#the dying gladiator

[castilestateofmind]

"A man without memory is of absolute plasticity. He is recreated at all moments. He cannot look behind himself, nor can he feel a continuity within himself, nor can he preserve his own identity".

- Alain Besançon.

#alain Besançon #europe #tradition #traditionalism #traditional values #nouvelle droite #alain de benoist #new right #european identity #history #liberalism #communism #globalism #great reset #european values #dying gaul #the dying gladiator #european art #roman art #capitoline museums

[losersimonriley]

I’m choking

#john soap mactavish #soap cod #this is so foul I love it #and as for the Hector skin name there seems to be a mythology theme with the skin names there’s one named keres and ghosts is venator #which isn’t mythology based but a type of Roman gladiator but that’s as close a relation I could find #hector. of course. being the beloved Trojan dying at the hand of Achilles #mwiii #mine.png

[7pleiades7]

Gladiateur Mourant/Dying Gladiator by Pierre Julien, (1779)

#dying gladiator #pierre julien #marble #sculpture #neoclassical #neoclassicism #louvre

[softquietsteadylove]

Wow, wonderful Gladiator AU! What about a fight now? Gil fighting Kro? Kro is winning and he's doing cruel things to Gil and people are already celebrating. Thena couldn't bear to watch him getting hurt and she couldn't stand people not about talking about her marriage with Eros but them celebrating every pain Gil was receiving. Kro had already left Gil's unmoving body and is celebrating already, getting all the hype of the arena. Thena's on her tears still believing that he can still do it, she had her faith on him. Gil with his numb body looked at Thena's direction and she SMILED at him and maybe saying 'I love you' to him that he can clearly read on her mouth. That gave him enough power to shot himself back and attack Kro who's already celebrating.

"Champion! Champion!"

The crowd was cheering. Gilgamesh could barely pry his eyes open as the sounds of their roaring celebration intermingled with the blood in his ears. He blinked, half of his view being the dirt of the arena floor, dotted with his blood throughout. The other half was of the stands, and of the people of his own allegiance cheering for his massacre.

"Are you not entertained!" Kro held out his hands, laughing as he celebrated Gil's defeat, and his death that he would surely deliver once he felt properly adulated.

Gil tried to pick himself up, but he had no strength left in him, for once. He could barely even feel his extremities, actually. He did his best to move any part of him at all, but with movement came pain. There was no feeling if he was moving his arms or his legs or his head, just pain, everywhere.

"Is this your Champion?!" Kro cackled, picking Gil up just so he could toss him away again. His body tumbled, like a stone skipping on a river. "This is a ragdoll I shall soon dispose of!"

Gil groaned. At least the rolling and tumbling helped him realise he was indeed awake, and not deceased as of yet. He was indeed in scorching, searing pain, but that also meant that he could still feel most of his body. He tried to pick up his head again.

Thena.

He could see Thena. He blinked, although one of his eyes was slower to shut than the other, most likely from the pummelling. But he could see her--he could see here anywhere, from any distance. She was standing, clutching her hands together in front of her. She was worried.

Oh yeah, she hadn't wanted him to enter this fight. She had told him that she was too worried after the fights he had already fought. She had told him that she feared for his life. She had told him that Kro would kill him, and make her watch.

He tried to pick himself up again, but by all the stars in the sky, it was hard. It felt like he wasn't even trying to lift his own body, but trying to lift something much heavier from outside of his own form.

"Gil."

He couldn't hear it--no, that would be impossible. But looking at her, he could swear he could hear her saying his name, in that voice of hers that was like the rustling of flowers in the wind.

"Gilgamesh, please."

He really could swear he could hear her voice. Maybe he was closer to death than he thought.

"I love you."

He blinked. He could make no mistake. There was a lot happening, and he was quite sure he was closer to death than he had ever been. But he had seen those words on her lips, plain as the sun in her hair.

Kro was still celebrating, revelling in his victory. He hadn't even glanced back at him once since tossing him away. As far as he was concerned, Gil was already dead.

Gilgamesh kept his eyes open as he pushed himself forward. He grunted, knowing his chest would feel tomorrow as if he had let an oxen sleep right on it. But he pushed himself up with his hands, more conscious than ever of his heart hammering in his chest.

He would get to hear her say it to him for real, he was sure of it.

Gil drew his knees up, forcing himself to fight against the weight of gravity until he could sway onto his feet. He panted from the effort. Thena was right, Kro had every intention of killing him.

He turned, dragging himself closer. The crowd was still ignoring him, maybe waiting to see what pathetic attempt he would make when he was so clearly already defeated. He scoffed.

"That is my Champion!" Eros shouted from his throne sitting across the arena from Thena and Ajak's. "You shall be honored when I am leaving with my bride in hand!"

In hand--he talked about Thena the way he would a pheasant caught on a hunt. He looked at her like a slab of meat sliced just for him. Gil did not want to even imagine what the man's thoughts of Thena were like (undoubtedly disgusting).

"I am your new Champion!" Kro shouted for himself, still with his back to Gil. He turned to face the queen and princess, pointing, "I am your new Chamion!"

"No!"

Gil faced Kro head on. He could have attacked the monster from behind. It was probably a better idea, given he didn't seem tired out from their fight at all. But that was not the Gladiator way. And just because this beast had no honour, didn't mean Gil was without it.

"You!" Kro snarled, moving and hoisting Gil up by his chestplate. He shook him, letting his feet dangle. "You yet live?"

"I'm not done yet," Gil growled back at him, still all but gasping for breath.

"Oh, you are," Kro argued with a grin. He raised his fist, ready to deliver a punch that would truly kill him. "I shall make sure, this time."

Gil let out a more even breath. His shaking stilled as he watched Kro raise his fist. He had a habit of moving his head as he did, exposing one length of his neck more than the other.

Gil's hand moved quickly, bringing up the shred of metal that remained of the weapons that Kro had used to break and batter him. He gripped one in each hand, unminding of the pain in his palms from doing so. He crossed them through Kro, over and upwards, slicing across him cleanly.

Kro blinked before his skin split, over his eyes, his cheeks, his throat. It was quick--one minute he was standing, the next he crumbled to the ground, a thing of the past.

Gil stumbled back, breathing hard. He resisted the urge to lie down again and close his eyes. He looked up, first at Eros, who could barely believe what he had witness. He looked over at Thena, across the great distance between them. He smiled.

"We have our Champion!"

#Thenamesh Gladiator AU #I'm so glad people asked for more of this! #I really liked writing it so I'm happy people liked reading it too! #although Gil suffering so much isn't good for my poor old heart! #but don't worry #he has the beautiful princess to nurse him back to health #well that will be Ajak #but Thena is going to be there the whole time #what?--like she's going to leave his side? #she didn't before #and he wasn't dying then #but he's fine! #he is the Champion! #just as he promised

[ragnar0c]

How the EO3 HD steam vrs has been going

#ragna ramblings #TBH i BUILT ALOPE TANK AND HANA WRONG BUT THEY WORK STILL?? #i mean meta classes BUT STILL on switch and ds they were easier to play. (they are also underleveled) #ALOPE AND HANA JUST BE LIKE ⚰⚰ #Meanwhile Aurora and Magnolia.... #However in boss fights the girls (Hana and peepee) excel where the women usually work better against encounters #i think Hana and Alope weren't ever super awesome with encounters unless it was ds where Alope had wild swings #Tank did the heavy lifting with Cloudbuster + charge #BUT I FORGOT AND GOT HIM THE SKILL MAD LATE #SO HANA AND ALOPE HAVE BEEN DYING AND WHEN I DO USE CLOUD BUSTER ITS ALWAYS AFTER THEY DIE #so they stay underleveled #Again tho bosses don't stand a chance against Alope's crushing blow and now 9 smashes.... #Hana has skipped out on her binary skills but is learning meteor so thats fun #Aurora when things and weaknesses work out... 'Legalize nuclear bombs' #Regal radiance does more damage sometimes. probably it'd work best with a zodiac/gladiator or smt so can't depend on it #Aurora is gimmicky tho if a boss isn't weak to an element it can take a while #BUT YEAH IVE BEEN USING AURORA FOR THE ENCOUNTERS A LOTTT MORE THAN HANA #rambled real hard in this one

[g0nta-g0kuhara]

1, 22, and (I know you’ve mentioned them in Aster’s streams but I’m want to hear about them again) 6!

What was your first exposure to Danganronpa?

VERY first was someone I followed on tumblr back in like 2016 occasionally reblogging Kazuichi fan art. Also general awareness of what Monokuma looked like, somehow. First time I actually looked into it myself was the Ultra Despair Boys streams in 2020!!

22. What’s a setting you’d love to see for a Killing Game?

HGDJSKF ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT TRAINGANRONPA? Me and Aster had the idea of a killing game taking place on a train. Maybe each chapter takes place in a stop? and executions happen in whichever the last cart happens to be, and it gets disconnected from the rest of the train afterwards. I just love trains and think this is a very fun idea.

I also really would love a killing game to happen on a college campus? Maybe thats just cause I'm a uni student right now, but university campuses allow for a lot of fun settings and a bit bigger of a campus than what we saw in v3 to walk around. I think this would be fun!

6. Do you have a fan character? Tell us about them!

I have a couple actually!! My two favourites are The Ultimate Dentist and The Ultimate Gladiator, neither of which I actually gave names ghdjksfd.

The ultimate dentist was supposed to be this quiet, creepy type who is very passionate about their line of work and maybe doesn't totally respect personal space. They also wear a mask over their mouth, and their outfit is medical scrubs and a lab coat, along with a case lots of dental tools.

The ultimate gladiator I guess should actually be "li'l ultimate gladiator?" cause he's around 10 years old. His parents were historians who participated in re-enactments and brought him along. He found himself in a "gladiator competition" for kids and just happened to be inherently really good at it, and was scouted as an ultimate. Problem is, he HATES violence and is a very sensitive kid. His outfit was a gladiator's outfit, including a helmet that usually is askew on his head, in his hands, or maybe in one sprite actually properly on.

#I didn't know you watched the streams!! qwq #pluto answers #ask games #MAN I want to draw those ocs again now #fun fact about the gladiator: I made him back when i was playing ch3 of v3 and planned to make him a ch4 death in his hypothetical fangan #and my idea was basically exactly how gonta ended up dying. ''wouldn't it be fucked up'' YEAH. IT WAS.

[alex-gfd]

alright gfd community, who do you think is gonna win the Dota 2 International

#dont be shy #I know everyones dying to talk about Gaiman Gladiators

[lesamis]

"recoiling from self-recognition through the other etc etc" please talk about this more 👀

ohh i'd love to! thank you anon, i'm desperate to unleash these thoughts on someone. sorry if they're a bit long, i unfortunately care deeply about stede and izzy and the Things They Share.

to start with: stede and izzy are obviously extremely different people. that's like, 90% of where their conflict stems from, and i'm not trying to argue that they're in any way on the same journey, so to say, from a narrative point of view. still, i think it's fun to wonder if there isn't some element of inward cringing to their very visceral hatred of one another. these two loathe each other before they're even competing for anything substantial, certainly before it becomes clear that they're both in love with ed. so what else is there about the other person that sets their teeth on edge so much? in part, i think the polarity's off; they're quite similar in a few ways that neither of them likes, or cares to look at too hard.

a few things izzy and stede have in common, some more and some less significant, all of which notably also set them apart from ed and the rest of the crew:

they're neat – ed cares about how he looks, so do all the crew, to some extent, but most of them tend to have some level of artful dishevelment going on. the crew don't really have the means to not look grubby, ed does, but still wants his appearance to seem effortless, but stede and izzy visibly care. stede with his meticulously coordinated wardrobe and outfits matched to occasions, izzy with his perfect posture, his One outfit and its neatly tied cravat and securely placed ring, both of them with not a single hair out of place. looking at izzy, you just sort of know that this man would love a manicure. you'll just never hear him say it.

they're intense, in ways that maybe don't seem immediately similar because their intensity has such different expressions. you can tell from izzy's stance, from his outbursts and his snappiness and bullying how tightly wound he is; with stede, it really tends to show more in his thin skin, his over-eagerness, his bossy little fits with the crew. “is he always this highly strung?” ed asks about stede, and who might that make him think of?

in connection to that last point: they're both so repressed, and so disastrously bad at saying what they want out loud. barely anyone on this show has a tighter lid on their more intimate emotions than stede and izzy do between eps 1 and 9. two events s1 shows us in direct succession are 1. izzy trying to manipulate ed into killing stede, then stabbing stede himself, in order to separate him from ed; and 2. stede contriving an entire treasure hunt in order to get ed to stay with him. these aren't equally deranged responses, izzy clearly takes the cake here, but they're both very elaborate ways of failing to say one and the same thing to ed, which is basically just don't leave me.

to end on a lighter note, they're extra. their entire first meeting is them trying to out-drama each other (and not hating it at all, for a second there). we only see this a few times, but whenever izzy thinks he has the upper hand, he's kind of funny and almost like. playful? in a way that i find mostly comparable to stede when he's planning his fuckery in ep 6. so when the two of them meet in ep 2, they're actually so fun and dynamic together! izzy's silly little flourishes when he shreds stede's shirt, stede's stupid haunted island story, “this isn't over mr bonnet” with that evil little smile. “good, 'cause i kind of enjoyed it”. they both did. i know this

i think especially on izzy's part, there's an element of “i have that same weakness, but i repress/handle/ignore it as any man/pirate should” to his abject loathing of stede, a begrudging of liberties taken that's not entirely without envy. stede cares a lot less, which is where their differences come in again; stede is nowhere near as obsessive, possessive, or angry as izzy. he is, for all his hard-headedness, a lot more well-adjusted, and has no real reason to single this one man out as the bane of his existence. but i still think their few similarities play some role in their (imo endlessly entertaining) relationship – they did, after all, fall for the same complex, difficult, layered and loveable man.

#they're soooo good together and i mean that in a way a roman plebeian means it re: the gladiators mauling each other for his entertainment #i hope s2 puts them on a desert island together. i hope izzy is incapable of dying #our flag means death #asks #anon #ofmd

[anarkhebringer]

Thinking about portrayals where even if they're just friends, calling each other "Gladiator" is the equivalent of a pet name for Arkhe and Raubahn. Even after the Light corruption turns him more fucked up and evil he calls Raubahn that. They both use it to gauge how the other is feeling.

#random ramblings #the one consistent is Arkhe reaching a hand to Raubahn and telling him ''we're not done yet Gladiator'' #even during the peak of his madness he does it even if the difference is coldly saying ''you're not dying here Gladiator'' #Raubahn's eyes light right up hearing him say it #even platonically these two have something highly specific to them going on

[lastofthelovesongs]

The other day I was listening to my playlist of movie scores while I cleaned my room and this one was playing and sounding all doomful and depressing and I was like "is someone dying?" and I checked the song and it was titled Patricide

#so yes someone was dying #it was from gladiator #just sit right back and you'll hear a tale

[thenwothm]

IRON CURTAIN STREAM NEW DYING VICTIMS MINI-ALBUM

Today, true-as-steel Spaniards Iron Curtain stream the entirety of their brand-new mini-album, Metal Gladiator, at heavily trafficked web-portal InvisibleOranges.com. Set for international release on February 24th via Dying Victims Productions, hear Iron Curtain‘s Metal Gladiator in its entirety exclusively HERE. For over 15 years now, Spanish metal inquisition Iron Curtain have been stalwart…

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#dying victims productions #Heavy Metal #Iron curtain #Metal Gladiator #New Album #new mini album #New Wave Of Traditional Heavy Metal #News #NWOTHM #thenwothm #thenwothm.com

[dabiekql]

Recommendation - Call of Duty: Simon "Ghost" Riley Pt. 1

Navigation

-----

Honorifics

Childhood Crushes

The Break In / Ver.2

Frozen Fingertips / Part 2

War God Ghost / Part 2

Gladiator Ghost

Zombie Ghost

Don't Make a Habit of Dying

Simon Struggles with Anger / Part 2

Your First Christmas with Simon is by Far the Worst

Hostage / Part 2

One Thing You Love

Trust

Sweet Dreams, My Love

Love Language

Atrapada

Liability / Part 2

Simon "Ghost" Riley Has a Crush on You

When Reader Bled Through Her Pants

Ghost Comforting Reader

Biker Simon

Single Dad Ghost

Nothing Fucks with My Baby

Around the Clock

Hush

Reader Wearing His Clothes

Digging Gaze

Pillow

Don't Feed Him, He'll Come Back / Part 2 / Part 3

Soft Love with Simon "Ghost" Riley

Lost and Found

Simon Who Cries After Sex Because It's So Intimate and He Just Trusts You So Much

Falling Asleep on His Shoulder

Neighbour Simon

Soft Simon

Tapping Out

We All Have Our Demons

Dog Collar Wrestler Ghost

#cod #call of duty #simon ghost riley #ghost x reader #ghost x y/n #cod ghost #cod simon riley #simon riley x reader #simon riley x y/n #ghost imagines #simon riley imagines

[starry-bi-sky]

sO i got to part two of the daniel jason todd fenton au :)

>:) word count 8k+

So, first, taglist for folks who asked for it: @blep-23 @mikyapixie @isnt-that-grape @randomenglishmajor @illryiannightmare @the-navistar-carol

SECOND: this part needs a trigger/content warning list: - CW Mild Swearing - CW Slight Psychological Horror - ^ CW mild depictions of being haunted by your own ghost/death flag and not realizing it (other people do though) - CW Brief Emetophobia (Danny throws up during a second nightmare) - CW Danny has nightmares of dying - except its of Jason Todd's warehouse death. It's not explicit but it's implied - TW Mild mentions of perceived Blood - TW Depictions of Corpses (first is non-descript, and then second one is slightly more descript but its not anything uh, super descriptive) - TW Mild description of burns (the descriptive part above) - TW Depictions of Panic Attacks (Danny's nightmares)

I mentioned that this au was inspired by a song lyric from Jann's 'Gladiator' here is that line:

I know your addiction's attention, Let's start a show Is it everything and more than you were hoping for? Show us something we ain't never seen before

The day after Danny meets himself, he's downstairs having breakfast in the dining room with the rest of the family, listening idly in on their conversations. Tim Drake is talking about something about Wayne Industries with Mr. Wayne - and wasn't that a startling surprise to learn the first time? - and Damian was slyly trying to feed Ace under the table. Duke Thomas was mid conversation with Cass, much of it audibly one-sided as Cass swaps between ASL and verbal speech.

(Danny comes across her a fair few amount of times in Wayne Manor. The first time was in the library. She hands him a book about planets, smiles, and walks away.)

(He hasn't talked much to Duke Thomas yet, but he plans to - he seems cool. They just haven't had the time to run into each other yet. Danny might just have to corner him, he thinks.)

And finally Dick Grayson on his left, his Dick Grayson, was talking away with the other Dick Grayson - who had stopped by from Bludhaven for the morning for his day off. He was a cop, ew. They were comparing lives, specifically college lives. There wasn’t much to talk about in their childhood, it seems. Danny was quietly listening in. 

(They both gave their Bruces headaches as children, apparently. Climbing the chandeliers and sliding down the staircase banisters. Flips and tricks only a child raised by the circus could do.) 

All-in-all, a very quiet morning, Danny thinks. That is, until the other Dick Grayson turns to him and goes; "I'm sure you've been asked already, but what do your parents do, Mini Jay?"

Danny squints at him, and releases his grip on his spoon to raise a pointed finger. "First off: only my Dick Grayson can call me Jay, you have your own." He says, slightly playful and nodding to Dick - oh that was going to get confusing, fast. He should come up with a nickname for one of them, probably - "And second: you're the second person to ask me that, actually. Jason - er, myself? - asked me yesterday. My parents are ectologists."

Apparently, mentioning that he met himself is a set of magic words, because the whole table stops what they're doing, and Danny's half-sinking back into his chair when all eyes turn to him in varying degrees of surprise. Dick - Richard, he’s going to call him Richard - looks at him with wide eyes and furrowed, confused brows. "You saw Jason?"

(Danny sends Bruce a confused look, but he's not paying attention - looking at everyone else with threaded eyebrows and a faint frown. Well, at least Danny isn't the only one confused by the reaction.)

(What a comfort.) 

"I guess that nickname is a dimensional constant." He mutters under his breath, and straightens up, eyeing the room warily. It... doesn't bode well to him that the Waynes were surprised by his other self's appearance -- was hisself estranged from the family?

...He hopes that doesn't happen in his world. Dick and Bruce may not be his adoptive family, but he likes them quite a lot. He wants to stay in contact with them when they get home.

"Yeah, he was in the library." He says, frowning at Richard Grayson. "He was sitting in my armchair." He supposes it was Jason's armchair first -- god, that was so weird to refer to himself in third person. "We talked for a little bit, and he asked me what my parents did. They're ectologists, by the way."

He turns to Mister Wayne and tilts his head, "Did you really not know that he was here?" He asks, narrowing his eyes. He wouldn't expect Richard to know, he doesn't live here. But Mister Wayne looks just as surprised, perhaps even a little remorseful.

(There’s a pit in his stomach that’s growing bigger.)

(His neck burns with a new pair of eyes, ones that he can’t see.) 

Mr. Wayne looks thoughtful for a moment, and then carefully, he goes; "Jason is rather... independent. He comes and goes from the manor when he feels like it." And the way he speaks sounds like he was choosing his words carefully. Danny suppresses the shiver of unease.

Something was not well in this house. Something unspoken was haunting the air. 

(Jason would know about hauntings, wouldn’t he?) 

He hopes history won't repeat itself, he likes Bruce quite a lot.

"...Alright," he says after a moment of silence, not hiding his wariness as he slowly turns back to Richard. His eyes flick towards Bruce, and then to Ricard. "Anyway, my parents are ectologists, as I've said for the third time now."

Richard, for his effort, takes the topic change easily, and his surprise shifts into one of curiosity - as does everyone else. (Did Danny really not mention what his parents did? Even Dick and Bruce look intrigued.) "That's... new." Richard says lightly, Danny commends him for the way he sounds non-judgmental. "What are ectologists?"

Danny quirks a dry half-smile, and deadpans; "Studiers of all things dead and afterlife."

...And there is that reaction again. A ripple of surprise and intrigue that spreads throughout the room as everyone looks at him, like a bunch of cats perking up their ears. 

On the other side of the table, Damian scoffs quietly, a sound much like the one Jason - the other one - did when Danny told him. Danny's eyes snap over to him in an instant, he stares at him, trying to study him. Why that reaction - again? 

He lets himself frown, briefly, before addressing Richard again. "Everyone just calls them ghost hunters, but the 'official' term is ectologists." He drawls, air-quoting the word 'official' with his fingers as he rolls his eyes. "They've been obsessed with ghosts since college. We even have a lab in the basement, and they keep liquid ectoplasm samples in the fridge."

Danny's been in the lab a handful of times, he and Jazz both have, either to clean it as part of their chores, or to listen to a lecture from their parents for their newest invention. The lab is cool, kinda, but Danny thinks it wouldn't look out of place in any evil lair of a Rogue with a doctorate. 

…He’s glad that the Fentons weren’t stationed in Gotham. They would have blown up a street. He’s surprised they haven’t already. 

"Ectoplasm?" Dick asks, leaning over to catch Danny's eye. Almost by instinct now Danny smiles at him, and then nods.

"Mom and dad say it's the stuff that makes ghosts." He explains, leaning back against his seat, his arms crossing. "It's invisible in its natural state, and it makes up everything. Kinda like the Force from Star Wars, or just, matter in general."

That cracks a few quiet, laugh-like sounds through the dining room. Danny halves a smile again, a swelling of pride in his chest that lingers for a moment. "My parents say that when ectoplasm condenses enough in one area, it can start taking on visible properties," he continues, "they say that ghosts are just the memories and emotions of a dying person or animal being imprinted on a concentration of ectoplasm, and that the ghost itself isn't actually the person or animal, just matter trying to mimic it."

Which Danny guesses makes sense, even if the way they talk about ghosts made him really uncomfortable. His parents insisted that ghosts weren't actually people, but he just couldn't shake the idea that they were. How close to ‘human’ does something get before they actually are? 

Well, no, that wasn’t fair. Superman wasn’t human, and yet everyone treated him like he was. Let him rephrase himself:

How human-like must something get before they are considered as such? Before they’re considered sapient and sentient, and real?  

"That's... quite interesting." Someone says, and Danny turns to see Bruce leaning his elbows against the table and putting his chin on threaded fingers. He looks genuinely engrossed in what Danny's said, and pride once again leaks into his heart. "You mentioned they kept ectoplasm in a liquified state in their... fridge?"

"Oh yeah," Danny says, putting his full attention to Bruce, "it's crazy. They keep little test tube racks in the freezer full of liquid ectoplasm, and it's this - uh - glowing, bright green stuff. It used to be the weirdest thing in the house."

(From his peripherals, Danny notices the room tense up again at his description — and he bites back the urge to slow his talking down and narrow his eyes. Suspicious. Suspicious. The Waynes weren’t scientists - why do they react to something like they are?)

(Nobody knows what ectoplasm is. To the scientific world, it's an unconfirmed theory of a state of matter. Why do the Waynes act like they know what it is?)

(Danny is not stupid. Even if his scientific family makes him feel like it, sometimes.) 

Bruce gives him this half-tilted, confused smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling up. "Used to be?"

Danny opens his mouth, the answer already on the tip of his tongue -- and then he freezes. His jaw clicks shut as he frowns. Should he say what his parents' latest pet project was? Surely, surely, it would be fine? Their inventions never work - and a life-sized portal is just another thing on his parents' crazy ideas list.

His teeth sink into his bottom lip, chewing on the skin as he rolls the answer over in his head. ...Surely, it would be fine. His face turns in hesitance, and his shoulders scrunch and twist to his ears, like he's about to admit something that could get him grounded by his parents.

"They... may, or may not, be building an inter-dimensional portal in the basement?" His voice steadily pitches upward nervously the longer he speaks. By the time he finishes, his voice is close to a squeaky pitch.

There is a horrified silence that follows him, sitting in the air so still-like that Danny could hear the whoosh of a pin drop. He should have expected that, nervously surveying the ranging horrified expressions on the Wayne family's faces. "...I promise they're harmless... to the living." He hesitates, "Mostly."

Bruce stares at him for a long moment. "Mostly?" He repeats, his brows arched high and pinched together. Danny cringes back a little.

"Dad's a little clumsy, that's all." He says, shrugging with a helpless smile. It doesn't help, he thinks, and the silence is strangling. Sitting up, he's a little frantic to add; "I really, really, doubt it's going to work, Bruce. Their inventions never do. Mom and dad built a mini portal in college and it didn't work either!" There's a moment of silence following him, before he quietly adds, wincing, "It- it did hospitalize the guy who was helping them, though."

He only heard about that when he asked his parents about the portal - it was still in production when they picked him up. Jack Fenton claimed it was safe as safe could be - they’d make sure that the ‘college’ instance never happened again.

Bruce - both Bruces actually - looked vaguely ill at the thought. Mister Wayne’s face was blank, his face sunk into his folded hands, and Bruce’s stare burned into Danny, intense like concentrated fire. 

Danny for some reason - either through his panicked urge to make things better, or through temporary insanity - laughs forcibly. "The worst thing that could happen is that the portal could explode, but that never happens."

Next to him, Dick makes a stressed sound. "That's not better, Jay." He forces out. He looks even more horrified.

Danny sucks on his bottom lip for a long beat. Then lets out a breath.

"Yeah, I know." Danny sighs, deep and long while his shoulders slump. He watches the room for a moment, with their various stony-like expressions, and looks back at the very concerned-looking Bruce. "But Bruce, I swear it's fine. Nothing's gonna happen, please don't call the Justice League on my parents. They really are harmless."

Bruce looks conflicted.

"I was being dramatic when I said the portal could explode, it won't." He continues, giving Bruce what Jazz has called his 'cheating puppy eyes'. "My parents are eccentric about their line of work, but they understand lab safety. They'd never do anything to put me and Jazz in danger."

...Actively or on purpose, that is.

He and Bruce stare each other down. One second, two seconds; what feels like thirty seconds pass in silence before Bruce relents, sighing deeply and uncannily dad-like. He drags a hand down his face, and rubs his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. "When we get back to our universe, you are giving me your phone number so you can contact me if anything happens."

Danny beams, nodding hurriedly. "Thank you, Buzz."

Bruce isn't able to hide his smile - small as it was - quickly enough. "You're welcome, Danny."

—-----

Danny has a nightmare that night. He doesn't remember most of it. There's a ticking sound, and high laughter, and there is a thumping heartbeat in his ears. Everything is dark and he is in agonizing pain.

He wakes up in paralyzing terror, a scream lodged in the back of his throat. His head pounds like a concussion and there is a shallowing ache in his ribs, like someone's kicked him, and kicked him, and kicked him until all air has been knocked from his lungs. He can't breathe.

Danny's hands scrabble for his throat, and even though he can hear himself gasping for air, it doesn't feel like he's taking any of it in. There is no relief in the action, no reassurance, and everything is so hot. He kicks at his blankets, his panic growing higher as they tangle around his legs.

He needs-

He needs--

He needs to move. He needs to get up. He needs to free himself. He needs to prove that he's not dying. He feels like he's dying. He feels like he's burning. There are tears swelling in his eyes as he finally gets the blankets off his feet, and he rolls - quite literally - out of bed.

He tries to catch himself, he does. But he doesn't. He hits the floor with a heavy thud and can hardly bring himself to care -- he catches himself on his elbows, and the sting it causes makes him feel worse. The air is knocked out of his chest again. 

The ground is cold though, blessedly cold. And before Danny can realize this, he lifts his head and, disoriented, looks for the door. It's too dark, it's too dark. His head swivels blindly in search of it. He needs to get out, he needs to escape. 

"Bruce." He croaks, still trying to force air down into his lungs. His call comes out raspy, weak, and hot tears blur his vision.

"Dick." He tries instead when a minute passes and no one comes, and he thinks he can finally start breathing. No one comes to find him - his voice is too quiet to wake anyone up. The tears in his eyes bubble and pop, and stream down his face.

He makes a distressed noise. "Jazz?" He whispers, his voice shaky and uneven with an encompassing want for his sister. It's nearly been a month since they got here. He wants Jazz.

No one hears him. He's alone.

God, he doesn't want to be alone. Please don't make him be alone.

Danny eventually gets himself calmed down. But he is curled up on the floor, trembling with the lingering traces of fear from whatever dream had woken up. His fingers dig painfully into his arms, leaving crescent-moon indents by his nails. The contents of the nightmare are already fading further into his mind, slipping out of his hands like water. Like ash.

He feels no need to chase after it.

The back of his shirt is damp with sweat, and in between the trembling he is also shivering, goosebumps lacing up his arms. His eyes have adjusted to the dark, and he stares with wide, crying eyes at the side of his bed. His breath comes out in short, shaky pants.

He doesn't know how long he lays there, trying to comprehend what happened as his mind still hangs onto the edge of the dreamworld. It feels like there is something in the room with him, crawling along the walls.

Danny forces himself to get up, and the sudden standing makes his vision blacken and swim as blood rushes to his head. He stumbles, slightly, and lurches halfway across the room for the light switch.

He squints as the room is drenched in light, chasing away the lingering paranoia in the back of his brain. He is still shaking. His head still hurts. He still looks, wide eyed, around the room for anything out of place.

There is none.

But he still feels unsafe. He needs- he needs to find someone, or go somewhere else. He grabs a firm pillow off the bed, and leaves.

(He ends up in the library alone. He turns on the lights and grabs a book Dick recommended to him, and he curls up tight in his armchair. He ends up falling asleep just as the sun is rising.)

(He doesn't tell anyone about the nightmare.)

-

Progress in getting the three of them back to their home dimension is slow. Dimension Hopping is a rare experience, and what update Bruce gets he relays back to Danny and Dick: they're trying to figure out a way to send them back safely, from the exact time they disappeared, and to find what dimension they're from. It's complicated magic.

It's been three weeks. 

Danny, for one, is getting homesick. He misses Jazz, Sam, and Tucker terribly, and his parents. Bruce and Dick are great, really, and Danny kinda wants to keep in touch with them after they return to their own world, but they aren't replacements of his sister and friends.

His nightmare from a few days ago still haunt his steps. He closes eyes, and that high-pitched laughter and blood-rushed pounding burns itself his ears and fills a level of unseen terror into his heart. Danny thinks that if he was hit with Scarecrow's fear gas, this is what it would feel like.

He tries to avoid falling asleep by reading in his room, by stargazing, but the place sets him on edge; an unsettling reminder of that nightmare. So he goes to the library when it gets too much, he's run into Bruce twice now doing it, and they both do reading.

Danny thinks Bruce can suspect something is up with him, but he doesn't want to tell him about that nightmare. Dick either, for that matter. He just wants to forget it.

They spend afternoons in the gym, they have it mostly to themselves - Tim Drake is at Wayne Industries, Damian Wayne is at school, so is Duke Thompson, and Cassandra Cain is... doing whatever she does during the day. Danny's not totally sure.

Dick in that time, tries showing Danny how to be more flexible. He says he's a fast learner, but Danny knows he's been slacking lately with his lack of sleep.

There isn't much they can do outside of the manor - Bruce and Dick can't go outside because they'll catch the attention of the paparazzi, and they are both significantly younger than their counterparts, and Danny isn't allowed out without a chaperone.

Which has its own unique set of problems because rumors could rapidly start if he's seen with any of the Waynes multiple times. The paparazzi aren’t dumb enough… okay, most — some — of them aren’t dumb enough to make a tabloid claiming there’s a new Wayne kid just because they see the Waynes interacting with one kid, one time. Multiple times however? That’s another story. And, he has the same issue as Bruce and Dick - he's a baby-faced Jason Todd. Who is Bruce Wayne's adoptive son in this world. He could be recognized. 

And how do you explain a tiny Jason Todd to a world where Jason Todd is a full grown man?

So all three of them are... stuck inside, so to speak. And making do with what they can. Danny spends most of his morning and early noon with Dick, and then they both separate after to have time to themselves before dinner.

Bruce is in one of the studies, doing... something. Danny's not sure and he keeps forgetting to ask.

--

Dick likes Danny - Jason? - Jay. Danny said that he can call him Jason, and he doesn't protest to being called Jay. 

Point is: he likes Jay. He's a delightful kid to be around; he's funny, and clever, even if he doesn't realize it himself. And Dick's a little upset that Jay isn't his brother in his world, he would've loved to have him around the manor. He probably would have visited more if he was around.

Something that he and Bruce were still slowly trying to fix...

He likes spending time with him - getting to teach him his acrobatic tricks was not something he expected, but he loves showing Jay how to do them. He thinks this is probably how Bruce felt when he was training Dick how to be Robin, all those years ago.

Speaking of which, Dick was still not over the Robin jacket that Jay wore. The origins of it weren't the best - Jay started wearing it to take back the insult the other kids at his school were throwing at him - but isn't that what part of what being Robin was about? 

Cheesy, he knows. But his point still stands.

He thinks that if he had to pass the Robin title down to anyone, it would be Daniel Jason Todd-Fenton. Or perhaps just Jason Fenton-Todd? Jay doesn’t seem all that attached to the name Danny. 

(“Mom and dad just started calling me it when they picked me up.” Danny — Jay shrugged when Dick asked him about it, the two of them swinging from bar to bar. “I wasn’t tellin’ ‘em my name at the time, so they gave me a new one.”) 

If he had met Jason before the Fentons had, Dick thinks maybe he would have adopted him instead. And what would that future look like? Would he have been able to, when he had to go to college and classes? Would he have been able to keep going out at night, and keep that secret to himself? 

He’ll never know, he supposes. 

“I think that’s it for today.” Dick says, swinging off the jungle gym and landing on the mats with a cat-like thump. Behind him, Jay groans, and drops with a less graceful thud as Dick stretches out his spine. There’s a satisfying pop-pop-pop of his back as he leans back. 

He turns, and sees Jay going for his water bottle. He looks tired — from what, Dick doesn’t know. But there are dark bags under his eyes and a sleep-distracted look on his face. He’s been distracted, and their lessons have been suffering from it. 

Dick wants to know what’s bothering him, but Jay hasn’t said anything, and Dick doesn’t know what he could say to make it better. 

“I can still keep going.” Jason insists, but he tiredly slumps over to grab his water, and straightens up sluggishly. It’s probably not a lie, but anything Dick shows him he doubts that Jay will retain it. “You don’t have to stop.”

“Oh but I want to.” Dick says, walking over to grab his own water. “I’m human too you know—” and Jay snorts at him with a grumbled ‘doubt it’. “—so I also need my breaks.” 

“With the way you can bend I really don’t think so.” Jason mutters, eyeing him up and down. Dick laughs quietly and takes a long sip of his water. “Seriously, circus boy, what do they feed you? Actually - what did they feed myself?”

Dick’s laughter doubles as Jay’s eyes grow wide and wild, his head shaking with spasming arms. “No, seriously! I don’t know if you’ve seen the other me yet, Dick, but he- he’s fucking huge!” He exclaims, and jumps as high as he can as his arms try to make a silhouette above his head. “I- I’m almost as big as Jack Fenton, and we’re not even biologically related! I don’t know where he got that much height to him, ‘cause- ‘cause Willis, that drunk bastard, was never that big!” 

Dick hasn’t seen the elusive other Jason Todd, and he’s been so curious about him. Both he and Bruce have — especially considering that everyone else doesn’t seem to want to tell them about him. He tried stopping his other self to ask about Jason Todd of his world, and his other self just said that he was his little brother and the second robin, and that he did a lot of his own stuff. 

It was a whole bunch of fucking nothing. And he and Bruce were growing suspicious about it. They hadn’t thought of it before because, well, they were busy adjusting to being in a new world and trying to figure out a way back. And then Jason was never really brought up, but neither was Dick Grayson unless Dick asked about it, and he didn’t think to ask about Jason Todd before.

It was all just strange.

But Jay’s exclamation over the size of himself distracts Dick long enough that he forces himself to put the mystery of Jason Todd on the backburner for now. “I’ll- I’ll have to see him for myself, Jaybird.” He says when his laughter subsides, and he straightens up. 

“Seriously,” Jay stresses, and he starts to make his way towards the gym door. “He’s fucking massive, Dick. Built like a brick shithouse.” 

Dick almost starts laughing again, “Where did you even learn that phrase?” 

Jay rolls his shoulders back and grins at him slyly, “I read.” He says, and it’s so clearly not how he learned that word that Dick barks out a laugh. 

They reach the door, and Jay holds the door open as Dick reaches for the light switch. He looks behind him, surveying the room quickly to make sure that there’s nothing they could have left on the floor, before turning off the lights.

Bright green eyes stare at him from the mirror. Right where Jay is standing. 

In an instant, the lights are back on. Dick’s heart has been kickstarted into fifth gear, suddenly and loudly racing in his chest as he darts his head around the room. It was only two seconds, perhaps only even one, but fear has been shot like an adrenaline needle into Dick’s veins. An inhuman, skyrocketing fear alike to Scarecrow’s fear gas. 

What was that?

What was that?

WHAT WAS THAT?  

But there’s nothing there. There’s nothing there. There’s nothing there. There is only Jason where the eyes were. 

From the mirror’s reflection, Jason turns his head — he hadn’t been looking at Dick, he hadn’t been looking at Dick — and stares up at him. There is confusion written on his face as he glances up at Dick, and then at the mirror. He meets his eyes - Jason’s blue, blue, not green, eyes — and Dick forces himself to look away from the mirror and down at Jay.

“What was that for?” Jay asks him, perfectly normal and perfectly confused. 

Dick feels like he just ran a marathon. He’s panting, he doesn’t know why, and he forces himself to sound like he wasn’t as he wets his lips and furrows his brows. “I thought I saw something.” He says, frowning. 

He didn’t think. He did. He did. 

What did he see? 

It was standing where Jay was. Those eyes. Those green-green eyes. It was where Jay was. He forces himself to shake his head, his frown deepening, unsettled. Jason peers around him as if to see what he had, and Dick puts a hand on his chest, stopping him. “It was nothing, let's go.” 

He turns Jay around, and ignores his bewildered look. That lighthearted mood he had earlier has plummeted, replaced with an eerie paranoia as he takes the door from Jason’s hand and flicks the lights back off. 

When he looks over his shoulder at the mirror, there’s nothing there. 

—------------

Danny has another nightmare. It’s the same one. It’s dark again. That high pitched laughter fills his ears. The ticking is louder, louder, louder. It’s counting down, but to what - he can’t see — he can’t see what it’s counting down to. 

There is still so much pain. His head hurts, his body hurts. He has a body now, he can remember he has a body. He’s in so much pain. He looks down at his hands and pooling around his knees is a bloody yellow cape, it’s torn and bloody and his hands are bloody and torn and he’s wearing green gloves. 

He wakes up just before the ticking stops. He doesn’t know how he knows that the ticking stops. 

Danny rolls over and hangs himself sideways off the bed, gasping for air that doesn’t come. He wants to scream again, to shriek with such terror that it sends everyone in the manor running into his room. He doesn’t, he can’t, he has no mouth and he must scream. 

Danny gasps for air instead, and then dry heaves until he throws up onto the floor. His head is spinning with the fadings of a dream-made concussion, again. His chest hurts deeper, more, it’s no longer shallow and as if someone was sitting on his chest, like someone had beat him in the stomach and chest and head.  

He feels like he’s choking. He is, he’s choking on what bile he can’t get out of his throat, and he forces himself to swallow it back down. He’s crying, he realizes, and dragging in air down into his lungs to the point it hurts. 

What is going on? He thinks through the haze in his mind. With what lucidity he has he brings a hand to his head to make sure he’s not bleeding. His palm swipes against sticky skin, and all that comes back is sweat. He’s not bleeding. He feels like he is. 

Make it stop. His inner mind wails as he finally, finally, starts to calm down again. He’s still crying. The tears burn down his cheeks, and he absently sticks out his tongue and licks the ones that gather at his lips away. He wipes at his face again, and when he looks at his hands, all he sees is skin.

He’s not wearing gloves. 

His hands reach for his back, and grasp his sweat-soaked shirt instead. He’s not wearing a cape. It soothes him, just a little bit. But not enough to keep him feeling safe. 

Danny peers over the side of the bed, and through his dark-adjusted eyes he sees the sitting puddle of throw-up on the floor. He cringes, sniffling. He can’t keep that there. He needs to — he needs to clean that up. 

Alfred must be sleeping by now — what time is it? He doesn’t know. He can’t wake him up. Where does Alfred keep the cleaning supplies? 

Danny throws his legs over the side — they’re not broken, he thinks dazedly — why would he think they’re broken? — and he stumbles to the door. He avoids, somehow, the sick.

(He passes by a mirrored vanity on his way to the door. He doesn’t see his reflection staring at him with green-green eyes. He doesn’t see those eyes following him.) 

He runs into Bruce in the hallway. He should have guessed it so. Danny freezes in his tracks, fear shooting up into his throat as Bruce turns towards him, already a smile pulling on the older man’s face. 

It drops immediately when he sees him. It twists down, and his face burrows into concern. “What’s wrong?” He asks, and Bruce is kneeling before him before Danny can blink. He looks worried. Danny must look awful then.

(He does. He looks pale as a ghost, and his face is splotchy red and shiny with tears.) 

Danny blinks at him numbly, trying to get his thoughts in order. Bruce’s hands are on his shoulders, Danny throws his hands over them, squeezing the knuckles and blinking widely. “I had-” he licks his lips, “a- uh, nightmare. And then I threw up.”

Fuck, he feels like a toddler. His eyes burn with embarrassed tears. He’s fucking thirteen. He’s not a baby. But he feels like a little kid going to their parent’s room. Bruce isn’t even his dad. He shouldn’t feel this way. 

But Bruce doesn’t make fun of him, or scold him, and Danny didn’t really expect him to, but the concern that melts over his face as his eyes soften makes him feel all warm and fuzzy anyways. “Okay,” Bruce says, expression softened but no less worried, and stands up. “Okay, we can go find Alfred then.” 

Danny’s lips press together, uneven and wobbling. “Please don’t.” He says before he can stop himself, and his voice cracks. He feels like such a baby. “I can clean it myself. We don’t have to wake him up.” 

“Do you even know where the cleaning supplies are, chum?” Bruce asks, and in the dark hallway he can see him raise an eyebrow. Danny’s lips press tighter together. He doesn’t. But he can find it. 

They wake up Alfred. Dany feels like shit the entire time. 

“I’m sorry.” He croaks as he follows Alfred and Bruce down the hallway with a mop and a bucket. He’s so embarrassed. He’s going to cry again, and he hates it. “I can do it, Mister Pennyworth. Please.” 

“You sound,” Mister Pennyworth starts, his voice soft, “just like young Master Jason when he started living here.” He turns to throw Danny an endeared smile, and Danny thinks it’s supposed to make him feel better. It does, a little bit, and it also makes him feel worse. 

“I am Jason.” He says, and tears spill down his face again. He is Jason. That’s his name. It’s not Danny, it never has been. The time he’s been here has slowly been pointing that out to him. He may be Fenton, but he’s not Danny. 

Alfred gets it all cleaned up, and Bruce sticks with him after he leaves. Danny’s grateful and resentful of it — hasn’t he embarrassed himself enough tonight? 

Bruce leads him to the library, a funny parallel to the first time. “We can ask Mister Wayne —” Bruce’s face scrunches up slightly, and Danny laughs under his breath. At least he’s not the only one still weirded out by it. “— about getting you a new room tomorrow.” 

Danny sniffs dryly, “How’d you know?” He didn’t think it was obvious that he didn’t want to go to sleep in his room. Bruce smiles knowingly at him, sadly, and they both sit down in the lounge chair next to the fireplace. It sits across from Danny’s armchair.

“I know a thing or two about nightmares.” He says softly.

Oh. 

Yeah.

That’s right. His parents. 

He probably had nightmares about that. 

Danny looks away from him, his eyes drop to his hands. His bare, non-bloody hands. He leans into Bruce’s side. “I don’t wanna talk about it.” He mumbles. He doesn’t want to talk about dying. Or what he thought was dying.  

“And you don’t have to.” Bruce says, slinging one arm around him and slumping against the curve of the chair. Danny reluctantly follows his falling, and finds himself trapped between the back of the chair and Bruce’s side. His ear is pressed to Bruce’s heartbeat. “We can just sit here, and talk about something else.” 

Danny blinks at the empty fireplace. “Okay. Tell me about films again.” 

Bruce’s fingers dig gently into his hair, and scratch slowly against his scalp. “Okay, Danny.” 

Danny frowns. “And don’t call me Danny. It’s Jason.” 

He doesn’t look up to see Bruce’s smile, but he can hear it as the man thumbs over the shell of his ear. “Okay, Jason.” 

(Danny falls asleep halfway through Bruce’s telling of the history of the Grey Ghost. Bruce knows by the way his breathing slows into a steady rhythm and his eyes don’t open.) 

(He smiles for mite a moment, before it drops and his eyes turn to the bookshelf in the corner. Standing there is a small black figure, with two burning green eyes.) 

(They stare at each other for a long, long minute, Bruce’s heart rising slowly. The figure tilts its head, and disappears. Bruce doesn’t sleep for the rest of the night.) 

—-------

Danny stares down Bruce. Bruce stares him down back. It’s morning. It’s breakfast. Everyone is at the table eating, and he and Bruce are having a silent staring contest. Danny has to ask Mister Wayne about moving to a new room, he thought he would be able to do so after breakfast. 

(Who was he kidding? He wasn’t going to ask at all - why bother Mister Wayne about something he can get over?) 

(Bruce, apparently, wasn’t having it. With that stupid knowing look on his face.) 

But Bruce wants it to be now. Danny narrows his eyes at him, and Bruce raises an eyebrow back. Dick Grayson, his world, was going to notice soon. He was sitting next to Bruce this morning. That traitor. 

If you don’t do it, I will. Bruce’s face says. Bastard. Danny was going to take away his Jason rights.

Danny’s the first to relent, pressing his lips together into an annoyed, thin line, before he lets out a silent sigh and turns to Mister Wayne. “Mister Wayne?” He says, cringing slightly when Mister Wayne looks up at him - as with most of the room. 

“Yes, Danny?” 

He spares one last look at Bruce, who nods curtly at him, and Danny throws him one last annoyed look before turning back to Mister Wayne. “Would it, uh, be fine if I changed rooms?” He asks. 

Mister Wayne tilts his head, slightly, to the side with a look of interest. “You can, but what brought this up? Is everything okay?”

Fuck. Shit. Fuck. Danny was expecting that question. He glares at Bruce from the corner of his eye. And then smiles shakily at Mister Wayne. “Um, uh, yeah. Everything’s fine— it’s just, it’s stupid. Some, some stupid nightmares keeping me up.” 

Mister Wayne’s brows furrow, and Dick looks concerned from Danny’s peripherals. “It’s not stupid, you can change your room. I’m sorry you’ve been having nightmares.”

He doesn’t even ask what they’re about. Bruce didn’t either — he thinks he would’ve, maybe — but fuck, jeez. Danny laughs uncomfortably, scratching his jaw. “Yeah- um, thanks. It sucks.” He just barely stops himself from blurting out that he was dreaming that he was dying.

That was not a can he wanted to open. They would have questions, he knows they would, and he doesn’t want to think about it. The image of his bloody, torn hands are already seared into his mind. 

Everyone goes back to eating.

(Dick keeps looking up at him with a shadow of a frown on his face, like he’s keeping an eye on him. Quick enough that Danny doesn’t notice it. Bruce does, and watches his son from the corner of his eye.)

(Danny doesn’t see it, but his reflection turns its head. And peers around the back of its chair. Its eye burns green and it stares at Dick. The next time Dick looks up, it catches his eye.)

(He doesn’t straighten up, he forces himself not to react. He just keeps staring at it, his breath locked in his lungs, his limbs filling with a low, buzzing static. He doesn’t know what it is. It’s terrifying him.)

(The reflection doesn’t react to him, but its eyes seem to… glitch. And an eye appears next to it, and another one appears in a line. The pupils slowly turn to look… at Danny.)

(The window begins to crack.)

“JaSON!” Dick suddenly yells, standing up so abruptly that his chair falls back and slams against the ground with an echoing bang. Danny jerks back in surprise, and stares at Dick, who looks at him with equally wide eyes. 

Dick looks like he’s seen a ghost, his face pale as a sheet. He looks ill. He’s panting, there’s a sheen going over his forehead, like he’s just run a mile. But he’s gripping the table like he may just vault over it.

And everyone is looking at them both once again. Bruce looks incredibly concerned. 

“I— what?” Danny says, pushing his back into the chair as far as he could go. 

Dick blinks, and heaves a breath. Like whatever trance he was in was just… snapped out of. His brows furrow, and he moves, suddenly, peering over Danny like he’s trying to look around him. Left, right, and over, and then back again. 

“You—” he pauses, breathing in, “you looked like you were about to disappear.” 

Danny stares at him in disbelief. And he looks behind him, laughing nervously. There’s nothing there but his own reflection in the smooth glass window. “What- what kind of fucking—” he turns back around to look at Dick. “Why would you say that?” 

“There was something in the window.” Dick says immediately, and Danny is immediately rising to his feet and rushing around the table. Nope - nope, nope, fuck that. He’s by him and Bruce in an instant, as the other Waynes stand up and turn to the window as well.

Dick’s arms are around him the moment he’s within reach, tugging him into his side as one hand presses down against his chest, keeping him close. Dick hasn’t taken his eyes off the window, brows furrowed and serious. 

Everyone looks so serious. It’s freaking him out a little bit. 

“What was your nightmare about, Jay?” Dick asks when he finally tears his eyes away from the window and looks down at him. He’s got a protective hold on him, something so similar to Jazz whenever their parents set something on fire upstairs. 

Danny swallows dryly — does he have to say it? Saying it might bring him back to it, and he doesn’t want to go back to it. Twice was enough for him. “I was dying.” He admits anyways, and regrets it immediately when half a dozen heads all snap to look at him. 

In a panic, his mouth runs. “I was- I don’t remember anything- I just, it was dark and I was in pain and-” He presses his lips together, “I— I was in so much pain. There was this laughter—” Laughter. Familiar laughter now that he thinks about it. From the news. Danny’s lips curl downwards, and he whispers to himself, “Joker?”

“Joker?” Dick repeats, his voice hard. When Danny looks up, his face is unrecognizably stern. “You had a dream that the Joker was killing you?” 

“I— no— yes?” Frustration bleeds into his chest, fear pooling up his throat as the nightmare pulls on the edge of his memory. “I don’t fucking know. I didn’t see anything, all I heard was ticking and that stupid laughter. And I was bleeding, and I was wearing this yellow fucking cape, and- and I was dying.” 

He pulls himself away from Dick, his breathing picking up. “I just- I was— there was this ticking sound and I woke up before it stopped, and I- I don’t know why I knew it was about to stop — but I know that when the ticking stops something bad was going to happen— and it was just a nightmare.” 

Danny grits his teeth, and looks back up at Dick, forcing himself to calm down before he works himself into a panic. “It was just a fucking nightmare, Dick.” He says forcibly, and then he marches out of the room to the library. 

His appetite’s been ruined. 

—---------

Danny’s — Jason’s — asleep next to him. Bruce would think it was sweet if it weren’t for the fact that Jason’s been having nightmares about dying of all things. Nightmares that weren’t, he suspects, completely unfounded. 

His other self looked ill in the face as Jason marched out of the room that morning after Dick’s outburst. Outburst. That’s all he can think to call it even if it sounds juvenile. Like it was unfounded as Jason’s nightmare. 

His other self has been hiding something from him. Something about Jason Todd of this world, who he hasn’t seen at all since they arrived, but Danny — Jason — has. He would’ve thought the other Todd was a ghost if his other world’s… children… hadn’t confirmed seeing and knowing him recently. 

(That was something he still hasn’t fully comprehended. Children, plural? He adopts more after Dick? He has a biological son?) 

He’d be interrogating his other self on this if Jason wasn’t asleep next to him. It would be remarkably easy, as they were all sitting in the living room for the afternoon. All his other children were vigilantes, he wouldn’t need to keep pretenses.

But Jason is asleep next to him, and he doesn’t know. So he resolves to staring holes into his other self’s head, who was going through documents. A case, he bets. His other self doesn’t pay him any mind, but Bruce knows he knows that he’s staring at him. 

(“What have you been keeping from me?” He growls the moment Jason is out of the dining room, rising to his feet. The look on his other self meant that he knew something about those nightmares that Bruce didn’t. 

His other self looks at him, “Nothing that concerns your world.” He says, all of the kids looked tense as well, but now they were staring between the both of them like a fight would break out. 

“Bullshit.” Dick snaps before Bruce can speak, he walks around him and points an accusing finger at his other self. “You looked like you saw a ghost when Jaybird said he was dreaming of the Joker killing him. You know something.”

He did not tell them anything.) 

Whatever it was that his other self was hiding, Bruce would find out before they went back to their world. This concerned him, and it concerned Jason’s safety. If he wasn’t safe and his other self knew something about it, Bruce would be furious. 

Jason’s ragged gasp cut through the air like a knife, and Bruce’s gaze snapped down to his face as the boy’s eyes flew open and he jerked sharply. Jason’s hands were latched onto his shirt before Bruce could react, his nails dragging into his skin like he was trying to claw himself up.

It was another nightmare. Jason was clawing at him, trying to sit himself up while jagged, awful sounding gasps filled the air. He wasn’t looking at Bruce, he wasn’t looking at anything, his eyes glazed over like he was still trapped in the nightmare. 

Bruce wrapped his arms around the small boy and pulled them both down onto the ground, ignoring his other children standing up and looking at them until he had Jay in a cradle. 

The boy was still gasping for air, hyperventilating. His hands drop from Bruce’s shirt and scratch at his throat, his arms forming an ‘x’ while he tilts his head back and desperately tries to draw in oxygen. Bruce tilts his head back up with his hand, and leans him against his shoulder. 

“Breathe.” He murmurs, pushing damp black curls out of Jay’s face. It was a poor command - Jason’s eyes were squeezed shut and his face scrunched in pain, Bruce doesn’t think he can even hear him. “You’re safe.” 

“Bruce.” Dick hisses into his ear, and Bruce doesn’t look at him. He grunts to let his son know he heard him. “The mirror.” 

Bruce’s eyes fly up.

There was a floor length mirror sitting in front of the couch. A mirror that Bruce was conveniently, coincidentally, sitting in front of. A mirror that should have been working as all mirrors do. 

A mirror that, instead of showing Bruce his reflection back as he was, showed him in his Batman suit. Jason was in his arms, but in a torn, bloody uniform. A uniform that looked like a Robin suit. Jason - his Jason - wasn’t a Robin. But here he was, dressed as one, his black-yellow cape pooling beneath him and covered in blood. 

The Jason in the mirror, the Robin, wasn’t breathing. His head lolled over Bruce’s arm lifelessly. 

Bruce’s heart skids to a stop, and he looks back down. Jason was still breathing, his hyperventilating was beginning to slow, but he was breathing. The pained crease of his face was softening, even as his brows were still furrowed. 

When Bruce looks back up at the mirror, the reflection has changed. It wasn’t back to normal, Jason was just in a different suit. He was wearing a white hazmat suit now, and he was burned, horribly. The suit was melted to his skin in patches around his body in black, charred splotches, what wasn’t burned was torn, and the skin he could see was cauterized. The only part of him that was bleeding was his head, and it soaked his black hair red. What of his face he could see, there were bright green lightning figures going up his neck, burning the skin around where it glows. 

The mirror cracks down the middle, severing Jason from Bruce. 

He forces himself to look down, terrified to see the reflection a reality right in front of him. But Jason was alive, uninjured, and breathing quietly. Bruce presses two fingers to his throat, and feels a steady pulsepoint thumping against the pads of his fingers.

Jason’s eyes open and blue stares up at him.  

When Bruce looks up at the mirror, the reflection is back to normal.  

#dpxdc #dp x dc #dp x dc crossover #dpxdc crossover #dpdc au #dp x dc au #dpxdc au #dpdc #dpdc crossover #Danny is Jason Todd au #i didn't think of anything beyond the ending point howEVER #this post is totally open for additions if anyone is interested #i love seeing add-ons to posts #anyways EVIL LAUGHTER #THIS IS THE PART I WANTED TO GET TO. PYSCHOLOGICAL HORROR #ANGST #if this was a fic i would have ramped up the horror more #alas tis a ficlet #starry terrorizes the waynes with the fact that jason is going to die in his world and there's nothing they can do about it. #he doesnt know he's going to die. but they do :) #fun fact jazz was going to be here and she was going to be the one to see the ghost #if this was a fic that ending scene would've occurred after more build up of dick and bruce and co seeing the figure following danny around #in the original variant au the waynes dont meet danny until he's already died and is a ghost #and i was gonna have one more jason appearance but couldnt fit one in #merry belated christmas folks #have some angst after two consecutive clone^2 posts of fluff #i tried to picture what danny's body would have looked like before being ghosted and #extremely burned was the first thing that came to mind. his suit is also almost entirely melted. something to kinda resemble his ghost half #but also i couldn't stomach making him completely unrecognizable because he WOULD have been #genuinely think danny's body would have been like. half melted at least

[in1-nutshell]

Hey just had a thought what if all the old Predacon buddy accidentally stumbles upon a relic that reverts them back to their younger body somewhere between when they were still a gladiator like they are mentally and physically reverted back into their younger form and younger predacon buddy is like more cold and distant but is still nice to the younger bots and Optimus

Young Predacon Buddy is not happy with this sudden change.

Especially with the buff Orin Pax they found.

Hope you enjoy!

Bot Buddy the Old Predacon turning back to his prime youth with Wheeljack, Smokescreen, Bulkhead, Ratchet, and Optimus Prime

SFW, Platonic, Cybertronain reader

TFP

The team had recently acquired a new relic from the latest find.

Buddy had stayed in the base with Ratchet and the kids to try and decode the item.

When the team arrived, they placed the relic in one of the med slabs to be scanned later.

Buddy was finishing the decoding when the relic started powering up and had a bad feeling about it glowing.

Glowing things and Buddy didn’t exactly mix well.

A sudden beam came out of the relic and started bouncing around the base.

Everyone ran for cover.

The beam headed straight for Optimus.

Buddy ran and threw themselves at him covering the mech with their beast mode and large wings.

A sudden bright light flashed before dying down.

Buddy and Prime were okay.

But the closer the bots looked at Buddy they realized something was off.

Either that beam polished them and gave them a frame upgrade.

Or…

Something wrong happened.

The Predacon groaned as they got off the Prime shaking their helm.

They stood up straighter than they had ever seen Buddy go normally.

And they stretched their massive wings farther than they had seen before.

Buddy goggling opened and blinked their optics.

Their entire paintjob was new yet scratched.

They also had more decorative markings and more armor plating.

Buddy finally looked around and hissed.

Their plating flared up a bit making themselves look bigger.

More threatening.

They demanded to know where they were before they slit everyone’s throats.

Something was terribly wrong.

Optimus took this moment to call Buddy.

Buddy turned annoyed but it turned to shock and surprised.

They called him Orion.

…

Oh no…

After a bit of explaining and finally decoding the purpose of the relic.

The relic had the ability of returning a bot to a point in their youth along with all their memories from that point in time.

That meant Buddy was only familiar with Optimus and Ratchet.

Everyone else was a stranger to them.

Wheeljack

Buddy gets annoyed at all the asks to spar by many of these ‘Wreckers’.

Especially from the white one, Wheeljack.

A very persistent fellow.

When Buddy finally gave into the challenge, it was over in a couple of seconds. Usually this would have taken 5 minutes tops for Wheeljack with older Buddy.

This strength was scary.

Too quick…

Too brutal…

Too much of everything.

Buddy may have gone a bit too far with some more denting than what they would usually do.

And they weren’t even using most of their strength, and Wheeljack knew that.

Even now at the prime of their youth, they were still holding back.

“Hey Buddy, you wanna spar?”-Wheeljack

“And why would I want to spar with you? Do you not value your own life Wecker? I’d rather not give Ratchet more work in the med bay.”—Buddy

Buddy goes to walk away.

“It’s only sparring, or are you too afraid of the challenge?”--Wheeljack

Buddy stops and slowly looks back at Wheeljack with cold and calculated optics.

“Challenge accepted Wrecker…”--Buddy

Smokescreen

Buddy is softer with the younger members of the team.

Even when they found out about humans, they were soft on them too.

Smokescreen, still being one of the younger bots, got this treatment too.

Buddy did mention before that they had a habit of ‘taking bots under their wing.’

He didn’t think they meant it literally.

Buddy was a bit rougher than usual, but they still cared and looked out for him.

When Smokescreen asked to spar, Buddy hesitated to ask if that was what he really wanted.

Smokescreen said yes.

5 seconds…

5 seconds was what it took to bring him done.

A minute with the phase shifter on.

Buddy constantly gives him tips on footing and arm placement, but he doesn’t really take that into account while his helm is still spinning from the tail whip.

“Hi I’m Smokescreen.”--Smokescreen

Buddy looks at the bot.

Buddy takes their wing over him.

“Mine now.”--Buddy

“What?”--Smokescreen

“Mine.”--Buddy

Bulkhead

Buddy liked Bulkhead.

He was an almost adequate sparring partner.

He could take much more damage than some of the other bots here.

Bulkhead didn’t want to fight Buddy though.

Bulkhead had been the one to cause some heavy dents in Buddy before.

But that was the older, more patient Buddy.

Now he was talking to the les patient, younger Buddy.

Which gave Buddy the wrong message.

They thought that he didn’t want to spar them because they were a predacon.

An animal.

A monster.

Something not worthy of his time.

Buddy defiantly made sure the two of them sparred even adding more denting from their frustrations.

But not too much

They didn’t want to upset Ratchet or Optimus.

“Have you come to spar with me like your friend in the med bay?”--Buddy

“Nah, I don’t wanna hurt you, Buddy.”—Bulkhead

“I almost guarantee you won’t Wrecker.”--Buddy

“Yeah, but I hurt you last time—"--Bulkhead

Buddy clamps their jaw on Bulkhead’s arm and throws him on the far side of the room.

“You calling me weak!? I’LL SHOW YOU WEAK!”--Buddy

Ratchet

It was between Ratchet and Optimus to explain to Buddy what was happening.

They only trusted being around the two.

Both knew it would take a while for Buddy to warm up.

Buddy often dropped off team members who thought it was a good idea to spar with this much younger predacon.

Or the ones who pissed Buddy off.

Buddy does look after Ratchet.

More worried about how many years the bot put on.

Nearing the same age as each other, Buddy worried for their friend’s health often asking him to take naps while they kept watch.

Surprisingly this worked many times while Buddy was in the med bay.

Buddy would always stand guard over their resting friend, growling at anything that would disturb his sleep.

Mainly because Ratchet didn’t want to be physically subdued by a younger Predacon that could take him out in seconds.

“Ratchet.”--Buddy

“Buddy.”--Ratchet

“Have you been sleeping well?”--Buddy

“Why?”--Ratchet

“You look closer to my age than a few cycles ago.”--Ratchet

“I’m old Buddy.”--Ratchet

“Not as old as me.”--Buddy

Optimus Prime

Buddy was extremely surprised to see Optimus and Ratchet the way they are now.

Ratchet for the number of years he took on.

Optimus… well that was self-explanatory.

From small Orion pax to big Optimus Prime there were quite a few changes.

It did warm his spark seeing Buddy so worried for their friends looking like they went a joined the pits.

Buddy for the first few days was Optimus and Ratchet’s shadow.

They constantly watched over the two like a hawk.

Even going as far as growing when one of the team memebers came to close to one of them.

Buddy insisted on sparring with Optimus

With this new form of him, he had a painted target on his back and Buddy was not going to let him go anywhere where he could get hurt.

Bigger framed or not, Buddy has taken down bots far bigger and stronger than him. He needs to get ready.

Optimus had the best time out of the entire team.

Mainly because Buddy focused on training Prime than getting the match over with.

“Orion?! Orion!”--Buddy

Buddy wraps their wings around the much larger Prime before taking a good look at him.

“What is all this? Are you planning on competing in the pits? When did you get so big? You were so small, why, you’re as tall as I am!”--Buddy

“There’s much that needs to be explained old friend.”--Optimus

“You, even sound old. Did Megatronus put you up to this? I swear that mech…”--Buddy

Buddy looks at Ratchet and nearly drops.

“Ratchet?!”--Buddy

Buddy goes up to him with a worried look.

“What happened?! You look almost as old as me? We just saw each other over two cycles ago? WHAT’S HAPPENING?!”--Buddy

#transformers x reader #maccadam #bot buddy #tfp #tfp x reader #tfp x platonic reader #tfp optimus prime #tfp ratchet #tfp wheeljack #tfp bulkhead #tfp smokescreen #tfp ratchet x platonic reader #tfp optimus x platonic reader #tfp wheeljack x platonic reader #tfp bulkhead x platonic reader

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

When The World Is Crashing Down [Chapter 10: Blame Everyone But Me For This Mess]

Series summary: Your family is House Celtigar, one of Rhaenyra’s wealthiest allies. In the aftermath of Rook’s Rest, Aemond unknowingly conscripts you to save his brother’s life. Now you are in the liar of the enemy, but your loyalties are quickly shifting…

Chapter warnings: Language, warfare, violence, serious injury, alcoholism/addiction, references to sexual content (18+), Aemond-induced chaos, death and destruction, witchcraft! 🔮

Series title is a lyrics from: “7 Minutes In Heaven” by Fall Out Boy.

Chapter title is a lyric from: “I’ve Got a Dark Alley and a Bad Idea That Says You Should Shut Your Mouth” by Fall Out Boy.

Word count: 6.2k.

Link to chapter list: HERE.

Taglist (more in comments): @tinykryptonitewerewolf @lauraneedstochill @not-a-glad-gladiator @daenysx @babyblue711 @arcielee @at-a-rax-ia @bhanclegane @jvpit3rs @padfooteyes @marvelescvpe @travelingmypassion @darkenchantress @yeahright0h @poohxlove @trifoliumviridi @bloodyflowerrr @fan-goddess @devynsficrecs @flowerpotmage @thelittleswanao3 @seabasscevans @hiraethrhapsody @libroparaiso @echos-muses @st-eve-barnes @chattylurker @lm-txles @vagharnaur @moonlightfoxx @storiumemporium @insabecs @heliosscribbles @beautifulsweetschaos @namelesslosers @partnerincrime0 @burningcoffeetimetravel-fics @yawneneytiri @marbles-posts @imsolence @maidmerrymint @backyardfolklore @nimaharchive @anxiousdaemon @under-the-aspen-tree @amiraisgoingthruit @dd122004dd @randomdragonfires @jetblack4real @joliettes

Only 3 chapters left! 🥰💜

“Aemond!” he roars into the cerulean midday sky, knowing it is useless, that fate has already spoken.

All his life, fate has proven Criston Cole wrong. He once believed he could not rise above being born to a steward in the Dornish Marches. He once feared he would never be permitted to join the Kingsguard. He once felt in his twisting, self-loathing guts that he would never love any woman but Rhaenyra. And Criston once knew—without reservation, without complexity—that Alicent’s eldest son would never amount to anything worthwhile, could never be courageous, self-sacrificial, competent, a true king. Each time, fate had a different ending in store.

All around him, Green soldiers are dying in what will be known to history as the Butcher’s Ball. They are being slit open, disemboweled, crushed beneath the hooves of warhorses, stabbed and clubbed and speared. The Northmen have scorpions with them as well, with massive bolts to bring down dragons; but they are unnecessary. There are no dragons on the battlefield today.

Criston pictures Aemond as a boy, always so sullen, always so dutiful. He read and he wrote and he sparred in the castle courtyard until the blisters on his palms burst and bled and then turned to callouses, knots of dead-nerved scar tissue that grew over his wounds but never cured them. Criston did not just believe in Aemond’s abilities, his honor; he was certain of these things, he carried them as interminably as the lines in his palms. Criston knew Aemond and Vhagar would be the saviors of the Greens in this war. He knew Aemond would be here.

But he’s not. He’s just not, and there’s nothing I can do to bring him.

Cregan Stark is cutting through the Greens’ men. He is not a soldier, he is a force of nature, he is a thunderstorm or a famine or a rogue wave, he is winter coming to rip the trees bare and bury the weak in frostbitten earth. Arrows are loosed by the Northmen’s archers, lethal hissing rain. One hits Criston in the shoulder of his sword arm. Another pierces him through the small of his back, severing his spinal cord and dropping him to his knees.

Through the fray, Cregan sees the Kingmaker. He wants him, he wants Criston’s blood on his blade, his hands, his face; and what the Warden of the North wants, he is never denied.

Alicent, Criston thinks, and he remembers her lying in bed after giving birth to Aegon. She was a girl, just a girl, pale, sick, in terrible and unspoken pain, never the same in body, forever darker in mind, alone in a room full of tapestries of her husband’s house as the court celebrated her newborn son. She knew she had been used. She knew this was her life and always would be, a wheel that goes around and around and crushes the same bones until they stop mending, until the misery and desperation becomes so much a part of you that you could almost forget it’s there. It’s your shadow, it’s your religion, it’s a sigil or a ring.

I suppose now I have something to live for, Alicent had said, and Criston sat on the edge of the bed took her small, cold hand in his own. He raised her knuckles to his lips and answered: I swear to you that I will always protect him. That I will never let him die.

Here in the Riverlands as Cregan Stark descends upon him, Criston looks up again and sunlight spills over his face, warm and kind and golden; but the sky is still empty.

~~~~~~~~~~

In the gardens of Dragonstone, on a bench carved out of gloom-grey basalt, you pull Aegon’s legs into your lap and roll up his loose cotton trousers to inspect them: scars that have knit shut the gashes bones once cut through, muscle mass that is slowly building itself back again, good circulation, able to carry him if only for short, hard-fought distances. You have bled twice since Aemond flew back to the Riverlands to seize Harrenhal. Here under flinty autumn skies and pine trees that sway in brisk wind that smells like saltwater and metal, you think that perhaps the earth is done giving things. This is the time for harvests, not blooms. This is the season of endings, long nights full of cold stars, firelight, reaping.

“Stop,” Aegon says gently. He’s clutching a thick wool blanket around his shoulders. He’s always cold now, pale and shivering. His silvery hair hangs in untamed waves around his face adored with only a single small braid that you weave for him each day. “I don’t want you to do it.”

No; he only wants the maesters to see his weakness, his suffering. “I like taking care of you. It’s the only thing I’m good at. It’s how we met, remember?”

“Oh, I remember.” Now he smiles. “I have no idea what you saw in me.”

“An exemplary cock, mostly. Better than any in my medical books.”

Aegon laughs, a sound you rarely get to hear anymore. Then he is grave again. His hair blows in the gales that roll in off the ocean; his eyes, a tumultuous blue like waves in a storm, are ringed by shadows. “Angel, listen to me.” He places a hand over yours where it rest on a knot of scar tissue just below his kneecap. “If I don’t…” He pauses, and you think as you look at him: He’s nothing but scars now, he’s nothing but pain that is calloused over but never forgotten. “If I’m not here when the war is over, I want you to know that you’ll still be protected. Aemond knows. Larys knows. You are to be provided for. You will reside only where and with whom you choose to.”

“Why wouldn’t you be here?”

Aegon shrugs, avoiding your gaze. “We should be realistic.”

“You’ll be here. You have to be.”

Aegon stares into a thicket of rose bushes, blood-red petals and twisted thorns. And he says faintly, like something a strong wind could carry away: “I’ll try.”

“We’re winning, Aemond and Criston and Daeron and the Greens’ armies. They might have won already and we’re just waiting to hear the words. Aemond will end the war and then we’ll all be together again in King’s Landing.”

Aegon gives you a wry smirk as you roll back down the legs of his trousers, concealing his roadmap of harm. “A man like Cregan Stark would not be such a disappointment. He would be able to ride into battle. He would not have compelled you to bloody your own hands. He would not be feeble and deformed.”

“It can’t be anyone but you.”

Overhead, half-shrouded in mist, there is an immense reptilian shadow and a rumbling like the earth splitting in two, cracked and forced apart by eruptions of steam, lava, trapped toxic heat. Gingerly, Aegon returns his boots to the earth, stony and barren. He winces and groans before he can bite it back to hide it from you.

“I’ll go,” you tell Aegon, skimming your fingers through his hair and touching your lips to his temple. His wave-blue eyes are watery, grateful. “Stay here. I’ll bring him to you.”

You hurry through corridors and down spiral staircases, watched by dragons of iron and stone with fire burning in their mouths. And of course, there is more than one reason why you want to greet Aemond by yourself. You don’t know what he will say to you; you don’t know if he’s still angry. But when he strides through the entranceway of the castle to meet you—his hair in one long white-blond braid, his black coat billowing around him in the sharp wind—he is not alone.

There is a woman with him.

“…Aemond?” you say, staring at her: hair like onyx, skin like snow. She grins at you beneath eyes that are pools of ink, dark and glassy and with hardly any whites. You do not believe she intends to unnerve you; still, there is a blade-cold shudder that tumbles down the rungs of your spine.

Aemond replies with pride that is hushed, pure: “This is my wife.”

“Your…?” You cannot look away from her. Her gown is black lace with long, dragging sleeves and a train that curls around her like a dragon’s tail. You can see glimpses of her starlight skin through the fabric, her forearms, her waist, her thigh. Isn’t she cold? You are wearing heavy velvet, pine green like Aegon’s banner, and still the impending winter needles at you. “Who…?”

Lord Larys Strong arrives, his cane tapping on the stone floor. When he sees the woman, he jolts to a halt and gawks. “Alys?”

“Hello, brother.” Her voice is deep, smooth, melodic. She speaks the language of ocean currents, roots in dark fertile soil, the revolving of the stars.

You turn to Larys. “Who is this?”

“A bastard daughter of my father,” Larys answers, slow and disbelieving. “Alys Rivers. She…she was at Harrenhal, last I saw her…years ago…”

“And now she is here with me,” Aemond says. “She is precisely where she belongs.”

Silence fills the room, the world, the space that has opened up between you and Aemond. Wife? Bastard? Harrenhal? At last, you manage shakily: “Aegon is in the gardens. He’s waiting for you.”

“Good,” Aemond says. He wears something you have never seen on him before: not just pride but serenity, consolation, contentment. “There is much to discuss.”

As slate-grey wind whistles through rose thorns and cranberry bushes, you and Larys step out into the gardens with your uninvited guests. Aegon’s eyes snag on Alys, widen, and then dart to you. He mouths: Who the fuck is that? You shrug, bewildered.

Aemond says: “Allow me to present my wife, Lady Alys Rivers of Harrenhal.”

“Your wife?!” Aegon exclaims, like he couldn’t possible have heard correctly. “Your wife?!”

“Yes.” Aemond’s arm snakes around Alys’ waist. She folds into him, palm to his chest, lips to his throat, something creeping and boneless like ivy or mist or smoke. “You’ve had two now. I’ve only just found mine.”

“Rivers,” Aegon echoes incredulously. “A bastard from the Riverlands.”

Larys notes: “One of my father’s natural children.”

“A Strong bastard?!” Aegon cackles and looks to Larys. “Where is Daeron presently? Can he be summoned here? He should see this.”

“It is no jest, Your Grace,” Aemond says calmly. “It is a true pairing of souls.”

“And you were not at liberty to give yours. You have to marry Borros Baratheon’s daughter. That was the deal, that’s why he has pledged his army to us.”

“Daeron can do it.”

“Daeron won’t be old enough to marry for years, and that’s not the point! This is a slight, an egregious slight, to reject a Baratheon noblewoman in favor of a…a…what was she, a serving wench? A wetnurse? What happened to your pathological obsession with self-righteous duty? And why aren’t you and Vhagar with Criston?! Is this what you’ve been doing for the past six weeks while I was trapped here, suffering and useless? You’ve been hiding in the crumbling towers of Harrenhal with your so-called wife? What was so fucking crucial that it kept you from the battlefield—?!”

“She carries my son,” Aemond says.

A gasp spills from you before you can silence it; Lord Larys covers his mouth with one hand. Aegon stares numbly at his brother, not warring with envy or spite but raw astonishment. This is an asset to the Greens, it is a detriment, it lifts a burden from his shoulders, it imperils all of you. “You have no way of knowing what it is yet.”

“I know. We know.”

“And why have you flown to Dragonstone?” Aegon demands. “To torment me with your disobedience, to illustrate so vividly how all that relentless, calculated striving has finally cracked your brain in half—?!”

“No.” Aemond glances to you. “Something has happened. And I wanted to be here in person to deliver the news and…express my condolences.”

“Condolences?” you say, fearful, alarmed.

“Lord Larys will not have received word yet,” Aemond continues. “It has only just transpired. But Alys has seen it.”

Aegon shakes his head. He doesn’t understand. “Seen it…?”

“She sees things. The future, the past. Not every detail, but some of them. She’s seen Mother in the Red Keep, a prisoner but still alive. She’s seen Jaehaera safe and well at Storm’s End. The child has a protector, though Alys isn’t sure who.”

“She’s a witch?” Aegon says flatly. “This bastard Strong woman that you have taken to wife is, among all her other deficiencies, a witch?”

And Alys answers in a voice like the night sky, dark but threaded with glimmers of stars, moonshine, comets: “I am a woman who lives between two worlds. Your Angel is much the same, I think.”

Aegon blinks at her, not entranced or awed but fighting the instinct to flinch away.

“There have been riots in King’s Landing,” Aemond says.

“Yes, obviously. Everyone is aware of that. I think the Wildlings north of the Wall have heard.”

Aemond ignores the jab. “The Master of Coin, Lord Bartimos Celtigar, was travelling through the city in a carriage when…” He trails off, uneasy. He glances at you again. His sole remaining eye—river-blue and without any malice—shimmers with grim compassion.

“What?” you say. “What happened?”

Aemond speaks to Aegon in words you cannot comprehend, swift ageless High Valyrian.

Aegon sighs testily. “Slower. Enunciate.”

Aemond tries again. Aegon repeats a certain word, unable to decipher it. Aemond offers him several others, what you can only assume are synonyms.

Aegon’s face goes even paler, the last of the blood draining out of his cheeks. Then he reaches out a hand to you. “Come here,” he beckons softly.

“Why?”

“Angel, come here now.”

“They killed him, didn’t they?” you ask Aemond. Your voice is trembling, icy, choked. He was an architect of Rhaenyra’s war effort, but he was your father first. He was a beast with blood on his hands, but now you are too. “The common people hate Rhaenyra and they hate my family. So they murdered him.”

Alys says: “They did not just murder him.” And she is not taunting you, though she grins like she might be; she has lost pieces of what it means to be human. She is no longer fluent in anything as trite as sympathy or decorum. Her obsidian eyes gleam, polished, glowing. Her long black hair blows in the wind. There are raven feathers in it, you notice now, and twigs, pine needles, earth, sand, ashes. “They bound and tortured him, they sliced off parts of him to keep as relics, they rode on horseback through the streets swinging his severed head and cock as they celebrated an end to all taxes—”

“Will you shut the fuck up?!” Aegon shouts at her. “Angel, please, come here.”

“Your brother was there too,” Aemond says solemnly.

Yes, of course he would be. He was always Father’s favorite. “Clement,” you whimper, pressing a palm to your chest. Your lungs burn as they drink down chill autumn air that cuts like a blade.

“No,” Aemond says. “The other one.”

“What?” No. No, that can’t be true.

“Not Clement,” Aemond insists. “It was the other brother. The burned man.”

No. No no no. I can’t believe it, I won’t believe it.

“Angel,” Aegon pleads, still reaching for you.

“Everett,” Alys says, dreamy, not knowing how cruel it feels, like splinters of glass beneath your skin instead of arteries and muscle, like shattered bones. “He was not difficult for them to catch. He could not run.”

Your words escape in a hoarse whisper. “I don’t believe you.”

Alys offers her hands. They are long, lithe, white like a skeleton’s. “Would you like to see?”

“No.”

“I can show you. Then you will trust what I say.”

“Alys, my love,” Aemond warns.

“No, you’re a liar,” you snarl at her. “You’re not a witch, you’re not some prophet, you’re just a liar and I don’t believe you—!”

And before you can flee she’s crossed the space between you, she’s gripped your wrist with those slender claw-like fingers, she’s pouring her magic into you like poison down a prisoner’s throat. The vision surges into your skull and fills it, sight and sound and scent: Everett screaming as he is dragged from the carriage, the hoard ripping at his clothes and his eyes, dull kitchen knives pulled from pockets, the coppery ether of blood in the air. You can feel the feverish heat of the crowd. You can feel their boiling-over animal rage. You can feel everything, but you can’t stop it.

Beyond the grisly mirage, you can hear yourself shrieking, muffled and distant; and you can hear someone else bellowing for Alys to let you go. Her hand is yanked off of your wrist and you are abruptly back in the gardens of Dragonstone surrounded by indomitable flora that warps and tangles and endures. You are kneeling on the cobblestones, tears flooding from your eyes. Aegon is on the ground with you, his arms circling around your waist. He is calling Alys a bitch, a monster, a demon. He is threatening to feed her to his dragon.

“Forgive me,” Alys says to you, peering down with a vague sort of regret etching lines into her brow. “I did not intend to cause any distress. I only meant to help you understand.”

Aegon seethes at Aemond: “Take your witch back to Harrenhal.”

“No,” you protest; and Aegon studies you, puzzled, as you gaze up at Alys, this half-human phantom that dwells between realms, something like a dark mirror image of an angel. “What else have you seen?” Tell me Aegon lives. Tell me the Greens win and we have a chance at a better world one day. Tell me this was all worth it.

“She has seen Daemon and Caraxes meeting me at the Gods Eye,” Aemond says. “She has seen me taking flight to join them in battle.”

Aegon is stunned. “When?”

“Soon. Three days from now.”

You sob, thinking of Everett; and Autumn too, wherever she is, who will reappear when the war is over searching for home but forever unable to find it. Aegon holds you and you pull yourself into him, arms slung around his neck. His silver hair brushes your face; his scarred right cheek is rough against yours. When you breathe in violent hitches, you inhale rose oil and wine and salt and warmth and misery, you taste the war that built him and now has returned to claim the debt.

“It’s Rhaenyra’s fault,” Aegon whispers, fierce and merciless. “We will kill Daemon and Cregan Stark. We will retake King’s Landing and capture Rhaenyra. And I swear to you that she will burn.”

Aemond is saying: “Do we have permission to stay the night or not? We’ve traveled a long way. My wife is tired, and so is Vhagar. Another flight so soon would tax her.”

“You can swim,” Aegon pitches back.

Lord Larys Strong—ever servile, ever composed—clears his throat, both hands resting on the handle of his cane. “Would anyone care for some soft-shelled crabs?”

~~~~~~~~~~

Mist hangs heavy over the castle the next morning, a cool metallic grey like steel; the sun is muted, only a wisp of itself, a memory that is swiftly fading. Alys Rivers stands in the surf fetching seashells and stones that she plinks into a basket. Locks of her long, wild hair dip into the roiling water and emerge sopping and heavy, sticking to her ink-black gown. Aegon is curled up with Sunfyre at the edge of the beach. The dragon breathes with rattling, labored heaves and Aegon pets his golden face, wishing the beast’s wings to knit themselves back together and his own legs to be strong again, murmuring to Sunfyre in some clumsy patchwork of High Valyrian and the Common Tongue to assure him that he’s served his king well.

You and Aemond walk down the windswept beach together, your boots sinking in wet sand and leaving imprints like bruises on flesh. Your gown is a deep, vibrant red like the sigil of the newly decimated House Celtigar; Aemond’s hair is wavy and damp and blows loose in the breeze. You are reminded of the night you shared with him six weeks ago, though you don’t want to be. Neither of you have mentioned that indiscretion. You believe you have silently agreed to forget it. You ask the prince regent: “How many people do you think you’ve burned in the Riverlands?”

“Why do you care? They’re not you. They’re not me.”

“Perhaps each life we take robs something from us as well. It carves a piece of the soul away and leaves it less than it was before.”

Aemond raises his eyebrow, intrigued.

“I am less than I once was,” you explain. “Acts of love feel like violence, violence is mistaken for love. Things that horrified me a year ago are now what give me solace when I dream of them. Vengeance, slaughter, fire and blood. Aegon grows more bitter, more ruthless. And so do you.”

“We will have the luxury of reforming ourselves when the war is won and Aegon is the undisputed king of the Seven Kingdoms.”

“If there’s any part of us that remembers who we were supposed to be.”

“I remember exactly who you were.” Aemond grins. “Fawning over Aegon, weaving braids into his hair. Scurrying around with your bandages and vinegar and honey. Always seeking to take his pain away. Always waging your own little war against the agony of mankind.”

“That feels like a different person,” you say, peering out over the ocean.

“We will build monuments to those we’ve lost,” Aemond promises. “Jaehaerys, Maelor, Otto. Your brother and my sister. You say you dream of fire and blood? I often find myself dreaming of Helaena.”

You turn to him, startled. And you recall the warnings her ghost gave Aegon before Baela and Moondancer arrived on Dragonstone: Don’t fall, don’t fall. “Does she say anything?”

“She keeps telling me I’ll lose my left eye.” Aemond smiles wistfully. “And I answer: Helaena, that’s happened already. But when I try to comfort her, when I try to embrace her, she turns away from me and says it’s too late. That I’ve ruined myself.” He walks with his hands linked behind his back, his face thoughtful but not brooding. “I still miss her,” he says. “And I still feel responsible. But things are easier now.”

You follow his eyeline to where Alys is plucking a starfish from the frothing waves and placing it in her basket. And doesn’t it make some strange bit of sense that Aemond’s match would be someone rare, bizarre, gifted in ways that are in equal parts mesmerizing and fearsome? “I’m glad you found someone who eases your burdens.”

“She has suffered tremendously. She knows what it is to be unloved and overlooked. She had to reinvent herself, just like I did. She had to shed her skin and step into a new one that she stitched together herself.”

“Perpetual Resurrection,” you say softly.

“Perpetual Resurrection,” Aemond agrees.

Now Alys is trekking up the beach to join you, her soaked hair whipping in the wind and her basket slung over one arm. From where he sits with Sunfyre, Aegon watches her with narrowed, disapproving eyes. “This belongs to the king,” Alys says to you, opening her hand. In her palm rests the ring of gold wings and jade eyes. “You should return it to him. He does not like me.”

You gasp and take the ring that you last saw before Aegon fell from the sky and shattered his legs, his spirit. “How did you find this?”

“It spoke to me. I spoke to it.” She smiles, more like a leer, though she does not mean it to be. Her eyes—onyx, jet, black moonstone—are bright with amusement. “See? You do not understand. Sometimes it is best not to ask.”

You slip the ring onto one of your fingers for safekeeping until you deliver it to Aegon. From the stone staircase that leads up to the castle’s main entrance, Larys waves Aemond over to him. Aemond kisses the woman he calls his wife farewell—a deep, burning kiss—and then departs. You say to Alys: “How did you become…like this?”

“I surrendered to it. Anyone can, if your life is hell and you are willing to burn it down to the foundations. You go deep into the swamp and then it goes into you. It grows through your skin and into your veins. It tangles up with you, vines climbing your ribcage and spine like ivy on a trellis. It changes you. It makes you greater than you were before. The victim becomes the victor. The weak turn watchful and wise.” She is gazing at where Aemond stands with Larys, exchanging theories and plots. Aemond shakes his head at something Larys says. “I always knew he would find me. The man whose fractured pieces fit with mine. Yet each time I thought I glimpsed him only to realize he wasn’t the one, I would think: How long must I wait? I have buried so many children. Will I ever have more? Will he come to me before it is too late? Is it too late already? But no, he flew to Harrenhal just as my hopes were giving out like a dry well. And Aemond was worth every second, minute, month, year. He was worth the beatings and the contempt, the rapes and the blood. He was worth all of it.”

Alys reaches out to touch your cheek and you recoil; but she is not giving you a revelation this time. She is merely tucking a loose strand of hair behind your ear with a fond, maternal smile. There are mottled plumes of violet and indigo on the side of her throat, you notice only now. Alys catches you staring.

“Aemond can be rough, domineering,” she says with a sly smirk. “You know how he is.”

You know how he is. You know how he is. Horror strikes you like lightning; you imagine what other visions she has swimming in her changed blood. “It was a mistake. Aegon must never learn of it.”

“Of course not. That would kill him.” And you are gutted by a blade of cool serrated treason. Alys does not appear to be aware of it. “If I can ever be of service, please do not hesitate to summon me. I can appear and speak to you briefly, perhaps for five or ten minutes. I will be like a mirage, a ghost. Find a closed door and write my name upon it in blood. Then knock three times and open the door. I will be there.”

“A door? Which door?”

“Any door.”

You contemplate her. “Why would you believe that you owe me loyalty?”

“Because of Aemond,” Alys says simply, without any trace of resentment. “You mean something to him. So you mean something to me.”

He doesn’t crave me anymore. He has his own prize now. “I think you’re mistaken.”

“I never am.” Then Alys glides off to rejoin her husband.

Hours later as you are helping Aegon into bed—he must be carried up and down the castle steps by his guards in a litter, something he considers mortifying—you weave a new braid for him and then pour him a cup of milk of the poppy when his glazed eyes keep listing to the glass bottle of pearlescent relief, deadened nerves, liquid dreams. You crawl into bed beside him, curl up against his scarred chest, listen to the slowing thud of his heartbeat as his arms enfold you and draw you in ever-closer. His dragon ring glints on his hand, returned to its rightful place.

“Your legs?” you ask, kissing the gnarled scar tissue that has grown over his collarbones like climbing roses, like ivy. He can’t really feel your touch there, that’s not why you do it. You do it to show that you aren’t repulsed by his wounds and could never be, could never think of any part of him as something less than wondrous.

“That’s most of it,” Aegon murmurs drowsily. “I’ve started getting this ache in my back too. It won’t go away.”

“What?” You bolt upright in bed. “Show me where.”

He gestures: the curve of his spine, just above his hips. Panicked, you begin pressing lightly over where his kidneys are.

“Here? Aegon? Does that hurt?”

But now he’s realized how frantic you are, how upset. “Oh, no, never mind,” he says, clutching his pillow and feigning being too tired to speak on the subject for even a moment longer. He yawns dramatically. “It’s just a sprained muscle, I think. You know I’m always crawling around now like some kind of vermin. It’s nothing serious. It will heal in time.”

“Aegon—”

“I’m alright.” He grabs your hand and pulls you back down to him, buries his face in your hair, nuzzles and sighs contently as he whispers: “Shh. I’m alright. Stay, stay.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“You left him!” you hear Aegon yelling from his rooms, and you drop the book you had been reading in the castle library, an anthology of illnesses of the body, the mind, the soul. You sprint through the shadowy corridors towards the noise, the hem of your sapphire gown fluttering around your ankles. You are always dressed in jewel tones these days. You are anything but neutral.

In Aegon’s bedchamber, Larys has pressed himself to one stone wall like he wishes to disappear. Alys is observing with her strange, impassive, void-dark eyes. Aemond is being berated. He does not appear resentful or defiant; no, he is paralyzed. He is haunted, he is damned.

“You left him!” Aegon screams again, and hurls a full wine cup that strikes Aemond in the chest, spewing red through the air like blood spurting from slit veins. The king is standing, but with great effort; he is scrabbling through the drawers of his bedside table for things to throw at his brother. Yet the glass bottle of milk of the poppy remains untouched. “You abandoned him, you betrayed him, you fucking murdered him!”

“Aegon, what’s going on—?!”

“Almost a week ago, Cregan Stark’s army met Criston’s in the Riverlands,” he tells you. He is panting, red-faced, furious as he recounts Lord Larys Strong’s words, the news the Master of Whisperers only now received from one of his innumerable informants.

You stare at Aemond, horrified, already knowing what this means. “And Aemond wasn’t there.”

“He was at Harrenhal!” Aegon roars, tossing one of your medical books at Aemond, a volume on herbology. It strikes the prince in the nose, and blood gushes from his nostrils; ruby droplets freckle his hair. Aemond makes no attempt to defend himself. He is in shock, he is mourning. “He was fucking his witch while our men were being butchered!”

“Criston, he’s…he’s…?”

“He was slain in battle,” Larys informs you quietly.

Aegon staggers to his brother, shoves him roughly, receives no retaliation. “He was the closest thing you had to a father, he worshiped you, he loved you, and you left him to fend for himself after I told you over and over again that you and Vhagar needed to stay with him, and now he’s gone!” There are tears on Aegon’s face, crystalline tracks that bleed down his cheeks and jaw and throat. “You killed him, you killed him!”

“The Stark men?” you ask Larys, not wanting to know but needing to.

“Moderate losses. Now headed south towards Daeron and the Hightower army.”

“You fucking traitor,” Aegon hisses, sobbing, beating his palms against Aemond’s chest again. “Your whole life all you’ve wanted was responsibility and the second someone gives it to you, you throw it away! Why can’t I be the one with a body that works?! Why can’t my dragon be whole again?!”

And at last Aemond finds his voice. It is brittle and almost too hushed to hear. “I’ll make this right. When I defeat Daemon and Caraxes at the Gods Eye, it will be over.”

“It’s already over for Criston!” Aegon explodes. “It’s over for Helaena and Jaehaerys and Maelor, it’s over for Otto and Everett, it’s over for Sunfyre, we keep losing people and it’s all your fault! You started this war and you’re too much of a goddamn coward to end it!”

“He will end it,” Alys says in that deep placid voice like dusk, dawn, midnight.

“Don’t try that bullshit with me! I don’t want to hear about your delusions, I want him to do his goddamn job! I want him to act like the hero he’s been begging to be seen as since he was five years old! You know why no one wants to write books about him or carve his face into statues? Because he doesn’t fucking deserve it!”

“I’m sorry,” Aemond whispers, his mouth trembling.

“You should be!” Aegon hemorrhages, and then collapses to the floor, moaning with his face in his hands.

You go to him, try to soothe him, grab the wine cup from the floor and fill it with milk of the poppy, tilt it against Aegon’s lips. He gulps the numbness down with helpless, hated need. Aemond and Alys flee for the doorway.

Aegon says, suddenly more calm: “Aemond, wait.”

The prince regent stills and turns back, listening. Aegon, with great difficulty, begins to say something in High Valyrian. Aemond cuts him off. “No, that won’t happen—”

“Please,” Aegon rasps. “Listen to me.” Then he continues. And as he speaks, Aemond’s eye fills with tears, a glistening like ice over lakes in the winter, like gemstones in a crown. You look between them, searching for any clues you can read.

“I understand,” Aemond says at last.

“Good. Now get out.”

Aemond wipes his face with his sleeve and then disappears from the room. You tell Aegon as you rise to your feet: “I’ll be right back.”

Aemond is moving quickly; you don’t catch up with him until he’s passed through the castle entranceway. Down by the ocean waves beneath a blood-red sunset, Vhagar is already landing, leaving cataclysmic imprints in the sand with her claws, trenches and impact craters. From the edge of the beach, Sunfyre watches with dull, wounded interest. Alys is halfway down the staircase. Aemond stops when he hears your footsteps, waiting under the rising full moon and materializing constellations.

You demand: “What did he say to you?”

“Nothing.”

“Aemond.”

“He’s confused, he’s exhausted, he’s in pain. He doesn’t understand—”

“Aemond, what did he say?”

The prince regent sighs and looks at you. “He said he doesn’t think he’s going to get better this time.”

I can’t believe that. I can’t survive that. “Why did you have to do it?” Your voice splinters; your throat burns. “He’s right that you started this war. You’re the reason Rhaenyra will never negotiate. You’re the one who made this horror inevitable. Why did you have to kill Luke?”

The dusk is radiant on Aemond’s face like firelight. It is a long time before he speaks. “I never intended to.”

That doesn’t make any sense. “What?”

“I never gave Vhagar the order. She went after Arrax. I tried to stop her.”

It wasn’t murder. It was an accident. And you think of all the times people have told Aemond that everything that’s happened is his fault, and how he has never disagreed with them. “Who knows?”

“You. Alys.”

“No one else?”

“Who would believe me?” Aemond smiles faintly, profoundly sad. “And even if they did, would that make me so much more noble than a kinslayer? A Targaryen who can’t control his own dragon? A man who is reckless, ineffective, unworthy?”

Here in air the color of flames and gore, you tell him, perhaps more kindly than he deserves: “You’re worthy, Aemond.”

“I will end this. I will meet Daemon and Caraxes in battle. Alys saw it.”

“Did she see you win?”

“Are you worried about me?” Aemond teases, grinning crookedly. And he does something that he hasn’t tried in a long time. He swipes for your forearm and you snatch it out of the way just before his fingers can close around it, just before he can catch you. Aemond chuckles. “I don’t want you to worry. I’ll win the war for the Greens. We will return to King’s Landing, we will rebuild, Aegon will heal. He will live for a long, long time.”

“Yes,” you say, wanting so desperately to believe it.

“You know,” Aemond adds as it occurs to him. “If the king does happen to predecease you, in ten years or twenty or thirty…and you find yourself unincumbered…Aegon the Conqueror had two wives. Alys would always be first, but…”

“No, Aemond.”

“Fine,” he says, agreeably enough. He smiles down at you. “I will come back to let you know when it’s done. Then I will fly south to join Daeron in annihilating Cregan Stark’s army. And then we’ll all go home.”

Yes, yes, let that be true. “Good luck,” you tell him, soft like a whisper.

“I don’t need it.”

Aemond descends the staircase, climbs up the rope ladder into Vhagar’s saddle, takes flight with Alys into the late-autumn dusk; and you watch them vanish into the crimson horizon until the sky is empty.

#aegon ii targaryen #aegon targaryen #aegon ii #aegon targaryen ii #aegon targaryen x reader #aegon x reader

[icallhimjoey]

Q&A things, here we go:

this is joe's first time in philly

joe said his life has changed immensely and that it's so nice to have a character that's so loved, it's beyond what he could have ever imagined

joe knew the eddie book was going to come out, he's on board with it, is involved with it, is excited about it but doesn't know much else

for the most epic theme song for his life, joe chose heroes by david bowie

joe just sat and waited for is passport to be found, didnt go "through hell" like the moderator suggested

if eddie got a spin-off, joe asked if it could be with chrissy and thinks they'd be a good duo

when asked what crimes their characters would be fighting, joe said he thinks eddie would take it very seriously (whereas grace mentioned she thinks it'll be scooby-doo funny and they'd solve nothing)

joe on eddie: eddie represents the outsider and is on the fringes of society and becomes a hero, it's brave to be different and brave to be yourself.

joe watched the peep show whilst filming st4

joe has not seen are you being served

joe mentioned set shenanigans, said it was funny to see grace in a harnes just hanging there

he mentioned how natalia is good a photoshop again

joe starts filming gladiator 2 next month and doesnt know if he's allowed to use his own accent

joe wants to use his own accent for gladiator 2

about eddie becoming kas, joe said no one has called him, but theoretically it could happen - probably won't, but it could

joe got to pick all the eddie tattoos himself, and he just picked the ones he thought looked good

when he picked the bats he didnt realize his demise

he was wearing pink socks, idk, felt like i should mention

joe's stepdad was a camera man, his mum worked in tv promotion, so joe would go into work with them and see that it was the most extraordinary place, he wanted to be a part of that

joe says you need good stamina for theater, and that you don't get paid well for doing theater

joe's scared to do a shakespeare play bc 'we all know how they end'

grace said joe should be used to dying by now

joe's never going to get used to seeing his face on so many things but he loves the creativity

joe is happy so many people have the eddie guitar, but doesnt feel like a rockstar (he did when filming that scene, but thats it)

joe loves all the heartfelt letters he receives, feels that it's more than something physical

Joe likes F Scott Fitzgerald

would love to play in something set in the 1920 bc he wants to be a flapper girl

joe had a cheesesteak for dinner last night

joe thinks eddie wouldnt have gotten into college, but instead would have been a rockstar - eddie would have made it

also said that eddie and chrissy would've been friends

joe has played DnD once, and we've all seen it, said he'd like to play again

asked for a bar recommendation from the moderator, bc why not, you know?

(big massive fat thanks to @jo-harrington who sent me live updates throughout the whole thing)

#joe quinn #joseph quinn