#the second when he promises his mother that on the war he will not slain any of his other brothers except a.rjuna; so at the end | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

monstershearts · 1 year

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Count Vlad Dracula

Nationality: Romanian (formerly Transylvanian)

Gender: Cis Male

Sexuality: Pansexual, Demiromantic

Age: 594 (appears to be somewhere in his mid-twenties) {Verse-dependent}

Apearance: Hypnotic hazel eyes, sharp elegant features, curly brown hair, 5’ 10", slim yet strong and intimidating figure. Usually wears formal or semi-formal wear in black, crimson, burgundy, or dark violet. Has taken to wearing natural-looking makeup in recent years to make himself look less pale and gaunt and more lifelike.

FC: Timothee Chalamet

Personality: Charming, intense, manipulative, slow to anger but monstrously violent, possessive, alluring, secretive, opportunistic, morbid, amoral. He will not hesitate to use those who dare to get close enough to him in order to gain some sort of advantage, regardless of their feelings or well-being, and is not above taking away their free will to do so. It is rare for his positive feelings toward someone to be completely genuine, and while he has no qualms about taking people of all genders to his bed, romantic attachments are very hard for him to form and even harder to break.

Goals: To create an army of vampires and rise back up to his former glory, and more importantly to survive.

Strengths and Powers: fiendish intelligence, hypnotic gaze, silver tongue, shapeshifting (bat, wolf, or mist), superhuman speed/agility/strength, telepathy, vampiric bite, immortality, eternal youth, can scale vertical surfaces and ceilings without being affected by gravity.

Weaknesses: Holy water, crosses and other non-satanic holy symbols, running water, sunlight, fire, stake to the heart, cannot enter someone’s residence without invitation, must feed on human blood at least once every few nights (he can sustain himself on animal blood, but must do so far more often).

Likes: When his victims season themselves with garlic, exploring new places, tea (earl grey is his favorite), corrupting innocent souls (or those who believe themselves to be innocent), armadillos, singing, motorcycles, freedom.

Dislikes: Full moons, werewolves, vampire hunters, religious zealots, demons, fae, blandness, boredom, seclusion.

Languages: Romanian, Hungarian, German, Russian, English, and French.

Background: The young son of an infamous warlord, Vlad grew up amidst both the turmoil of war and the privilege of aristocracy. He was first in line for his father’s throne, and made every effort to ready himself for the responsibility, though his precocious and flirtatious nature rendered him an insufferable youth in the minds of most others. He was an arrogant lad to be sure, but he carried his mother’s compassion in his heart and knew how to appeal to his subjects with ease. It seemed that he was much softer than his father, utterly naive to the horrors of the world outside of the palace. He was barely in his twenty-third year when it all came crashing down. Turkish invaders somehow managed to not only breach their borders but completely overwhelm them. His father begrudgingly left him and his mother in charge of fortifying the palace in order to lead the his armies against enemies who outnumbered them by far. Desperate to save his family and homeland and believing them to be forsaken by god, Vlad reached out to the powers of the occult. He was answered by a cunning and bloodthirsty demon, who promised him immortality and ungodly power in exchange for a cost that Vlad was too anguished to hear. The distraught boy accepted without a second thought. He was subsequently transformed into one of the world’s first vampires, cursed to feed on human blood and dwell in the shadows of night for eternity, and was too late to save his father from being slain on the battlefield. Enraged and mourning, the boy set out to exact his revenge, leading a second charge against the invaders under cover of night. It was a bloodbath. Vlad was relentless in unleashing his fury, growing stronger and stronger with every kill, but only realized the true cost of his actions once the Turks finally retreated. When he came back to his senses, Vlad was totally alone in a field full of blood and corpses, Turkish and Transylvanian alike. Stricken with both grief and guilt, the young vampire sank to his knees and wept, lamenting the fact that he’d allowed himself to become such a monster, only to realize that dawn would soon be approaching and that he still had to return to the palace to break the news to his mother. When he arrived, he found the whole place ransacked and abandoned, smelling of gruesome death. A troupe of invaders had gotten past his father, unbeknownst to Vlad, and made to lay waste to the palace. His mother and many of her handmaidens and other servants managed to fight them off, at the cost of their own lives. Those who survived had fled into the night, believing their home to be no longer theirs. In the midst of his despair, Vlad could not honestly say that he blamed them, but he could not bring himself to do the same. He slept through the day, tormented by horrific dreams, and set about burying them in the catacombs by night, feeding off the blood of rats to sustain himself until the work was done, at which point he condemned himself to sleep for the rest of eternity. That, he believed, was an apt punishment for his crimes.

-Meeting Frankenstein-

In the late 1700’s, Vlad was awakened by an odd yet familiar scent. One that hadn’t reached his nostrils in several centuries. Living human blood. It smelled so sweet, so incredibly enticing. Calling to him like a siren, it drew the starved vampire from his slumber, and all he could think about was drinking that hapless mortal dry, which he did with little to no remorse. Grief, sleep, and insatiable thirst had driven most of his morals away, leaving a cunning predator in their wake. That explorer wasn’t the last to wander into his castle, and with each one after him, Dracula’s strength and reputation grew and grew, until one fateful night. The moment Victor Frankenstein stepped foot into his palace, Vlad could smell the death on him, and that in itself intrigued the vampire enough to refrain from attacking him right away. A look into his mind revealed both intelligence and tragedy, guilt and rage, ambition and anguish. A brilliant scientist who had lost his way and his family all before turning twenty, now nearing thirty and chasing after a monster of his own creation. An interesting mortal full to the brim with potential. It was easy for Dracula to manipulate him, befriend him, offer him shelter, food, and a sympathetic ear to listen to his plight. He allowed Victor to stay in his otherwise empty castle for about a week before offering to aid him in his search for the Creature. Desperate and nearly defeated, the young man accepted readily, and the two set off the following evening, with Dracula explaining that he was far more comfortable traveling by night than by day. Victor, of course, did not question it. Their search eventually led them up to the Arctic, following a path of destruction and terrified rumors to the lumbering monster himself. Victor, however, had apparently lost the heart to kill the beast, having realized that he was to blame for creating and then abandoning him, which consequently threw a wrench into Dracula’s plans to turn him and take control of the creature. He apologized instead, begging the Creature for forgiveness and finally giving him the name Adam. Disgusted by the show of what he viewed to be weakness, and irritated by the change of heart, Dracula showed his true colors and punished Victor by attacking him, only for Adam to fly into a rage and attempt to defend his creator. The pair of undead waged bloody battle against each other while Victor watched in horror and slowly bled out on the ice. Adam quickly claimed victory when he broke the ice beneath Dracula’s feet, sending him plunging into frigid briny deep. The free flowing water burned the vampire, rendering him catatonic and trapped beneath arctic floes. That should have been the end of him, but thanks to some far too kind fishermen who pulled him out of the ice less than a month later, it was not. After draining them of their blood, he enthralled their captain and forced the man to ferry him back to the nearest European port, and from there made the harrowing journey by night back to his home in the Carpathians, where he remained in isolation for another century. Aside from his victims and those he chose to turn into the beginnings of his vampire army, Dracula allowed himself to keep no company. Victor’s betrayal burned him worse than any holy water could, and he couldn’t risk something like that happening again. It was a lonely existence, but a necessary one.

-Journeying to England-

He did not quite realize just how lonely he was until the turn of a new century crept up on him, the late 1800’s bringing with them the wake of the Industrial Revolution and a need for Vlad to find a way to escape his solitary gilded cage. He reached out with his telepathic abilities, past the borders of Romania, as far as he could. Though it strained his mind, he managed to reach England, latching on to the mind of an unassuming real estate agent by the name of Renfield as he tended his garden and compelling him to journey to the palace for a meeting about possibly buying property in London. Renfield agreed and set out for the Carpathians posthaste, eager to close a deal with this mysterious stranger and intrigued by his abilities. Thrilled that his plan was working, Vlad told his fledglings to leave him in peace when his guest arrived; Renfield was meant to be his and his alone. The meeting went splendidly, ending far more amicably than the mortal expected it to. He simply could not reject the rather stunning Count’s offer of a room for the night, since it was so late, and a shared meal sounded positively delightful, as did a few celebratory drinks. One thing led to another. A tipsy yet still terribly nervous confession of attraction on Renfield’s part yielded a kiss, which led to another kiss and many more after, and eventually to a passionately shared bed. Renfield woke up the next morning hung over and covered in what he assumed to be love bites, though one on his neck appeared to be excessively painful and red. He paid it no mind. The young Count had simply gotten carried away. They both had. Perhaps the wine had gone to both their heads in equal measure. Why else would such a handsome noble in the prime of his youth take an interest in a mid-thirties pencil pushing sobersides? He’d almost forgotten about the Count’s remarkable ability to enter his mind until he heard that sultry voice in the back of his head, sleepily asking him to come back to bed in heavily accented English. It worked like a charm. For a solid week, his days were spent entertaining the lusts of Count Dracula and sleeping in his embrace, and his nights were spent finalizing paperwork, chatting, and sharing meals with the inexplicably enamored young man with the sharp yet dazzling smile. He almost didn’t want their time together to end, but if the Count truly was to move to London, then Renfield would have to actually do his job, which would require him to return home and properly file the paperwork so that the property could be made ready to move into. As reluctant as he was to let his new not-quite-mortal pet go so soon, Dracula agreed that it was time to move forward with his plan. The reason why he had subtly turned Renfield into a dhampir in the first place. He needed someone in London to establish a respectable reputation for him, making it easier for him to be invited into people’s homes for parties and other such events. Easier for him to target the aristocracy and one by one bring them into his fold. Renfield unfortunately was not as emotionally sound as Dracula first thought, and over the course of two years of clandestine communication and manipulation, the dhampir slowly descended into madness due to his growing thirst for blood that he continuously tried in vain to resist. Eventually, Renfield was admitted into an asylum, and Dracula was forced to hire another lawyer to help him finalize his purchase of Carfax Abbey. Enter Jonathan Harker, a bright eyed and highly intelligent young man who was eager to prove himself both to his employers and to his first real client. Harker, as naive as he was, was much harder to seduce than Renfield, as he was already happily engaged, and had an annoying habit of frequently writing letters about his experiences in the castle to his fiancee, Mina. Dracula quickly found himself growing jealous of the strength of their relationship, vowing that he would one day have both of them under his thrall. In the meantime, he did everything he could to try and break Jonathan’s resolve without revealing his true nature to the mortal, even going so far as to save him from three female fledglings, regaling him with his impressive historical knowledge, learning how to cook hearty traditional meals, and virtually begging for every bit of knowledge he could get from the man about England. Charming as he was, nothing worked. In fact, he got the feeling that Jonathan was actively trying to pull away from him. That simply would not do. Their business long since concluded, Dracula arranged passage for himself to England and left his castle behind, abandoning Harker to his fledglings. From there, things went far more smoothly. The Count was well received amongst the London elite, and was easily able to keep himself sustained. Lucy Westenra seemed to be an ideal candidate for the inaugural member of his vampiric army in England, and he was able to make his move on her without much trouble, until Jonathan and his blushing bride, who happened to be Lucy’s best friend, returned to England with Abraham van Helsing in tow. Ever vengeful, especially after they managed to kill Lucy and keep her from fully turning, Dracula soon set his sights on Mina Harker, determined to use her against Jonathan and his friends. Van Helsing was clever, employing various techniques to ward off Mina’s room at the asylum and educating Jonathan, Dr. John Seward, Arthur Holmwood, and Quincey Morris in how to combat vampires. Dracula, however, still had a man on the inside in the spider eating Renfield. He exerted his control over the man once more, using him to let himself into Mina’s room and biting her. Believing himself to now have two pawns under his control, Dracula used Mina to taunt Jonathan and the others. He did not, however, count on Renfield being able to find his resolve long enough to be able to betray him to Van Helsing, nor did he account for Jonathan being able to track down his current lairs via the paper trail left by his dealings. When Renfield’s betrayal was revealed to him, he brutally murdered his former lover in a fit of rage, but was soon forced to retreat to his coffin with the coming of the dawn. He wasn’t prepared for the assault waged on his estate by Van Helsing and the others. Quincey Morris’s Bowie knife through his chest was a rather rude awakening, and he made damn sure that the mortal cowboy paid for it with his life, only to feel Jonathan Harker’s blade slice across his throat from behind. Hot tears streaked down the vampire’s face. It was the first time he’d felt so enraged and genuinely terrified since the day his father died in battle, and he was just as doomed as he had been back then. Faced with imminent demise, Vlad did the only thing he could do; he fell. Made them think they had killed him, and relinquished his hold on Mina in order to really sell his performance. It worked. As they worked to build him a funeral pyre, he used what little strength he had left to transform into mist and escape from his locked coffin, hiding himself in the deepest darkest part of his cellar until they were long gone. When dusk settled over England, he left the wretched country and set off for his home in the Carpathians, though it was slow going because of his greatly weakened state. He could barely hunt. Eventually, he was forced to find an unused coffin and go into his second death sleep.

-House of Frankenstein-

The next time Dracula awoke was in 1944, having been on display in the oddity show of traveling man Professor Lampini. Delirious and starving, he was revived by the scent of the murdered professor’s blood, and agreed out of gratitude to assist the two perpetrators in getting their revenge against the Burgomaster who had previously put them in jail. He held up his end of the deal, slaying Burgomaster Hussman after seducing his granddaughter-in-law, only to find that Dr. Niemann and his assistant betrayed him by destroying his coffin. Furious but unable to do anything about it before dawn, Vlad was forced to search for shelter, allowing the pair to believe he’d perished in the morning light. He stalked them by night, watching from the shadows as they revived and subsequently betrayed Adam Frankenstein and a werewolf by the name of Larry Talbot, but decided to leave the traitorous duo to their fates at the hands of the other monsters in favor of trying to regain his strength. Over the next four years, Dracula hunted and built himself back up, slowly but surely.

-Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein-

Once he deemed himself well enough to make another attempt at building his army, Vlad set about finding and attempting to revive Adam, still believing him to be a key element to his success. It worked, though the creature was extremely weakened by his numerous deaths and still had a burning hatred for the vampire. Obviously, that wasn’t ideal, so he made plans to revamp the creature that included replacing his brain with one that was much easier to manipulate. He set his sights on America, this time, getting in contact with an ambitious and brilliant doctor by the name of Sandra Mornay and coordinating with her to turn an island fort off the coast of Florida into a state of the art lab. He sent her the journal of Victor Frankenstein to study, then arranged to have himself and the once again dormant Adam to be shipped to McDougal’s Wax Museum. Once there, he found the perfect brain donor in Wilbur Grey, who unpacked his coffin with the help of Chick Young. Waiting until Wilbur was alone, Dracula quickly enthralled him, revived Adam once more, and made his escape to the island with the creature in tow. Once the creature was secured in the secret lab, Vlad was very pleased to find out that Dr. Mornay had already been steadily seducing Wilbur, despite Chick’s jealousy and misgivings about their relationship. She revealed that the boys had actually invited her to a masquerade ball on the mainland later that night, which he immediately insisted she should go to. Things got a bit more complicated when the boys showed up to the castle to pick her up with another woman in tow, whom Sandra later discovered to be an investigator for an insurance agency, Joan Raymond. Sandra excused herself, saying that she wasn’t feeling well and that the three of them should go with her workaholic assistant, Professor Stevens, instead. They left, and Vlad and Sandra got into an argument that resulted in him turning her into a vampire and setting off for the mainland together. Chaos ensued, mostly due to the unexpected presence of the ever righteous Larry Talbot, who finally succeeded in warning the boys about Dracula’s and Sandra’s plan, and things only went downhill from there. Talbot transformed into his lupine form with the rising of the second full moon, causing havoc at the ball and providing sufficient cover for Sandra and Dracula to abduct Wilbur, but come dawn, Talbot was able to join forces with Chick, Joan, and Stevens to formulate a plan to storm the castle. They made their charge the next night, with a third full moon high in the sky. Between the three humans, the raging werewolf, and the freed Adam and Wilbur, Dracula and Sandra found themselves quickly overwhelmed, with Adam throwing Sandra out a window and Talbot gunning for Dracula himself. Vlad luckily managed to turn into a bat and escape Talbot’s claws, just barely, and vowed never to cross paths with any of them again, going back into hiding.

-Modern Day-

Vlad spent the next several decades covertly touring the United States, making a concentrated effort to never remain in one place for too long and to not make any attachments to mortals or any grand plans. He discovered a love of rock ‘n’ roll in the ‘70s, purchased his first motorcycle and learned to ride it in the ‘80s, and fell head over heels in love with the life of a renegade shortly afterward.

Verses:

V; modern - Vlad rarely spends more than a few years in the same place, traveling from major city to major city without making too much of an effort to get attached. He is jaded and acts like a charming, aloof, punkass playboy, searching only for his next victim and meal.

V; main - Takes place at any point during the timeframe of the novel/first Universal movie.

V; prince - Takes place in Transylvania, when he’s still human.

V; stranger things - In the late summer of 1984, Vlad finds himself rolling into the seemingly sleepy town of Hawkins, Indiana, and immediately knows that something feels off about it. Intrigued, the vampire decides to investigate, and is dragged into a chaotic mess of hellish monsters, kids who are too brave for their own good, alternate dimensions, and Russian spies. Could he possibly find it in himself to act as a hero, for once?

#🩸 the blood is the life 🩸 c; Dracula #🦇 Chaos behind the quill 🦇 ooc talk #🦇 Calling all the monsters 🦇 promo #🦇 developing characters for fun and chaos 🦇 headcanon

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musetta3 · 3 years

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Dragon Age OC as a Companion: Revka Cadash

Trend started by @little-lightning-lavellan it’s an amazing one and I had such fun with it! Thank you for the template!

This will be under a cut, because ohhhhhh my, there’s a lot here <3

This is also on AO3!

Is your OC a Companion in the Dragon Age series? What would it be like for a player to select them to join their party for quests (or romance them, perhaps? 👀)

You have selected Revka Cadash to join your party!

Race: Dwarf

Affiliation: Carta

Gender: Female

Class: Rogue/Archer

Specialization: artificer

Background

Revka Cordelia Cadash (born 8:95 Blessed) is a dwarven rogue and businesswoman. She is a companion and a potential romance option for a male human, dwarf, or qunari Inquisitor in Dragon Age: Inquisition.

Revka is a member of the many-membered Cadash Clan, and daughter of Brygida ‘Cookie’ Cadash and Artur ‘Archie’ Cadash. She has an older brother, Tavi, as well as numerous cousins, including Edric ‘Dasher’ Cadash, the head of the Ferelden Carta.

Revka grew up in the company of her rambunctious cousins, and thus views them like brothers and sisters. It’s common for Cadashes to play tricks and pull pranks on each other as a way to show affection, as is evidenced in the short story ‘Flapping in the Breeze.’ Some of Revka’s favorite pranks include spiking food with chili oil, switching people’s beverages, hiding belongings, and breaking into ‘private’ things such as journals, desk contents, or that box of cookies under the bed.

Revka made a name for herself in the Carta accompanying her mother and cousins on patrol as a teen. Her deadly accuracy with a bow earned her the nickname ‘Hawkeye;’ her duties quickly expanded to include ‘problem-solving’ for the Carta, her solutions ranging from assassinations, blackmail, and negotiating contracts, to smuggling, and forgeries. Her successful business plans and battle tactics made her a valuable asset to the Carta.

In 9:13 Dragon, Revka married Iwan Feddic, a member of the merchant caste and a Cadash client in Ostwick. She helped her husband run his international shipping business, a venture she took over after his untimely death. When Dasher’s wife, Darya, died at the hands of the Orlesian Carta, Revka returned to Ferelden to help her cousin raise his five children, turning over the Ostwicker affairs to her brother, Tavi.

When the Cadashes eliminated a rival Carta branch in Kirkwall, they sent Artur Cadash to oversee operations in the city. 22-year-old Revka volunteered to accompany him, becoming her father’s second in command. Once arrived in Kirkwall, she helped him found Graywater Imports, an import/export company functioning as a storefront for both legal and illegal goods. She is a prominent member of the Cadash Carta branch in Kirkwall, often dealing with the Dwarven Merchant Guild and Varric Tethras.

Romance with Varric Tethras

Shortly after Revka arrived in Kirkwall, she met the young Varric Tethras. What began as mixing business with pleasure became a romantic entanglement that lasted until Tethras met the talented smith Bianca Davri, and broke off with Revka for Bianca. As much as Revka wanted to cut all ties with him, she maintained their business relationship… and an unrequited, one-sided love for the deshyr prince.

Involvement

A special mission at the War Table will unlock a quest at Kirkwall’s Docks, ‘Ten Shades of Graywater,’ in which the Inquisitor will receive a mysterious anonymous letter inviting them to the coast to discuss a purveyor/supplier contract for the Inquisition. The Inquisitor will arrive in a seemingly abandoned alley, but is ambushed by Coterie thugs. After the enemies are slain, Revka can be engaged in conversation.

If Varric is in the party, he will be surprised to see Revka. It’s revealed that they know each other through various business ventures, and are old acquaintances… although the weighted, bitter quality of Revka’s answers imply that their relationship is more complicated than Varric had said.

Upon further questioning, Revka pitches her business proposal: wholesale lyrium for the Inquisition’s mages or Templars, with access to the Cadash Family’s network of spies, businesses, and Carta members for Inquisition purposes. Her only condition is that her family obtains an industry monopoly, becoming the sole provider of lyrium for the Inquisition and Southern Thedas.

Revka can be found near the archery targets and training dummies in Haven. Once the Inquisition relocates to Skyhold, Revka spends time training in the courtyard, in Skyhold’s main hall talking to Varric, or in the rookery, spoiling her messenger crow, Cipher, with treats. Dialogue options will reveal that she uses the bird keep in contact with her family and business associates.

Approval and Romance

Revka can be romanced by a male Inquisitor of any race, and will jokingly comment on the height differences if romanced by a qunari, elf, or human. A Cadash inquisitor of either gender can unlock Carta-specific dialogue. Revka is guarded at first, giving out only generic information about her family, but with some persistent questioning the Inquisitor can wear her down. Depending on dialogue choices, the conversation can end with the Cadashes exchanging stories of ‘colorful’ family members and an approval gain.

Revka takes a more pragmatic view on politics: she supports whoever pays the most, and sells lyrium to both the Templars and mages without discrimination. Upon learning the truth behind the events Redcliffe, however, she is dismayed to learn what her products enabled. Traveling to Redcliffe with Revka in the party will trigger her personal quest ‘Scales Fall from Her Eyes.’ (this quest will trigger after the Inquisition relocates to Skyhold if the player sided with the Templars)

Revka approves of Inquisitors who are tenacious, calculating/far-sighted, and does what is best for the majority. She believes that the end justifies the mean, sanctioning death only as a last resort. She approves of bold plans, investigating all aspects of a quest before making a decision, and an Inquisitor who makes jokes (especially puns). Her sense of justice changes as the player completes more of her personal quests. She will approve of charitable acts and kindness as the game progresses and her personal beliefs change.

Revka’s romance can be initiated through the conventional method flirting and conversation. During the quest ‘Scales Fall from Her Eyes,’ the Inquisitor has an opportunity to embrace Revka, leading to a kiss.

If Revka is not romanced by an Inquisitor, she can enter a relationship with Varric Tethras, but only if the Inquisitor assists in reconciling the two ex-lovers. Revka’s romantic past with Varric is hinted at in party banter if both are present, the two bickering with each other. This series of quests are available post-arrival at Skyhold, and has conditional dialogue for certain scenarios.

Revka gets along well with Dorian and Cassandra, bonding with them over their mutual love of books. It’s revealed that the three of them have an unofficial ‘book club’ going on, where they read various novels and comment on them in party banter. Revka also gets along well with Sera, bonding over pulling pranks in Haven and Skyhold. She makes a special bond with Leliana over nugs, owning a nug, herself.

Revka does not trust Solas from the moment she meets him, stating he knows too much, and is fond of talking without saying anything. She also suspects Blackwall of hiding something.

Companion Quests

Scales Fall from Her Eyes

After the events of Redcliffe, the Inquisitor will receive a note from Revka to meet her at the abandoned cabin outside Haven. Or, if the player sided with the Templars, this will trigger once the Inquisition relocates to Skyhold. At the meeting, she will share her guilt and horror at what occurred. She questions her personal beliefs, and offers an apology with the promise to amend her family’s business practices. After this quest, Revka is more empathetic, approving of selfless and charitable acts, whereas before she’d disapprove.

At the end of the quest, the Inquisitor has an opportunity to embrace Revka, which can lead to a kiss, if desired.

Varric’s Quest in Valammar

Revka can be found beside the fireplace in the main hall, arguing with Varric over the contents of a particular letter. Upon investigation, the Inquisitor learns that Revka has broken into the locked box in which Varric keeps his correspondence, which she claims he’s done to her on multiple occasions over the years. He neither denies nor confirms the accusation. Revka demands to know why Varric is still in contact with ‘that woman,’ declares she won’t set foot in the main hall until his ‘guest’ is gone, and leaves, demanding the Inquisitor ‘talk some sodding sense into him.’

This leads into Varric’s quests with Bianca Davri, and some cutting comments from Bianca calling Revka a ‘sore loser.’ Varric comes to Revka’s defense, much to the Inquisitor’s surprise.

If the Inquisitor takes Revka to Valammar, she disapproves and will grouse all the way there, cutting snide remarks whenever Varric says something. She becomes jealous during Bianca and Varric’s reminiscing, interjecting and muttering. Her anger only grows as the quest proceeds, Revka calling out Bianca for her selfish, pragmatic methods and carelessness. Once Inquisitor concludes the quest, Revka declares she needs some air, and says she’ll meet the Inquisitor at the nearest inquisition camp later.

Upon arrival at the campsite, a scout reports that Revka never returned to camp. The Inquisitor must search the nearby area; eventually, they find Revka injured after being ambushed by bandits (the Inquisitor and the party must defeat them in order for the quest to proceed).

If Varric is present, he will be upset, demanding to know why she would be so foolish as to wander around alone. Revka half-jokes, claiming how surprised she is that Varric cares about her safety, after all these years. Varric’s expression visibly shifts. The Inquisitor arranges for her immediate medical care, but it’s too serious a wound for her to remain out in the field. After this point, Revka is unavailable as a companion until after the Inquisitor returns to Skyhold.

Once the Inquisitor returns, they will find Varric in the central courtyard, pacing outside the infirmary/medical tents. The medic will inform the Inquisitor that Varric hasn’t left since Revka’s arrival, but refuses to go inside to see her. Selecting Varric for a conversation will show he can’t bear to face her after what happened at Valammar; he feels especially guilty, knowing that she got hurt in an attempt to calm down after the encounter. The Inquisitor can remind Varric that his apology should be to Revka, not them. To trigger their romance, the Inquisitor can encourage him to visit Revka and share his feelings.

If the Inquisitor visits her instead, they will gain high approval with her, and further unlock romance scenes. After the visit in the tent, Revka will invite the Inquisitor to her quarters to personally ‘thank’ him. The Inquisitor can choose to accept her proposition, or refuse. Depending on choice, Revka may sleep with the Inquisitor. There is an option to break relations off with Revka the morning after.

Revka’s Family

Revka’s war table missions mostly revolve around business opportunities she’s scouted out for the Inquisition throughout Thedas. Some of these are triggered through conversations with Revka in the rookery or throughout Skyhold. Completing quests from her cousin Jon in Tevinter will reveal Venatori camps on all game-maps, and will reduce the cooldown time on war table quests dealing with Venatori in general.

Revka’s cousin, Czibor, can be encountered in the Hissing Wastes hunting Venatori. Accompanying xem in eliminating a Venatori camp can lead to xir recruitment as an Inquisition agent.

The Trouble with Tavi

After the quest Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts, Revka will ask to meet the Inquisitor, requesting their assistance in a matter of life or death. She reveals that she’s received a letter from the Orlesian Carta, stating their displeasure at the Inquisitor’s choice of ruler, since they’re encroaching on the Orlesian Carta’s operations. They know Revka and the Cadash family has been helping the Inquisition, and threaten to exact revenge. She’d thought it an empty threat until her brother Tavi stopped replying to her letters. Upon investigation, it’s revealed that the Orlesian Carta kidnapped Tavi and have hid him at their base in Val Royeaux. Revka asks the Inquisitor for assistance.

Should the Inquisitor refuse Revka, she will greatly disapprove, stating that her brother’s more important that the Inquisitor’s ‘sodding principles,’ and leave the Inquisition to save him. She will not be available again until later in the game (post Adamant), when a war table mission will appear from Tavi in Ostwick, stating that Revka saved him and has returned to Kirkwall. She is still very offended, and is considering terminating the Cadash business contracts with the Inquisition. He urges the Inquisitor to please make her reconsider, citing the monetary gain the contracts net him but also Revka’s hurt (note: the letter will also reference a romanced Varric, asking the Inquisitor to enlist his help). The Inquisitor has the choice to make up with Revka and invite her back, or leave her be.

Should the Inquisitor choose to help Revka, she will greatly approve and travel with the Inquisitor to Val Royeaux. Varric—regardless of the romance status—will also express interest in coming, but bringing him along is not required. Revka will be touched by his offer, regardless.

The meeting place mentioned in the Carta’s letter is an abandoned oil warehouse at the docks. Inside, the companions note the derelict condition of the place. The further they travel into the warehouse, following a trail of blood, the smell of rancid oil grows stronger. In a storeroom, there is a lone dead dwarf bearing a note, a man Revka recognizes as Tavi’s second in command in Ostwick. If the Inquisitor can find Tavi before time runs out, the note says, they’re welcome to him. As the Inquisitor reads the note aloud, a shadow darts in the periphery; the door slams shut, locking them in. A torch is thrown in through a window, setting the spilled oil on fire.

The Inquisitor may, through a series of dialogue choices, decide to rescue Tavi or leave him to his fate, opting to escape. If the Inquisitor chooses to escape and leave Tavi behind, Revka will greatly disapprove, running off to find him herself. If she is romanced by Varric, he will also greatly disapprove, stating that they should go after Revka. If the Inquisitor chooses this route, they can still save Revka and Tavi. Otherwise, the two Cadashes are not seen again, supposedly perishing in the fire. Revka will then be unavailable as a companion for the remainder of the game.

The mission to save Tavi is time-sensitive, with several endings: should the Inquisitor take too long to escape or find Tavi, the warehouse will collapse on them, killing everyone. The timer, separated into quarters, is marked by sections of the roof collapsing: escaping by the third collapse will guarantee the party’s safety. Escaping post-third collapse can result in a 50% chance of the roof collapsing on the party: if this occurs, Revka pushes either her love interest or her brother out of the way of a falling beam, sacrificing herself for their safety. The mission then ends with the party barely escaping in time, mourning the loss of their lover and/or friend.

Pranks

Various pranks around Skyhold and Haven are attributed to Revka via ambient dialogue and party banter. If the approval rate is high enough, Inquisitor has an opportunity to join Revka in pulling pranks around Skyhold post-Adamant. She claims that she’d like to cheer everyone up, and would like the Inquisitor’s help.

Prank 1: sneak into the kitchen and switch the sugar out for salt in a cake.

Prank 2: paint a smiley face on the back of a sleeping Solas’s head

Prank 3: Rearrange Vivienne’s furniture

Prank 4: Distract Varric so she can steal his letters and replace them with scrambled riddles

A cutscene follows, showing a crowd standing at the base of a flagpole the morning after. Revka pushes through the crowd, gasping: someone has nailed her frilly blue panties to the pole. Varric is seen leaning against a column, howling with laughter. Revka pulls a face at him and scowls, but eventually ends up laughing, too. (Note: this is inspired by the short story ‘Flapping in the Breeze’)

Trespasser

If Revka left or died during the events of the game, she will not be at the Winter Palace. Otherwise, there are several outcomes as to what she’s been doing…

If she romanced Varric, she returned to Kirkwall and is his lover

If she romanced the Inquisitor, she stayed alongside him as an Inquisition agent

If she did not romance anyone, she returned to Kirkwall

There is an option to marry Revka as a romanced Inquisitor, or urge her to marry Varric. If she marries, her brother Tavi and a recruited cousin Czibor may attend the ceremony.

Combat comments

Kills an enemy

And stay dead!

Sodding nughumper, good riddance.

Low Health

A little help would be lovely!

Oh shit. Not good.

Atredum na satolva! Toss me a health potion, will you?

I’m too old for this…

Low Health (Companions)

(The Inquisitor) Inquisitor!

(The Inquisitor - if romanced) Hold on, love!

(Varric, unromanced) Varric, you don’t look so good...

(Varric, if romanced) Oh shit, don’t you dare die on me.

(Sera) Can someone check on Sera, please?

(Cassandra) Cass! Wait!

(Dorian) Dorian needs help!

Location comments

(Approaching Camp) Ahhh! Home sweet tent.

(When collecting a shard) Ooh! I wonder how much it’d fetch at market.

Storm Coast

(sighs) They ought to call this place the ‘Soggy Coast,’ or the ‘Sopping Coast.’ My socks are soaked through to my boots.

Fallow Mire

The bugs will drain you dry before the undead will. Nug-humping bastards keep biting me…

Anyone else feel eyes watching you from the shadows?

Hinterlands

(Laughs) You know, back when I was running jobs for the Carta, I would get so lost here in the Hinterlands. Good to know things haven’t changed.

Don’t go near there; bears love that place. I learned that the hard way…

(at Witchwood) Ah, the Which-Witch-is-Which-Wood. Da would warn my brother and I about this place when were children.

The Hissing Wastes

I have sand in places I never knew existed.

Why my cousin had to choose to hunt Venatori in the ass-end of nowhere is beyond me…

Emprise du Lion

(scoffs) Snow. Snow. More sodding snow. I’m up to my tits in the stuff.

We don’t get snow like this in Kirkwall.

(on seeing a snowfleur) Ooh, look! Fluffy nugs! Can I take one home? Lucky could use a friend.

Emerald Graves

I…I heard the reason why this place is called the Emerald Graves. Such a tragic story.

I didn’t expect such greenery this far south, to be honest.

Exalted Plains

(shivers) You can feel the sorrow in this place.

Companion Comments

Blackwall: “Rev? She’s a bit… unnerving, to be honest. Never smiles, glares holes in the side of your head. Offered to sell my carvings in Denerim, though: two sovereigns apiece. I swear she could sell water to a fish, that woman…”

Varric: “(Laughs) Hawkeye and I go way back. Don’t let her innocent face fool you: she’ll bleed you dry at Wicked Grace if you let her. Learned some of my best tricks from her—Don’t…erm. Don’t tell her that.”

“Do you know how Hawkeye got her name? She shot a fly from across a room, once. Still don’t know how she did it.”

(If Inquisitor romanced Revka) Hawkeye’s a sweet girl, under all the Carta bullshit. I’m glad she has you; she deserves some happiness in her life.”

(If romances Revka): “I know they say don’t mix business with pleasure, but I get all the best discounts at Graywater Imports, now. You want anything? I think they’re running a sale on Antivan leather, at the moment.”

“She’s probably upstairs feeding Cipher, knowing her. Or taking another order for Dagna; buys crafting supplies like candy, that one.”

Sera: “Rev’s fun, not all stuffy just ‘cause she’s someone back home, yeah? Takes jokes well. Can’t shoot for shit, though…”

Cole: Ash, steel, gray, withering inside at the sight of him smiling at her. Don’t look back, you’re not going that way; old coals don’t rekindle. It bleeds under her armor, but she can’t bandage the wound. I want to help. (if she romances Varric) but he helped her feel whole again. (if she romances the Inquisitor) but you helped her feel whole again.

Solas: “Is it wise to allow a known member of the Carta in our ranks? She actively seeks information and passes it along to her superiors.”

“Do tell Mistress Cadash that if she breaks into my desk one more time, I shall ward the drawers to set her on fire. I can tolerate harmless pranks, but one thing I cannot abide is liars who snoop.”

Iron Bull: “They say still waters run deep, and she’s no exception. She might appear all laughs and smiles, but that woman knows exactly what she’s doing. Don’t underestimate her.”

Dorian: “Ah, my darling Rev: she has excellent taste in literature and baked goods.” (if she romances Varric) “And dwarven merchant princes.”

Cassandra: “I doubted her intentions, at first, but she has proven herself quite useful to the Inquisition. If you see her, tell her to return my book, will you? She ‘borrowed’ a week ago, and I want to know what happens to the poor Guard Captain.”

Vivienne: “Mistress Cadash would do quite well at court; she understands the Game surprisingly well for one who’s not a courtier. Too strong from the onset, however: the idea is to gain a person’s trust, not frighten them into submission.”

Cullen: “I knew Mistress Cadash back in Kirkwall; I’d frequent Graywater Imports often. They carry three kinds of hair pomade there, did you know?”

Josephine: “Mistress Cadash has many useful connections throughout Thedas; I’m pleased she offers them to us so freely. But then, we’re making her a rich woman with all the business contracts. Quid pro quo, as the Tevinters say.”

Leliana: “Rev is a shrewd woman, fierce and good at her craft. Did you know that she has a pet nug in Kirkwall? She always has something for the birds when she comes here; I like her.”

Trivia

It’s said that the young Varric Tethras wrote his first novel, The Dasher’s Men, about Edric Cadash, Revka’s cousin. The femme fatale who assists the hero of the tale, Revka, is heavily inspired by Varric’s lover at the time, Revka Cadash. An autographed copy of The Dasher’s Men can be found in the rookery, where Revka sits.

Revka adores cookies, and has been trying to get the secret brandy snap recipe off of her cousin, Edric, for years. She has tried everything from recipe book publisher scams to impersonating the Viscount of Kirkwall’s chef to obtain the recipe

In party banter, Revka will mention her nug, Lucky, which, according to the short story, she won during a rather raucous evening of Wicked Grace.

When Revka isn’t reading, answering correspondence, or training, she enjoys baking, sewing, and embroidery.

Despite being an adept businesswoman, Revka is terrible at bookkeeping, and will often complain about it to Varric… sometimes enlisting him to do it, with a bribe of cookies.

#dragon age #dragon age inquisition #writing prompt #dai #dragon age companions #revka #revka cadash #Cadash x Varric #dorian pavus #Varric Tethras #dragon age varric #cadash #female cadash

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butterflies-dragons · 4 years

Text

You may be as different as the sun and the moon, but the same blood flows through both your hearts.

I always thought that both, Sansa and Arya have sun and moon imagery around them. But if I have to choose then I would say that Sansa is the sun and Arya is the moon; and after my last re-read of Fire & Blood, I just confirmed it.

As I said before, several Targaryen sisters duos described in Fire and Blood are very similar to Sansa and Arya, as if George wanted for us to have the Stark sisters in mind while discovering all these Targaryen ladies:

Visenya and Rhaenys

Rhaena and Alysanne

Aerea and Rhaella

Baela and Rhaena

Let’s talk about the last ones, the twin daughters of Daemon Targaryen and his second wife Lady Laena Velaryon: Baela and Rhaena.

In 116 AC, in the Free City of Pentos, Lady Laena gave birth to twin daughters, Prince Daemon’s first trueborn children. Prince Daemon named the girls Baela (after his father) and Rhaena (after her mother).

—Fire & Blood

Baela’s description matches Arya Stark

At ten-and-four, Baela was a wild and willful young maiden, more boyish than ladylike, and very much her father’s daughter. Though slim and short of stature, she knew naught of fear, and lived to dance and hawk and ride. As a younger girl she had oft been chastised for wrestling with squires in the yard, but of late she had taken to playing kissing games with them instead. Not long after the queen’s court removed to King’s Landing (whilst leaving Lady Baela on Dragonstone), Baela had been caught allowing a kitchen scullion to slip his hand inside her jerkin. Ser Robert, outraged, had sent the boy to the block to have the offending hand removed. Only the girl’s tearful intercession had saved him.

(...)

Baela’s time on Dragonstone had been more troubled, ending with fire and blood. By the time she came to court, she was as wild and willful a young woman as any in the realm. (...) Baela lived to ride…and to fly, though that had been taken from her when her dragon died. She kept her silver hair cropped as short as a boy’s, so it would not whip about her face when she was riding. Time and time again she would escape her ladies to seek adventure in the streets. She took part in drunken horse races along the Street of the Sisters, engaged in moonlight swims across the Blackwater Rush (whose powerful currents had been known to drown many a strong swimmer), drank with the gold cloaks in their barracks, wagered coin and sometimes clothing in the rat pits of Flea Bottom. Once she vanished for three days and refused to say where she had been when she returned.

Even more gravely, Baela had a taste for unsuitable companions. Like stray dogs, she brought them home with her to the Red Keep, insisting that they be given positions in the castle, or be made part of her own retinue. These pets of hers included a comely young juggler, a blacksmith’s apprentice whose muscles she admired, a legless beggar she took pity on, a conjurer of cheap tricks she took for an actual sorcerer, a hedge knight’s homely squire, even a pair of young girls from a brothel, twins, “like us, Rhae.” Once she turned up with an entire troupe of mummers. Septa Amarys, who had been given charge of her religious and moral instruction, despaired of her, and even Septon Eustace could not seem to curb her wild ways. “The girl must be wed, and soon,” he told the King’s Hand, “else I fear that she may bring dishonor down upon House Targaryen, and shame His Grace, her brother.

—Fire & Blood

As you can see Baela and Arya shared a lot of similarities, both are wild and willful, both short of stature, both wear short hair, both like riding, both prefer the company of the common folk instead of the courtly life, both admire the muscles of a young blacksmith’s apprentice, both seek adventures, both make their Septa’s despair, etc.

Later Rhaena will marry her cousin Alyn Velaryon, born Alyn of Hull, a legitimized bastard, but the marriage was stormy.

Rhaena description matches Sansa Stark

As young girls, the twins had been inseparable, and impossible to tell apart, but once parted, their experiences had shaped them in very different ways. In the Vale, Rhaena had enjoyed a life of comfort and privilege as Lady Jeyne’s ward. Maids had brushed her hair and drawn her baths, whilst singers composed odes to her beauty and knights jousted for her favor. The same was true at King’s Landing, where dozens of gallant young lords competed for her smiles, artists begged leave to draw or paint her, and the city’s finest dressmakers sought the honor of making her gowns.

(...)

It was Jace who came to the fore now, late in the year 129 AC. Mindful of the promise he had made to the Maiden of the Vale, he ordered Prince Joffrey to fly to Gulltown with Tyraxes. Munkun suggests that Jace’s desire to keep his brother far from the fighting was paramount in this decision. This did not sit well with Joffrey, who was determined to prove himself in battle. Only when told that he was being sent to defend the Vale against King Aegon’s dragons did his brother grudgingly consent to go. Rhaena, the thirteen-year-old daughter of Prince Daemon by Laena Velaryon, was chosen to accompany him.

(...)

She would of course wed whomever the king and council wished, she allowed, though “it would please me if he was not so old he could not give me children, nor so fat that he would crush me when we are abed. So long as he is kind and gentle and noble, I know that I shall love him.” When the Hand asked if she had any favorites amongst the lords and knights who had paid her suit, she confessed that she was “especially fond” of Ser Corwyn Corbray, whom she had first met in the Vale whilst a ward of Lady Arryn. Ser Corwyn was far from an ideal choice. A second son, he had two daughters from a previous marriage. At thirty-two, he was a man, not a green boy.

—Fire & Blood

As you can see Rhaena and Sansa shared a lot of similarities, both are ladylike, both love the courtly life, both are linked with a (bastard) Joffrey, both lived at the Vale, both are linked with singers, both are linked with Knights and Tourneys, both are dutiful, both are betrothed with a Knight of the Vale, that already had two daughters, etc.

As Ned promised Sansa a betrothal with a high lord, kind, gentle and strong, Rhaena asked for a not too old, not too fat, kind, gentle and noble husband. She married Ser Corwyn Corbray, who had a great reputation as a warrior, so much so that his father gave him the ancient Valyrian steel longsword of House Corbray, Lady Forlorn.

Later Rhaena will lost her husband, Ser Corwyn Corbray. He would be killed during some succession war at the Vale, which is kind of similar to the events developing at the Vale with Alayne Stone, Harrold Hardynd and Robert Arryn.

Much later Rhaena will marry Garmund Hightower, the younger brother of Lord Lyonel Hightower, by whom she will have six daughters.

The Sun and The Moon: The Contrasts between Baela and Rhaena

The contrasts between Baela and Rhaena are very similar to the contrasts between Sansa and Arya:

Rhaena was slender and graceful; Baela was lean and quick.

Rhaena loved to dance; Baela lived to ride…and to fly, though that had been taken from her when her dragon died.

Yet even here, the council encountered difficulty and division. When Leowyn Corbray said, “Lady Rhaena would make a splendid queen,” Ser Tyland pointed out that Baela had been the first from her mother’s womb.

“Baela is too wild,” countered Ser Torrhen Manderly. “How can she rule the realm when she cannot rule herself?” Ser Willis Fell agreed. “It must be Rhaena. She has a dragon, her sister does not.”

When Lord Corbray answered, “Baela flew a dragon, Rhaena only has the hatchling,” Roland Westerling replied, “Baela’s dragon brought down our late king. There are many in the realm who will not have forgotten that. Crown her and we will rip all the old wounds open once again.

The sisters reacted to these lickspittles in vastly different ways. Where Rhaena delighted in being the center of court life, Baela bristled at praise, and seemed to take pleasure in mocking and tormenting the suitors who fluttered around her like moths.

Lady Rhaena proved to be as tractable as her sister had been willful.

But despite their differences and living separated for years, the twins never had a bad relationships, it seems they were good friends, worked together and comforted each other.

The good relationship between Baela and Rhaena also gives me hope about a reconciliation and the development of a better and close relationship between Sansa and Arya.

Baela’s Dragon

Baela’s dragon, the slender pale green Moondancer, would soon be large enough to bear the girl upon her back…

(...)

Even more than boys, however, Lady Baela loved to fly. Since first riding her dragon Moondancer into the sky not half a year past, she had flown every day, ranging freely to every part of Dragonstone and even across the sea to Driftmark.

(...)

So it came to pass that when King Aegon II flew Sunfyre over Dragonmont’s smoking peak and made his descent, expecting to make a triumphant entrance into a castle safely in the hands of his own men, with the queen’s loyalists slain or captured, up to meet him rose Baela Targaryen, Prince Daemon’s daughter by the Lady Laena, as fearless as her father.

Moondancer was a young dragon, pale green, with horns and crest and wingbones of pearl. Aside from her great wings, she was no larger than a warhorse, and weighed less. She was very quick, however, and Sunfyre, though much larger, still struggled with a malformed wing and had taken fresh wounds from Grey Ghost.

—Fire & Blood

Baela’s dragon Moondancer “danced” with Aegon II’s dragon Sunfyre. Despite Aegon II’s win against Baela, before dying and being eaten by Sunfyre, Moondancer wounded Aegon II’s dragon so much that it never flew again and died not far later. Moondancer sounds as fierce as Nymeria, Arya’s direwolf has no fear of other wolves and men and became a savage killer.

So, Baela Targaryen being so similar to Arya Stark and having a dragon named Moondancer, and Arya being a water dancer, convinced me that Arya is the Moon.

Rhaena’s Dragon

Rhaena’s egg had hatched a broken thing that died within hours of emerging from the egg, Syrax had recently produced another clutch. One of her eggs had been given to Rhaena, and it was said that the girl slept with it every night, and prayed for a dragon to match her sister’s.

(...)

Known as Rhaena of Pentos, for the city of her birth, she was no dragonrider, her hatchling having died some years before, but she brought three dragon’s eggs with her to the Vale, where she prayed nightly for their hatching.

(...)

Even more grave were the tidings from the Vale, where Lady Jeyne Arryn had assembled fifteen hundred knights and eight thousand men-at-arms, and sent envoys to the Braavosi to arrange for ships to bring them down upon King’s Landing. With them would come a dragon. Lady Rhaena of House Targaryen, brave Baela’s twin, had brought a dragon’s egg with her to the Vale…an egg that had proved fertile, bringing forth a pale pink hatchling with black horns and crest. Rhaena named her Morning.

(...)

And everywhere that Rhaena went came Morning, her young dragon, oft as not coiled about her shoulders like a stole.

(...)

During the first quarter of 135 AC, two momentous events were the occasion of great joy throughout the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. On the third day of the third moon of that year, the people of King’s Landing woke to a sight that had not been seen since the dark days of the Dance: a dragon in the skies above the city. Lady Rhaena, at the age of nineteen, was flying her dragon, Morning, for the first time. That first day she circled once around the city before returning to the Dragonpit, but every day thereafter she grew bolder and flew farther.

—Fire & Blood

Rhaena lost her first dragon the same way Sansa lost her direwolf Lady, but later Rhaena got another dragon that she named “Morning”.

Sansa is heavily associated with Dawn, the moment immediately before the Sun comes. I wrote about it here.

So, Rhaena Targaryen being so similar to Sansa Stark, having lost her first dragon but getting another one that she named Morning, and Sansa being heavily associated with the Dawn, convinced me that Sansa is the Sun. This lovely parallel also gives me hope that Sansa will have another direwolf in the future, that maybe she will name Dawn.

#Sansa Stark #Arya Stark

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redteabaron · 4 years

Note

Could u talk about the 3 giants with the prophecy?

So bad omens/bad tidings come in threes in asoiaf. It's there throughout the books where each bad thing progressively gets worse, or confirms that the first thing that happened is just the beginning.

Threes exist everywhere in asoiaf; in particular, magical things or things that will have more significance or be more than what we expect but it always seems to signify bad things. Three Lannisters, three dragons, Three Eyed Crow, for instance.

We have multiple references to a giant in Sansa's storyline. I don’t think Sansa encounters one giant. I believe there’s three because we have evidence of all these "giants" being a part of her storyline as antagonists.

The first giant - destroyer of Winterfell:

Sweetrobin (and his doll). He's a kid and a brat and doesn't realize what making that snow castle meant to her - the closest she can get to Winterfell, a place she associates with family and safety. To him, it was just something to trample and get Sansa's attention - who effectively becomes a surrogate sister, mother, playmate, caregiver to him. It doesn't mean he's a villain in any way but in this moment he is her antagonist, and he's an innocent one at that; he's a poorly socialized child that doesn't recognize boundaries or know how to interact with people.

But he destroys the memory of her home she's losing herself in, a home she desperately wants to go back to, a home that remains a place where her family was last whole. She rips his doll, the giant is defeated and her "home" is avenged. The first giant is slain in the name of a castle made of snow.

The second giant - the savage giant

Littlefinger/Baelish. His sigil is the titan of Braavos, and the machinations that ripple across Westeros leads us to believe he is a man of enormous reach (a giant). I'm torn on what (or who) may exactly happen to him, but no doubt that Sansa will have a hand, indirectly, in his death. If Sweetrobin lives, Sansa/Alayne may be able to provide evidence of what he's done and confirm that he orchestrated SR's poisoning (which she doesn't know is actually meant to kill him, she's not a maester). I know one thing - I don’t believe he makes it North. He never makes it to Winterfell.

I don't think he even makes it out of the Vale. He's chosen to be there and collected his power around him, his victims, and is assured nothing can go wrong, that everything is carrying on as planned. He’s comfortable. He’ll die in a castle made of snow but it doesn’t need to be in the North - maybe he’ll die in the Snow waycastle if he tries to flee, but is caught. (And it's already snowing in the Vale anyway - any castle he dies in could be made of snow).

On one hand I think SR/the lords of the Vale will call for his execution as vengeance for Lysa's murder and the poisoning of SR once the truth comes out.

On the other hand, I'd love it if Lady Stoneheart would be the one to have him executed - he tore apart a kingdom which causes the deaths of her family, murdered her sister, obsesses over her, and forced his sexual attentions on her daughter to groom her for his personal use. It'd be just desserts if he "got" Cat only for her to be his end. But due to time constraints, this one would require more storyline timeline info for me to bet on certainly against SR and the lords calling for his execution. No matter what, however, Sansa will be the catalyst of his end - either providing evidence to the lords and SR for his crimes, or to LSH who would kill Petyr for touching her daughter. I specify him as the "savage giant" in this thread due to his actions directly affecting Sansa (identified as the maid who slays giants) and Jeyne (who he helped trap in a snow castle).

The final giant - the giant at the end of the world in a castle of snow

Tyrion. Book!Tyrion is completely a villain (I don't acknowledge show!Tyrion here; Show!Tyrion is pretty unrecognizable from his book incarnation). There are quite a few statements people in asoiaf make about Tyrion being a giant, unprovoked, but my personal favorite is this remark Aemon makes when Tyrion visits the Wall:

"Oh, I think Lord Tyrion us quite a large man. I think he is a giant come among us, here at the end of the world."

Aemon is responding to Bowen who snidely points out how much Tyrion drinks for a ‘small man’. But the second part of the quote always hooked me. He’s referring not just to Tyrion’s large appetite/self who’s larger than is believed, but the fact that he’s at the Wall; the end of civilization that Westeros recognizes, but I think there's a couple deeper meanings.

Tyrion as the giant that comes to them at the end of the world:

1. from the perspective of southron Westeros, he'll be bringing dragons and a dragon queen who will burn them and be the end of their world as they know it (the dance of dragons 2.0, the burning of King's Landing, an invader bringing a foreign army, a usurper of either Aegon VI or of the still seated Lannisters if they're still alive) (the world ending in fire)

2. Tyrion will arrive at Winterfell to collect "his bride" and the claim of Winterfell and the North, on behalf of Dany (but operating for his own desires) after the war against the Others (the world ending in ice) already happened. If Jon misses the war against the Others, I think it's very possible, and he'd only be in the south to ask for assistance or dragonglass because I don't see him being crowned KITN (Rickon or Bran or Sansa will be acting as KITN/LOW and he'll have to be their emissary).

I think there's a good chance that the ending in ice happens before the ending in fire; the Others will be dealt with before Jon can leave the south.

In turn, Tyrion may be sent to negotiate with the regent/Lady of Winterfell (assuming no one knows Bran and Rickon survived) about swearing fealty to Daenerys esp if Aegon VI is still alive and he and Dany haven't begun their dance yet. Jon is forced to stay at the behest of Aegon and Dany as a mediator, perhaps, if the revelation of his birth comes out; I think there's a good chance he finds out before he goes south (three heads of the dragon meeting in KL - not good tidings and bringing back Jon's time as mediating peace between the Watch and the freefolk).

3. If the Night's Watch is still operational at the end of asoiaf, I think that's where Tyrion's endgame lies. At the end of the world (and in a position and place he mocked in the very beginning for being useless).

How would Sansa be the end of Tyrion? By denying him. She denied him before and this time so will the North. Sansa will "slay" him metaphorically. Those dreams and aspirations and desires? She will be the end of them. She won't let him have her or the North and vice versa - Ned (the North) won't let that Lannister [(wo)man] have this skin.

Neither she nor Lady (whose bones rest in Winterfell) will fall into Lannister hands for good.

If he does become Hand of the King it would be...odd. A complete glossing over of his crimes when grrm has setup indications that ppl might not be punished immediately, but they will be punished. Plus, if Tyrion returns to Westeros as Dany's Hand then he'll have served under two tyrants. Rule of three, serving under Bran would...not be a good look. It's a guideline grrm has set for the threes in asoiaf.

Maybe in the books the King of the 6/5 kingdoms hands Tyrion's judgment over to Sansa and she sentences him to take the black; honoring a promise that his nephew (a Lannister) broke to her and Ned (Starks). Who knows. I don't hold out hope for him suddenly aboutfacing and becoming a hero who then faces no consequences - him turning on Dany after she burns KL won't pardon his other crimes; rape, kinslaying, molestation, planning to use Dany or Aegon as his hammers against KL/his family.

Hope that fully explains it, others have done a better job writing tyrion as a villain meta. Thanks for the ask.

#anti petyr baelish #anti tyrion lannister #anti littlefinger #anti tyrion #sansa stark #robert arryn #theory and meta #asoiaf #anti sanrion #anti petsa #there's a lot of meta posts and theories about tyrion's trajectory on tumblr and all of them explain it better than i do #well ones that see him as a villain but there's a great deal that see him as a dark gray hero

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drethanramslay · 4 years

Text

In my Head

Pairing: Oliver x F! MC (Ida Bellamy)

Masterlist

Word count: 1038 words

Warning: Angst

Author's note: I participated in this week's @wackydrabbles and you will find the prompt in bold

The MC is not present in this fic... It's basically Oliver contemplating life and thinking about mc heheh...It's something new which I tried and I hope you like it 😊

Song: Lost my Mind by FINNEAS

Please forgive me if I make any mistakes

The moonlight poured through the small window in the captain's lodge. You could see the clear sky, the dark and peaceful waters which stretched for miles.

You could hear the waves splashing against the hull of the ship, making it sway, as if a mother was rocking the crib, to put her child to sleep.

Everyone was asleep.

Everyone but Oliver.

He lay in his bed, shirtless lost in the whirlwind of thoughts and demons.

As a lieutenant of the navy, his life always revolved around the seas and war. He maybe young but, he had slain mighty pirates and bathed in the blood of great bandits in the 12 summers he spent in the navy.

He was ruthless and unstoppable, just like his father. His ambition and passion towards serving his country drove him to work harder, resulting him to become the youngest lieutenant of the navy. The edge of his sword has met the demise of mighty criminals and their goons.

But lately, he has been contemplating how much of the blood on his hand was just innocents, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The weight of guilt on his almost non-existent conscience made him claustrophobic all of a sudden. He felt the walls closing around him. The need to breathe became overwhelming, so he got up and walked towards the upper deck of the ship.

The humid, night air with the smell of the sea was comforting as it whistled through his golden shoulder length locks. Under the moonlight, they looked golden, like an angel's halo.

I'm anything but angelic. Oliver scoffed to himself.

He was baffled by his brooding state. He was a happy go lucky guy, a rationalist and rarely found himself confused but, he knew the answer for his grumpiness and confusion.

Ida Bellamy.

The name left his lips like a prayer. The name which had been ingrained into his brain. The name which could bring him down to his knees.

Ida... The name was so unique and so was she.

All his life, he had many woman trying to court him but nobody, absolutely nobody could hold his attention for longer than ten seconds. He wasn't one to waste time in this whiffle-waffle. His place was in the open seas, not in a mansion, playing as a provider.

But, Ida was so different. She had a fiery spirit. Just like a flame which always dances to its own tune and can't be tamed, Ida was a free spirit.

It may have been mere four hours they spent together but, Oliver was a very good at analysing people. And the more he learnt about her, the more intrigued and drawn he felt towards her.

Like Icarus towards the sun.

Like a moth drawn to a flame.

I just met her acquaintance, yet in that little time I felt like I have known her for lifetimes... Oliver thought to himself as he leaned against the railing.

He looked up at the stars which gleamed against the prussian blue sky and it immediately reminded him of her twinkling emerald eyes.

Is she also looking up at the stars and thinking about the night we met? Oliver thought wishfully, realising just how stupid and far fetched it sounded.

He still remembered the way those eyes shone as they stood face to face on the dock. It felt as if he was soaring through the sky, amidst the stars.

But when he thought back to their brief encounter, he would remember about the capture. About how those radiant eyes dimmed, and hate and anger took their place.

He could remember how she felt repulsed by his touch. How she visibly flinched with disgust, when Oliver approached her jail cell. He could remember how she called him a "bastard" and how he was like the usual "damned navy dogs".

He had been cussed out by many people in the past and called a navy dog so often but, hearing her say it made him clench his jaw with shame.

It felt like a pang in his chest and for the first time in a very long time, he found himself hesitating. Found himself questioning himself. Found himself at crossroads.

Maybe it was confusing, but it wasn't like anyone really cared.

And the surprising thing is that, he found himself willing to be careless. Willing to give it all up. All the medals, accolades and titles.

Ida... What are you doing to me?

He didn't know where she was anymore. Or if she was even alive at this point. He had seen his father's ship blast cannons into 'The Revenge' through his spy glass and he was definitely sure that nobody could have survived a wreck like that.

His father even sent a messenger dove his way, informing him that Edward Montmartre was still in custody but the girl went missing.

It infuriated him and he almost turned the ship and set a route for Carribbean islands but, his right hand commander stopped him. Told him that he would be risking the lives of all men on board.

So with a heavy heart he continued his course, the only thing pushing him to move forward was hope. Hope that their paths will cross again. Hope that she is alive and breathing.

Since the past fortnight, he found himself doing things that he never believed in. Praying, hoping and worrying.

Ida, if you survive and if its meant for our fates to intertwine once again, I'm not leaving you. Oliver swore to himself, his intention becoming steely.

He started down to look at the earring in the palm of hand. It was Ida's. He picked it up from the floor of the deck, with the intention to return it back.

But time was never on their side.

Clutching the delicate earring in his passion, he started at the glowing horizon, signalling the start of a new day. I know we have rotten luck but, please hang on and stay alive.

I promise, that the moment my eyes are on you, I will make up for all the pain and prove that I'm a good man. But for now, I wish to see you soon.

I wish to see you now.

Permanent Tag list: @trappedinfandoms @oofchoices @agent-breakdance @dailydoseofchoices @tyrilstouch @siaramsey @theeccentricbibliophile @ac27dj @ramseysno1rookie @justanotherrookie @openheart12 @jamespotterthefirst @checkurwindow @chasingrobbie @junggoku @bellcat2010 @nooruleman @anonymously-cool

Oliver x MC taglist: @pixelberryownsme @n-whas @sarcasticsandy @malvolari-take-my-soul @krishu213 (lemme know if you want to added or removed from the taglist)

I hope you enjoyed the Drabble heheh :)

like, comment, reblog and share your views :D

#Anushka writes #distant shores #distant shores oliver #oliver ds #oliver x mc #oliver cochrane #choices ds #choices #playchoices #choices stories you play #choices stories we play #pixelberry #choices fanfiction #distant shores fan fiction

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apricuscity · 3 years

Text

Love In The Time Of Revolution!

“Welcome back everyone! We hope you’ve been enjoying the show so far. Please relax and enjoy the thrilling conclusion to Love In The Time Of Revolution!”

Act Two:

War has broken out across the kingdom. Villages are burning, people are losing their lives, chaos has consumed the once peaceful land...and madness is beginning to consume the Emperor..

Augustus and Baskerville are alone in the war room. Baskerville explains his grand plans to wipe out the rebels. (War). While yet again asking for Mia’s hand in marriage. Augustus agrees and says when the time comes Baskerville will have the throne he desires but not until this war is won.

Mia is horrified at what her father is allowing to happen and begs her mother to speak to him (War). Zelina claims Augustus will speak to no one except Baskerville and fears all is lost. She has her loyal servants pack Mia’s things in preparation for her departure.

Across the kingdom Soldiers, and Townspeople wonder how they got to where they are now (War). Benjamin has become the leader of a group of awakeners. Their number only seems to grow with each village they liberate. (War).

Before she leaves the castle Mia speaks one last time with her mother. Telling Zelina of the man she met at the festival. Zelina tells her daughter that love can happen in the most unexpected ways and most of the time Love doesn’t “see” classes. (Love Is Blind). She tells Mia that as strange as it is, she must follow her heart. She doesn’t want her daughter to end up in a loveless marriage such as her own. Mia bids her mother farewell and is escorted out of the castle by Zelina’s loyal guard.

Baskerville stands before a large crowd of people. He explains he knows none of them is an awakener but it doesn’t matter. All of them are filth and if he doesn’t eradicate them now they’ll likely be a problem during his rule. (Unthinkable). A few young villagers are seen hiding behind the elders. Baskerville smirks as the soldiers open fire.

The carnage continues as Baskerville has given up on trying to find just awakeners. Deciding to just burn it all and start over. Eventually his path takes him back to the fishing village where this all started. Walking through the streets as his soldiers burn down everything. Only to come face to face with Benjamin and his rebels.

Benjamin had been following the trail, knowing eventually he’d catch up to Baskerville. Baskerville and Benjamin’s forced engage each other. The sight of all this destruction has been taking it’s toll on Benjamin. Despite his resolve Benjamin isn’t as skilled a fighter as Baskerville and is stabbed in the side.

Baskerville explains that once he’s done with all of this he’s going to marry Mia and take the throne. He tells Benjamin he knows all about their festival meeting and Benjamin shouldn’t worry. Baskerville says he cares nothing for Mia and will gladly send her to meet Benjamin after he becomes emperor.

A sudden feeling overcomes Benjamin..time itself seems to stop as he feels a burning within his very soul (Awakened). His blood flow begins to greatly increase. His strength and speed are amplified. As time seems to return to normal he throws a punch as Baskerville prepares to strike him with his blade. Benjamin’s punch shatters the blade, a shard of it flying back and slicing Baskerville’s right eye.

Baskerville howls in pain and covers his eye, staggering backwards as Benjamin rises. Baskerville calls for a retreat but just before Benjamin can rush after he feels a tremendous pain in his body and drops to his knees. The other awakeners assure him he’ll be alright and congratulate him on becoming one of them.

Baskerville demands to speak to the Emperor alone. Augustus allows this but questions Baskerville’s authority. Baskerville claims Augustus has lost control, the awakeners are gaining ground, and Mia is gone. Baskerville demands they activate the chimera project. Augustus refuses.

Baskerville concedes that perhaps he’s taking it too far...or perhaps Augustus is simply a fool who doesn’t know when to stand aside. Baskerville produces a dagger from his sleeve and plunges it into Augustus’ heart. Augustus’ ceremonial mask falls from his face and shatters before the the emperor drops to the ground. (What Have You Done)

Baskerville has one of his spies plant the dagger in Zelina’s chambers. Calling for help and claiming he was attacked and the Emperor was slain. He places the blame on Zelina and has her arrested. Claiming the throne for himself and initiating project chimera.

As they ride through the countryside Mia and her guard are confronted by Baskerville’s soldiers. Mia proves herself capable as she fights off her attackers but the numbers catch up to her. Just as she and her guard about to be captured, Benjamin arrives. Demonstrating his newfound ability and dispatching the soldiers effortlessly. Mia and Benjamin embrace. (Fated).

As the strange chimera beasts begin to ravage the land, the awakeners find themselves having to save the very soldiers they were once fighting. The chimera threaten to wipe out everything and everyone. Mia learns of her father’s death and mourns him even though he was never truly kind to her.

Benjamin realizes the only way to stop this is to confront Baskerville who has left the castle and has secluded himself in the facility the chimeras are coming from. Despite protests Mia decides to come with him (No Second Chances). Mia refuses to lose another loved one.

Baskerville decides to increase the chimera production. He’ll outnumber the rebels and end this war. They had their chance to surrender..now everyone is simply expendable (No Second Chances).

As Benjamin, Mia, and a large contingent of awakeners march toward the chimera facility they see the scope of the destruction. Forests destroyed, the land itself scorched, wildlife and people alike either killed or devoured. The awakeners battle against a seemingly never ending amount of chimeras as Benjamin and Mia rush toward the facility.

They find the building strangely empty, Baskerville’s soldiers lay dead as a demented Baskerville sits on a makeshift throne. His chimera rushes Benjamin and Mia. Benjamin finds despite his new powers the chimera is proving too tough to handle. Baskerville explains the chimeras are designed to counter awakeners. They are the superior lifeform.

As the chimera pins Benjamin on the ground Baskerville steps forward, drawing the emperor’s blade. Claiming Benjamin took his eye...it’s only fair he repays the favor. As he’s about to strike, Mia tackles him to the ground. The chimera diverts it’s attention just long enough for Benjamin to punch through it’s heart. Tossing it aside.

Baskerville shoves Mia away and stands, smirking as Benjamin draws close. It’s only then that Mia notices something dripping from Baskerville’s blade. She realizes the truth. Baskerville knows he can’t beat Benjamin fairly so he’s poisoned his sword. One small cut is likely all he needs. Benjamin is already filled with rage as he charged.

Baskerville waits until the opportune moment and slashes hoping to simply land a small blow on Benjamin...Baskerville and Benjamin pause as they finally see Mia in between them. Baskerville’s sword stopped by her hand..and her blood dripping to the ground.

Mia stumbles back and Benjamin catches her. Baskerville takes a few steps back as Benjamin cradles Mia. Mia tells Benjamin to save their people. Benjamin looks to Baskerville who taunts him.

Benjamin lays Mia down and promises to return as he rushes Baskerville. Knocking him back into some equipment. As Baskerville slashes with sword he begins to strike more and more of the strange equipment. The machinery begins to spark, flames erupt as more of it is destroyed. Baskerville strikes a cable, causing sparks to blind Benjamin.

Baskerville tries to flee, running up several flights of stairs as fire begins to engulf the building. Benjamin regains his sight and pursues Baskerville. The floor itself begins to crumble as the building falls apart. Benjamin backs Baskerville into a corner.

Baskerville goes to strike with his sword but the ground gives way beneath him. Baskerville’s sword falls into the flames. Benjamin reaches out and grabs Baskerville’s hand. Baskerville pleads for his life and despite his rage, Benjamin pulls him up.

Baskerville admits defeat but as Benjamin turns he pulls another dagger from his sleeve. Much like he did with the Emperor he goes to strike down Benjamin. Unfortunately Benjamin sees this coming and dodges the attack, causing Baskerville to stumble and fall through the crumbling floor into the inferno below.

Benjamin hurries downstairs and retrieves the still conscious Mia, rushing her outside. As the facility burns the chimera begin to fall dead. Mia and Benjamin embrace as the sun begins to set. (Setting Sun).

Mia tells Benjamin that whatever comes next will need him. The empire will fall and the people will rebuild. Mia asks Benjamin to help Zelina, that her mother deserves to know what happened. Benjamin says he can’t lose anyone else, he doesn’t know if he can go on.

Mia smiles and says she knows he can. That he needs to. For her. Because tomorrow the sun is going to rise on a new world. They kiss one final time as the sun sets.

The curtains close.

“Thank you everyone! Can we get a round of applause please?” The curtain opens to reveal the entire cast. “ Emperor Augustus - Sorin Nightingale, Queen Zelina - Alabaster Brahms, Princess Mia - Lye Marigold, Commander Baskerville - Rudolph Donnerov, Benjamin - Amias Zelly, Village Elder - Shin Goodfellow!”

“Have a good night everyone!”

#Revolution Day

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corinthbayrpg · 3 years

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NAME. Elene Petrakis (Helen) AGE & BIRTH DATE. Unknown, 3,000+ GENDER & PRONOUNS. Female & She/her SPECIES. Rift OCCUPATION. Archivist at the Museum of Corinth FACE CLAIM. Emilia Clarke

BIOGRAPHY

(Tw abduction, war, death, hanging) They thought she was going to be a monster. A queen gave birth to two eggs, and whispers had abound of what horrors could lay inside. Everyone had see what had become of Pasiphaë’s child, the ferocious creature that tormented the island of Crete until it was slain. They looked at the eggs and feared creatures of equal terror would emerge to plague this world. Perhaps they had even been right. But what emerged instead was a babe, bright and beautiful even in the cradle, along with her siblings, every one of them humans with ten fingers and ten toes. To the child they gave the name Helen, a princess of Sparta and daughter of both a king and the mightiest of the gods. She grew quick and strong, her earthly father ensuring her capabilities with any weapon that could be fit into her small hands. Perhaps in another life, she would’ve been a warrior, more comfortable sat atop a horse with a bow in hand than others would grow to be in their entire lives. She wrestled against other children in the palaestra, and frequently went hunting with her brothers. But even as a child, Helen was golden, and so her fate was tainted.

The first lesson she learnt that beauty could be as much a curse as it was a boon befell the princess in her girlhood. She was merely thirteen, when Helen was abducted from her home in Sparta. Theseus and his companion Pirithous had decided that they would take wives, but only those great enough in stature to themselves. As a daughter of Zeus, Helen became Theseus’s choice, taken to his mother Aethra to be watched over in Athens, while the pair descended into the Underworld to claim Persephone for Pirithous’s bride. That was the last time she laid eyes on either man, for her rescue came long before the sole survivor’s return from the failed abduction. It was her brothers Castor and Pollux who came for Helen, leading an invasion into the city for the return of their sister, whisking her away back to Sparta.

After the abduction, King Tyndareus became concerned with the safety of his daughter, that others may attempt to follow in suit. A closer guard was kept on the princess, and when the time came for Helen to marry, a great contest was put forth. Men from across Greece came to compete for her hand, including the man that would eventually be married to her cousin. It was Odysseus who suggested that an oath be sworn by all the suitors, a pledge to uphold and defend the union of Helen and whomever her husband was to be, should quarrel ever arise. With his daughter’s best interest in mind, Tyndareus agreed to the idea, unknowing of the trouble it would eventually bring.

Menelaus had not been her choice, but at the time of their marriage, Helen had no cause to protest the arrangement. His attention was flattery, the greatest of the great many who had come for her, and for a girl of fifteen, it was easy to allow herself to be swept up in the fantasy. But real life is hardly ever so idyllic, and her husband soon proved to be far removed from what she had wanted. Lust and love are so easily confused for each other, but the want of a person is not the same as to see their soul. To Menelaus, Helen was a trophy; the most beautiful woman in the world, the daughter of Zeus and Spartan royalty, a coveted possession that he had won and displayed proudly. Even as she sat beside him, Queen of the land that had always been her home, she found no value in her life anymore, and none that took her more seriously than a girl with a pretty face.

It was not the life Helen had wanted for herself. A golden cage is still a cage, no matter how much finery decorates it’s bars. She gave Menelaus a daughter, gave him years of her life, and yet received little in return. Bored, lonely and wistful, it was then that Paris appeared in her life. First came Aphrodite, who informed her of the Trojan prince’s impending arrival. She promised Helen the connection she had always yearned for, an understanding that would never be found with Menelaus, and bid for the young queen to go with him when he came for her.

Paris was everything that he had been promised to be. Kind, attentive, and genuine, unlike her husband. He cared to hear Helen’s thoughts and opinions, her desire for independence from the marriage she had become trapped in, and a close knit bond formed between the pair in a short amount of time. They made plans to run away from Sparta, to return to Paris’s home of Troy and live amongst the dryads in the land beyond the city, where they would be safe and Helen would have the chance to be free. It was a selfish decision, and one she would not make again if given the chance to rewrite history, knowing all the grief that was to follow.

Menelaus was not a man to let his bride go so easily, Helen knew that. Still, never in her dreams did she imagine he would call upon her once suitors to uphold their oath, and lead them across the sea to reclaim his wayward life. They never got the chance to reach the trees, before the city was besieged by Greeks. War had broken out, and thousands upon thousands of people would die before it came to an end. The Trojans that housed her did so with spite, blaming her for the death that arrived at their doorstep, and though she had the company of Paris and Hector to shield her from the mass of their anger, Troy became just as lonely a place as Sparta had once been.

Both the Trojan princes would lose their lives in the war, and it was meant to be Helen’s fate as well. She was shunned by the women of the city as the walls were breached and Troy burned around her. The daughter of Zeus, a trained fighter in her own right, and yet she had been reduced to a state of fear and desperation, surrounded by people on both sides that reviled her. Trojans and Greeks alike wanted her blood, prepared to stone her to death for the role she had played in such a great destruction, but it was for Menelaus that their hands were stayed. The king had declared he would be the only one to kill his runaway wife, and so she was brought forth before him and his blade. But at the sight of Helen, dropped to her knees in subjugation, he was once again taken by the sight of her great beauty. Though the rest of Troy would not be so lucky, the once and again Spartan Queen’s life was spared, and she was taken back to her homeland along with the victorious Greek army.

Sparta no longer offered a comforting home to the woman either now, however. The image of her as a wanton adulteress had spread across the Greek land, never mind the truth of the matter, and the remaining years of her human life were no more happy. After Menelaus’s death, Helen was chased from the land by the anger of Nicostratus and Megapenthes, who still harbored hatred for their stepmother that had simmered across the years. She fled to Rhodes for sanctuary, where a woman she thought to be her friend resided. Polyxo had been the queen of the island for a number of years, after the death of her husband, and so Helen mistakenly thought the place to be safe to her.

But though Polyxo received her warmly, inside she held a desire for vengeance. She, along with many others, blamed Helen for the events of the Trojan war, where her husband died on the first day of fighting. When the former queen came to her for protection, she saw the opportunity she had waited on for years, placed right onto her lap. And so it came about that while Helen had been bathing in her chambers, Polyxo had the handmaidens she had given to her dress up under the guise of furies, to drag her out of the tub and through the city. She was taken into the public of the island, amongst it’s people, and hung by rope on a tree branch for everyone to see, until her once pink lips turned a shade of blue.

Perhaps death had been kinder to Helen than her life ever had. As Zeus’s child, she had been taken to Elysium for her eternal rest, a land of paradise and splendor. And yet even so, she had not been happy. It was during this time that she had made a companion of the goddess Hestia, one of the few friends she had found even in such a utopia. She could see the sadness that resided in Helen’s soul, the feeling of loss that she had never truly gotten to live as she desired, and so the goddess offered her a gift; a second chance at life, to return to the earth as an immortal. It was a decision she made with ease, and so Helen was sent back to the land of the living, no longer a mortal woman, but as a rift.

But she could not be Helen anymore. No, her name had now become synonymous with the great and terrible war that left the city of Troy in shambles. In order to be truly free with a new beginning, she had to be someone new, too. The infamous women went through an abundance of names at first, trying them on like the dresses she wore, but never back to her own. It was during this time that she returned to the destroyed city, to the hills beyond where the dryads Paris had spoken of lived. It was with them she found a feeling of true peace, maybe even for the first time. There was a kinship with the dryads that the former queen had been missing, the feeling of belonging amongst a people that for the first time, did not see her for only her beauty. But nothing can last forever, not even for immortals.

She loved the dryads greatly, and remained with them until the very last had returned to their tree, to slip into a slumber that would last for thousands of years. Alone again, Helen slowly reformed herself to fit into the world she was left with. Elene Petrakis was a name she adopted centuries later, when the story of Helen of Troy was more myth than history. It was close enough to remain familiar, and yet not so much that to hear it felt like reopening the wound that never quite healed inside her chest. A life as Helen had lead to a great destruction, and so Helen she would no longer be.

That was how Elene’s story began; she was a wanderer, who moved across continent to continent, never settling anywhere for more than a few years. She used the new talents she had gained as a rift to help those wherever she ended up. Women in particular, she found herself protective of — perhaps it was too much like looking into a mirror, the reflection of everything that used to shackle her in her human life. But she was still a Spartan princess before she was ever known as the face that launched a thousand ships, and she could swing a sword just as well as any man. And swing she would, in the defense of those who could not defend themselves. It was not a righteous crusade so much as her inability to watch others suffer as she once did. Greater conflict it was easy to steer from, to turn away and let the world become what it would, and the greater humanity she cares little for the fate of. But individual people in suffering, Elene has found, it is much harder to walk away from.

It’s surprisingly easy to be a ghost, even when the entire world thinks it knows your story. Who would ever connect the pretty blonde they saw in a crowd to the woman of legend? Her name became a cautionary tale, a treacherous and wicked woman or an unfortunate victim, even a cheesy pickup line for those bold enough to spin it, all depending on from whose lips it fell. After awhile, she learnt how to shut it all out. Elene learnt how to keep her head down, and not include herself in the rabble that existed around her, whether supernatural or human. She intended to keep on living that way, maybe even for the rest of her immortal life, until the fall of magic came.

It happened suddenly, and returned just as quick, as if the world had been reset. Though the two week period in-between was a strange adjustment time, Elene had been prepared to return to her life as usual, until the whisperings reached her ears. It was an impossibility, and yet, talk of the dryads resurfacing was not something she could ignore. She remembered the days of living among the trees, the last time that she had truly been happy. It was an ache so sharp, that’s led her straight to Corinth Bay to see for herself. It’s a city she’s been avoiding since the veil first tore, evading the pull it had on the supernatural creatures of this world, that it might would bring a chaos into her life that Elene sought to avoid. But at the chance of seeing her friends again, there is little she would not do, even if it means stepping into an unknown danger.

PERSONALITY

+ protective, generous, observant - defensive, contrite, withdrawn

PLAYED BY Abby. CDT. She/Her.

#rift #female #helen #emilia clarke

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pamphletstoinspire · 3 years

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November 29 - Today is the feast day of Our Lady of Beauraing.

Our Lady of Beauraing, Immaculate Virgin, bring to Jesus, your Son, all the intentions that we entrust to you today. Mother of the Golden Heart, reflection of the Father’s tenderness, look upon the men and women of our time with love and fill them with the joy of your presence. You, who promised to convert sinners, help us discover the infinite mercy of our God. Awaken within us the grace of conversion so that our lives may be a reflection of that mercy. Make every moment of our existence “a yes” to the question you ask today: “Do you love my Son? Do you love me?” Then the kingdom of Jesus will come to the world. Amen.

The world was staggering under the burdens of the catastrophic financial collapse of 1929, which led to the Great Depression in 1932. But soon after crawling out of the wreckage, the world was to be hurled once more into a devastating world war—number two—just as Our Lady of Fatima had prophesied!

Through this crucial time of self-determination—repent or be punished—Our Immaculate Mother was watching and endeavoring to lend her sweet assistance to rebellious mankind. Thus, in the Autumn of 1932, as in the Autumn of 1846, Our Lady came once again to young children. This time the country was Belgium, in the valley of Beauraing.

This time it was not to the mountains to which Our Lady came, but to the plains, and to a place which had something of beauty attached to it in the past, as its very name implies, though it was to bear an incomparable loveliness when graced by the immaculate presence of the Queen of Heaven.

Between November 29th, 1932, and January 3rd, 1933, Our Lady appeared thirty-three times to five children: Fernande, Albert, and Gilberte Voisin, and to Andrée and Gilberte Degeimbre. Although Our Lady appeared at various locations in and around the convent grounds, she appeared most of the time on a May tree—Mary’s tree! It was on a tree, also, that she appeared at Fatima, and she is said to have appeared on a tree at Heede, Germany, as well.

There is something significant about these trees on which Our Lady stood! It was through a tree, and that which grew on it, that Adam and Eve sinned, and the human race was damned forever. It was through a tree, and through Him Who hung upon it, that the same human race was Redeemed from that damnation. Now, once again, it is through a tree, and through her who stood upon it, that the sinful world is given the opportunity, and the only means, by which it can be saved from the unspeakable wrath of God at the sight of its countless sins. Many unheard-of atrocities in this world could be avoided, and as Our Lady said at Fatima, many souls could be saved from eternal damnation, if only we would do as she requested of us upon that “noble tree.”

As with Maximin at La Salette, and Francisco at Fatima, so now there appears on the scene another erstwhile skeptic; this time a grown woman, who brings with her a big stick to “knock It” with. On one occasion, Madame Degeimbre started to thrash the bushes, like poor Lucia’s mother at Fatima had thrashed her. But she also later became, like Lucia’s mother, a firm believer in the apparitions.

As at her visits to La Salette and Fatima, Our Lady appeared at Beauraing garbed in an unspeakable light, more dazzling than the sun. Here as at Fatima, she was dressed in spotless white, and both at La Salette and Beauraing she had golden rays shining around her Heart.

As Lucia had asked at Fatima, so Albert repeated here, “What do you wish?” And the first request of Our Lady was: “Always be good.” Thousands of the faithful began flocking to the place of the apparitions, and in December witnessed the children in ecstasy, much like St. Bernadette at Lourdes.

On December 29th, Our Lady appeared, opened her arms and revealed on her breast a Heart of Gold. Her actions were reminiscent of her apparition on June 13, 1917, when she revealed to the Fatima children her Immaculate Heart, surrounded by terrible thorns, which, they were told, were placed there by our sins and blasphemies.

On December 30th, in addition to showing her Heart to three of the children, Our Lady said: “Pray. Pray very much.” On January 1 she said to Gilberte Voisin: “Pray always.” On January 2, she said: “Tomorrow I will speak to each one of you separately.”

A great crowd was on hand for what was to be the final appearance, January 3rd, 1933. After two decades of the Rosary, four of the children gave a joyful shout and fell to their knees. Fernande sobbed because she could not see the vision.

Our Lady gave three of the children a secret, which they never divulged. To one she also promised: “I will convert sinners.” Upon saying “goodbye” to the fourth child, she said: “I am the Mother of God, the Queen of Heaven. Pray always.” She then showed the Heart of Gold as she disappeared.

Fernande remained kneeling while the other children went inside the convent to answer questions. Suddenly Our Lady appeared to her and asked: “Do you love my Son? Do you love me?” When Fernande answered “yes” to both questions, Our Lady added: “Then sacrifice yourself for me.” Again she showed her Golden Heart and disappeared, saying: “Goodbye.”

Here again, as the world was rushing to its destruction in the Second World War, Our Lady came at the eleventh hour, to call men back to God, through sacrifice, penance, and prayer!

Tragically, men refused to listen to the Mother of Eternal Wisdom, and men went forward erecting their flimsy temples to false peace and worldly pleasure. Thus, the chastisements came, just as she had predicted. War! The punishment for the sins of mankind! Many priests were martyred: 11,000 were slain by the Communists in Spain alone. Many homes were destroyed, many people were killed, just as she had foretold at Fatima, where she also said that “most of those who die in war go to Hell.”

Hell! A terrifying word; a word which we are told by the Saints to consider daily, but which most so-called Catholics, at the Devil’s suggestion, put out of their minds entirely. Many of them, in fact, following the heresy of the Modernists, don’t even believe that Hell exists! Ah, would that they could, like St. Teresa of Avila or Sister Josefa Menendez, go down into Hell but for a moment or two, and see the countless numbers of apparently “good” people suffering there forever in endless hate, unspeakable rage, and despair. If they could see, as Josefa did, a young girl going down to Hell and cursing her parents the while, because they had permitted her to read suggestive and immoral books!

No wonder Our Lady wept at La Salette! No wonder she opened the earth at Fatima and showed the children a horrifying vision of Hell, and told them, as Our Lord Himself declared in Scripture, that most human beings go there! No wonder the Immaculate Heart of Our Lady is wrenched with sorrow, pierced with thorns and bleeding! But because she is our Mother, the Mother given to us by Jesus from the Cross, she continues her miraculous warnings, to save her little ones from this unimaginable eternity of pain, separated from the infinite Good for which we were created.

So urgent was (is!) the need, and so short the time, that from thence onward, Our Lady began to come much more frequently and with shorter intervals between. The next year was an extra Holy Year, and in that Year, only a few days after her visit to Beauraing, Our Lady appeared again in Belgium, this time at Banneux. Some time later she would come to Heede and then to Marienfried.

OUR LADY TO FERNANDE VOISIN, JANUARY 3, 1933

IN 1932 ALBERT VOISIN was a lively boy of eleven with a fifteen-year-old sister, Fernande. One November evening they called for their friends Andree and Gilberte Degeimbre and made their way to the convent school in their small home town of Beauraing to collect another friend, Gilberte Voisin, at the end of the evening study.

As they waited at the school door Albert suddenly cried out, “Look, the Virgin Mary is walking over the railway bridge!” He was a notorious prankster, so the girls took no notice. But Albert assured them he was not joking. When at last they turned to look, they saw a woman in white strolling through the air above the bridge and the convent garden. The children were afraid and hammered at the door.

Sister Valeria came to the door with Gilberte Voisin. Gilberte looked towards the bridge and she too saw the apparition, but the nun saw nothing and told the children to go home. When she reported the alleged vision to Mother Theophile, the Superior, she was scolded for her credulity. The frightened children ran home to their respective parents, who were deeply skeptical and sent them to bed in disgrace for lying.

+ A SECOND APPARITION

The following day the children were at the convent school as usual to collect Gilberte Voisin when the apparition reappeared. Strangely, the youngsters were not frightened this time. Again they tried to convince Madame Germaine Degeimbre, but without success. She advised Hector Voisin that in future he should collect his daughter from school himself if the two families were not to be held up to ridicule all over the town.

The next evening, at about six o’clock, the Degeimbre children wanted to go to the convent again in the hope that the Virgin would appear. Their mother refused at first, but then she had second thoughts: what if someone was playing a practical joke on the children? She decided to accompany them and get to the bottom of the mystery. Other neighbors joined the group and they all set off for the convent. The children ran ahead and the adults heard their cries of delight: “She is here! She is here again!”

This time the vision appeared on the walkway between the garden and the convent door. Later the children reported that the Virgin was standing three feet above the ground. She wore a white dress and her hands were clasped in a gesture of prayer. Then she opened her arms to welcome them before vanishing. The adults saw nothing.

Later that night, Germaine decided to conduct further investigations on her own. Convinced that the children were not telling lies, she felt someone must be deceiving them with reflections or mirrors. The children begged to be allowed to go with her, and, when they were about to leave the garden, they saw the Lady in the hawthorn. And when they reached the convent they fell to their knees and began reciting the Ave Maria. Germaine walked towards the spot on which their eyes were fixed, but Andree Degeimbre warned her mother not to go further for fear of offending the Virgin. After a few moments the apparition vanished, and the distraught children cried. Germaine and the other adults then made a thorough search of the garden for the supposed trickster, but found no one.

In school the next day, Mother Theophile addressed all the children severely and said there was to be no talk of “visions”. Meanwhile, Madame Degeimbre and Madame Voisin had been to see the parish priest, Father Leon Lambert. The priest said that during Mass on December 8 he would pray for clarification: were the children being duped or was the Blessed Virgin truly visiting them?

+ WE WILL BE GOOD!

The following evening Mother Theophile padlocked the garden gate and let dogs loose in the yard as a further disincentive to the curious. Undeterred, the children went along as usual, followed by a small group of interested adults. Again the Virgin appeared and the young visionaries fell to their knees. The girls were silent but Albert asked them, “Is this the Blessed Virgin?” The Virgin nodded affirmatively, so he added, “What is it you want with us?” Then the girls spoke in chorus, as if in answer to a voice which they alone had heard: “Yes, we will always be good.” After this the vision disappeared.

On Sunday, December 4 the children went again to the convent school at about 6:30 in the evening. This time they took with them a little boy who had polio and a blind uncle of the Degeimbre girls. Again they asked the vision to declare unambiguously whether she was the Blessed Virgin or not. Later they reported that she had nodded her head. They then asked her to heal the two sick people they had brought with them. There was no apparent response.

They returned again on the 5th, and this time the accompanying group had grown into a crowd. Albert asked the Virgin for some sign to convince the adults that the vision was authentic. On the following day, December 6, the Feast of St. Nicholas, the Virgin appeared holding a rosary and the children at once began to recite it. The Virgin asked them to return on the Thursday, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

Word of the apparitions had spread throughout Belgium, and on Thursday twelve thousand people turned up. This time the children went into an ecstatic trance during which they were subjected to investigation by doctors who were interested in abnormal psychological states. One Dr. Lurquin lit a match and held it under Gilberte Voisin’s hand. She uttered no cry of pain, and later examination revealed no burn mark. The doctor also nipped and pinched the children, but drew no response.

In the following days not every child saw or heard the same phenomena, and so discrepancies and confusion arose. As a result Mother Theophile suspected that the Devil was involved, so on Christmas Eve she fastened a medallion of St. Benedict to the tree in the garden where the Lady had appeared. The apparitions briefly ceased.

+ PRAY VERY MUCH

They resumed again on December 27, when the Virgin told the children, “My last appearance will happen quite soon now.” On the 29th nine thousand pilgrims arrived in the hope of receiving a miraculous sign. That evening, Fernande Voisin claimed to have seen the Virgin reveal a golden heart radiating heavenly light. She alone saw this phenomenon, which made the subsequent interrogations even more ill-tempered. The youngsters were constantly interviewed and cross-examined by doctors and officials until they were tired out. On December 30, Fernande and Gilberte Voisin and Andree Degeimbre claimed they had seen the luminous golden heart; but only Fernande said she had heard the Lady say, “Pray very much.”

On January 3, 1933, thirty-five thousand pilgrims made the journey to Beauraing. The children at once went into an ecstatic trance and began to pray the Ave Maria in unnaturally high-pitched tones. Each child received a private message from the Virgin; they were all deeply touched and wept openly—–all except Fernande, to whom the Lady had not appeared that evening. She was heartbroken.

Fernande knelt by the gate and began praying the rosary desperately. At that moment there was a brilliant flash of lightning and a clap of thunder. It was apparent from the look on Fernande’s face that she could see the Virgin once again. After this the visions ended.

+ BLESSINGS AND CURES

Enthusiasm for the visionaries’ story competed with a mood of skepticism, so that controversy raged throughout Belgium. In May 1933 the Bishop of Namur set up a committee to evaluate the visions. Then came the first reports of cures and blessings. A young girl, Pauline Dereppe, was healed of a severe bone disease after praying at Beauraing. A middle-aged woman, Madame Van Laer, was cured of her tuberculosis. As the news spread, the number of pilgrims increased phenomenally: there were two and a half million in 1933 alone.

All the children survived into adulthood, married and raised children. Albert became a missionary schoolmaster in the Belgian Congo. It was not until 1949 that the findings of the committee of inquiry into the apparitions at Beauraing were made public. The Bishop declared, “The Commission has thoroughly studied the events and we are convinced of the supernatural character of the visions.”

+ VISITING THE SHRINE

At the north-west end of the church is the Garden of the Hawthorn, marking the place where Our Lady first appeared to the children. This is also the site of the Railway Bridge. A lovely statue of the Virgin in Carrara marble stands to greet you. Two miraculous cures were officially recorded here: those of Maria Van Laer and Madeleine Acar. Here too are the very paving stones where the visionaries fell to their knees. Under the podium is the Crypt of St. John, which contains a beautiful statue of Our Lady as well as stations of the Cross by Max Van Der Linden.

Don’t leave without visiting the Votive Chapel and the commemorative stone to the pilgrimage of Pope John Paul II on 18 May 1985. Proceed through the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, where Mass is celebrated daily, to the Monumental Arch under which is the Altar to the Queen of Heaven.

At the head of the nave is the Upper Church which is reached by a stairway [there is a ramp for wheelchairs]. On the right is a silhouette entitled The Mother of God, traced by Maurice Rocher and realized in ceramics by Alice van der Gaast. Under the Upper Church you find the Rosary Church with the ceramics of the Mysteries of the Rosary by Max Van Der Linden and also the metal stations of the Cross by the Swiss artist Willi Buck.

Between the shrine steps and the Town Hall is the Marian Museum, which displays souvenirs of the apparitions including clothing Worn by the visionaries themselves. Each year tens of thousands visit the chapel built near the little convent school. Beauraing has become one of the best-loved of all the shrines of Our Lady.

On 21/22 of August each year an international pilgrimage takes place and the anniversary of the apparition is celebrated on November 29.

The Beauraing cemetery contains the tombs of Andree Degeimbre and Fernande Voisin.

#our lady of beauring

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jasontoddiefor · 4 years

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Title: Same Heart, Same Blood Summary: You do not have a name. You were supposed to be Lord Vader’s son, the copy of the child that had died on the desert planet, but the man that never was your father rejected you. You grow up hating him (you just want to belong).The Emperor made a clone of Luke Skywalker, who died as a mere five-year-old. The rest, as they say, was the Will of the Force. AN: Take this mess that has stolen my calm away these past days

[Read on AO3]

You do not have a name, not yet, but the old man with the golden eyes has promised that you will soon. He calls himself the Emperor, your Emperor as if it is a fundamental truth you better not question.

(It is one, you’re going to learn later, wheezing for breath as you kill the children you grew up with. It also a lie, you realize two decades in the future, crying in a princess’s embrace.)

But right now you don’t think to question it. Your thoughts and memories are much too confusing and your muscles still jerk from phantom pains. The environment, the wealth of the palace around you, confuses you and you aren’t sure how to handle it. You are dressed in fine black clothes by two servants and the fabric is much softer than the one you are used to wearing.

(These too are memories you don’t recall.)

“You are the son of my Lord Vader,” your Emperor tells you. “You will bring glory to the Empire.”

You nod because that is obviously what your Emperor expects. He smiles, strangely, kind and loathing at the same time, and orders you to walk with him.

You meet Lord Vader in the throne room. He is a monster dressed in blood and torment, but you think you might learn to adore your father. He is strong, that much you can tell already, but he is also in great pain. You think that if you might ease his suffering, you could be happy for the rest of your life.

“I have discovered a great plot,” the Emperor tells your father. “After you killed you dear wife, the Jedi took her body not just to bury it on Naboo, but to steal your child as well. He brought your son to Tatooine, to be raised as a farmer. I felt a great disturbance in the Force, my apprentice, and it was there that I found your child, a son. Unfortunately, it was too late already. Your son had been slain like your mother before him.”

Darkness pours from your Father, so thick and terrible, you feel like you’re choking, as if your breath was stolen away. But you stay silent because your Emperor told you so.

“Embrace the anger, Lord Vader. You may swallow that planet whole if it pleases you, but first I want to introduce you to someone.”

You are young still, so small and frail and caught off-guard, but even now you understand what the Emperor is asking. You step forward, hoping to make a good impression on your father.

“I have tried to remedy that cruelty,” the Emperor says. He puts a hand on your shoulder, keeping you close and away from your father. You’re not sure why he’s doing it. Aren’t you supposed to go to him?

“Child, introduce yourself,” the Emperor orders.

You frown as you aren’t sure what to say. You haven’t been given a name yet, but you want to make him proud. After all, you’ve been told your purpose and your role already. Son of Lord Vader, glory to the Empire.

“Hello, Father,” you say, trying to look as brave as possible. “I am here to please you.”

“A perfect clone of the boy,” the Emperor explains your existence. “A gift.”

(You don’t know what a clone is, not yet. Later, during your lessons, you will read about the Republic and the Clone Wars, understand that you are a pale copy made to be used as a common tool without any rights or a name. You will beat your opponents into the ground until you and they are bleeding. You’re snarling in anger and remembering that this, at least, is yours.)

Your father doesn’t answer at first, he just breathes as the hatred and pain continue to surround him.

“Is the clone to be a replacement for my son, then?” He finally asks.

“If you wish. The Force is strong in him,” the Emperor replies.

You get the impression that your father stares at you, mustering how you measure up to his expectations. You stand as straight as you can and smile a little shyly perhaps. You want him to love you, but you only need him to like you.

“Give him to the Inquisitors,” your father replies. “I have no use for him.”

You watch as your father leaves, standing still at the Emperors side. You don’t understand what happens until the Grand Inquisitor comes, pulls you harshly by your arm and drags you away to the training facility.

They call you boy and child and soldier and brother and you aren’t given a name. You don’t dare to ask for one, so sure that your father will still come.

The hope leaves you the first time they break your bones and you scream and beg, try to reach out to the darkness you experienced only once. He’s far away, that much you know.

He’s not coming to save you.

Glory to the Empire.

You’re nobody’s son.

Half the time the Force is screaming at you, the other half is spent being shouted at by the other Inquisitors. They teach you discipline, loyalty to the Empire and all the skills needed to ensure the Emperor will always sit on his throne. You’re not sure whether you’re actually loyal to the Empire. It’s all you have ever known and you suppose you should be thankful to it for creating you, but you aren’t.

You hate it, you resent your own existence to the core. You weren’t born, you were made to bleed and die for the Empire. And, being forced through its punishing training, you catch yourself thinking that death might be kinder. The numbers of the Inquisitors always stay roughly the same, but only because they steal children as quickly as they kill them.

You refuse to be murdered by them; you won’t give them the satisfaction. You will live and you will serve and you will bring glory to the Empire.

(You will fight and keep fighting until you’re standing in front of Lord Vader and force him to acknowledge you. You will be great and he will realize all he lost when he threw you away.)

The thoughts of running away or defecting to the rebels never cross your mind, but the idea of compassion does. It is forbidden to you, to all Inquisitors. You are taught how to forget it in the death matches they force you to compete in. The weakest get the chance to prove themselves one last time, while the oldest are made to kill the companions they share a room and a table with.

The lesson never sticks.

It is compassion that saves you again and again.

Your shields are made of durasteel. Nobody can get through them, no matter how hard your teachers try, but invading their minds is so much easier. You suggest they stop kicking you when you are already down and they do.

Your talents don’t go unnoticed, they never do in a place like this. You are taught infiltration, how to smile and make your blue eyes light up in childish wonder. When you are ten, you meet a girl two years younger than you with the same skill set.

Her hair is bright red and stands out as much as your own blonde crown. She doesn’t have a name either, at least not until the two of you are stuck in a dorm together. Nightmares are a frequent occurrence here and she screams.

You’re tired, you want to sleep, you slip into her dreams.

(There is a woman standing in the desert, screaming at you. She’s crying and you think you are as well. The girl is hiding in a basement and watches her mother die shouting her daughter’s name. The scene is familiar. You don’t know that the first part of the dreamscape isn’t Mara’s but yours until it’s nearly too late.)

You call her Mara when you’re alone and she hurls whatever nickname she can think of at you. You still don’t have a name, only a rank.

It’s Third Brother right now.

(By the end of the year it will be Second Brother and when you’re fourteen, you will be the First Brother. They will begin to whisper about Siths and Apprentices you will stare at your face in the mirror every morning, wondering why your eyes are still blue.)

Mara likes to stick to words associated with the sky.

“It’s because you always volunteer for missions, just to pilot, Skyspawn,” Mara says with an eye roll.

You enjoy flying. It makes you feel like you are free, even when you’re stuck in a durasteel container. If you had been given a choice as a child, you’d be a pilot instead of an Emperor’s Hand.

The title is given to you on your creation day. The Emperor smiles, tells you he is proud of you. You’re thankful for your shields because you honestly couldn't care less about what he thinks.

(It’s not him you want to impress.)

All you know is that your training is finally complete and that your life might not be your own, but even just the taste of more room to be whoever you want to be leaves you dreaming. Then, after half a year of doing missions handed to you by the Emperor himself, he gives you your first long-term assignment.

He puts you on the crew of Lord Vader’s flagship.

You are to assist Lord Vader in all matters. You are given an appropriate uniform and a new name for all the other personnel to use when addressing you.

Commander Forbes.

Forn Besh.

First Brother.

Even Mara’s worst nicknames, and she has come up with some truly awful ones, aren’t as uncreative as this. You miss her like one would miss their right hand, but Mara is still training and you are not.

(Vader never calls you anything but Inquisitor.)

You think you might hate Vader, but you know he doesn't hate you, not really. He hates the idea of you, all that you represent. You are the son he never got to meet or raise, the Emperor’s total control over him, all his flaws.

Vader only really lashes out at you once. He chokes you with the Force, squeezes until you can see the stars surrounding you, and then he drops you.

(You don’t know that for all that you are Anakin Skywalker’s copy, you resemble Padmé Amidala even more. It is only this that saves you.)

For one terrible moment you wish he would have gone through with it. He could have snapped your neck so very easily.

(You know because that’s how you killed the First Brother.)

Vader introduces you as the Emperor’s asset. For all that you’re supposed to be undercover, Vader’s troops obviously know that it means you’re a spy. You are surprised at first because you didn’t expect them to be this loyal to Vader. The Stormtroopers treat you like an outsider because they are Vader’s men. The other military officers just treat you strangely because you’re incredibly short for your age.

You should report this to the Emperor.

You don’t.

The Stormtroopers start inviting you to the mess hall. It is only then that you see why they might be so loyal to Vader, hundreds of identical faces talking to each other at the same time.

Nobody told you that most of Vader’s fleet consists of Clone Troopers, but you suppose that it does explain why their missions have a much higher success rate. They have been made for war, just like you, and don’t know how to be anything but a smarter blaster.

(You’re not sure you know either.)

CC-2224 is your favorite. You’re not supposed to have favorites, but you’re not supposed to be compassionate either and that has only aided you so far. The other clones seem to pick up on your new acquaintance with him and now draw you in too. You gather that CC-2224 used to be a Commander, a position now reserved for fourteen-year-old Emperor’s Hands, and some of the other Troopers still defer to that.

Vader puts CC-2224 in charge often enough despite it all, so you begin to report to him too, report to him first. You gain the clones’ favor and you fight at the front with them.

At Vader’s behest, you raze through battlefields with twin red ‘sabers in your hands. You cut through droids and rebels and smugglers, execute on his orders.

You give him everything you have.

(He doesn’t return in kind.)

The clones start to slip up around you. They call you Commander usually, but when it’s just you and them between blaster fire, a verd'ika slips out often enough.

They do not actually mean you, you realize quickly. Most men of Vader’s Fist wear a little extra color between their regular uniforms. They’re not supposed to do so, but you catch flashes of blue and orange. The battalions of the Republic are not as dead as they should be.

You ought to tell the Emperor.

(But that would mean betraying Vader and losing this little space you carved out for yourself. You’ve collected trinkets of the worlds you visited and you get to keep them. The clones give you sweets and CC-2224 mutters about reverse grips when he sees you hold your ‘sabers for the first time.)

You don’t.

(You quietly look up the old Republic battalions. 501st blue and 212th orange. General Kenobi and Skywalker, blue lightsabers. Commander Tano with twins. You wonder if it’s her CC-2224 is thinking of when he sees you.)

You’re just like the clones, you think. A vod to a dead child. But you don’t dare to actually voice your thoughts. You think CC-2224 might know anyway.

(This is why Vader hates you. The clones, for all that they are supposed to be identical, have slightly different skills and tastes. You’re not a perfect copy. You never were.)

But you‘re still the Emperor‘s Hand. You‘re called back to Coruscant regularly to report and train with the other Inquisitors. You‘ve only become stronger since you left, even if you haven’t become much taller. You see Mara only for moments during the daytime, but she doesn’t fail to tease you about your height when you‘re stuck in your room, turning your sheets red because of badly treated injuries.

“You’re getting popular here,” Mara tells you. “They call you Vader’s attack dog.”

Vader’s replacement, is what she actually means. It makes a terrible amount of sense. Your presence throws Vader off, the Emperor thinks you’re only his own and you were made for this.

The Force is strong in you.

Vader has ambitions, mourns a child and a wife and perhaps - this thought occurs to you for the first time then - he blames the Emperor. If he is so strong, was stronger than Vader, he should have been able to stop it all from happening.

But he hadn’t.

You exist and you’re not a gift, you’re a punishment and you will be the instrument of the Emperor’s downfall.

(You’re tired. You don’t want to be anyone’s anything. You just want to belong somewhere and be left in peace.)

You crawl out of your bed, allow yourself to wince because of your bruised ribs and make yourself comfortable in Mara’s bunk.

“Aren’t we too old for this?” She asks, but makes space for you anyway.

It’s an old song and dance, except you’re not ten-and-eight, you’re seventeen-and-fifteen nowadays. You’re exhausted from all your nightmares. You have become used to them, but they’re still painful.

(You dream about the battlefields, the smell of burned flesh. Children half your age you can’t afford to care for and sentients twice your age who do. You’re not a torturer, you’re a soldier, but it doesn’t make a difference when you are ordered to slaughter them like cattle.)

“No,” you tell her. The clones still share bunks after particularly gruesome campaigns and they are much older than the two of you.

Mara’s breath evens out before yours. You want to take her with you on board of the Devastator. She’s one of the most skilled Inquisitors, your teamwork is great and Vader hasn’t tried to outright kill you in three years. Mara would be safe and away from the Imperial Center.

Vader might always send you into the worst parts of the battles, but you return victorious.

(It’s spite, you tell yourself, but that’s a lie. You still only want to make him proud, have him acknowledge you. Just once you want him to look at you like he did before.)

You will just have to keep fighting.

The clones don’t celebrate birthdays, they don’t have any, and the Inquisitors never do either. You know you were created on Empire Day, so sometimes it feels like you’re celebrating having made it through another year. This campaign though leaves much to be desired. Vader is always called back to Coruscant for Empire Day, but this year his troops have been left behind, turning another rebel cell to dust. You’re dirty and haven’t eaten in a week and want to go back to the ship.

“I hate marching through caves,” CT-4545 complains. “It’s dark and wet and urgh.”

“We’re halfway through already,” CC-2224 says. He’s walking right behind you and from experience you know he will tackle you to the ground first, should any complications arise.

(It’s comforting in a way you can’t quite understand.)

“At least we’ve got somebody to light up our way, don’t we?”

The clone means you and you can’t help smiling. You’re glad you’re walking in front of the, so that they can’t see it. All of you engineered war machines have a role to play still after all.

“You sense any danger, nau'ul?” CT-4545 asks.

Candlelight.

CC-2224 had come up with the moniker after seeing you train in the dark, only the red of your ‘sabers illuminating the training hall. A week later, every Clone Trooper had been using it in the appropriate moments.

The mission absolutely sucks, but you’re in good company at least. Using your lightsabers as flashlights is ridiculous, but you don’t mind at all.

“No danger,” you reply and hope the campaign will be over soon, but you already know it's useless.

The battles get worse. There are civilians here and you are told to ignore them and keep fighting. You’re not allowed to hesitate, but there’s a little girl with red hair and you look away, just for a second.

(It’s enough.)

You get thrown to the ground, your head smacks against the dry earth and dust gets into your eyes. Somebody is lying on top of you and you push them off.

Their armor is white because everyone’s is, but you’ve always been able to tell them apart in the Force.

“CC-2224!”

He took the shot meant for you, and this one wasn’t just a blaster shot. The people of this planet use sharper weapons, reply on bleeding you dry in the most violent ways because they can’t afford blasters.

He’s bleeding.

You take off his helmet and try to get him out of his armor. He needs to get medical treatment, but you’re on the frontlines and there are no medics here.

(They don’t get wasted on troopers and you’re expected to be able to protect yourself. CC-2224 has taken to checking up on you after fights because you spent the first nine years you can remember hiding away all weaknesses to survive.)

“Kriff,” you hiss.

CC-2224 is getting paler by the second, but his face isn’t crunched in pain. He doesn’t look like he’s feeling anything at all.

“You safe, verd'ika?” CC-2224 slurs.

Somebody is shouting for a medic. It might be you.

“No, no, no,” you stutter. You press your hands on CC-2224’s wound, but the blood just keeps welling up. “You can’t die here!”

“It’s my time,” CC-2224 rattles. He pulls at his hands, taking off an orange bracelet. “Keep it, nau'ul. Tell him- tell him I’m sorry.”

You get flashes of a man you know is Kenobi, then various vode, none of whom you recognize. Clones have funeral rites, you know this much, but they rarely get to practice them. The Empire doesn’t care about its dead, but you do and you can’t do it.

“Don’t- don’t leave me here, please,” you beg. “Please, Cody, please, you have to make it. You can’t leave me here, I don’t have anyone else. Cody- Cody, please, I don’t know how to-“

Cody doesn’t answer so you scream in his stead.

The next hours are a blur. You know you win the battle because you return to the Devastator covered in red. You’re not sure how many people you’ve killed. You stopped counting years before you were sent to spy on Vader. There’s an orange bracelet wrapped around your wrist, untouched by the bloodshed.

Vader spares you a second glance.

(It is more than he ever did before.)

The next months don’t get better. The rebels become more desperate and daring, and yet the Emperor calls you back to Coruscant. He tears through your mind and you let him see everything but the memories tainted in orange and blue. Whatever he finds, he’s content.

“You have done well, Inquisitor,” the Emperor says. “Your talent may excel Lord Vader’s yet.”

“Thank you, my Emperor,” you reply, carefully keeping the pain out of your voice.

You keep your hands behind your back, you tug at the orange band, just to reassure yourself that it’s still there.

The Emperor is driven by ambition, but not the kind that forces you to throw yourself at enemies again and again, hoping it’ll make him look at you.

He wants total control, you’d be content with your own autonomy.

“Return to Lord Vader’s side,” the Emperor orders. “He shall instruct you.”

You have been learning from Vader since you can remember. The Inquisitors’ training is based on Vader’s ruthlessness and you’ve had the chance to observe him on the battlefield. You’re already copying a lot of his fighting style because, buried beneath brute strength, Vader is a rather cunning fighter. He wastes no energy and uses his opponents’ attacks against them.

You’re under no illusion that Vader hasn’t picked up on the fact that you’re learning from him. Being stuck in the worst areas of the battles often also means being near Vader, it gives you a chance to observe him closely.

If Vader were to instruct you directly, you’re not sure you’d actually keep learning from him. He might actually kill you and call it an accident.

“Thank you, my Emperor.”

You wait for him to release you, but instead he just observes you.

“You may call me Master, my young apprentice. Lord Vader is hunting down rebels near Scarif, I suggest you haste.”

“Yes, my Master,” you reply and choke down the bile.

Your leave the Emperor’s hall as fast as you can, you don’t stop to see if Mara’s at the base and you run.

(You do not want to surpass Vader. The higher you reach, the more terrible the fall. The Emperor’s anger is barely endurable when you’re otherwise having a good day. You don’t want to be his, you never did.)

The hanger is pretty empty and nobody looks at you twice as you leave in your ship. You’ve been modifying it over the years as a side-project to keep busy when you’re not fighting or staying at Vader’s side. The ship is fast, but it’s not fast enough to catch up. Your comms pick up chatter and-

The Death Star is gone.

Hesitantly, you reach out to the darkness that never left you and retreat again when you find it unchanged.

Lord Vader is still alive then.

You should ask Command for coordinates, follow through with the Emperor’s assignment, but-

You were supposed to have been on the Death Star already. You’re supposed to be dead.

Your shields have always been excellent.

You run.

(Away or towards freedom, you’re not quite sure. You’ve never experienced either and if not for the echoes of Jedha, Scarif and Alderaan, you might even laugh as freely as you did when Cody picked you up because you were too short to reach the control panels of your ship.)

Your ship is not Imperial, you don’t have to ditch it. Besides, you doubt the Emperor would search for you on his own homeworld. Naboo is a beautiful planet, rich in colors and nature. You’ve spent most of your life in underground training complexes, on battlefields or on ships. Never before have you had the time to just look around and see the world for what it is.

(Of course that’s not actually what you do. You check how often the security guards pass, see the pickpockets run over the market place, the arms deal going down in a cantina. You’ve been trained to check for danger first, so that’s what you do.)

You keep nothing but your ship, the mementos on it and your lightsabers. You get rid of your boots, which never were all that comfortable in the first place, and every piece of clothing you own. You never want to wear the color black again.

Instead, you buy sturdy beige boots and pants of a dark brown color. You put on a white shirt whose hems are a bright orange color and wear a brown belt with some extra pouches. The vest you throw over it all is gray, has a lot of pockets and orange buttons.

It all matches the bracelet circling your wrist.

You look like a spacer and not at all like an Inquisitor. You’ve been taught how to disguise yourself for undercover work, but this doesn’t feel like a disguise, more like a homecoming.

Your Coruscant accent has to go as well and you pick up something that sounds vaguely Outer Rim, but feels familiar on your tongue.

“Name?” One of the many underpaid workers at the spaceport asks.

You could just slip into their mind and avoid leaving any trace at all, but you’re so caught up in your emotional high, you don’t even think of it.

“Nau’ul,” you reply because it's the first name that comes to your mind. You want to smack yourself a second later because dropping Mando’a with an Outer Rim accent on a Core World is a stupid mistake.

The worker doesn’t even care. “Last name or first name?”

“First name,” you say and then, because you’re committed and might as well go through with it you add, “My last name is Kad.”

You start hopping from planet to planet. You begin stocking up on blasters because your lightsabers are a dead giveaway who you are. Not once have you caught even a glimpse of any Inquisitor the Emperor might have sent after you, so you just keep moving. You dream of the desert and the sky and Cody’s last words.

(You owe it to him.)

Truth is, you have no idea what to do with your newfound freedom. You don’t want to spend the next decades of your life in hiding, hoping Vader kills the Emperor and can overlook your existence.

And then the wanted posters come out.

Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi, rebel, dead or alive.

Leia Organa, Jedi, rebel, dead or alive.

The bounties on their heads are unbelievably high, but what shocks you more is that Kenobi doesn’t look at all like the man Cody remembered. You knew he wasn’t dead, the Inquisitors have a more or less accurate list of all Jedi that should still be around somewhere, but you didn’t expect him to have aged so much.

Organa’s training must have happened in secret or started only recently. He catches a few holos of her with a blue lightsaber and she is good, but her movements don’t speak for a particularly long and in-depth tutorship yet.

They might profit from some support and you’re not too far from Nar Shaddaa. The crime-ridden planet has been calm still by its standards, the Empire hadn’t interfered much there and Grakkus’ obsession with Jedi artifacts was well known.

You will buy yourself your way into the Rebellion, to Kenobi and Organa.

Breaking into Grakkus’ vaults is ridiculously easy. You’re not sure what to reach for because there’s so much, but you figure the holocrons are a good start. You stuff your backpack full with them and are glad you brought a second. Grakkus has a whole line of lightsabers, hidden away behind glass panels. Deactivating the security is a child’s play for somebody raised to tear down every defense.

You’re out again and have left Nar Shaddaa before Grakkus even notices that he’s been stolen from. You travel from planet to planet, trying to find hints of the Rebellion. The work makes you a little uncomfortable, it is so very similar to what you used to do for the Empire, you expect every planetary drop to end with your blood red lightsabers cutting someone in half.

You haven’t taken them out of your backpack since you put them there, hiding them away from the world and, perhaps, yourself as well. The last weeks you’ve spent listening to the Holocrons, watch the Jedi Masters of old explain their philosophies.

You don’t understand them.

(They were made for Jedi, raised safely amongst their kin. You are not a Jedi, not yet.)

But the lightsabers are a whole other matter. You do not mean to touch them, to take them apart, but their crystals hum beneath your fingertips in a way yours never did. You pick up the lightsaber pieces as the Force sings around you.

When you are finished, you are looking at a new blade, a staff this time. You chose twin sabers when you were young because it allows you greater offensive capabilities, even if it’s more difficult. You’re hesitant to ignite the staff when you realize what you’ve done. This is not a choice, your teachers staring down at you as you pick up your defeated opponent’s blade to throw yourself in the ring again.

You forged this lightsaber.

(The crystals aren’t red, and yet you fear.)

The color of sunrise and sunset greets you.

For one impossible moment you feel unstoppable, like you never had any limits in the first place. Then you take a step back and an old scar that never healed properly complains, reminding you sharply of the day you got it.

Exhausted, you turn off the ‘saber and drop into the pilot chair. You have a group of rebels to find and you don’t intend to give up now.

You put all your tracking skills to use, follow the rumors and the bloodshed, the angry civilians and the slaughter. Lady luck is on your side because eight months after the Death Star, you do find a rebel cell.

Unfortunately, you show up lightsaber swinging, decapitating the bounty hunter who was trying to take them in. You can’t pretend to be a simple spacer now and, even though your blade isn’t red anymore, they recognize your face.

(They don’t say it out loud, but your age shocks them. You’ve been Vader’s tool for six years now and, without the uniform and proper posturing, you actually look like twenty.)

They’re unsure what to do with you and all your attempts at reassuring them that you’ve defected from the Empire are met with a snarl.

Of course they don’t believe you. You killed their families on Vader’s orders. They throw you in a makeshift cell and handcuff you. Their security is so lax that breaking out of it wouldn’t even take much effort, but you’re fairly sure that course of action wouldn’t end with you having gained their favor. So, instead you hand them one holocron and activate it. They understand about as much as you do of the Jedi philosophies but it’s enough to convince them to call Kenobi and Organa at least.

Organa looks at you with barely disguised anger. She snarls Inquisitor and you think you might gag. Her inflection reminds you of Vader in ways you can’t quite comprehend, so you decide you’d rather focus on Kenobi.

You think of rough hands and ships models and banish the thoughts as soon as they arise.

He stares at you with dead eyes, as if he might be seeing a ghost. It makes you frown and he flinches. Before you can do more harm and ask, you recall the list you’ve been forced to memorize since you could read.

(Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, Jocasta Nu, …)

You’ve never seen Vader’s face, but you were made in the image of his child. For the first time in your life, you wonder whether you look like him. Vader’s anger at Kenobi was well known, it wouldn’t surprise you if Kenobi actually knew what Vader looked like beneath his mask.

(If you were more than one person’s mirror image.)

“We caught him,” the rebels tell the two Jedi and you can’t stop yourself from snorting.

“You didn’t catch me, I’m here out of my own free will.”

One of the rebels, a male Twi’lek, hisses. Not every Twi’lek is from Ryloth, but you think this one might have been once upon a time.

“You can’t do kriff-”

You interrupt him by dropping out of your handcuffs and bending the metal bars of your cell so you could slip out easily, if you wish. Organa reaches for her ‘saber immediately, but you remain seated.

“Master Kenobi,” you address the Jedi instead. “I come in peace. I’ve brought a bag full of holocrons and lightsabers for you and your Padawan. I wish to…”

(You do not want to join the rebellion. Your life has been dictated by other people’s causes. The Republic was weak because it allowed the Empire to rise and the Empire is cruel and doesn’t honor its dead. You’re here because of a dead man who cared for you when nobody else did.)

“I don’t want to be the Empire’s anymore,” you finish your sentence. “I am a person.”

(And you have a name that’s almost yours.)

“What is your name?” Kenobi asks.

“I was the First Brother.”

Confusion and disappointment alike flicker across Kenobi’s face, but he doesn’t elaborate why. He and Organa ask for directions to your ship and in a show of trust, you give it to them. They return a day later, Kenobi somehow appearing to have aged another decade over night while Organa obviously still doesn’t trust you. You think about Cody’s last words, but you can’t bring yourself to say them out loud.

You stay silent.

They take you to the rebel base.

The Rebel High Command takes offense at being called rebels. It is Imperial propaganda as it undermines their intention to bring peace to the galaxy and rebuilt the Republic. They are an Alliance of Independent Systems with elected leaders.

You think it’s bantha crap, but you roll with it.

They question you about your decision to switch sides, about the way their military is organized, any codes you might know that are still usable, the Inquisitors and Vader.

And they ask about you.

You refuse to tell them your name, which is just random bits of Mando’a, stacked together in a rather uncreative manner and you can’t tell them where you’re from. You don’t remember, but you assume it was some cloning facility, but you don’t tell them about that either. They realize rather quickly that as far as personal life or details go, you actually don’t have much to share because there is nothing.

So they ask about missions instead. Giving mission reports is easy. You regurgitate your significant operations like important assassinations, Jedi hunts, battles won and battles lost and it reminds you all very much of the reports you had to do back in the Inquisitor Headquarters.

“Without the beatings,” you add, attempting to joke. “We’d always get those, but if you did well, you got bacta after.”

Nobody laughs.

It’s a work in progress.

They assign you Kenobi and Organa as guards, who keep your lightsaber. You’re not allowed to go anywhere without them. It’s a step up from being thrown into a cell you have to pretend is actually secure. You tell Organa that you could take her on the first day, honesty seems like a good approach, and she punches you in the face.

(You could have avoided that, but the Jedi talked about releasing their feelings into the Force. Letting her punch you seems like an appropriate way of dealing with that.)

The rebels continue to be wary of you, so you try not to cause any troubles. On some days, even if you wanted to, you wouldn’t have the energy for it. Your nightmares, constant childhood companions, are back at full force. You can’t shake them off, no matter how many droids and ships you repair and update. Sometimes, you see Vader choking you, more often than that you’re killing Stormtroopers. The worst nights are those in which you dream of blood red sand.

You try not to let them get to you, but they get so bad even your Jedi companions notice. Your presence essentially keeps them tied down to the base. You’ve offered to accompany them on missions so the two of them can go, but that suggestion was denied. Organa goes off with that Corellian smuggler with the tempting bounty on his head, Kenobi stays behind with you.

You keep training, of course. You might not have a ‘saber, but you can still go through the katas. Inquisitors were trained to take down Jedi fast and without any mercy. You’re used to forms Kenobi refers to as Makashi and Djem So with some bastardized Shien. Somehow, telling him that you’ve learned the later by watching Vader doesn’t go so well. Vader never really deflected blaster fire with his saber, except as a warm up, he just stops them mid air and passes through. It requires a greater control of the Force apparently, but you’ve never really had a problem with that. The greater trouble is adjusting for the fact that you’re down one ‘saber. You still do the katas like you’re doing them with your twin reds instead of your staff.

At least this way you can pass the time while waiting for the other shoe to drop. Most rebels on the base know you already and no matter how secure they are, they ought to have a leak sooner or later. You’re still running from the Empire, even if you’re stuck at one place. It can’t be long before your past catches up to you.

And when it does, you’re not prepared.

Another rebel cell drops off and it’s only chance that you actually get to see them. You’re in the hanger, repairing ships while Organa’s astromech bothers you, until he doesn’t.

He begins beeping in excitement and rushes off. Kenobi is still busy talking to a Commander, but you’re under no illusion that he doesn't know where you’re heading.

“Artoo!” You shout and catch up to the droid when he’s made it to the new ship. A group of people are getting out of it and Artoo drives circles around one of them.

He has no scar, but a beard instead, his eyes aren’t as empty, but they’re the same color and you know him.

“Rex.” The name falls from your lips before you can stop yourself. Being with the rebels has really shot your control to hell. You used to be able to get through torture disguised as training without screaming, now you can’t even keep your mouth shut.

The clone’s eyes snap to you and narrow. “Who are you?”

“Captain,” Kenobi acknowledges next to you. “It’s good to have you back. This is-”

“Nau’ul Kad,” you say. Next to you, Kenobi tenses. You had thought about telling him so often, but you never found the right moment, but Rex is here and he look just like-

“CC-2224 named me,” you explain and you wouldn’t need to be Force-sensitive to tell they’re shocked. “He caught be training with the ‘sabers in the dark so often and I didn’t- They didn’t give me a real name because for us only ranks mattered.”

You should stop. You’re better than this.

(You can’t, you won’t, you fail.)

There are still people running around, shouting and cursing but you can’t hear any of it.

“He- Cody figured I’m just like you. I was supposed to be Vader’s. I was made for him but he didn’t want me and Cody knew and he did.”

You tug at the orange bracelet, pull it off your arm and try to give it to Rex because that’s what Cody wanted, right? To rest amongst his brothers.

“He died for me. He looked after me for five years and he died because I was too reckless, because I still want Vader to look at me and see more than his dead child.”

They continue to look at you and you don’t know how you’re supposed to make up for Cody’s death. It should be him standing here.

“I- he said to tell you he’s sorry.”

They question you again, this time you tell the full truth. You admit that fifteen, almost sixteen, years ago the Emperor brought you to Vader and told you that he is your father.

Except he wasn’t because you are an imperfect clone and he had no use for you.

You talk about how your assignment to Vader’s ship was meant as a punishment for the Sith Lord, that a lot of the troopers from the 501st are clones still, hiding their colors and that they are more loyal to Vader than the Emperor.

They ask you about yourself again.

You tell them that orange is your favorite color, that the troopers bought small trinkets for you and sometimes even managed to talk about their jetii without freezing up. You begin to list the names of the clones who made sure you got your wounds looked at and the dozens of more you can remember.

“They taught me Mando’a,” you end your statement. “And when nobody else could hear it, they called me verd'ika.”

The looks you get after your confession are different. Not worse, not better, just different. Rex has to leave again and no matter how much you want you, you can’t go with him. He seems to have picked up on your mood though because he hands you his comm number and makes you promise to call.

Halfway through the next month, your appearance has apparently become so pitiful that Organa picks up on it and drags you to the training halls. She musters you for a moment, then she throws you your lightsaber.

“Don’t make me regret this,” she tells you and you grin.

“Wouldn’t think of it, Organa.”

She parries your strike with her blue lightsaber. It is not the same she was using before your arrival, but it looks similar. You’d bet that she used parts of her old one to make this one.

“Leia,” she says suddenly. “If we’re sparring, you might as well call me Leia.”

Between missions and reviewing intel, your sparring sessions turn into lessons with Kenobi guiding you. Leia picks up lightsaber combat at a frightening speed. You think for a split second that she would have made a frightening Inquisitor and are thankful she never was. In the beginning, you still have to hand in your lightsaber every time you’re done and then, one day, they forget to collect it.

(Or perhaps they don’t forget, but they’ve learned to trust you.)

Your dreams get worse still. They’re all similar nowadays. You’re staring at your own dead body, a woman screaming, a dead man, Stormtroopers, the Emperor’s laughter.

(Your own blue eyes, innocent still and full of love, saying something you can’t quite hear.)

You know they’re not visions because visions leave you exhausted in a different way. You mention them to Leia only once and for the next week, Kenobi stares at you like he’s trying to figure you out. You want to be mad at Leia for telling him, but you can’t because she was right to do so, especially because your night terrors start interfering with your daily life.

“I nearly took off your head!” Leia shouts.

You smile apologetically. “But you didn’t.”

“It was much too close still,” Kenobi speaks up. “You are tired.”

It’s not a question and you’re glad he’s not giving you the opportunity to argue. You’re not sure how understandable your defense would have been.

“I am dreaming,” you reply.

“Of what?”

Of memories you shouldn’t have. You notice only belated that you must have said it out loud, because Leia looks at you in worry, while Kenobi’s body language speaks of resignation.

“What do you see in your dreams?”

You shouldn’t answer.

You do.

“I’m in a desert. A woman is calling me, then she’s screaming.” Red lightsabers are flashing and you try to reach her, but they keep pulling you back. “I want to help her, but the Emperor keeps pulling at my mind-”

Recognition flashes in Kenobi’s eyes and you rise up to your full height. You’re shorter than him, but you know from experience that you’re no less intimidating.

“You know what’s wrong with me,” you accuse him. “Tell me and fix it!”

(Here’s the ugly truth you’re told:)

Kenobi lost his entire life in just one day, but the thought of ending his life to join them never crossed his mind because he had a child to protect. A son, a boy, he brought to his family on his father’s home world. The child grew up happy and loved, but the one moment Kenobi did look away, the Empire found him and took him.

He spent nine years mourning the child he failed to protect, then you showed up at Vader’s side.

(Here’s the ugly truth you remember:)

There was a blonde boy sitting next to you, your exact mirror image. People came and went, took him and then you to test your abilities and skills and a thousand different things you do not want to recall because they left you in tatters. The Emperor wanted a means to control Vader, so here the two of you were.

You were all each other had, so you shared dreams and memories, strength and pain, hope and stories. One of you was older, but by the end of the first month, it didn’t matter because you were of the same blood.

Your bond wasn’t made out of orange cords, but it served the same purpose. There is a reason highly Force-sensitive people shouldn’t be cloned and, above that, should never form a bond with their mirror image.

You remember dying. You remember mourning your brother.

(You blocked it all out to protect yourself.)

“But- but I’m the clone!” You shout, but your defense sounds weak even to your own ears. “I’m the clone of Vader’s dead child and he never wanted me.”

You do not want any of the memories to be real, but you remember bright blue eyes and think the reason you never wanted to be a Sith, is the brother made from your own flesh whom you curled up to at night.

“You’re nobody’s dead child or clone,” Kenobi, Old Ben, says softly. “You can’t fake Force signatures and I know yours, Luke.”

You flinch when you hear him say that name. You used to share it, whisper it so silently, you think you never actually said it out loud.

You have a name, you always had, and the Emperor stole it from you.

There are constants to every universe. The Sith will always return. Alderaan will always be the witness of terrible slaughter.

Darth Vader will always fight his child on Bespin.

The parameters of all these events are what vary from universe to universe. In this one, Vader is the one attacking while you are trying to stay defensive. You ought to kill him, it would bring the Rebellion one step closer to the Emperor, but you’ve seen what fighting for a cause instead of yourself does to people.

(You’re fairly sure Vader hasn’t fought for himself in years.)

Vader corners you. For all that you have grown stronger, he has thirty years of experience compared to your mere fifteen. This is never a fight you can win, in any universe.

But you aren’t trying to win. You just need him to lose.

“You are beaten. It is useless to resist,” Vader rasps as his lightsaber bears down on yours.

(You know you can’t keep this up much longer.)

“The Emperor never told you what happened to your son,” you say.

Mentioning the dead child, the vod you lost, shocks Vader long enough for you to jump away and put some distance between the two of you.

“He died, you filthy copy!” Vader shouts.

You want to laugh or cry perhaps because for the first time in all these years, Vader acknowledges you.

“Yes.” You shake your head. “But I am your son.”

“No! That’s impossible! How dare you lie to me-”

“Search your feelings, Father, you know it to be true. My name is Luke Skywalker and the Emperor lied to you.”

Your confession doesn’t stop Vader from lashing out. You still lose your hand and Han is still captured and you still fall and it is still Leia who guides Lando back to you.

But other things change.

You’re on Tatooine, standing at the graves of people you hardly recalled, the family who died for your survival when he approaches you. He’s still wearing his black suit, but he doesn’t feel like he’s going to slowly take your other limbs apart.

“Who is the boy I buried on Naboo?”

You are genetically identical, there is no way to say who was the clone and who the boy stolen from the desert. It should not matter, it does not matter, because his death was a tragedy regardless.

“My brother. Your son.”

(You.)

“Then the Emperor will pay.”

(He does.)

#star wars #Luke Skywalker #Anakin Skywalker #darth vader #commander cody #fanfic #just go read this on AO3 it's long af

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scotianostra · 4 years

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On August 25th 1330 "The Good" Sir James Douglas died at Teba near Malaga, in Spain.

It was every medieval Knight's ambition to go on a Crusade, they saw it as a sense of duty to god. Robert the Bruce was no different, nor his faithful friend James Douglas, Lord of Douglas. The Bruce had been excommunicated barring him from taking the "pilgrimage" Sir James and he were rather busy as well, there was the matter of a war with England.

The English called Sir James "The Black Douglas" , the man was so frightening a wee verse has survived through the centuries that mothers used to whisper to their children when trying to get them to sleep.Hush Ye, Hush YeDo not fret you,The Black Douglas,Will not get you.

The Douglas must have hated the English with a passion, his father Sir William Douglas, known as "le Hardi" or "the bold" had been one of the few nobles who openly supported Sir William Wallace, he died a prisoner of Longshanks in The Tower of London around 1298, the young James had been sent to France for safety during the early years of the Wars of Independence, and was educated in Paris, it was where he met William Lamberton, Bishop of St. Andrews, who took him as a squire. He returned to Scotland with Lamberton. His lands had been seized and awarded to Robert Clifford. Lamberton presented him at the occupying English court to petition for the return of his land shortly after the capture of Stirling Castle in 1304, but when Edward I of England heard whose son he was he grew angry and Douglas was forced to depart.

James seems to have went about his business after this not causing any problems of note until The Bruce took up arms against the English in 1306, it is clear that he had been starting to feel somewhat disgruntled about his lack of inheritance and, after Bruce’s return from exile a year later, the nineteen-year old joined the Scottish camp. Not long afterward, on Palm Sunday, he launched a swift and brutal attack on his castle of Douglas (held at this point by Lord Clifford) reportedly seizing the castle while the defenders were at church and shutting the garrison up in the cellar to burn to death. After Bruce’s victory at Loudon later that year, despite Douglas momentarily getting cold feet and attempting peace negotiations, he became active in the region that his descendants would draw their main strength from- the Borders.

And so it was that he fought with Bruce right through the campaign to free Scotland from Edwards tyranny.

Fast forward to 1330 and it is said Sir James was called to the bedside of King Robert as he lay dying he asked his loyal friend to remove his heart after death, place it in a casket, and take them on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and bury his heart in the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.

Sir James took Bruce’s heart, embalmed it then put it in a casket which he wore round his neck, and set off on the crusade to the Holy Land with a party of 25, made up of knights and noblemen, among them Sir William de Keith of Galston, Sir Robert Logan of Restalrig and his brother Sir John, Sir William de St Clair and his brother John de St Clair of Rosslyn ,Sir Alan Cathcart and Sir Symon Loccard of Lee.

Having been granted a promise of safe conduct from Edward III of England, the party sailed from North Berwick and made for Luys in Flanders in the spring of 1330 remaining there for 12 days and attracting more followers from all over Europe.

Their intention was to then sail to Cape Finnestere in the North West of Spain to visit Santiago de Campostella which had been ordained as a holy town by Pope Alexander lll following the discovery of the remains of the Apostle James. A pilgrimage to Santiago captured the imagination of Christian Europe on an unprecedented scale as it was the 3rd holiest site in Christendom and at the height of its popularity in the 11th and 12th century attracted over half a million pilgrims each year.

However, before they could set off for Santiago word reached them that the King of Castile and Leon, Alphonso Xl , in his efforts to drive the Moors out of Granada had laid siege to the Castillo de las Estrellas(Castle of the Stars)at Teba which was occupied by the Saracen Army of Mohammed lV,Sultan of Granada.

Douglas sent word that they were prepared to join forces with Alphonso and sailed immediately to help, making landfall at Seville and marching the short distance to Teba.

Alphonso having heard tales of Douglas’s bravery and leadership skills gave him the right flank of the Castilian Army.

On the morning of the August 25th the Saracen army had assembled below the Castillo de las Estrellas under the command of Osmyn.

The Castilian trumpets sounded and Douglas, thinking it was a general advance, led his troops forward.

The Scottish contingent charged the Saracens and, although not fully supported by the rest of the army, managed to hold them, finally the Moors, unable to withstand the furious onslaught,fled.

Douglas is said to have found himself deserted and turned his horse with the intention of joining the main body.

Just then he observed Sir William St Clair surrounded by a body of Moors who had suddenly rallied. With the few knights who attended him Douglas turned hastily to attempt a rescue.

He soon found himself surrounded and, making one last charge shouting the words “A Bruce A Bruce”, took the casket containing the heart from around his neck and hurled into the enemies’ path shouting “Now go in front, as you desired and Ill follow you or die”.

Douglas and a party of his followers were all slain but they had diverted enough of the enemy forces away from the main thrust to enable the Castilian army to overrun the remainder and capture the Castle.

It has been speculated that the Moors lack of knowledge of European heraldry had a part to play in the death of Douglas.

Noblemen on both sides were valued as hostages, but because Douglas did not display the red cross on his tabard that distinguished English knights, but instead had the 3 stars of the Douglas family on his harness and shield, the Moors did not recognise his status or they would probably have spared his life.

Douglas’s body was recovered from the battlefield along with the casket, his bones, the flesh boiled off them, were taken back to Scotland by Sir William Keith of Galston in Ayrshire (who had missed the battle because of a broken arm), and deposited at St Bride's Church. The Heart of The Bruce was given to Regent Moray, who interred it under the high altar of Melrose Abbey.

Pics are Sir James by the late Andrew Hillhouse, note the lack of a heart on his shield, it was added after this event, second pic is a 15th century depiction of Battle of Teba and lastly the Memorial to Sir James Douglas in the town of Teba.

#Scotland #The Good Sir James #james douglas #Scottish Knight #warrior #History #teba #spain

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thaneirstaer · 3 years

Text

The Eirstaer Lineage

All the details to Thane’s family history.

Great Grand parents: Lord Riolga Eirstaer, first of his name Lady Banrion Eirstaer, second of her name

Aiding in the development of Ondatholm's Council of Lords and Nobles, driving back raids of orcs and advances from the Northrealmers, cunning, strength and honour were exemplified in no other Eirstaers than Lord Rioga and Lady Banrion

Grand parents Lord Leoncroi Eirstaer Lady Arda Eirstaer.

Whilst his parents set the ground work for the future of their house, 'twas Leoncroi and later his wife Arda whom solidified it the foundations. Their motor and brick was the blood and bones of Northrealmers.

His parents killed in a calling to court between Ondatholm and the Northrealmers, a ploy by the Emperor of Northrealm and the three dukedoms that serve him. Leoncroi however suffers only one thing as harshly as Orcs; Traitors and so in a deed that earned him the title of Orc Herder amongst Ondatholm's Lords, the cunning lord organised a meeting for truce, to end the bloodshed once and form all.

The deed definitely could be counted as a resounding success. For inviting the few in Ondatholm that the Emperor of Northrealm and his dukes viewed as true lords, corrupted by greed and treacherous words. One of the Dukes himself attended the event, only to learn in a missive left in the main table from which the host usual addresses his guests, they learned with horror that another, true king, had been invited.

For truly Leoncroi and the other loyal lords to Ordatholm could even dare attend, who are they truly to the Dukes and Emperor. So instead to serve in his stead a King had been invited. King Sintohs the Vile, ruler of all the orcs of the island.

And so the Sacking of Ashbourne began. All evidence of Leoncroi's influence was burned, along with many a treacherous lord and the Duke of Northrealm.

Parents Lairge Eirstaer Onorach Eirstaer.

Second child of Leoncroi, Laige enjoyed his privileged life, coddled by hand maidens as his parents were afield, holding back orcish incursions. For it was his older brother: Thane Eirstaer who was said to be destined to elevate his house to glory, so Laige could think of no plausible reason to do anything but indulge in pleasures of luxury.

Tragedy struck, when in completing a task set by his mother, Thane was slain by a beast of unholy repute, indescribable in it's hideous nature and black heart. His mother died in grief and Leoncroi grew cold and grim to the world.

Thane's would be wife, Onorach was a noble born Northrealmer, sent almost as a bargaining chip and token of good faith to the Eirstaers. She was destined to marry Thane, however when the great warrior fell his sapling of a brother Laige became Lord, and her husband.

There is little love between the two for Laige is fickle, often visiting houses of ladies and watering holes of cheep drinks and pleasures. She did however bare him a son, who was named Thane, Second of his Name. A suggestion present to Onorach by Leoncroi, who still commanded grim authority over his snivelling son.

Laige however would find freedom of his pressures of lordship, which he struggled at, on three occasions being aided by his father to prevent calamity. Spies of Northrealm infiltrated the court of Eirstaer and whispered promises of great wealth, wine and women to the lord in return for a suggestion on the odd occasion in court.

This continued until Laige became a mere puppet, influencing and foolishly disregarding damage he did not only to his own house and Dukedom but to all Ondatholm. Until Leoncroi discovered this, and had the problem was solved when Laige's advisers were all found, strung from the entrance to the Eirstaer estate, with the Northrealm crest carved into their chests and foreheads.

Laige was denounced and now holds only a fraction of his previous power, Onorach however now rules, a far more capable lord, but still provided only a valiant attempt to triage the damage her husband did. One such act she did to this effect was ensuring Laige had as little influence on her son's upbringing, ensure he was tutored instead by her father in law and his trainers in the way of war and statesmanship.

Thane passed the rights of Knighthood and failed his anointment at the age of 25

Now sent forth to the Rustinglands to aid in the civil war again a seemingly malicious monarch. Thane and his comrades were summarily beaten at the Battle for Falin's Wall.

#Long Ass Post #Some details may be corrected or edited by dm

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bssaz97 · 4 years

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Juane and ruby go missing for a year only to show back up to tell yang she’s an aunt and ren is The Godfather

Missing For A Year… (1)

*At the newly reopened Beacon Academy, a large groups is congregated in front of a new statue inside the school, currently covered in tarps. Of this group consists the remains of team (R)WBY, (J)NPR, SSSN, CVFY, C(R)D(L), FNKI, Ace-Ops, (S)TRQ, Penny and Pietro Polendina, Maria Calavera, Winter, Willow and Whitley Schnee along with their butler Klein, Ghira and Kali Belladonna, the redeemed Illia Amitola, Mercury Black, Emerald Sustrai, and Neo Torchwick, as well as the entirety of the Arc Family and Athena Nikos, and the old Beacon Faculty. They are all seated in the auditorium as the newly appointed Headmistress Goodwitch takes the podium.*

Glynda: Good Afternoon everyone, I know for many today may not be such a good day. Today we are here to commemorate the death of Ruby Rose and Jaune Arc, two of Remnant’s greatest heroes. They sacrificed their lives today precisely one year ago at the final battle against Salem. You here are the many who know what the war was like and what it has cost. ‘Sigh’ I knew both Miss Rose and Mr. Arc, I want to say that they were two of the most exceptional students during their time here, but that would obliviously have been a lie.

Everyone: *Laughs*

Glynda: While they may have not been the most prominent of their peers, they held the most promise. I know for a fact that Ruby Rose was born to be a huntress, but it was her heart that made her a great one and Mr. Arc....I knew when he first came here that he was wildly unprepared for the trials that were to come before him. He did not excel in any subject he was in, and at the time he wasn’t particularly strong, but he more than made up for that with his desire to learn and to support his team. They were.....

*The Audience saw that Glynda took a moment to compose herself. Those who knew Goodwitch always aware that she cherished her students very much. After the Fall of Beacon, she had to count the amount of students had been slain by Grimm, Atlesian Knights and White Fang Insurgents. It was difficult for her to keep her emotions hidden at times but kept a strong front for many years, but she wasn’t perfect. As she recomposes herself she continues.*

Glynda: They were wonderful students and showed us all that even the most simple souls can conquer great forces. As such, we are here to commerate them and those who have fallen throughout this conflict by adding this monument to our newly reestablished Beacon Academy, so that others may know of their heroic deeds and ultimate sacrifice for all mankind.

*With that the tarp is removes and showcases a statue of Jaune and Ruby together in similar poses to the statue at the front of the school. Behind it is a large marble wall to serve as a memorial to those who had fallen at the fall of Beacon and its reclamation.*

Yang: ‘Sniff, sniff’ See sis...I told you you’d be the bee’s knees. Just wish you’d be here to see it.

*The group gathered are so preoccupied with the commemoration to notice that the main doors opened and someone walking through. At the stage, Oscar Pine prepares to say his own words.*

Oscar: I hadn’t known Ruby and Jaune as long as many here, but they have had a profound impact on my life. They encouraged me when I was pretty much thrusted into a conflict I was gradually unprepared for. But they were there for me and I will always be grateful to them. Ruby...Jaune if you can hear us, we miss you and we hope you two are in peace.

*The person walk towards the group, while everyone is too busy to focus on the new guest. At this point Weiss Schnee has taken the platform.*

Weiss: Ruby was my partner and team leader but more importantly than that she was my friend and sister in arms. I can’t say we started out that way, I constantly butted heads with her and wasn’t the best teammate at first. As time continued, I saw her for the qualities that made her a great leader and a powerful huntress. But she is more than that...she’s my best friend. Who I miss every day.

*The person stops to take a seat behind everyone else and waits until the event is almost completely done.*

Yang: That was great Weiss, thank you for saying that.

Weiss: I meant every word, I....I just wish Ruby and Jaune were still with us. ‘Sniff, sniff’

Neptune: You did great, I’m sure she would have appreciated to hear that.

Weiss: ‘Sniff’ Thank you. I just miss them so much.

Yang: Me too, Weiss. Me too. *Wipes a tear with her bionic finger, when someone next to her hands her a tissue. Which she takes and blows her nose.* Thank you.

Ruby: Any time sis!

* * * * * ‘Ding!’

*Everyone in attendance does a double take and looks to her right to see her ‘deceased’ half sister right next to her with a box of tissues. One of which she uses herself.*

Ruby: Everyone has said so many nice things it’s *Blows Nose* So beautiful!

Everyone: RUBY?!?!?!?!

Ruby: Huh? Why is everyone so surprised? I mean I was a bit surprised nobody invited me to the reopening of Beacon and a little ticked no one tried to contact me.

Yang: Ruby? You’re here? You’re...YOU’RE ALIVE! *Grabs her sister in a tight embrace that almost turns Ruby blue*

Ruby: Guh...Yang...can’t Breathe!

Yang: Wait a minute! *Lets her go* You’ve been alive this entire time? Where have you been?! We looked for you for almost a year!

Ruby: Oh, well I was preoccupied with my-.

Voice: Look I’ve already told you I’m a former student here, now if you just let me through!

*The front door opens once again to reveal another guest, this time in the form of the ‘deceased’ Jaune Arc, with baby carriers strapped onto him. He looks over the crowd and stops the person he’s looking for.*

Jaune: Ruby, there you are I was looking all over for you! Man you won’t believe how rude these new guards are. Barely let me in here without a fight.

Ruby: Hehehe. Sorry Jaune! I just got so excited to see everyone again that I guess I forgot to wait for you.

Everyone: JAUNE?!?!?!?!

Jaune: Huh? Oh hey guys, long time no see!

Nora: F-Fearless Leader? You....YOURE ALIVE!!! *Prepares to glomp him. Making his eyes enlarge.*

Jaune: NORA STOP!!! *Outstreched his arms.*

*Nora almost collided with him when she stops mid air, she falls down when she takes note of the little people on his chest. One girl and one boy.*

Nora: Are...are those...?

Jaune: Yeah they’re babies. Well more particularly me and Ruby’s babies.

Everyone: BABIES?!?!?!?!

Ruby: Well of course they’re our babies, I mean Jaune and I have been married for almost a year now.

Everyone: MARRIED?!?!?!?!

Yang: OH FOR GODS SAKE WILL EVERYONE JUST CALM DIWN FOR TWO SECONDS!!!

* * *

Babies: *Start crying*

Yang: Oh shi-! *Rushes to the two infants sides* No, no! I didn’t mean you two! Oh I’m so sorry I didn’t mean to scare you. Please don’t be mad at Auntie Yang.....oh gods, I’m a Auntie!

Ruby: Yep. Also Ren and Nora are the godparents.

Ren: G-Godparents! *Blushes*

Nora: ‘GASPs!’ I. Have. God Babies! *She grabs the boy and holds him above her.* Oh my gods you and I are gonna have so many adventures together! Oh my wittle, shmittle, melittle...what’s this baby’s name?

Jaune: That would be Rowan.

Nora: Rowan! My little man, I’ll take you on all my conquests and together we will rule the lands!

Rowan: *Cute baby laughter*

Jaune: Not even a day and she’s already claimed him. Sorry little guy.

Yang: *Moves towards his side* Annnnd this one would be? *Gestures to the baby girl*

Ruby: This is little Summer.

Yang: *With permission from Jaune she grabs the baby gently and hold Summer in front of her* Summer huh?

Summer: .....*Cute baby giggle*

Yang: *Blushes* ....I’ve only known this baby for five seconds but I would protect her with my life.

Ruby: Yep babies will have that effect. But I’m really surprised that you didn’t know about them until now. Haven’t you been getting our letters?

Yang: Letters?

Ruby: Yeah, the letters we’ve been sending you every month for the past year.

*Everyone looks perplexed about what the young mother was talking about.*

Jaune: Wait you guys are serious you haven’t been receiving any of our mail to you all?

Neptune: Dude for a year we thought you guys were dead!

Ruby/Jaune: HUH?!?!?!

*Both finally noticed that everyone was wearing all black and that the decoration around them was fit for what seemed to be a wake. Including the giant memorial statue in the back of the auditorium.*

Ruby: What the-? JAUNE! Did you not send any of those letters through the mail!

Jaune: Of course I did! You had them all stamped right?

Ruby: .......oh gods I forgot about the stamps.

Jaune: What?! How could you forget about the stamps! That’s the only way to make sure the mail gets to where they’re supposed to go!

Ruby: It’s hard ok! They get so sticky and at the time it was hard to do so without ripping them. I thought they’d make a exception.

Jaune: Ruby, the postal services always check for stamps, otherwise they don’t send the mail!

Ruby: Oh~ I’m sorry.

Jaune: ‘Sigh’ Look it’s fine Ruby, I didn’t check and assumed the stamps were there in the first place so we’re both to blame.

Ruby: ‘Sniff’ Thank you dear! *Hugs Jaune* I love you!~

Jaune: I love you too Rubes!~

Weiss: .....Ruby....Jaune.....

*The lovey dovey couple suddenly stop their affection when they feel an icy chill up their spines. Slowly they turn around to see their longtime friend Weiss Schnee behind them with a shadow overcasting her eyes and Myrtenaster in hand.*

Ruby: N-Now Weiss! Let’s talk about this!

Jaune: Y-Yeah it was a honest mistake!

Weiss: I know...that’s why you get a five second head start. Right now.

*Without a word, both husband and wife race outside the doors and run for their lives.*

Jaune: The kids will be ok right?!! We can trust the others to handle them right!!!

Ruby: Yeah they’ll have a blast!!! Just don’t look back!!!

**Explosion!**

Weiss: YOU DUNCES!!! COME BACK HERE AND TAKE HOUR PUNISHMENT!!! YOU’RE GONNA PAY FOR ALL THE TEARS I’VE SHED!!!

-Fin-

Author Notes:

Yes i made a JoJo reference.

I decided to add my two OC Lancaster babies. This is not canon to that particular AU but I loved the idea and consider it a AU to the AU.

I may continue this for a little if you guys want. Probably nothing too serious but fluff.

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author-morgan · 4 years

Text

Title: Dread and Destruction

Pairing: Deimos!Alexios x Fem!Reader

Rating: T

Summary: You left the Cult of Kosmos, it’s time he does too.

THE FEVER BREAKS but you still wake in a cold sweat surrounded by darkness. A dull throbbing in your leg returns. The poisoned arrow leaves its mark on you and the minds of the Cultist. You’re no longer immortal to them –your usefulness has run its course.

Out of the darkness, a flickering light appears and grows brighter –larger and reflects off golden armor. Deimos. You’re both relieved and terrified to see him. "They're going to kill you," he says and you draw in a deep breath, looking around the prison for a weapon. You couldn't fight him though, not in this state. Deimos throws down a pack and dark cloak next to you and kneels. You lean back, eyes meeting his –waiting for him to draw his blade to do the Cult’s bidding. "You have to leave," he tells you.

Your brows knit together. Deimos shoves the hem of your stained chiton up and takes a strip of linen, laying it over the wound on your upper thigh and wrapping it tightly. You can’t help the chill that creeps down your spine at the feel of his rough fingers against your heated skin.

You want to ask why he is going to such lengths to help –deep down you already know, but you want to hear it in his own words. Deimos pulls you off the ground and leads you deeper into the cave, past the Cult of Kosmos’s meeting chamber. The path grows narrower and then turns upward. Star and moonlight filters through a dense canopy covering the hidden entrance. A horse is waiting –your sword and bow already secured to the saddle. You turn back to Deimos. "What about you?" The cult would not let him act without punishment –demigod or not.

Deimos shakes his head. "No questions-" he motions to the horse "-go."

You and he are kindred souls, bound by misfortune. Trembling, you surge forward, pressing your lips against his. He seizes your waist, drawing you closer. You’ve always been his source of rapture away from the dread and destruction. Your hand caresses the side of his face, following the scar below his eye –you’d put it there yourself years ago. Stepping back, you mount the pale mare and look back over your shoulder. “I’ll find you,” you promise. Fate had always led you back to one another.

FREE FROM THE Cult’s control, you seek retribution for the years of pain endured under their heel. Freedom makes you see you’d only ever been a puppet in their schemes and Deimos is still their pawn. They’d given you training and praised, called you the daughter of gods, but never once thought what should happen if you went rogue.

Perched in the rafters of a temple –you wait. You’d always been the more patient one. Worshippers rise and flee when he enters. The Cultist kneels, placing a coin at the feet of Plutus in offering. You move in the shadows, then pounce.

Midas slumps against the altar, hand clawing at the open gash on his neck –prayers unheard. Before the gurgling stops, you kick his body over and drive a bronze dagger through his heart. The last thing Midas sees is you smiling with blood on your face. Rising from the slain Cultist, you wipe the blood from the dagger in a stained cloth –not realizing you aren’t alone. The point of a blade digs into your back. "Tell me why I shouldn't kill you right now." The voice is familiar. The Eagle Bearer.

“Because I just did your work for you,” you remark, glancing down at Midas’s lidless eyes.

“Try again,” Kassandra sneers.

You sigh, dropping the dagger you’d had pressed into her side. “I left the Cult,” you tell her. The Eagle Bearer steps back and you present her with the golden artifact that belonged to Midas. She does not sheath the broken spear though. "And I can help you bring them to their knees.” You’d been hunting Cultist and their accomplices like animals. Midas was the thirteenth to fall on your blade.

“I saw you with my brother,” she hisses, disbelieving.

Though before you can say anything else a civilian enters the temple and screams after seeing you and Kassandra standing over the corpse of Argos’s banker. Soon after soldiers and guards are shouting in the distance. "Your brother is the only reason I'm alive," you admit –the thought of Deimos softening your expression. "I suggest we leave quickly."

Kassandra lowers her spear, reluctant and you flee. "Malákas!" The Eagle Bear curses, giving pursuit before she is found standing over the body of Midas –she doesn’t need another mercenary looking to collect the bounty on her head.

WAVES ROCK THE Adrestia to and fro. A lit brazier separates you and Kassandra. Since deciding to work together, five more cultists have fallen, but now it is time for answers that did not come from the dying. The Eagle Bearer demands answers and you offer them freely. "Chrysis always took children in pairs," you explain. "My mother abandoned me the same night yours was told Alexios was dead." Fate had brought them together, just as Chrysis said the Pythia ordained.

"We grew up together. Trained together. Fought together-" the briefest of smiles flash across your lips "-we were unstoppable." People feared the very mention of your names, of the things you could do. Together you and Deimos could bring cities to their knees in a night, could shape the tides of war. Still, despite the titles and praise, you were only mortal. "But we were sloppy sometimes and that came with punishment."

Kassandra clasps her hands together, feels something twist in her stomach. Chrysis will die for the things she'd done. You glance down at the scars on your arms then look to the heavens. "We were taught to expect pain." The world is pain. At first, it was lashes, then brands –if a Child of Kosmos ran out of room for a mark they were discarded.

Though for Deimos and you, the Cult had to become creative in their punishments. A brand did nothing to someone who did not cry out in agony or beg for release. "What they found is they could hurt us more by hurting each other." The first time Deimos let a target escape their grasp, Okytos the Great had carved lines into your back and rubbed salt in the wound. Deimos swore he'd kill Okytos for that.

"What is he like?" Kassandra asks. Her little brother is a stranger to her.

You shrug. "Irascible and stubborn mostly." That tended to be the temperament of most men though, but Deimos is different. He brought the wrath of gods and was like a rock rising from the sea. "Even the Cultist fear him." He was a puppet for the Ghost of Kosmos, but sometimes he tested the length of his leash. There was a time when both you and he commanded the Sages and Adepts.

"He's always been different with me, though," you admit. There had always been a certain degree tenderness in his touches and gaze. Even his words were not harsh. "Softer." Is the word you use to describe the Deimos no one but you know.

The Eagle Bearer's face falls. "You love him." She's seen that type of expression before many times in her travels. It is the look in a woman's eyes as she sends her husband to war.

You look away. "I love the man he could be. I will help you hunt down every cultist crawling over the Greek world-" you rise to your feet. "-but know we're fighting for different people, Kassandra." You return below deck, hoping the memories would let you know peace for one night.

AT THE BACK of the cave is a man garbed in silver and gold armor. You recognize him at once, a few seconds later the Eagle Bearer does as well. Kassandra strides forward, but you grip onto her arm, pulling her back to the cave’s entrance. “Let me go alone,” you whisper. Deimos can kill you if that is what the Cult wishes, but Kassandra needs to live.

"Have you lost your fucking mind?" She hisses. "I can't leave you with him!" Your harsh glare makes her reconsider and alas she turns back, returning to the Adrestia.

You descend into the dim cave. Footfalls silent. ��Deimos,” you breathe, pushing back the hood of your cloak. Almost two years have passed since you’d fled execution. Now fate brings you together again.

In two large strides, his hand wraps around your throat, pushing you back against the rock. "You left me," he shouts –voice echoing deep in the darkness.

You wrap a hand around his wrist –terrified of the moment when he decided to squeeze. Despite his strength, his face looks thin –tormented. Dark circles ring his eyes. The Cult chips away another piece of him –of his resolve. "You helped me leave," you tell him, breathing shallow.

His face twists, but he drops you and steps back –chest heaving in sync with yours. He’s dreamt of killing you for betraying him, leaving him, but all it takes is one look and he can’t do it. "They said you abandoned me," he grits out.

Rising, you take a step toward him. “I didn’t.” Your fingers brush over the scar on the back of his right hand. You can leave too." He still won’t look at you, but he doesn’t move when you slip your hand into his. "Come with me," you whisper. "The Cult has used us. Broken us." You had only been able to see the truth after leaving and though you were still on a path of vengeance, it was better than being a puppet. "We can be whole."

Deimos shakes his head, chuckling and turns back to face you. There was no going back, no leaving this life. "Not after the things we've done,” he says.

You let his hand go. "But do we not deserve the chance?" You ask, reaching out to touch the scar below his eye.

He knocks your hand away, knowing your touch would ruin him and bring more pain. "I will not listen to your lies," he snarls.

"Alexios." He lashes out, shoving you. Something in you back cracks as you hit the cave wall. "Don't use that name!" Deimos roars, shoulders shaking.

You sit up, closing your eyes and ignoring the pain. “It’s who you are,” you breathe, hands shaking. Your whole body feels as though it is shaking. You open your eyes. Deimos is crouched down before you, dark eyes full of pain and anger, but there is still a glint of the gentleness you’d known before. Your breath catches and takes that as a queue, kissing you.

You hesitate, mind racing. He may have been about to kill you. One last kiss before death. The cold bite of iron never comes. You lean into him and his anger subsides. His hands run down your arms, finding new scars. “Where have you been?” He asks.

"Searching," you shrug, then the briefest of smiles appears on your lips and makes Deimos want to kiss you again. "To discover who I truly am." You reach out toward the scar on his cheek again, this time he does not resist.

He leans into the touch, unable to admit to himself that he'd missed this. "I cannot leave,” he utters. You already knew that, though. "If they find out you're alive, they'll kill you.” You rest your forehead against his.

You nod, knowing well how the Cult of Kosmos operates. "I would expect nothing less.” Then something akin to fear appears in your eyes. "But what if they gave you the order?" You ask.

Deimos turns his head, swallows hard. "I-" he hesitates – the answer should have been easy, but it wasn't. "I couldn't," he whispers. The words should have brought you relief, but they did not.

You lift your hand to his cheek, bringing his troubled gaze back to you. “We are bound by fate,” you murmur, leaning forward. He grabs the back of your neck, closing the distance between you. You brace one hand on his breastplate, the other tangles in his hair. His kiss is bruising –a punishment in itself. Pulling away, you run your thumb over his lips. When you kiss him, it makes his heart ache and his body go weak. "The gods will always bring us back together," you tell him as you part, hands caressing both sides of his face.

You both rise. He has been away too long, the Cult will begin searching for him. Deimos grips onto your hands before you can leave the cave. "Stay out of my way, please." He doesn’t want to be faced with a decision he'd grow to regret.

You smile and Deimos knows a piece of your former self persists. "Only if you stay out of mine."

#Alexios #Deimos #Alexios x Reader #Deimos x Reader #Alexios Fanfiction #Deimos Fanfiction #Alexios Imagine #Deimos imagine #Assassin's Creed #Assassin's Creed imagine #Assassin's Creed Fanfiction #Assassin's Creed Odyssey #AC: Odyssey #my writing #okay but i really love the idea of Deimos having someone that grew up being controlled too and together they learn how to love #even if the cult doesn't approve they know they can't stop it or risk losing their weapons #also his leisurely strut in that gif is like super hot #and his back in and out of arm: HAWT #i'm not kidding when I say I'd let Deimos!Alexios do <i> anything </i> to me

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unlockthelore · 4 years

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Ritual of Habit [ Yōkai AU ]

“When is taking a life justified,” Rin asks. “How much life can be taken before the meaning of it is lost?” From the fic Feathers in the Wind on Ao3. For more updates, follow the feathers in the wind tag on this blog. If you’re looking for Yōkai AU, search the yokai au tag.

Fireflies drifted aimlessly over the pond’s rippling surface, their yellowish-green twinkling like stars across the crystalline depths as they meandered through the humid summer night. A splash spurred them to flee as Rin pulled her hands from the cool waters, rubbing them together from fingertip to wrist then back.

Guilt sloshed inside her heart as she stared at her fingertips then curled them into fists, holding them to her nose. Beneath the hyssop and primrose, a musty rancid scent churned the emptied contents of her stomach.

“What did you do, Rin?”

Barely a whisper on the wind, Rin’s lips parted and naught a sound but a sigh passed them. She bowed her head and settled her hands in her lap while soft footsteps sifted through tall grass. Vibrant red skirts shifted in the corner of her eye, wrinkling as a young woman knelt beside her, setting aside the wicker basket filled with pinked ripe peaches. The desire to take one and take to the skies was swallowed beneath the thick putrid taste on Rin’s tongue.

Her gaze returned to the now-still waters and a twisting pull stole air from her lungs til they burned. Rain dampened her cheeks. Breath rattling in searing lungs as a touch jostled her into an embrace. White sleeves, pristine and unmarred, clouded Rin’s vision as the woman held her to her chest.

Slowly, she allowed her eyes to close and in the back of her eyelids, she saw naught but blood and dust.

Rin sat silently, listening to the wheel’s creaking turn and her blade’s gentle humming. A drizzle had begun to fall, a distant clap of thunder rumbling through the skies, cracking the veil of grey drifting overhead. She rocked backward to a soundless song and parted her lips to welcome a few drops of rain to her dried tongue. Around laid the bodies of men and animals, beasts of burden ridden into glorious battle and laid low without a second thought. Their screams echoing into the atmosphere as they watched helplessly while their comrades rode on. Her eyes shuttered almost disappointedly as the wet clomping of hooves across sodden earth came to a halt a few paces before her perch.

“Speak true, girl,” a stern voice ordered with an undercurrent of trepidation hardening yet shaking his words. “Do ye fight on behalf of Inu no Taishō?”

Rain cooled between her toes squelched as she curled them, rocking forward with her hands resting upon her knees. Almost lazily, her gaze drifted to the two men on horseback staring down at her unsurely. One, stern-faced, young, and angered, eyes deadened coal and reflective in their contempt. While the other, hooded and resigned, stared down at her pleadingly though the words would not leave his sewn downturned lips.

Sympathy thudded deep within her heart for them. While neither were inherently evil, the acts they wished to commit on the other side of the field where the Western Lord’s troops were retreating, would not come to pass.

Without a word, Rin nodded and the stern-faced man balked while the other averted his gaze. Horses brayed as one of the men dismounted, the other clumsily following after, but Rin didn’t raise her gaze to meet either of them as they approached. A dirtied calloused hand seized the front of her kimono and yanked her up to her toes, blade clattering to the mud.

“Have ye gone mad?” The stern-faced man spat into her face, his yellowed teeth and barley-thick breath singing her nose hairs. “Bewitched?!”

For a long moment, Rin said nothing. She knew what it must have seemed to them. Wings tucked away and left alone, she resembled a human girl but the eyes could not be fooled. Lifting her gaze to meet those contemptuous eyes, she saw the flicker of recognition before his hand released her with a backward shove. She did not fall. Taking one a half-step backward, regaining her footing on the cart’s wooden railing.

Drizzling rain began to fall in earnest, sleets becoming a steady downpour muddling blood and dirt. The stern-faced soldier moved to draw his sword, the blade clattering clumsily in its sheath only to be stayed as his companion grasped his wrist.

Pleadingly, he stood between Rin and the grieved soldier. “My lord, she’s only a girl. Please let her be.”

“That is no child,” the stern-faced soldier snarled, yanking his hand free of his companion’s grasp.

Before they could continue, Rin sighed. “He is right.”

All movement stilled. The hooded-eyed soldier looking back to her, stricken and aggrieved. She wondered for a moment how many battles had he seen. How many children did he plead for? Were they spared or did they paint ghostly images in the back of his eyelids? Despite the heavy armor he wore, polished and sluiced with the rain, and his weathered skin marred with scars — his expression was young and broken at the implication.

Her admittance would be her death, and she pitied him.

“You came to fight on this soil for your fathers, brothers, sisters, and mothers slain by your enemies,” Rin said, inhaling deeply as the thick humidity began to deepen with the weight of her power. Hammering rains drenched them, distant confusion in calls for retreat or advance, while the pair before her looked on. One with his intention secured while the other yet wavered.

Still, if they decided to fight, Rin would stay her course.

She promised.

“Nothing will return them to life,” she said sympathetically. Thunder roared over her head and the earth trembled in response. “Do not waste yours.”

Wind howled and Rin’s blood pulsed as it rushed through her ears. Both soldiers stared, uncertainty in their eyes, but the elder turned away from his younger counterpart to stand before her. He knelt to the mud and scooped up the blade. Its sheath drenched from torrential rains, pressed into Rin’s waiting palms as he rose to his feet, his eyes meeting hers for a second before he towered over her once again.

“Michikatsu!” The younger cried out but the elder raised his hand, silencing him.

As he lowered it, the rains died and the winds calmed, distressed noises eased into ones of curiosity and concern. “… What is your name?” The elder soldier — Michikatsu, Rin reminded herself — asked in a gentle tone. The younger looked on in surprise as the elder removed his helmet, letting it rest in the crook of his hip.

Recognizing respect, she bowed her head curtly. “They call me Rin.”

His lips pulled to one side. “But is that your name?” He asked, stately and poised despite the rivulets of water and mud spraying across his garbs. “A demoness such as yourself must have many.”

Rin’s eyes softened and the sympathy she felt for him was unmatched. “It is the only one you may know.”

Something akin to understanding emerged in the elder’s weathered features and he closed his eyes, bowing his head slightly.

“I see.” Painstakingly slow, he raised his helmet and slipped it onto his head, speaking as he secured the fastenings. “Know that I do not agree with my lord. But…”

The mawkish call of indignance from the young soldier fell on deaf ears. Rin, giving the entirety of her attention onto the elder, even as scouts began to gallop toward their position.

“On behalf of all those who’d fallen to that creature’s rise, I stand here now. So I ask you…” His sword drew with purpose, a slick ringing echoing in Rin’s ears as the tip of his blade rested square between her eyes. At the end of its length, she saw Michiktasu’s eyes. Resignation and defeat, but determination as his lord looked on from behind and the number of soldiers stood ready to wage war.

“Rin, will you die for that creature?”

Stoic as those words were, they were drenched in a silent plea. One Rin could not answer. Michikatsu made his decision and she had made hers.

“No.”

The air crackled and smoldered around her as her hair lifted on arcs of energy drifting from her small frame in waves of blinding white. Her eyes closed for half a second and when they opened, she could see the fear and apprehension in theirs.

“I do not plan to die on this day.”

When she dared to open her eyes, the comforting hold had become a vice-like grip. One that may have been painful if not for the nature of her being. And yet, that was the issue. Her being is what drove those pitiful humans to their end. Loyalty, friendship, determination in the barest sense of the word — is what ended their lives.

Rin trembled and braced herself against the woman’s sides, easing away from her comforting embrace. Velvety hands, pleasant to the touch, leave her pliant as they tip her head upward to meet a pair of ink-colored eyes belonging to a fair-skinned woman. Her raven-black hair sweeping thick tendrils down her shoulders and back, gentle rounded features twisted with reticent thought. Beneath the silvery moonlight, the woman seemed to glow.

Ethereal and never-ending, ironic considering her being.

A pained tremor cracked as the woman brushed her fingertips along the underside of Rin’s eyes. An aroma of spider lilies incensed the air as her palms cradled the curve of Rin’s cheeks.

“Speak to me, little one…”

Mirthless laughter spat out from Rin’s lips. Sound harsh and grating to her ears, and along the worn lining of her throat. Yet, if it bothered the woman, she said not. There was little to be angered over. Their lives were over, the battle won.

Toga had returned home to his son. She’d seen to it herself.

And yet…

“Midoriko,” Rin prefaced, staring into her eyes. She couldn’t help but notice, although the face and presence were naught the same, those eyes reminded her of Michikatsu’s. She tore her gaze away, guilt cinching her chest. “… When is war justified?”

The priestess’s eyes widened and for a brief second, Rin felt remorse. She hadn’t meant to come into Midoriko’s garden with such heady conversation. However, she couldn’t seem to ease the question from mind. After a moment which felt like an eternity, Midoriko’s expression smoothed into one of serenity and she shifted her gaze to the pond before them. Rin following suit, catching sight of their reflections in the still waters.

“War is often waged between those with conflicting ideals,” Midoriko started, holding out one of her hands, a firefly drifting to set upon her finger. Its light casting shadows over her palm. “Or in need of protecting what is theirs from those who wish to take it.”

Rin’s brow furrowed as she heard crickets chirping and glanced off to the smattering of huts in the distance. Lanterns weaving in and out of the trees.

“Is there no way past it?” She asked, rising to her feet as she stepped behind Midoriko, furthering herself from the distant line of the forest. The clearing in which they sat together, while a favorite of hers, was not only known to them. In a bid to keep their talk quiet, Rin lowered her voice but she couldn’t ignore the swell of curiosity and anxiousness burning at her lungs.

Midoriko allowed her with her eyes, concern downturning her lips, her mouth opening but the swell of emotions poured out of Rin before she could stop them.

“When is taking a life justified?” Rin asked hurriedly, Midoriko’s mouth snapping shut, eyes widened. “How much life can be taken before the meaning of it is lost? And to whom…” She regretted her words as Midoriko rose to her feet. “Does one answer to when they no longer feel that remorse?”

Her arms beginning to tremble as she took a half-step backward, staring down at her hands. Clear though her fingertips were, pristine and free of blemish, she could still remember the feeling. Red coating and outlined in the creases of her fingertips, streaked across her palms and smeared against her wrists.

She knew why she drew her blade. And unperturbed by the respect shown, by the look in their eyes, she swung it again and again without mercy.

Til naught else remained.

Warm hands enveloped her own and jostled her forward. “Rin,” Midoriko snapped, voice firm as the grip she had on Rin’s hands. “This— The pain you feel… It is a symbol of remorse.”

Rin shuddered, swallowing the lump in her throat, allowing Midoriko to squeeze her hands in spite of the fear of red smearing across the priestess’ own.

Undisturbed, Midoriko held her and smiled, kneeling in the grass. “A way to know that you yet live, and feel for all you’ve done.. Even if you do not wish to undo it, it still proves that you are good.” She nodded once, slowly releasing Rin’s hands and reaching out to pull her into an embrace. Her nose settled against Midoriko’s shoulder as she held her tightly.

“Because only those who are mindful of their action seek repentance.”

#inuyasha fandom #rin #midoriko #fanfiction #my fanfiction #feathers in the wind #yokai au

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