#the band inevitably falls apart? wouldn't it be better to have no relationship to start with? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

omgkalyppso · 1 year

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💘💗 for Almanzor and Peregrine? 🥺

Thank you for the ask! 🥺

💘 What do they love most about their partner(s)? What do their partner(s) love most about them?

I think after Miklan's death a lot of the people in Peregrine's life lost their idealism, hope and the rebellion in their hearts. They became less occupied with social order and more desperate for their next meal. The war didn't help, and when Peregrine lost her spouse, she too fell into jaded pragmatism. The soldiers in her retinue were nearly bandits, held together by coin, pride, opposition to the dukedom, and defense of their homes.

It takes time for her to love Almanzor, even into their relationship. He thinks he's bitter and has his regrets, many stemming from outbursts of frustration. But she finds that what he calls bitter, she would call defensive, that his regrets are far from worst in her mercenary band, and that his outbursts come from an honesty that is both refreshing and worrisome. He has a good heart and a respect for family, and she falls in love with both.

Almanzor respects her ability to lead and her strength (and her relationship to her daughters), but it isn't until he's on the receiving end of her vulnerability that he starts to fall in love. He loves her tenacity; enduring each hard day with the drive for a better tomorrow. He wouldn't wish harder days upon her, but he loves when she invites his aid when challenges reach a head. He loves the values she holds onto, and that she dictates of her mercenary band. He loves the situational patience she has, for him in their relationship, and between actions taken to assert herself among mercenaries and to assert her mercenaries politically.

She doesn't see beauty in all things, but she appreciates (the beauty of) things she holds in esteem obstinately; and I think that's what he loves about her most. But like, narratively? In the big picture? Obviously he wouldn't love that about her if he was diametrically opposed to those things? Idk. They get along, and they roll their eyes at and about one another, but their rough edges fit together far more than they fall apart.

💗 Describe your OC’s partner(s) from their point of view! What do they really think about them?

I'm going to do something Completely Different, because I know you won't mind. Turning a WIP into a simple post. Maybe someday it will be a fic or part of a fic.

2782 unedited words below the cut. Peregrine's dialogue is at times intentionally grammatically wrong. Other grammatical errors are probably unintentional. Lol.

An iron nail clattered on the silver circle below the candle on the wall, signalling the hour. Almanzor had something of a routine for his moonlit hours on slow nights like this, and though the sound was meant to call an end to his writing, he’d not managed more than five words this evening. His mind was elsewhere; in the future, in the past, in the house he currently occupied.

He had been living under Peregrine’s roof for nearly nine months now, and publicly for at least four. It was home, more than anywhere else had ever been, certainly more than the inn and the barracks that had preceded it.

Here his boots still stood in a line, but not with soldiers’ or strangers’, but with little ones. Some nights he would hear Peregrine’s daughters, Apolline and Huguette, whispering either in their room or their mother’s, while he brought his footwear to the rear of the house, up past their bedtime in a way that was safe and dry and warm and quiet … These details only occurred to him because of what he knew of their past, where their family had been on the run.

Apolline was too young to remember, but Huguette sometimes still had moments of distress because of three hard years that had culminated in her father’s death.

She’d brought up how her relationship to Almanzor would have been inevitably different if her father were still alive, once. Conflicted and young, slightly accusatory, and resigned to how that would never be. It had hardly been a conversation, there was little he could say, and less that she wanted to hear. Mostly he had held her as she wept through unearthed grief, and had worried that he’d injured their relationship beyond repair through some inadequacy, but Apolline had been friendlier with him from then on, and even Peregrine had expressed stilted thanks sometime after.

With a careful hand, Almanzor unlatched and popped open the rear door, walking out past the runoff from the roof to the untouched snow at the edge of the property. A bucket, freshly tossed atop the blanket of white waited for his careful retrieval, and he quickly stuffed it into the edge of the shovelled bank to fill it.

Rushing back, a breeze cut through him as if the elements themselves were chiding him for failing to bundle himself appropriately in his eagerness. Yet he restrained the impulse to keep his boots as he entered, and curled his toes in each step of the carpet to speed along the restoration of feeling to the soles of his feet.

Above the fire in the main room of the house an iron pan with a tapered point could be tilted to and from blocking the chimney overhead. With a nearby rag, Almanzor tipped the pan on its hinges until it locked in place, and started preparing water for Peregrine’s nightly tea.

She’d been in the habit of making it until he’d started insisting on performing the task. The first time had been a novelty, as he’d been instructed on where she kept cheesecloths, and how to use a large, flat spoon to scoop snow out onto the cloth in the pan. When the snow had melted, the cloth could be removed for cleaning in the event there had been any debris, and then the water was left to boil both to remove impurities and for the sake of the tea. It was the second time Almanzor had made the tea that he’d noticed how Peregrine had blushed with delight, and this had been when he’d decided it should be part of his routine.

While she could prepare the tea on her own, Almanzor hoped that Peregrine enjoyed having someone make her tea as much as he enjoyed having someone for whom to make tea.

And not just anyone, but each other.

While the water set to boiling, Almanzor puttered around. He returned his boots to the row by the front door, and latched the back one. He washed his hands with a basin that was set out on the counter for this purpose, the water stale and oily from a day’s use, the simple soap laced with fruit rinds and sand.

When the water was ready, Almanzor tipped the pan so the water poured down into a teapot and set it aside to steep.

With still more time until the tea was ready, Almanzor collected two small bread rolls from a cloche on the counter. One he ate immediately, without guilt or compunction, but the other he sliced in half and placed upon the pan over the fire, turning it over until it was firm and golden.

The room smelled of bitter tea and warm bread as Almanzor plucked the roll from the pan with a knife, and he brought both this and the teapot to where he could spread the roll with butter and pour the tea into a deep, clay mug.

The bedroom door was ajar, and Almanzor pressed on it lightly, allowing its squeak to signal his presence, though he imagined his footfalls were less than subtle.

Peregrine was at her own desk, surrounded with letters and clippings of decrees and flyers. She worked hard to stay informed and relevant. She smiled, stiff with stress, over her shoulder as Almanzor placed the tea by the bed and brought the bread to her side.

When Peregrine glanced at Almanzor again he had a hand over his heart and she sighed affectionately. “Sit down. I will free in short order.”

Almanzor hovered regardless, resting a hand on the back of her chair as he leaned in to press a kiss to the top of her head, smiling to himself when she hummed with more appreciation than she’d been able to manage at his entry.

“More trouble with the ports?” he asked casually, reaching for three bulletins on her desk.

“Just a bit,” Peregrine answered simply, frowning at her letter. “They want archers on the bridges,” she held up two fingers to indicate where, on the map in front of her, “to watch the boats that pass beneath.” She rapped her knuckles on the map. “But this has been going on for too long — and with extremely particular casualties.” She rested the flat of her palm upon her paperwork wearily. “If the problem is collusion, I don’t want my people to end up as scapegoats.”

“They’re not paying enough,” Almanzor observed, uncritically.

“Not enough for ransom and compensation, no,” Peregrine agreed, and Almanzor knew the lingo enough to know that by ransom she meant bail or fines.

She turned over her hands, and as her left thumb and fingertip were clean of ink, she ate a bite of the bread Almanzor had brought.

“Are you alerting the margravate?” Almanzor asked, and now he let his worry be plain in his tone as he lifted his hand from the table and took a step back.

“I wouldn’t without consulting with the others … but it will be something to consider.” Peregrine grimaced and shrugged. It would be bad for their reputation among other clients and other mercenary bands if they did.

“The territory is already a mess of veterans and unclaimed traitors,” Peregrine said, as if reading Almanzor’s thoughts. “And missing the refugees that have returned south. It’s only going to complicate further the next few years.”

Almanzor squeezed Peregrine’s shoulder, adrift in the assurance that he could offer without contaminating his sincerity. To his relief, she turned her head to press her cheek to his hand in acknowledgement, and that was all that was needed in the moment. She returned to her missives, and Almanzor moved across the room to pour himself a cup of water from a pitcher that sat on a narrow table.

He swallowed twice, and then nodded to himself and his passing thoughts. He suspected she was working more slowly, as if to give him privacy as he took off his glasses and swept at his eyes, pulled out of his day clothes and into nightwear. Almanzor clasped his hand around the pouch at his neck, normally removed for bed but currently safely beneath his clothing.

When he looked back at Peregrine through the blur of his vision, he couldn’t make out more than the black of her hair, turning away from him to the pages in front of her, the beige of her shirt, making soft wisping noises with her movements, and her thick creamy legs, bare and bent around her seat. Replacing his glasses meant he could pick out the silver in her hair, the gold in her eyes, the wrinkle on her nose as she focused, the loose stitching of her clothing.

He drifted his hand across her shoulders as he moved to the bed, and Peregrine’s writing raced away again, first through her words and then over a tally on a calendar.

Almanzor couldn’t help but think of the day that calendar would need replacing. He hoped that it would be a simple act, unremarkable, but it could easily be because this one was stolen or needed to be burned or abandoned. He would play any part of the myriad possibilities that came to mind if Peregrine asked.

She ate the rest of the bread roll and moved to the table that housed the pitcher Almanzor had used, and a basin. She washed the ink from her hands and collected the tea by the bedside, drinking much of it even before she sat.

“Thank you,” Peregrine whispered, pulling the covers over her crossed legs as she propped against their pile of pillows.

“You’re welcome.”

Almanzor had one leg propped across his opposite knee and leaned in to accommodate Peregrine’s position.

She looked tired, if happy, and everything had gone as well as it could have to be a passably ordinary night.

This is what he had convinced himself he’d wanted to broach this conversation. If he had worked to make the night special then that would have tipped his hand, or— It was hard to articulate, but Almanzor could anticipate that this would have placed pressure on Peregrine, and that she would have assumed he was romanticizing what their lives could be, and not recognized the laborous monotony that made up much of her lifestyle.

“Any strides in your stories you’d like to sound out?” asked Peregrine, turning to accept Almanzor’s arm around her middle as she reached back for her tea.

“No, I… I was distracted,” Almanzor confessed.

She hummed, half inquisition, half understanding, and tilted her head as Almanzor rested his chin upon her shoulder. His free hand, not around her, held aside the pouch on his neck, and he took a breath.

“I have a big question. And I feel it should, to some degree, involve the girls. But it's something we should discuss first.”

As Peregrine turned to look at him, Almanzor let his arm slip away so he could remove the cord from around his neck without disturbing his glasses. From inside he produced a silver ring, with three modest little emeralds; a common man’s engagement ring.

“Al?!” Peregrine hissed.

“Peregrine.” He’d meant to say it to soothe, but he couldn’t hide his amusement, his own surprise. He’d expected her to be embarrassed and shocked, but not … jubilant. Her cheeks were pinched and rounded with failure to suppress her smile, and Almanzor was tempted to abandon the rest of what he’d intended to say to kiss her instead. With restraint, he kissed the side of her forehead and then closed his eyes and spoke plainly, in a way that might hurt another but that Peregrine had always appreciated.

“I don't know whether you'd only want to associate marriage with your late spouse…” Upon opening his eyes, he found no objection forthcoming, and continued, nervously. “This is a request, and an offer, but it isn't an ultimatum; and even if you say you’re not interested in marriage, you can still have my vow. You’ve come to be — more than important to me. Two years ago I didn’t know you and I — I am not that person anymore. I never could be, again. I would always be in your house. I would always be there to mend your armor. To be yours, as you need me. Will you marry me?”

“How long have you been thinking of this?” asked Peregrine, and Almanzor scoffed in delight, that this would be her response and immediate reaction. He made to speak but the fingertips of her right hand found his lips, silencing him. “And don't say any romantic drivel, like, 'Since the moment I met you,' or whatever. I want a serious answer.”

Almanzor tilted his head towards her hand as it curved around his cheek and behind his jaw.

“I know, Poppy. It has been on my mind since about Verdant Rain Moon. Huguette walked us all over town, and I was tired, and worried, and a little irritated, if you recall—”

“I do,” Peregrine said, in admission and to tease. Almanzor averted his gaze momentarily to capitulate. His unfair irritation had been with Peregrine and others in Huguette’s life who might have more appropriately diagnosed the pain the young girl had been under as coming with puberty, and saved them a few hours of distress.

“But I didn't want her to know that,” he clarified, “because I love her and Apolline.” This was easier to say, and easier still for Peregrine to hear. Their exchanges of typical statements of love were still shy and sparring, though the sentiment was often felt, and so Almanzor felt reasonable with his proposal.

“And then you asked me to stay,” Almanzor asserted, and whether or not Peregrine remembered that this had been the first night that he’d stayed openly, with her girls at home and nothing planned, he remembered, “and none of that mattered. Because it had been a labor of love and I knew you were tired too. And you wanted to recharge with me. I imagined days and months and years of doing things for you and the girls, of supporting one another. It would be all I want now. Nothing would make me happier. And I want you to know that. I would do anything for you. That's all this is.”

Peregrine had taken her hand back at some point during his blathering. It rested over her mouth now, still curved in a smile. She swept back her hair and asked him, coy, “You said you think the girls should have some say in this?”

Almanzor rolled his eyes and hid the ring securely in his fist to keep from dropping it, noting how Peregrine’s eyes followed its disappearance. “I don't want to put you at odds with them. I don't want them to feel betrayed by either of us.”

“They adore you,” Peregrine said, her tone implying that this could be chiding in some way, and not, as Almanzor felt, the very crux of his concern. She frowned for just a moment, a flash of something deeper that she might have trusted Almanzor with in a different moment, but she was distracted, and wrapped a hand around his fist. “They are very loving, and Apolline especially, but ... it's different. I can't see them objecting.” Peregrine pressed her thumb in the crook of Almanzor’s hand as he lowered it between them, as if holding his hand and caressing the promise within. “They could find a father on you.”

“To my great surprise,” Almanzor said, with more wonder than self-depreciation. He leaned in to press his forehead to Peregrine’s. “What about you, Poppy? What do you see in me? No wrong answers.”

Her eyes flit up and down, from where she played with his hands and over the proximity of his person. There was no eye contact like this, but Almanzor could feel it, a friendly assessment, an admiration, an indulgence. “A lover. A partner. A friend. A husband.”

“Your husband?” he asked, opening his hand entirely now. Her fingers drifted away, as if surprised, and then she clasped the ring between thumb and forefinger as she rested her hand down upon his.

“My husband,” she confirmed.

Peregrine pulled back as she put on the ring, and Almanzor followed her lead.

“Wild lions couldn't keep me from you,” Peregrine said, blushing deeply, meeting Almanzor’s kiss as he leaned back towards her.

“I love you too,” he said, pulling her half across him.

“With all my heart,” Peregrine said, reaching farther away to dim the lantern. Another kiss found the top of her head in the dark, and a quiet whimper of joy as she settled on his chest.

#long post #oc tag: almanzor #oc tag: peregrine #blaiddyd bastards

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