. “But I did not know it would happen, nor did I desire it. I swear to God, Aemond, I swear on every god men have ever believed in. None of us knew, my mother had forbidden harm to come to them—”

“And Jace was there too.”

“Yes,” Luke admits, weeping for his dead brother.

“You and Jace were in London with Daemon, and now you’re here on the battlefield. But that beast isn’t. Not that I’ve seen. So where’s Daemon?” Aemond asks Luke. “Where’s Daemon?”

“Aren’t you going to ask me to spare you?” Daemon doesn’t move like a man. He stalks like a wolf, like a phantom, off-kilter, inhuman. He grins, white teeth and violent eyes. “Aren’t you going to beg for mercy?”

And for a moment, the words fill up in your mouth like blood in a wound: Please don’t hurt me. I’ll do anything you want. I’ll go back to Navarre and never return, you’ll never hear soldiers cheer for me, you’ll never see me again. Please, please, just let me go so the baby can live.

But Daemon would not be moved by your pleas. They would only give him wicked, ghastly pleasure, a high like the knowing touch of a lover. You cannot stomach the thought of it. You can only bring yourself to twist the allegorical knife deeper. “If you had taught Baela mercy, she would still be alive. If you had any within yourself, Rhaenyra would be winning this war.”

“Too proud,” Daemon says, but he doesn’t sound furious anymore. He sounds awed. And you realize that all along underneath that hatred had been something else too: a venomous admiration, a hunger that corrupts and burns. He lays the point of his sword against your throat. Rain flows down the length of the blade in cold, crystalline rivulets. You sob, unable to help it. Your mind is a tapestry of all the things you’ll never live to see. “Aegon is a nonentity. But you were different. I saw that from the start. Just a girl from a minor kingdom offered like a sacrifice to be neglected and violated by some drunken, ambitionless, catastrophically weak prince. Yet you didn’t seem to know it. You had that intractable, defiant ruthlessness. So much like Rhaenyra’s when she was younger. So much like Aemond’s. So much like mine. And I knew I could never call myself worthy of the throne without breaking you. Rhaenyra comforts herself with the notion that none of this is personal. That I would have had the same contempt for the Milanese girl or the Holy Roman Emperor’s daughter if either of them had been the one to marry Aegon. Rhaenyra feels sorry for you, I believe. She has a mother’s compassion. But this has always been personal for me. And now it’s finally over.”

There is a sound above you at the top of the gorge, huffing and stomping. Reflected in Daemon’s blade, you see Midnight, her legs and chest painted with blood from kicking through the walls of her stall and then the stable door. She takes a few tentative steps down the slope and then is forced to retreat. If she falls, she’ll shatter her legs or snap her neck and drown in the current of mud and rainwater. She can’t come to you. But if you can get to her…

Caraxes is dead. Daemon wouldn’t be able to catch me.

Time ticks by slowly, impossibly slowly; and you are reminded of all those nights you spent under Aegon waiting for him to finish, a long-clawed eternity lurking in the doorway between seconds. You are reminded of how each hour you spent pregnant felt like forever as the possibility of having a child of your own receded like a ship dropping over the edge of the horizon, and then farther, and then farther. You are reminded of how you counted the days until Kunigunde would marry Aemond and possess him in ways that you still have only dreamt of. Since your arrival in England almost two years ago, you have been a prisoner of time. Now—as you scavenge for a chance at a future almost too bright to imagine—you are grateful for it.

Too late, you think, but it’s not a statement. It’s a question. Too late?

“Do you know what, Navarre?” Daemon asks. He traces the point of his blade around the curve of your throat, drawing a half-moon of crimson as thin as a spider’s thread. Then he hooks his left hand into the white velvet of your gown—drenched with rain, stained with blood and earth—and wrenches you upright, devouring you with wild, wolfish eyes. You strike at him to no avail. “I think before I gut you, I’ll enjoy you in the way Aemond never could. That would hurt him best, wouldn’t it? He was always covered in it. That pitiful, dire hunger for you. Written on his ruined face as stark as ink. Now he can have whatever pieces of you are left when I’m done. Scraps, butcher’s cuts, your child, your eyes, your heart. If he’s still alive.”

Too late??

You don’t have a sword, you don’t have a dagger or a bow, you don’t have the physical strength to fight Daemon. You never have, even before your hand was crushed and shredded by his Scottish deerhound. At the crest of the gorge, Midnight paces and whinnies.

What DO I have? What the hell do I still have?

Suddenly you feel it, cool and unyielding against your chest: the ivy leaf necklace made of gold.

With your mangled hand, you rip it off you—destroying the clasp, drawing blood at the back of your neck—and stab at Daemon. He rocks his head back swiftly enough to save his eyes, but not his mouth; you shove your fist in as far as you can, pushing the jagged charm of the necklace down his throat to choke him. With your free hand, you cling to him like a lover so he cannot create enough space between you to swing his sword. He screams, and you do too, as the gashes in your hand are split wider and deeper by his teeth, as his jaws close around your wrist and he tries to bite through the flesh and into your veins; but you do not relent. The pain is dreadful but not disorienting. You’ve had time to learn how to think through it.

Daemon flings you away and—choking, retching, doubled over—tries to claw the necklace out of his throat. You bolt for the embankment and begin climbing up towards Midnight. You have to move quickly; each time you hesitate, the saturated earth begins to disintegrate beneath your palms and bare feet. Rain falls in stinging sheets. Rods of lightning break the sky in two. Midnight is stomping and snorting at the apex of the gorge, waiting for you. You are halfway to her when you realize you can hear Daemon behind you.

He’s wheezing and weighted down by his armor; when you glance back at him, there are tendrils of blood spilling from his mouth. Still, the insanity in his eyes is alight and glittering. You claw for the summit desperately. When you get close enough to reach out to her, Midnight lowers her head; you throw your arms around her vast neck and she drags you over the top of the gorge and onto flat, muddy ground. But there’s no time to catch your breath. You clamber to your feet and try to pull yourself onto Midnight’s back. It’s no use; she’s too tall, you’re too weak. She looks at you with her attentive volcanic-glass eyes and upright ears, and then she understands. With ungainly effort, she drops down to her knees so you can climb onto her back. When Midnight stands again, you steady yourself and twist your fingers into her mane, and then she charges towards the stone bridge—

There’s a shrill, glass-sharp roar and a hand on your gown. Daemon is yanking you off of her. Midnight is whirling and shrieking, trying to shake him. There’s not enough for you to hold onto, no reins, no saddle. Daemon drags you down to the earth. You hit hard, the breath knocked from your lungs, your vision stunned black. You can feel that Daemon is on top of you with his sword at your jugular; you scratch and shove blindly at him. And then Midnight is stomping and kicking and there is a new sound: a crack muffled by gelatinous flesh like the sheet around a corpse, a great fracturing like the world splitting in half. And Daemon is gone.

Your sight materializes: black to grey to color, shadows to shapes. When you haul yourself upright, the rain is slowing and Midnight is nudging your head with her velvet-soft muzzle. Daemon is ten feet away. He has propped himself up against the entranceway of the bridge, his legs splayed out in front of him. When you go to him and kneel down in the mud—thunder growling distantly, moving into the west—you see that his jaw has been broken from the impact of Midnight’s hoof. It hangs disjointedly, ruinously from his face. A moon-white dagger of bone juts from the torn flesh. His teeth are a garden of ivory shards and excavated pits. Blood pours down his throat and chest like a river, like a sea. He cannot speak. He can only gaze at you with glassy, vacant eyes, the knowledge dripping in slowly, piece by piece, like waking up from a dream: he’s dying. And it occurs to you that sometimes dying is the end, and sometimes it’s just killing the version of yourself that existed before, sacrifice, spring after frost, a blade born from a forge, resurrection.

You press your hands to the blood that hemorrhages from Daemon and then drag them down your face, palms and fingertips, coppery-tasting scarlet like wine, like rubies. “You once told me that I’d look better covered in red,” you say to him as the last vestiges of consciousness flicker in his eyes. “That was on Christmas, just before you murdered my son in the womb and I spent weeks bleeding fragments of him out of me. How do I look now, Prince Daemon? Now you’re the one who’s bleeding. Now you’re the one who will never grow old.”

He hears you. You can see that he hears you: horror, agony, disbelief, mourning.

“I want you to think about that as you lie here dying alone. I want you to think about all those things you wanted—those glorious, ruthless things—and how you stole them from yourself.”

You stagger to your feet. Daemon’s hand, weak like a whisper, juts out and grabs your muddied ankle. You rip free of him without looking back. You are the last person to ever see him alive.

Midnight follows you back to the palace. Your damaged hand hangs limply by your side; the other cups your belly. You wait for the cramping to begin, the razorlike severing, the blood. It seems unthinkable that your child could have survived, that Daemon could have departed this earth without stealing one last life from you. But for all the places where you hurt terribly, that isn’t one of them. When you reach the well, you brace yourself for what you’ll discover there. You grip the cool grey circle of stones and peer over the edge.

“Your Majesty?!” Criston exclaims, gaping at you. He’s wading in water up to his chest. “Oh, thank God! I heard the footsteps and thought it was Daemon!”

“He’s dead,” you reply in a voice that sounds very little like yours: cold like winter, hard like steel. The rain has faded to a misty drizzle.

Criston shakes his head, not understanding. “How did you…? What did you…?”

“I’ll find a way to get you out,” you say, and leave him.

You procure a length of rope from the stable and—with considerable difficulty, your wounded hand trembling and nearly useless—tie one end around Midnight like the harness of a plow. You toss the other end down to Criston. He emerges from the well with a broken leg but otherwise relatively unscathed. He limps, leaning against Midnight (an only semi-willing ally), to where Daemon’s body lies by the bridge.

“Oh my God,” Criston marvels, staring down at him: ruined face, empty hands. “He’s gone. He’s really gone. He was the greatest weapon the Blacks had, and he’s gone. What the hell will Rhaenyra do now?”

You pry your sword from Caraxes’ corpse and then return to Criston. “I need you to help me. My blade is too small, and even if it wasn’t, my sword hand is practically unusable. I can probably do the first part, but I’ll need you to chop through the spine.”

Criston is horrified. “What are you talking about? The spine…?!”

And then you tell him.

You have just finished when you hear the rumble of hooves approaching. Vhagar and Aemond are at the front of a detachment of cavalry. The cannon fire in the distance has stopped; Daeron and Alonzo are doubtlessly overseeing the clearing of the battlefield. Aemond leaps down from the saddle and rushes to where you stand to meet him on the bridge, his gaze flying from your ragged hand to the streaks of red on your gown and your face. Your other hand is hidden behind your back.

“Are you—?!”

“I’m alright,” you say. “The blood isn’t all mine.”

And then you throw Daemon’s head—clutching it by his long, white, Targaryen hair—out onto the grey stones for everyone to witness. It rolls several times before coming to rest face-up, the last raindrops falling into Daemon’s vacuous eyes as the sky begins to clear. Aemond grins, a fiercely proud, wonderous grin; and the soldiers’ cheers are carried on the calm, cool breeze: “The Queen from Navarre! The Queen from Navarre! The Queen from Navarre!”

A physician is fetched to set Sir Criston’s leg and to tend to your hand. It is scrubbed with boiling wine (excruciating) and then the deepest gashes are stitched closed with a needle and thread (even worse). The process takes several hours. You are offered strong wine for the pain, but you don’t want to risk harming the baby. Aemond stays with you. He knows exactly what this feels like: the serrated agony now, the scar tissue that will grow through the rubble like roots. It will pain you all your life. You will never be free of it.

Aemond cleans Daemon’s blood from your face and allows you to squeeze his hand until your fingernails leave crescent-moon indents in his palm. And then he begins to distract you. He brings his lips to the curve of your jaw as one arm hugs your waist, and as he dusts your skin with tantalizingly slow kisses and teasing nips, you are reminded of the February night when he touched you beneath your nightgown for the first time, when he showed you how hot desire could burn and how kindly it could treat you. As your flesh is mended like a torn tapestry—the physician’s head bent low over his work—Aemond nuzzles you and murmurs to you and traces his fingertips lightly over your throat, your collarbones, the nape of your neck.

Miraculously, after a while you barely notice the pain at all. After a while, you are covered in nothing but weightless, glimmering desire for him.

In the room of Castle Rising that has become your bedchamber: back to the wall, hands in his hair, loose and wild and silver. In the starlight that streams in through the open windows, it has an opalescent sheen like moonstone. He’s kissing you like fire consumes forests; he’s breathing you in like smoke. You can feel him growing through you, flames licking, ivy climbing the trellis of your ribs and vertebrae. He’s tearing off your gown—once white, now red, impure and unrepentant—as you undress him and litter the floor with all the leather and fabric that once separated you. As Aemond’s hands skate up your bare thighs, you remember other moments with him: in the royal stables on a July afternoon, your miscarriage after the Christmas feast, on the bearskin rug in February, his wedding night at the end of April, here in the bathtub before the battle.

“Please, Aemond,” you beg as his fingers slip between slick warm folds of needful flesh, circle the place that raises euphoria in you like the moon pulls the tides. “I need all of you.”

“No,” he pants between fevered kisses. The ruby of his missing eye glints hungrily. “You first. I’m not going to last, I know it. You have to go first.”

Your unbandaged hand knots in his hair, tugging him ever-closer; his tongue darts into your mouth; his bare chest and hips press insistently to yours. You can feel his hardness, his length against your inner thigh, and this time there is no trepidation that roils in your mind like the waves of the sea. You want him with everything you’re built of, every minute and mineral and memory. You could not silence your moans if you tried. You can feel your shoulder blades bruising against the wall, heavenly pressure, delicious bites of pain, trapped blood that tomorrow will be swimming with recollection.

“Aemond, it’s happening—”

“Good, good,” he purrs through your disheveled hair. He slides one finger into you, and then another, kissing the slope of your cheekbone as your hips rock with his rhythm. “Come for me, Ivy. You wanted me to be the one to have you and now I’m here, I’ll be here forever, I’ll be here until the world ends. Let me show you how good it will always feel.”

You cry out against him, shuddering and rapturous. You can feel the past slipping away like a dream you can’t recall in the morning, a flash here, a phrase there, but otherwise indistinct, shadowy, the jagged parts sanded down until they no longer sting.

“I love you,” Aemond whispers, his fingers still inside you, buried to the knuckles in your pulsing warmth, your wetness, relics of the pleasure only he showed you was possible.

And you reply with his own words, cradling his face in your palms, half-scarred and yet entirely beautiful: “I would love you anywhere and at any cost.”

He draws you to the bed. He’s on top of you, he’s touching you, he’s tasting you, he’s stroking you until you plead for him to give you everything. But Aemond wants to be sure you’re ready. When he finally eases himself into you, it is a smooth and gliding action, overwhelming and unfamiliar but in no way painful. You hear his promise—I won’t hurt you, I’ll never hurt you—and you know that he has kept it. The intense fullness is a sensation you’ve never known before, never even imagined. When he moves, very carefully at first, it hits at an angle that rekindles your lust, somehow deeper, less pointed, more total than the peaks you knew before. You can’t catch your breath; you feel like if the wave doesn’t break, it will kill you.

“Again?” Aemond murmurs, stunned yet ecstatic.

“Again,” you gasp helplessly. He threads his fingers through yours on your good hand and pins it above your head, thrusting more powerfully as he kisses you, bodies and souls alike tangled up together, inseparable, irrevocable. When you come, it is an indescribable high; it is a force that feels like it could snap ropes of muscle and break bones. Aemond, unable to wait a second longer, empties himself with a trembling, reverent moan of the name he gave you: Ivy, Ivy, Ivy. And he holds you—tightly, to his chest, to his heart—for a long time before he pulls himself away, as if he is afraid that the moment he lifts his hands from you you’ll vanish.

Gently, he pushes your thighs apart when you move to close them. “Let me look at you,” he says. And he sighs, transfixed, as he watches his seed spill out. He takes a corner of the sheet that you’ve torn from the mattress and whisks the pearl-white river away. Then he smiles, his gaze flicking playfully to yours. “One day this won’t go to waste.”

You bathe together in water murky with steam and herbs and rose petals, washing away the past, cleaning the slate for the future. And when you return exhausted to the bed remade with fresh linens, neither of you stare up at the ceiling and wonder at the cruelties of time. You fold into Aemond—your head on his chest, rounded belly pressed against him, an arm slung across his waist—and you are asleep before you can begin to count the beats of his heart.

As soon as you arrive back in London, you and Aemond marry in the small private chapel, not illuminated by candlelight but by the sun, radiant afternoon beams refracted by stained glass scenes of kings and saints, colors on your skin like gemstones: ruby, sapphire, amethyst, emerald, amber, ruby again, treasures from the earth born only from suffocating pressure and the passing of time.

Two years to the day after you first set foot on English soil, Aemond is officially invested as regent pending either your deliverance of a daughter or your son’s coming of age in eighteen years. During the feast that follows, Alicent tends fretfully to Sir Criston: feeding him morsels of bread and meat, asking after the pain in his still-mending leg, forbidding him from rising unnecessarily from his chair. She finds excuses to touch his hair and his hands, and you observe them—furtively, from behind sips of honeyed mead, trying not to intrude—with warm blood blossoming in your cheeks. You are happy for them. You know exactly what it feels like to taste passion after a lifetime without it. It is better than a paradise, an oasis, a port in the storm. It is magic. It is a spell.

You and Aemond traverse the Great Hall of Westminster Palace to thank the Southern nobles for their loyalty, their sacrifices, their dead sons and widowed daughters. You collect wary apologies from Northerners who must now somehow be rewoven into the fabric of English society. You are offered praise for your heroism, condolences for your dead husband, well wishes for your unborn child who might one day be the king. And when, suddenly, you gasp and grab at your belly with your scarred hand, Aemond reaches fearfully for you.

“What—?”

“He’s moving,” you say, incredulous, beaming. And then you lay Aemond’s palms on your bump so he can feel it too. “He’s alright. He’s alive.”

“Of course he’s alive,” Aemond says; but you can see on his face that only now does he truly believe it, and that all along he was so adamant only because he knew it was what you needed.

The nobility—Greens and reformed Blacks alike—try not to raise their eyebrows too much when you and Aemond announce that you wed immediately upon your return to London. Yet they accept it, and so do the kingdoms of the Continent, and—after some adept persuading by your father and Alonzo—so does the Pope in Rome. There are far greater sins still fresh in everyone’s memory. And no one can deny that Aemond was built for ruling. He is the best thing for England, for all of Europe. So are you. You are beloved by the people. The name they call you—the Queen from Navarre—lives in the same breath as martyrs and saints.

Daeron is rarely left alone. Even the Duke of Hightower has compassion for him. Aemond takes him hunting and sparring, you walk with him in the gardens where Nico once sat and wept as she read his letters. He does not forget her—not at all, not even a little bit, not ever—but he does learn to remember her with more affection than bitterness. Bitterness does not come naturally to Daeron; he sheds it more swiftly than other men could. Someday he will have to marry, of course, but he is allowed time to mourn. The promise of the child you carry grants him that. And Aemond asks you to sew a new banner for the Greens: two roses, one red and the other emerald, entangled on a field of golden yellow like the flags of Milan and the Holy Roman Empire. Yellow for Nico, yellow for Kunigunde. Yellow for the dawning future they helped pay for in blood.

As retribution for his daughter’s murder, the Holy Roman Emperor demands that Rhaenyra’s three children with Daemon be sent to him as wards…including her only girl. And so Aegon III, Viserys II, and Visenya—still young enough for the memories of their true parents to be essentially obliterated—are shipped off to the Continent, never to raise armies or enlist poisoners, never to marry into the illustrious families of Northern England, chess pieces removed from the board. Luke and Rhaena relocate permanently to Scotland where they will one day inherit the throne; Aemond corresponds with them regularly, seeking to establish a rapport that will spare both kingdoms from further bloodshed. Joffrey is raised by King Corlys and Queen Rhaenys. Rhaenyra is banished to an abbey on the irrelevant, dreary, windswept island of Iona off the west coast of Scotland. As long as she commits no treachery, she is permitted to have visitors there. But she may never leave without forfeiting the lives of her children held as perpetual hostages by the Holy Roman Empire.

In the bleak depths of November, your labor pains begin as you are visiting the royal stables, feeding Midnight and Vhagar and Tessarion knobby carrots from the gardens and handfuls of oats. The midwives and physicians are baffled by Aemond’s insistence upon staying with you during the birth. He is similarly baffled by their assumption that he would rather be off somewhere else: hunting, sparring, writing, politicking, gifts he possesses in equal measure. And mercifully, for all that you have suffered in pursuit of motherhood, this particular trial passes as unremarkably as possible. Your labor begins one afternoon and ends the next with the birth of a small yet healthy, living, white-haired son. The midwives let Aemond catch him, cut the umbilical cord, and place him on your chest, a weight you have waited nearly two and a half years to feel.

“You did it, Ivy,” Aemond whispers, kissing your temple with tears in his eye, as if he had no part in it at all. And the rest of your life suddenly lines up in front of you like stars in a constellation: teaching your children to walk, to read, to ride horses, to fight for themselves and their country if the fragile peace the Greens have brokered ever crumbles.

When Daeron comes to see you, you tell him as he cradles the baby in tentative arms: “We’ve named him after Nico.”

“Nicoloso?” Daeron replies, pleased yet rather amused. It is a ludicrous name for an English monarch.

“Nicholas.”

“Ah. Yes. Grandsire won’t hate that quite so much.”

Daeron studies the infant king, his tiny flailing hands, his drowsy yawns, and when Nicholas grips his thumb Daeron laughs for the first time that you can remember since Nico was alive. And you think as you watch them that maybe time is less like a wheel—something that crushes and repeats—and more like a vine that climbs ever-higher. Maybe chronology is less like a prison than an open door.

Tonight, Aemond is cross-legged on the bearskin rug and holding Nicholas, smoothing his downy silver hair in the amber firelight, telling him the same stories he once told you: King Arthur, Beowulf, Robin Hood, the Rollright Stones, Saint George and the slaying of dragons. On the wall hangs the tapestry that Aemond moved from his rooms to the bedchamber you now share. In the trunk at the foot of your bed are his poems, your sword, the letters that Aegon sends from Navarre. You are reading the most recent one now. It is—peculiarly—written in Spanish.

Wife,

I have endeavored to compose this letter in the language of your homeland. (I’ve begun taking lessons with Alonzo. Am I any good yet?)

No, he’s not; he’s made at least six grammatical errors and has confused the word patria (homeland) with patear (to kick).

I offer you my most heartfelt congratulations upon your safe deliverance of a son. I am sure it has brought you and Aemond immeasurable relief. The court here has celebrated with a feast of traditional English food (a crime! have I crossed the sea only to still be tormented by black pudding and salmon pie?) and plenty of dancing. But don’t grow too proud. They still gossip about your hasty second marriage to a man whose own wife was barely cold in the grave. You should be thankful for Rhaenyra’s brazen mating with her loathsome, deranged uncle. Your supposed transgressions seem mild in comparison. No one mourns me much. I suppose that is the mark of a life not properly lived. I’m hoping to remedy that. I really am.

You wrote that the baby looks a lot like me. That made me smile, although I’m not sure why. I’d like to meet him someday, once you have fully recovered and he is old enough to travel. Summers are beautiful here, as you well know. You and Aemond should visit in June. It will be the anniversary of my death. We can celebrate with rosado and lamb.

I had this thought recently that I can’t seem to shake. It feels too insightful to be mine. Sometimes endings are more like beginnings…don’t you think?

Whatever the color of his hair and eyes, I hope Nicholas is more like you than me.

I’ll be dreaming of you. Both of you.

With great affection,

The King in Navarre (and Sunfyre)

You re-fold the letter and place it in your trunk. Then you look to Aemond and the child he considers his own. “Navarre in June?” you say hopefully.

Aemond smiles, warm like embers. He ruby eye reflects the firelight: crimson comets, red stars. “Navarre in June,” he agrees. “It’s been too long already.” And then he touches his lips to Nicholas’ tiny, flawless forehead before laying him in the cradle.

Once, as golden afternoon light poured into the royal stables, Aemond had asked you what brought you happiness here in England. Everything, you would answer now if he asked you again.

Everything.

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