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purrincess-chat · 3 years

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Marinette Dupain-Cheng’s Spite Playlist: Remix CH29

The plans are in motion! Just a reminder, after I post CH30 next week, I will be taking a break through the month of September to finish up the final edit. I’ll probably be scarce around this blog as well during that time cause I’ve got to work on my BB piece as well, but my queue is loaded through like January of next year, so it’ll be like I’m not even gone.

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Chapter 29: Take Cover

Marinette and Adrien stared at his phone, jaws hanging agape. The silence stretched on until Chloe sighed, and Marinette blinked out of her trance.

“I’m sorry. We’re going to what now?” she asked.

“Ugh, just get over here.” Chloe hung up.

Marinette and Adrien exchanged bewildered looks, and he shrugged as if to say, ‘I have no idea what just happened either.’ Chloe wasn’t one to keep waiting, so they gathered their things and piled into Adrien’s town car. On the drive over, Adrien laced their fingers together, tracing patterns on the back of Marinette’s palm with his thumb. She smiled up at him, that familiar, fluttery feeling spreading through her chest.

She’d dreamed of being Adrien’s girlfriend since they day they met. To her surprise, she was calmer about the whole situation than she’d expected. She wasn’t planning their wedding or naming their future pets, and she’d only daydreamed about his soft lips twenty times that day. They knew each other better now and had grown more comfortable with one another.

Adrien was a true friend and a stable rock in the middle of a storm, always there for her to fall back on if she needed. If it weren’t for him, she would be drowning in her own anguish. Lila may think she had the upper hand, but Marinette and Adrien were the perfect team. Nothing could stop them when they worked together.

Chloe was staring out at her balcony when they arrived, a pensive frown wrinkling her forehead. She turned to them, pursing her lips to mask her expression as they approached. They eyed each other in tense silence until Marinette spoke up.

“So,” she started, “what?”

Chloe rolled her eyes and rubbed her temple with a sigh.

“Look, don’t go getting any ideas. This isn’t about you; it’s about revenge,” Chloe said. “Lila seems to feel the most threatened by you, so I think it will have more of an impact if your name is associated with all of this charity work, and the only way to make anyone else care enough to report about it is to make you someone worth talking about.”

“What makes you think Lila is threatened by me?” Marinette asked with a disbelieving grunt. “All she ever does is toy with me.”

“And why do you think that is?” Chloe rolled her eyes when Marinette still seemed lost. “When someone like her feels threatened, they lash out and try to bring you down.”

“Is that why you were always so mean to me?” Marinette’s eyes narrowed, a smirk curling on her lips.

“Don’t lump me in with her! I’m mean to people for the sheer entertainment of watching them suffer. Totally different.” Chloe scoffed.

“Okay, so how exactly do you plan on making Marinette famous?” Adrien asked.

“Easily.” Chloe shrugged. “The dumb brat has already started making a name for herself, and more and more important people are starting to notice her talent, if you want to call it that.”

“I will ignore the insult in favor of the compliment.” Marinette crossed her arms over her chest and cocked a hip.

“Look, even my mom has complimented your work, so I think we should—as disgusting as this is—ask my mom to help you launch your fashion career.” Chloe cringed as she said it.

Marinette stared at her for a long moment, and Chloe shifted her weight with a moan.

“Stop looking at me like that!”

“You’re being serious right now?” Marinette asked.

“I know. Even I’m shocked.” Chloe wrinkled her nose.

“You want to help me start my fashion career? Now?”

“It’s the only way to take down that brat for good,” Chloe said, cheeks pink. “After this, I will go back to hating you and thinking you are a talentless nobody.”

“This is uncharacteristically nice of you, Chloe,” Adrien said with a smile. “I’m proud of you.”

“Don’t get any ideas, Dupain-Cheng. I’m not going to be caught dead wearing your trash, but my mom wanted to train you, so I think it’s our best shot.” Chloe shrugged.

“So, what? We’re just going to walk up to your mom and ask her to work with me?” Marinette scoffed as if it were the most absurd thing she’d ever heard. Because it was.

“Pretty much.” Chloe marched past her.

“Wait, we’re going right now?”

“We want to take Lila down this century, Dupain-Cheng,” Chloe said pointedly, crossing the hall to her mother’s suite.

“But…wait, Chloe-” Marinette rushed after her as she barged into the room across the hall.

Audrey was in the middle of a hot stone massage, and Marinette curled her shoulders.

“I don’t think we should disturb her-”

“Mommy,” Chloe said, and Audrey gave some groan of acknowledgement. “You remember my dreadful former classmate, the one who designed the feather hat for Adrien?”

“Vaguely,” Audrey said.

“Well, Clara Nightingale walked the red carpet in one of her designs, and I think you should back her brand,” Chloe said.

“I thought you hated this girl-”

“You and me both,” Marinette grumbled.

“-now it sounds like you’re being nice.” Audrey choked on the word.

“There’s a nasty girl at school that I want to get rid of, and I need to make Dupain-Cheng famous to do it.” Chloe explained.

Audrey moaned as the masseuse worked a knot in her shoulders.

“Get me a portfolio by this time next week, then we’ll talk,” she said.

Chloe clapped her hands together. “Thank you, Mommy.”

“Wait, I’m sorry, a week?” Marinette blanched.

“Fashion moves quickly, dear, so if you want to be relevant, you’ll get me your portfolio with a pitch by next week,” Audrey said more sternly.

“She’ll have it ready,” Chloe promised.

Marinette shot her a look. “I’m not so sure she can-”

“Enjoy your massage.” Chloe grabbed Marinette’s arm and dragged her from the room.

“Chloe, I don’t know if I can-”

"Oh, shut it." Chloe clamped her hand in a mouth-shutting motion. "You are annoyingly persistent when you want to be. I've seen you accomplish way more in less time, so don't you even say you can't do it because if anyone has got what it takes, it's you, and if you tell anyone I said that, I will destroy everything you love."

“A week? To come up with an entire line,” Marinette said. “Not to mention it has to impress your mom—the queen of fashion!”

“And?” Chloe shrugged. Did she hear herself? What was so hard to understand about the absurdity of the situation?

“Chloe’s right, Marinette, you can do this,” Adrien took her hands and gave them a reassuring squeeze.

“But what if I can’t?” Marinette asked. “What if Audrey hates my designs or if I can’t come up with a whole line in time?”

“Then your fashion career is dead, and I’ll just get rid of Lila my way.” Chloe sauntered back to her suite. “Toodles!”

Marinette leaned her face into Adrien’s shoulder with a moan, and he wrapped his arms around her tightly.

“I know this is a lot of pressure, but you are the most amazing girl I know. You’re an incredible designer, and I know you’re going to crush it.” He pressed his forehead to hers, those green eyes shining with a confidence she wished she felt.

She took a deep, centering breath and nodded.

“Okay.” She pressed her lips into a firm line. “Let’s do it.”

♪♫♪ Misery Business ♪♫♪

Lila glared down at her phone screen, her laptop playing Clara’s acceptance speech in the background which only made her blood boil hotter. As if that stupid bakery brat needed more attention. Marinette pulled a couple fast ones on her, but Lila always got the last laugh. She stared down at Adrien’s Instagram post again with a scowl.

“So proud of @marinette-dc! I’m so lucky to have such an amazing girlfriend like you.”

Most of their classmates had already liked it, but it didn’t matter. Lila would figure out a way to spin this back on Marinette. The cracks were already forming in her little good girl reputation. Lila just needed to apply pressure, then everything would come crumbling down.

♪♫♪ Look What You Made Me Do ♪♫♪

The next day at school, Marinette was quite the hot topic after her big debut. Everyone was buzzing about Clara’s dress, and she received compliments left and right, though she found it hard to enjoy her moment with Audrey’s deadline looming over her.

She’d spent all night brainstorming ideas, but so far she had nothing. Nada. Zilch. No ideas. No inspiration. Nothing, and she was a sweaty ball of nerves. Numerous times she’d tried to give herself pep talks. She saved the city on a daily basis, fought ten-ton monsters and tricky magicians. How hard could it be to design a few dresses and coats?

Infinitely hard, as it turned out. In fact, part of her wished it was as easy as fighting an akuma. That there was some clever shortcut to her end goal, but there were no such things in this case. Just her own imagination and the wall between it and her sketchpad.

“Why so glum?” Macy asked as Marinette shoved books into her locker. “Shouldn’t you be excited about your dress? Everyone loves it. Things didn’t go bad with Adrien after we left, did they?” She cupped her cheeks in horror.

“No.” Marinette assured her with a laugh. “Everything is fine, but I just… Another amazing opportunity has fallen in my lap, and I don’t think I can do it, and I’m stressing out over it.”

“Yeah, you are breaking out a little.” Lisette pointed out, and Marinette covered her chin with a groan.

“You’re amazing, Marinette, and you always find a solution,” Macy said, but when Marinette seemed less than convinced, she pursed her lips. “Tell you what, Lisette can help you cover your zit, and we’ll help you get your mojo back, okay?”

“Okay,” Marinette said, allowing Macy to tug her to the bathroom where Lisette managed to completely erase any signs of her stress. Honestly, she was a wizard with a tube of concealer.

“There they are with the lady of the hour,” Eliott said when they met up for lunch. “How did your alone time go with a certain model last night?”

“He gave me this necklace.” She pulled it from under her collar with a soft smile.

“How romantic!” Lisette said.

“How sparkly.” Macy added with a longing look until Eliott nudged her with his elbow.

“We should double date this weekend. The weather is going to be nice, so we could go golfing.” Eliott suggested, and Macy shot up.

“Oh! Can I come? My parents are part-owners at one of the courses so my dad can play whenever he wants.” She bounced excitedly.

“Fine, but you have to bring a date,” Eliott said.

“I’ll just bring Martin again.” Macy shrugged.

“That’s cheating.”

“How? You said to bring a date, so I’ll bring a date.”

“You didn’t even ask him!”

“Fine! Martin, will you be my date?” Macy turned to him with pleading eyes, and his cheeks flushed.

“Uh, sure,” he said.

“Ha!” Macy stuck her tongue out at Eliott.

“That’s all fun and everything, but I’ve never played golf,” Marinette said. “Besides, I have a lot to do.”

“Oh, come on, Marinette. We can teach you,” Macy said. “Please?”

“I-” Marinette hesitated when they all gave her pleading looks. “We’ll see.”

“What’s so urgent that you can’t come out, Marinette?” Eliott asked as they took their seats.

“Does it have to do with that girl?” Martin lowered his voice.

“Kind of…” Marinette took a deep breath before explaining the entire situation—the plan, her deadline, all of it.

“Whoa, you’re really gonna pitch to Audrey Bourgeois?” Lisette whispered, eyes wide.

“I’m gonna try,” Marinette pushed her peas around with a spoon. “I’m kinda running on empty right now.”

“If you need any help let us know, okay?” Macy reached out to place a hand over hers.

“Yeah, we know tons about fashion and starting charities, not to mention handling drama queens.” Eliott echoed. “We’ve got your back.”

Marinette smiled, though the sentiment didn’t reach her eyes. It wasn’t their fault that Marinette was never going to make it in the world of fashion. When she inevitably failed, Adrien would probably dump her, Lila would take over the world, and she’d be left selling stupid little trinkets off of a cart to tourists. Why did she let Chloe talk her into this?

♪♫♪ Yeah Right ♪♫♪

“Good morning, Lila! I have your geometry homework!” Sabrina greeted on the front staircase the next morning.

Lila feigned a smile. Sabrina was annoying, but she did all of Lila’s homework, so she usually didn’t complain. After that brat Marinette scored a point against her last night with the award’s show, Lila wasn’t in the mood to deal with clingy girls with dependency issues.

“Thank you so much, Sabrina. You’re such a sweetheart,” Lila said.

“How is your ankle feeling? Do you need anything? Aspirin? A hot compress? Foot massage?” Sabrina offered.

“Well, it feels much better than it did a week ago, but if I walk around a lot, it gets a little sore. Would you mind taking my bag to my locker for me?” Lila slipped her bag off her shoulder and held it out.

“Of course! You rest that ankle,” Sabrina said without hesitation.

Lila smirked as she trotted off to the locker room. At least Sabrina was easy to get rid of. Some of her other idiots would have insisted on walking her to class—a commitment Lila didn’t have time for today. She needed to figure out her next move against Marinette. Everyone was still conflicted over the stairs incident from the Louvre. That stupid goody-goody built up a reputation over the years that wasn’t so easily collapsible. Even still, every shred of doubt Lila could cast would pile up in the end.

“I see you’re still walking around like you own the place.”

Lila stopped a few steps into the school, jaw clenching. Adrien was leaning against the wall just inside the door, and he pushed away when she narrowed her eyes, taking slow, deliberate steps toward her.

“In case you hadn’t noticed, I do own the place,” she said. “Or I will soon enough.”

“I’ve warned you before, Lila, but you didn’t listen. What you did to Marinette was not okay,” he said darkly, green eyes narrowed into slits.

“Oh? And what are you going to do about it? Call another one of your celebrity buddies to call me a liar? Go ahead, it’ll help me win these losers over even faster.” Lila crossed her arms over her chest and cocked a hip. “You can’t beat me, Adrien. You’re too nice to get your hands dirty.”

“If you do anything else to Marinette, you’re going to learn how nice I am.” He glowered down at her, sending a shiver down Lila’s spine. “You hurt someone I love, so enjoy your reign while it lasts. Pretty soon everyone is going to see you for who you really are, and I won’t feel sorry for you.”

He brushed past her, and Lila rolled her eyes. He was bluffing, and even if he wasn’t, Lila could handle anything he threw at her. Whatever they were plotting, Lila wasn’t going down without a fight.

#mdcspr #marinette dupain-cheng's spite playlist remix #my writing

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insomniac-dot-ink · 6 years

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The Maiden and the Bog Hag

Genre: fantasy, mythology, wlw

Words: 7k

Summary: A maiden betrothed to the crown prince frequents a bridge that a bog hag lives under

they begin to chat

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warning: for injury and some disturbing imagery

I was a little over 400 years when she arrived. Young for the ages, old for what I used to be.

I felt the vibrations before I saw her: dainty feet, an uneven tilt to her steps, sloppy, like pancakes hitting the hot skillet and scattering. I bet my last five teeth that she was a late-walker, late to crawl, late to lumber across my path.

My lips curl back and I grin wildly, not like something like that would matter after this.

She takes five steps across the wooden planks, barefoot, like she was tempting me with a prayer, then stops. I wait for another minute for those prime pale ankles to come within my reach, but she just stands there.

I peak quietly out of the hole and scowl when I saw a head sticking down over the edge of the railing. Rivers of lank blonde hair cascade toward the water, a small face, frowning slightly, nose wrinkled and eyes sharp- like needle points or homing beacons.

They were pale green eyes under expressive eyebrows, thick and rounded for her small face.

Her mouth quirked to the side and her nose was too big for her small features, I snort loudly. She was wickedly beautiful, I would eat her now if she wasn’t looking at me with the directness only arrogance can summon.

I present my darkened teeth to her, spreading my long thin fingers out and leaning into the dim light, the muddy water parts around me.

“Well, well, well,” I flex my fingers and make the ripples dance, “they really do serve themselves up on a platter these days.” I lick my lips rapaciously.

The young woman just makes her hair flutter as she tilts her head, still observing me upside down. “I don’t think so.” She finally says and then flashes me her fine fingers, chubby and small to match her figure. One golden rose ring shines from her pointer finger, I hiss.

“Royal brat.” She shrugs and finally stands up to peer down at me, “come out.” I scowl, “you may have immunity, but I don’t take orders. You are all temporary,” I squat down into the sludge and pout, “I am the trees and wind. You will pass, I will not.” “Yeah, yeah,” she flicks her wrist, “I just wanna see.” I slit my eyes, “what the inside of my belly looks like? I’d be happy to accomodate.” She could only be around 18, young, blithe, angry about something I couldn’t guess at.

She cushions her chin on her folded arms and blinks down, “I wish I looked like you.” I make a face, more of one than usual, “The little girl wants the devil under her skin. How special.” The girl rolls her eyes in a magnificent circle, “I’m not little.” She says loudly, “and you know what I mean.” I am overtaken with a strange puzzlement with the girl, “what’s your name little bird?” She scowls, “Not. Little.” She repeats, “I’m almost 20 and I’m not dumb enough to give my name to a witch.” I shrug, “it seemed like you were.” “Ugh,” she leans over the railing, “I wish all I had to do was sit under a bridge and tease strangers. And my mom says I’m the ungrateful one.” “Tease and then eat them,” I say in a exasperated tone, “you’re leaving out the most important part. The fun one.”

She hums lowly, “what do people taste like?” I smack my lips together, “like juicy juicy pig meat, but more tender.” She laughs with a rich tin sound, “liar.” I frown at her, “don’t you have places to be? You are a royal.” She scrunches her face up and pushes her loose blonde hair back, “Why do you think I’m here? I’m trying not to have things to do.” I look her up and down, “I don’t remember being invited to the birth of such a brat. Is that Hessia family spurning me again?” She sighs loudly, “Nah.” The girl reaches into her pocket and shines another ring in my direction, “I’m not from here.” “Ah,” I mull that over for a second, “it’s good thing they already extended their immunity to you. Just remember to invite me to the wedding or I’ll-” “Or you’ll unleash the gale force winds and raise the water and curse our children. I’ve heard.”

My eyebrows buckle inward into a grimace, “do they not have manners where you’re from,” I ask mildly, “or are you simply in the mood to push your luck?” I wander further out of my tunnel, feeling the pale sun bathe my earthy hair, covered in twigs and dirt and the wiggling life of one bird pecking for earthworms.

I can feel the girl stiffen as she examines me, taking in the puffy green skin and wrecked knuckles, parched mouth, the hunch of my back and long mud-caked gown. I smile so wide I think I might crack my face in half.

She places her chin on her arms again, “I’m not here to have manners.” She says in a small voice, “you don’t have any, as I can tell. Why should I?” She sighs, “what’s this bargain with the devil again?” I shake my head, “too high a price.” I’m not sure if I say that part aloud or not. I turn my chin upward, eyes glowing ember yellow and long nose catching the light. I am now fully exposed in the swampy waters, “Are you sure you still want to look like me then lovely bird?” She raises her eyebrows, “Oh yes,” she says simply, “who wouldn’t?” She turns around, “Prince Jace will probably send out the dogs if I am gone any longer, but,” she pushes her hair aside and looks over her shoulder, “I’m Tuck.” “Tuck,” I roll the name around my tongue and try to consume the vowels and suck the life out of the rolling sound. I frown.

“Not my real name, obviously,” she says with a smirk, “but everyone calls me that. Or used to.” She shrugs again.

I’m still gnashing on something I can’t quit chew, “fascinating. Of course,” I give her a flat look, “Tuck.” She waves, “they told me there was a powerful Bog Hag in these parts,” she examines me, “it was nice to meet you.”

Now she has manners.

The strange girl turns around and starts walking. I grin after her and imagine sinking my teeth around her pale throat, letting the red droplets spill out and color my muddy brown waters. I blink a couple times and then grumble about the royals. They could always do more to me, apparently including being nuisances.

Tuck’s unsteady footsteps disappear without a trace and I close my eyes to sink into the warm earth again.

I was around 400 at the time, young for the steady trees and arching rivers, old for what I used to be.

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“On a scale of one to ten, how clever do you actually find fairies?” Tuck was sitting on the edge of the water, skirt tucked under her and feet narrowly close to the lapping pond in front of her.

I want to sigh in exasperation, “go home little birdie,” I wave my hand in the air, “your presence isn’t requested here.” She hums loudly and glances up, “that isn’t even a proper answer. Are centaurs truly as health-obsessed as they say? My uncle met one and he said all the poor fellow could talk about is his kneecaps and the next plague. A right hypochondriac.” My left eyebrow twitches, “why don’t you go ask one?” Tuck leans her head up and looks up toward the dappled sunlight, “does it looks like I know many mythics?” She says loudly, “I’m asking you.”

I glower over at her, “you must have books.” I sneer, “rooms full of them I hear, houses full.” Tuck crosses her arms over her chest and frowns slightly, “and what would the court say? That’s what Matilda would remind me. The future queen burying herself in otherworldly material.” Tuck sighs noisily, “I would never get away with it.” “But you get away with conversing with a bog hag?” I remind her pointedly, mostly so I could return to my hunting. “How progressive.” She cracks an almost-smile, “oh yes, they call it a glorious new diplomatic mission.” She lifts her chin up, “for only the foreign queen of course. Taking up friendship with the local terrors.”

I hum loudly, “I take it they think you’re out riding.” She doesn’t look back at me, “they think I’m out weeping.” She takes a deep breath in and glances over at me, “a Kiliok tradition before a wedding.”

“Kiliok,” I roll that word around in my mouth, “A northern Queen, very well.” She doesn’t so much as nod as keep staring, “do you know of us?” I shrug, destabilizing clumps of dirt that roll down my shoulder tops, “I know of many things.” That same smile ghosts over her lips again, “cool.” I shake my head and my eyes pour of the warm waters, “you know, perhaps you are safe from me eating you, but there are other scarier things in this forest.” I hit her with a hard look, “it’s old. And the earth here is not as kind as me.” She looks nonplussed, “scarier than you?” She grins boldly, “I highly doubt it.” I huff shortly, “perhaps you should act like it.” I say hotly, “and leave. That’s what you do when you’re scared if you’d like to know.” “So touchy!” Tuck says boisterously, “it almost sounds like you like to be alone.” She winks and I feel for the nearest large fish.

“How did you guess?” I say in a flat tone and she laughs.

“Go on,” she says cheerily, “catch something.” My lips curl back again, “you’re already here.” “Oh come now, we already had this out.” She curls her legs up into her chest, reminding me of a child or a cat. “I want to be you and you want to eat me, neither of us can have what we want.” I give her one last placid look before plunging my hand into the water, my long nails pierce the fish before it can even twitch. It was larger, the largest one I had in months, I smile greedily.

I wrench the catfish from the waters and holding it’s flopping body in my hands, “watch carefully young queen,” my eyes gleam, “you may learn something.” I dig my teeth into it’s moist flesh and wait for it to stop squirming, tearing at it’s soft meat.

“Cool,” is the last soft word I hear before I dig in, I would be rolling my eyes all over again if I wasn’t preoccupied.

Tuck is still there when I finish, and asks me how I find Roc’s- were they slightly above dog intelligence or was it true you could hold a conversation with one? I try to fade back into the muddy waters and we bicker about which weather God’s were the most superior.

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“I don’t suppose you ever leave this place.” I come to expect her weekly visit, I don’t turn around this time when she approaches.

“Not like you do princess,” I say soberly as I ooze my way back towards the mid-day sun, she always comes at mid-day.

“Ha, right.” She says with a slight grunt as she takes her usual seat by my waters. “You could go wherever you please though.” I raise my eyebrows, a stick falls down and bumps my cheek before making a silent ploop into the water. I trace patterns in the algae in front of me, “And where would I go?” Tuck makes a soft sound, “I dunno, another swamp? Triste? The coasts? You must have hobbies.” I fix her with an even look, “Between you and the fisherman I’m afraid I have no time for hobbies.” I say lightly and she lets out her little snorting laugh.

“I’m serious.” I shake my head, “I’m as bound to this swamp as you are bound to the land instead of sky.” I say slowly, “it’s how it is.” She just nods a little sardonically, “finally, straight answers.” I sigh loudly, “have you come to quiz me again about dwarven bathing habits?” She just smiles with a little shrug, “that and, unfortunately, it seems Jace will have me do all the work for him.” “The Hessia’s usually do,” I peer down at my long nails, “what is it?” Her large green eyes hold me for a second, “Are you free next friday?” I have the decency to grin widely, “let me check my calendar.”

Tuck returns the wicked smile, “I was told it was best to invite the local powerful mythics,” she winks, “wouldn’t want to snub anyone.” “After all the other visits?” I grumble, “I wouldn’t mind being snubbed at this point.” “Come now,” she says lightly, “Scare a few nobles, get a free meal, remind the world that’s it’s mortal and weak and easily eaten by strange green ladies. You must like being invited to these things for a reason.”

“It’s a matter of honor,” I say with pointed enunciation, “respect.”

She examines you again, “I see.” “No you don’t.” I snap back and she laughs once more.

“Always so prickly!” She tuts, “you’re lucky I like you or I wouldn’t invite you to my wedding.” “You just like oddities,” I say in a nasally voice, “bored nobles like yourself so easily lose their common sense,” I eye her, “but I’ll come.” I smile widely, “I do like to see the children’s faces when I arrive.” “That’s the spirit,” she beams. “Now,” she settles down, “do you think the God’s of night are better lovers than those of the sun? I’ve heard rumors going both ways.” “Of course the moon ones are better,” I say as I settle down deep into the silt of the pond bed, my head exposed, “the sun God’s are more self-centered than a Nymph discovering her complexion…” I wished so desperately for Tuck to leave, but I never was good at giving into myself either.

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The day came, a sunny Friday in spring when all the flowers were in bloom, there were very few flowers by my bridge but I felt them. On the air, rejoicing in the soil, pecked by the distant din of birds that feared the dark woods.

I dragged myself up and ate, spending two days gorging and fuelling myself for the journey, casting protective circles around my limbs and throat. I even cake more mud into my hair and fashion branches into crooked wings off my hunched shoulders.

A bog hag had to play her part after all, show them what eternity looks like.

The actual exit is long and unnerving, the familiar suck of my life force, the shuddering of every nerve in my body. I heft myself slowly out of the water, groaning slightly like an oak tree against a typhoon.

The last push is always the hardest.

Solid ground is a cold kick to the teeth and I am very glad no one wanders the edges of my bog for any particular reason. I take several deep wincing breaths and straighten myself out.

“Alright,” I say calmly, “yes.” I summon my strength back to me with several dark heaving breaths and the color returns to my cheeks, it would be easy after that. I do not walk the streets, that would in many ways ruin the effect.

I arrive at the palace gates as a shadow and summon the northern winds to blow open the doors. The first set of people jerk toward me at the banging of the wood and whoosh of the breeze.

I spread my arms out wide and raise myself up high, “good morning.”

I take in the children’s face first, oh yes, their little bewildered stares, that is the cream to the cat’s tongue. Their mouths agape and eyes as wide as moons, I can only grin at the hisses and hushed whispers of the adults as I am witnessed.

I stride forward and watch their breathes seize up and noses turn toward the ceiling. I walk.

The halls are blood red, sheathed in gold trim and marble steps, I don’t bother to soften my steps or hold my dirt clumps to me. I let them fall to the castle floors and the earthworms to wiggle in my wake.

I make a beeline for the throne room, finding a tall graying man with steel grey eyes outside of it, waiting, I lift my chin up.

“Kind as ever to invite me King Gregory,” I says huskily as I reach near the throne room, I don’t have to look up to feel the king noticing me.

I feel every muscle in his body tighten, “it is an honor to host you Miss Lam.” Lam is the name of the bog I inhabit, they don’t know my real name, but that is how it’s supposed to be.

I turn my sharp chin up further, “a witch always remembers loyalties sire.” I remind him that witches both give and take, the diplomacy of the sword and bread as they call it.

They were offering me the bread so I won’t brandish my sword, I nod at their wisdom and exchange a tablet of blood with the king. I would never harm his bloodline as long as he honors me.

“If you’ll excuse me miss Lam.” He leaves as soon as the process is over, I turn back to the great hall. The crowds parts for me with enough room for a parade of horses between us. I grin, oh yes, this part I liked.

I show a nearby girl all five of my bare busted teeth, she makes a small simpering sound before hiding in her mother’s skirts. I cackle and turn back to the main room, the king is whispering to an advisor but makes no move to approach me again.

A smart man.

The Queen of the fairies arrives shortly after and is greeted in a similar fashion, Hessia is a large kingdom and I know quite a few powerful mythics could attend if they wanted to- but only a few will. I will admit that normally I might have foregone the trip, but I was still a little perplexed by the future queen.

I had been meeting her weekly after all.

I am unsurprised to read a different name on the parchment hung at the entrance of the church. The locals watch me carefully as I pass easily through the church doors with not so much as a twitch.

Like the devil works like that so easily little fools.

I shake my head and glance back at the welcoming sign. “To the Wedding of Prince Jace to his betrothed Princess Nadina.” I didn’t know what to make of ‘Nadina’ but perhaps we all come up with names for ourselves that are wildly different than ones we are given.

I sit on the closed off balcony and wait.

It reminds me of every other human wedding I’ve attended: stiff, formal, uncomfortable shoes and frivolous hats. There is a small boy who keeps unlacing his smock and throwing it off only to have mother tie it up all over again.

I almost want to give him a smile, a real one that wouldn’t haunt his dreams to come. But it was a fleeting thought.

The music begins and I almost regret attending, Queen Jinn of the fairies looks similarly bored but she holds her mouth in a taut line, dark skin glowing softly. Prince Jace arrives with his back straight and mouth an even straighter line.

He looks like every other young man this family had in line and I don’t bother to memorize his face, framed by licorice black locks and cool blue eyes. I don’t see any Tuck in him at all, but I’m not sure what I expected.

The music starts again with a silver jingle and I pause, stilling myself for the next familiar clumsy, uneven footsteps. She was wearing heels this time, white and pristine and high as the heavens.

Her gown trailed several people behind her and she had flowers braided into her shimmering blonde hair. Her dress was white and the jewels around her throat are blood red, it seemed to wear her more than she wore it.

“They caught her at the edges of the 13 Kingdoms,” Jinn was murmuring and they both glance at each other, “the Kingdom of Kiliok is not known for strength,” Jinn smiles with all of her teeth, “the Prince would bargain for beauty over the brawn of a nation it seems.” I frown slightly, of course, Jace’s family would choose someone from Kiliok. The country couldn’t leverage for her back or request much from them.

Tuck walks steadily down the aisle and I examine the pearls embroidered into the bodice of her dress and the curve of a fitted waist. She sets a steady pace up the steps and I forget to count the minutes.

She reaches the altar just as the minister begins his monologue outlying duty and country, heirs and gold.

“Are you going to curse them?” Jinn asks mildly as we watch on.

I shake my head, “they’ve paid their dues.” I say without blinking, “I have nothing to gain from it.” I look at her, “you?”

She shrugs, dark wings fluttering, “I considered a blessing even.” I glance at her, “oh?” Her eyes dart down, “Or a curse. I still haven’t decided, I’ll have to see my mood.” I give a rumbling chuckle and turn away, “do as you will.” “... and do you Nadina Josephine Tulip…” I wonder which name is actually hers as they wind down to the actual kiss. It doesn’t really matter of course, their lips meet in the end and the crowd erupts in applause.

A new Queen has just been welcomed into the family, however foreign she might be.

Tuck only pauses to give me a very curious look as she passes, arm and arm with Prince Jace, I give her a short nod and she smiles. I let it all pass and consider leaving then.

“Oh,” I look up as Jinn speaks.

I blink, “yes?” I prompt her and watch her crafted delicate features shift, her lips pull down and pale eyes expand. “Did you make up your mind?” I finally ask as she blinks.

Jinn flashes a look at me, she shrugs, “Humans make their own curses.” My mouth twitches, “ruins our business, doesn’t it?” She doesn’t laugh and I don’t like the feel of this. The wedding of Nadina of Kiliok and Jace of Hessia passes without note for that night.

I watch the first dance and eat my fill of chicken and all the little lambs in the kingdom, I only stop to tell one tale to the locals of blood eating giants and the ghosts of lost maidens in my bog. The maidens in white are banshees at the end of course, but the locals eyes always get so wide when I get to that part. It was worth it.

Tuck doesn’t spare me another glance.

-----------------------------

I return, exhausted, to my bog and wait for the next week. It comes, she does not. I wait for the next one, but not horse hooves or little clumsy feet approach my bridge.

I try to let go of the strange Tuck girl and her brief fascination with oddities.

She was just another bored noble afterall.

The sun sets and raises and the days pass on.

-----------------------------

I was older by then, still around 400, young for the ages, old for myself.

Her footsteps come on the night of the rains, heavy this time, mixed with rain fall and a steady pace. The vibrations on the bridge are lumbering, the lightness of her step forgone for a thumping sturdy gait.

I raise my eyebrows, but it’s still her.

The water washes against the top of my bridge and I curiously stick my head out, feeling the pelting of the raindrops as someone stands directly above me. She hadn’t bothered to stay carefully in the neutral zone this time.

I observe a stout figure drooping slightly on the railing, like her limbs might fall apart at the seams at any moment, heavy, fit together with bolts and screws instead of feathers. I look up and feel the thunder crash in the distance.

I frown, “This isn’t really the time or place little bird.” I try to make her out, I notice the shape of her dress has changed, no, her body has changed. I try to remember how many years it had been, but out of the dark night I make out a distinct slope of her dress, outward, a belly extending down.

I draw myself up, “there is a storm. You should know-” “Help me.” My eyes finally drag up to her face and I see it, the swollen cheeks and hollow eyes, complexion pale as the blurry moon behind her. Some life was drained out of her.

I should turn her away, threaten her back into the castle.

I jut my chin to the nearest bog tree instead. “Curl up there,” I murmur, “close your eyes.” I cast the protection spell before I even know what I’m doing, I shouldn’t, I don’t want to. But the spot is soon dry and glossy as the water veers away from it and a young girl curls up underneath the branches.

The hours slip by as I watch Tuck fall into a troubled deep sleep in my wake.

I don’t let the rain touch her.

----------------------

When she awakes the next morning I am peering down at her mid-drift.

“You’re with child,” I say dryly as lick my lips, “the heir.” I point easily downward and try to put together my next question. Tuck eyes go flickery and panicked, “it wasn’t a dream.” She looks in both directions and clutches her loose shawl around herself.

“Sshhh,” I hover closer, “you’ve simply had a bad night little bird.” She glances over at me and her eyes are as wide as sunken valleys and craters on the moon. “You,” she says breathlessly, “Lam.” I nod slowly, “among other names.” I watch carefully as Tuck’s eyes filled with a wet moisture and start to overflow, she curls up on herself and cradles her swollen belly, “I thought I dreamt you too.” I shake my head, “Tuck,” I say calmly and she looks up immediately, responding to what must be an old name. “You carry the heir. Someone must be looking for you by now.” And I don’t fancy being swamped by an angry mob right now.

She shivers from head to toe and I observe her thin wrists and inflamed joints. Something was wrong.

She looks up at me with a wobbly chin, “it doesn’t matter,” she says in a hiccuping voice, “let them look.” I frown deeply, “what is it?” I ask sharply, dragging my eyes over her sickly pale skin. “What is all this?”

She looks down at her lap, eyes burning, “Lam, this child feels as if it might kill me.” She says it faintly, with a bow to her head. I wait for a moment, accessing the waters, the vibrations, the steel in her eyes. I take a deep unhappy breath, “it is never easy.” She shakes her head and the tears keep overflowing, “he keeps moving. He’s… it’s not going right, it’s all wrong.” I just nod and hum deeply, “I can see the sickness on you.” She lets out a little sob, “did you do this?” Her eyes crinkle, “I don’t think you cursed me, but…” I just shake my head, “I am not the person you think I am.”

She looks down at her lap again and blinks a couple times, “I know.” She says in a small voice, “I told Jace it was me and not you.”

She sighs deeply and I hover ever closer, I only pause when her puffy red eyes drag themselves up. “Please,” she says in a voice I never heard her use, “can you help me?” I just nod, I don’t want to. I know I shouldn’t. Don’t let them in.

“Reed root,” I say simply, “Mandrake placed in warm milk,” I continue, “honey mixed with temple rot, not the mold kind, the roots.” Her brow was rumpled upward, “the doctors have been working around the clock, do you think, do you know,” she grasps at something and searches my face.

I slowly raise my thin gnarled hands from the water, “And one last thing.” She blinks a couple times, “yes?” “My blessing,” I whisper and suck the light dry from the air around me, “don’t tell anyone.” The light hovers, brave and new, twinkling in the air around us like stars, I hadn’t given one out in ages, not since I was fresh, young. The light scatters in all directions, sucked into her skin and pores, I say the words under my breath, welding them to her.

“Light, protection, breath,” I murmur, “light, protection, breath.” I weld her life line together so thick and golden that I think she might live forever after this.

I take a deep breath and open my eyes I hadn’t realized I closed, “that child is not going to kill you your majesty.” Tuck was still weeping, she was older somehow, so much older. “Thank you,” she says breathlessly, “Gods, thank you.” I take her hand and repeat, “mandrake soaked in warm milk, honey mixed with temple rot, reed root.” We share a look that I can’t describe and I want to shatter that too, gnash it up between my teeth and forget.

Her shoulders are thick and heavy looking, sloping down, she lets them relax. “They wouldn’t let me see you after we started trying for him.” She holds her belly again, I just nod.

“It’s for the best.” I respond tartly. She just shakes her head, “I don’t suppose bog hags have to give their lives for Duty and Country?” I give a sad smile, “go back little bird.” I say and close my eyes, “the grass is not greener in pastures you know not of.” She raises her eyebrows, “I always read bog witches were full of riddles, you’ve been holding out on me.” I give a soft chuckle, the old Tuck I remember shines through this new mature woman.

I reach, I know I shouldn’t either, but it’s too late now. I take her soft milky hands and I squeeze them, hard, not hard enough to hurt. But she needed to know.

“This child will not kill you your majesty,” I whisper with a hiss, “you have my blessing. Use it.” She cradles her belly protectively, “will he have it too?” I glance down and frown slightly, “you shouldn’t tell anyone.” She looks down and coos softly, “you hear that little one?” She gives a smile that glows at the edges, “you will be imbued with bog witch.” I shake my head, “you always were more daring than a box of feral cats.” She looks up, sadly this time, “thank you.” She says, face still swollen and eyes sunken, “I won’t forget this.” I start to shoo her, “go,” I say quickly, something stirring within me, “before I change my mind.” She rolls her eyes but manages to lumber to her feet, “this won’t be the last of me Lam.” She says softly, “not this time.” My eyes crease and watch her back, “it’s Clemency,” I say after her, “Lam is the name of the bog.” She was gone already and I have nothing but a sudden pain left in my gut. I close my eyes and extend the blessing once more.

----------------------

Tuck returns twice, once to tell me that the mandrake screamed at her and to curse me for it, another time to laugh so hard she almost fell into the waters with me. Jace almost passed out when he saw her eating temple rot apparently.

She got better.

I heard from afar that the next prince was born, just as the old king Gregory died. Tuck really was a queen now.

It was a closed birth, a hard pregnancy and a hard birth. No one was invited to it.

I feel her footsteps far and distant from me, sometimes they come to the edge of the bog once more, but they don’t enter this time. I wait, I don’t dwell, I sleep as two winters pass.

I left once, into the city streets, disguised as a beggar woman, I hear that the new prince is strong, rambunctious, he has his father’s charcoal black hair and mother’s smile. I try not to catch his name, I do anyway.

Clement.

I don’t dwell on it.

-------------------

I am steeped in the roots of a tree when I hear it again, something I thought I wouldn’t hear again.

“I can’t,” she speaks rapidly, quickly, “I tried to. But I can’t, not again.” I turn around slowly, easily, I straighten up and ooze down the roots and back toward my bridge, I raise my eyebrows, “And here I thought you were a smart girl and were done with me.” Tuck just shakes her head, dressed in an olive green gown and looking bright and full of life this time. “Never.” She says softly and I don’t know what to do with that.

“Huh,” I turn away again.

She takes a deep breath, “I tried to take him to meet you.” She says steadily, “again and again. But they watch him more carefully than a hawk on a field mouse.” I glance up and sink into the muddy waters, “as they should.” She frowns deeply, “they don’t trust me.” I nod again, “A foreign queen stays foreign for a land like Hessia,” I say grimly, “I know well of these people’s superstitions.” She gives a tight smile down at the ground, “I started reading all those books you told me about.” She says in a small voice, “they keep me sane.” “Did you ever figure out if fairies are actually clever or not?” Tuck looks up, “I did,” she says slowly, “they are. But not as clever as they think.” I give out a hearty laugh, a real one, “smart girl.” Tuck tightens her hands, “No,” she looks away, “I was foolish.” I shrug, “You were young.” I tilt my head, “Different, strange, and not sorry about it.” She grins, “still am.” She sighs, “but I made so many mistakes.” She rubs her knuckles together, “I never earned their trust.” I tilt my head to the side, “why are you telling me this?” My jaw tightens.

“I don’t know,” she sighs heavily, “I wanted one last confession, or maybe perhaps I thought it might change something. To go where it all began.” “What began?” She shrugs, “it doesn’t matter.” She says bitterly, “they want me to do it again.” I raise my eyebrows, “do what?” My lips quirk up, “wander into bogs again and bother ancient powerful beings?” She laughs, “I wish!” She takes a deep heaving breath, “they need more than just Clement. Hessia demands multiple heirs just in case the first one dies.” “Oh,” I should nod at that, I should affirm the truth I already knew, “don’t they know?” Don’t they know the first one was a hair away from killing Tuck.

She just frowns at her feet, “they don’t listen.” I nod again, “I can…” I take a deep breath, “I can do it again.” I should add ‘for a price,’ but I don’t.

She just shakes her head, “I don’t I have it in me. Not a second time.” She looks weary, eyes tired and hands still and open at her sides, “even with a powerful witches blessing.” I put my hand out, “you don’t know what I’m capable of.” I give an almost-smile, “you never did.” She hesitates, looking at my hand for a long second, my fingers tingle and I should pull back, but I don’t.

She takes it. Our skin touches and tingles like a wildfire, it wasn’t like the first time, like when I was trying to convey everything to her.

She holds the dust and the grime and my long gnarled fingertips, she brings them up to her lips. “Tell me,” she whispers, “how does a river nymph descend into a bog?”

I don’t meet her eye but I tighten my grip firmly, “with a bit of luck.” I say loosely and she chuckles.

“Of course.” She searches my face with her prickly green eyes, “what kind of luck?” I tilt my head to the side, “it goes like all stories go. Life gives and takes. Power and hunger mixed with men who want with a want that carves out your flesh and digs out spirit and soul. Then I was given a blessing.” I curl back my lips. “You already knew that secret though.” She nods and fingers reach up and ghost across my cracked skin, “I wanted it so badly.” Her eyes shimmer and meet mine, holding my gaze and passing something unnamable between us, I lean forward but don’t press anywhere closer.

We hold our breaths and wait for something that isn’t coming, wrapped in something we don’t understand.

I clutch her hand so tightly I know it hurts.

Tuck turns before I do and we say a soundless goodbye. I throw my blessing at her one last time.

--------------------

Men, men are cruel. They fight and ruin each other, arguing and crying out and falling in love only to do it all over again. Men are cruel. So are the waves and the snow and biting wind and unforgiving earth, the earth is also cruel.

Though men can be bargained with, the earth on the other hand will eat you all without question. Perhaps that’s what I liked about it.

Her footsteps came heavy this time, fast and pounding the water bottom, feet sucking into the mud and struggling with each step. She was breathing hard and dashing forward with lurching hurried movement.

I wake with a start, dogs bray in the distance. She hadn’t been subtle, or perhaps the King had more eyes on her side then she knew of. Either way I can feel the pounding of men’s feet and the calling of distant voices.

I surge to my feet and move as fast as a roaring river.

“Tuck!” I call with the voice of a rumbling, mountain, “Tuck!”

I can feel someone else, cradled in her arms and squirming. “Mama,” I hear it now, clear as day. He is young and strong, as I knew he would be.

His eyes glow yellow in the dark as I whoosh forward, approaching quickly just as the soldiers do- also in pursuit of the mother and child.

I gnash my teeth as I turn on the soldiers, “I will grind your bones to dust and use your shin bones as my garden gate.” I roar and the men falter, but only for a moment.

“A witch!”

“I knew it! I knew the gregij Queen had allies on the Other Side.” My nostrils flare and I lift my hand, but so do the men, one young soldier raises a crossbow.

“Don’t hit the child!” The captain cries, the young soldier is jostled and it all happens in slow motion.

“Clemency!” Tuck’s voice rings out just as I reach for her, just as the arrow does too.

Her son’s eyes are huge and glowing yellow, shaking and frightened as the arrow pierces his mother’s back like a sapling pierces the soft earth as it grows. I see a silent gasp spread across her face and a shock of pain.

Red blossoms across the dark waters.

I give out an earthly scream as she falls, every inch of me tingling as I know these soldiers are dead. And eaten and discarded into the scraps of time and earth.

I scream and scream, but I’m not the only one listening, before the bog cats come bristling out of the waters, before the roaches come crawling out of the trees, before I summon hell. The earth is listening, the earth does not bargain, but it gives and it takes.

Much like a witch.

I feel it encompassing her before I see it, the vines and leaves and waters swishing around her, covering her, my eyes go wide. I needed to rip out the throats of these men, but I pick up her son instead.

He is weeping and wiping at his brilliant eyes, tearing at his dark hair, whimpering softly in an emotion I couldn’t fathom from one so young.

“Shhh,” I gather him to me, “it’s beginning.” The leaves twist and the waters ripples and the forest becomes so deathly quiet I’m afraid it might break. They call it the devil, but I don’t think I’ve seen the devil breath life back into someone as quickly as he takes it.

I see her skin fasten into a steady bark, her hair twist into streams of golden light, her face mix into something otherwordly and unknowable, rough and hard in all directions. Tuck raises once more and I am left breathless. She stands, bark and light and forest now, all forest.

She raises her head and smiles, smiles something brilliant and wicked, “I knew it,” she says softly and looks down at her hands. The soldiers had scattered by then, run for their lives to tell the King of the betrayal, terror would follow after horror. But that could wait, it all could wait, I shift young prince Clement in my arms and reach out on last time.

She takes my hand, “tell me,” she says lightly, “can a bog witch fall in love? I read they can’t.” I smile widely, “let’s find out.” We turn towards the deepest parts of the forest and start walking, creeping deep into unknown depths of a soft and distant world. The first kiss shifts everything inside me, and then the second one breaks it.

Very few new footsteps arrive after that, for who would face the two most powerful bog witches in their home? Two witches and the next and future King.

FIN

#wlw #original story #writeblr #sapphic #lbgt fairy tale #lbtq fiction #wlw romance #original writing #original short story #my work #f/f #fantasy

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internetremix · 6 years

Text

You Know What You’re Doing, Obviously

A/N: Camp StreaMix is never over in Kristen’s heart and Alex commissioned her for something cute and wholesome like a monster. Here’s some CS fluff or something.

Every day at Camp StreaMix somehow managed to be the worst day ever. This was a bit of an overdramatic thought, the Murder God could admit that. But also it was right and frankly more people should be sympathetic to her suffering. This included a number of things- oversized t-shirts, the mosquitos, the humidity. The obligatory swimming lessons in the smelly mud puddle these idiots called a lake. There had been the whole debacle with gum in her hair, which had resulted in her campers having to use peanut butter of all things to get it out.

No self-respecting God should smell of peanuts for a week straight.

At any rate, today was the worst, as was standard. Wednesdays were Wild Wednesdays (!!!!), which were supposed to feature time with nature or something. This meant Team Murder was supposed to hit the wood chip trails and this meant the Counselor’s lovely heels were going to get stuck, again. She still staunchly refused to switch to the smelly tennis shoes Grand Scoutmaster Darby had so helpfully dug up from the lost and found, because she had standards. Also she wasn’t ready to complete her apparent transformation into a soccer mom if she could help it. But that meant mud on her heels and she’d had enough. So the Murder God thought “well, we’ll try this off-roading business, it can’t be that hard.”

It was very hard, as it turned out. It had rained the night before, and also she was seemingly always the perfect height to get slapped in the face by whatever branches they passed. So now she had scrapes all over her stupid frail human body to pair nicely with mud on her heels and dress, again, and that meant she was stomping into the main office for the first aid kit, again.

Herself damnit, today was the worst.

“Fuck!” She snarled over the slam of the screen door as she entered. She kicked off her muddied shoes as she stomped past the splintery waiting bench to the front desk. There was a moment’s pause as she scratched irritably at one of her arms, then began to rifle through the desk drawers.

“Language, Miss Murder~” Grand Scoutmaster Darby’s voice called from the back room.

“Oh fuck off!” She snarled back.

“Ah, I thought I smelled peanut butter.” A voice drawled from the corner.

The Murder God paused, glancing up to see Counselor Alex seated on the waiting bench. As was standard, he had not so much as glanced up from his phone, which somehow made his presence even more insulting. Damn millennials.

“What are you doing here, Meatsack Number One? Don’t you have children to ignore?” The God snapped as she finally pulled out the first aid kit.

Alex shrugged, still not looking up from his phone. “I could say the same for you. Walrus, however, seems to have a case of heatstroke, so here we are. I’m just sticking around to make sure it’s not too serious. The rest of Team Fallen can handle themselves for a few minutes. Probably.”

The Murder God snorted. “Wow, look at you, actually doing your job and taking care of your little snotbag’s human frailties. I’m sure Counselor Sunshine is so proud of you.”

“Didn’t Shyner very nearly cause a forest fire last week with your help?”

“Third degree burns are an important life lesson all children should learn.” The God hissed as she slathered disinfectant onto her cheek. She paused again to scratch at her wrist, then continued.

“Uh huh. You know there’s no way the band-aid’s gonna stick with that much disinfectant, right?”

“I know that!” She snapped as she tried to subtly scrub some of it off. How the fuck did he know what she was doing without looking up from his phone? She dug deeper into the kit, still scratching absently at her wrist. “Ugh, who are these colorful monstrosities and why are they the only bandages we have?”

“Because the kids like superheroes and ponies.”

The Murder God wrinkled her nose. She then glanced up, making sure Alex’s stupid cow eyes weren’t looking before she chose the pony ones. They were cute.

Again she scratched at her arm, growling in frustration. “What is with this disgusting mortal coil? It’s so itchy, why is this happening to me!?”

Alex finally glanced up, then sighed and stood. “Lemme see it.”

Her response was to very quickly slam her palm on the desk, pointedly keeping the injury from view. “No. Why would I do that? I’ve told numerous stories about the various ways your disgusting forms can take damage, I think I know what- HEY, DON’T TOUCH ME!” It was not difficult to move her stupid tiny stick arms so Alex could take a look, apparently.

“It’s just for a second, you’ll live,” Alex’s was all too casual about this indignity. She scowled and pointedly averted her gaze while he looked her arm over. “Huh, looks like you walked through some poison ivy.”

“What.” She monotoned as she pulled her arm back.

Alex shrugged as he leaned against the desk, looking back to his phone. “Oh, I’m sure you’ve heard of it. Little plant out in the woods that gives you a rash if you touch it. Mostly just annoying, it won’t kill you or anything… unless you’re super allergic. It’s pretty easy to avoid as long as you stay on the trails. But then, you knew all that, of course.”

“I-I… y-yes, of course Meatsack Number One, I am well aware of this disgusting Earth bullshit!” The Murder God felt this was a very convincing lie. She also felt her own lie to herself that the first lie worked was pretty good. Yes.

“Uh huh. Anyway, it should go away on its own, as long as you stop scratching it. So probably stop doing that.”

She paused mid scratch to glare at him. “I wasn’t doing that.”

“Mmm. You’re gonna wanna wipe that down with some of those alcohol wipes.” He reached across the desk to pull out the wipes in question, then also picked up a small bottle of pink lotion. “Calamine should help with the itching. Don’t cover it up or anything, air’s gonna help it heal faster.” Alex said as he set them in front of her.

“Excuse me? I don’t need your pity or your disgusting human healing methods. I will remind you I am a God and can clear this up by will alone!” She declared, folding her arms in a way that was definitely threatening. So was the way she stuck out her tongue between her fangs.

“Okay.” Alex shrugged and went back to the bench.

The two sat in silence for awhile, the only sounds coming from the whirring ceiling fan overhead and Darby’s gentle murmurs from the backroom. The Murder God glared at Alex, waiting to see if he’d look up again. He did not. Then, grudgingly, she cracked open the bottle and poured some of the lotion into her palm- ugh, gross. It was worse on her skin, why was flesh like this?

Also it helped pretty quickly so there was that.

This task done, she put everything back as she’d found it- again, standards. Then she stomped toward the door, eager to end this entire scene as quickly as possible.

“You should probably take that stuff with you. If you got a rash your kids probably have it too.”

The Murder God snarled under her breath and stomped back to the desk to retrieve the objects in question. The first aid kit was finally re-returned to its drawer with a much louder bang than necessary, then punctuated by aggravated footsteps.

She flopped onto the bench next to Alex, tugging her shoes on and grumbling as she tried to brush off dried mud. Once this was done she stood with as much dignity as she could muster.

“Well, this has been an experience I will be eager to erase from my endless memory.”

“Yep.”

The Murder God stood there for a moment, fidgeting with her shirt. “Thanks,” She finally mumbled quickly out of the corner of her mouth.

Alex gave a small smile. “You’re welcome.”

“Ugh, you’re the worst,” She hissed as she finally ducked out of the office, screen door banging shut behind her. The Murder God paused outside for a moment, taking a deep breath. Her fingers twitched to scratch at her (admittedly much better) arm, then she shook her head and stopped herself.

Today was the worst. But maybe a slightly less worse. Kind of.

#camp streamix #does it count as fanfiction if kristen wrote it #Counselor Alex #counselor murder god

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tysonrunningfox · 6 years

Text

Bad News

This is one of the last 3 chapters of this like...what I told myself I had to do to call it finished. I edited through the rest again today and like...I’ve worked up to the next week for like three years. And this is totally going to get buried by rtte but I’m not really operating on the idea that those two things have the same people paying attention to them so I’m keeping as close to on schedule as I can anyway. (This didn’t feel like a valentines chapter so I gave it an extra day)

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It’s too early to be awake after a long, mostly sleepless night when someone knocks at the door. Or at least I think it’s someone, because it sounds more like a hollow metal ball than it does a hand. I wait a moment for someone else to deal with it but Mom doesn’t appear and Aurelia doesn’t come bounding down the stairs so I wrap my blanket around my shoulders and trudge over there, not bothering to put away my glare as I open it.

It’s Ingrid with what looks like breakfast that she mercifully didn’t cook and I reach out and grab a roll, biting into it and miming shutting the door in her face.

She reaches out and stops the door with her bad hand, that metallic sound ringing out again, and my eyes widen when I actually look at her fingers.

There are three metal fingers where yesterday there was blank space, a leather holster covering half her hand and attaching to a latch around her wrist. Another leather strap is around the base of her thumb and when she moves her hand away from the door, I can see that each finger has two carefully wrought, ratcheting joints.

“Let me see that—”

“Good morning to you too,” she pushes past me, stepping on my dragging blanket with a muddy boot and setting food on the table like she owns the place, even though I don’t think she’s ever been here. “Did you sleep out here?” She pats Bang’s head with her good hand—I mean her flesh and bone hand, and wrinkles her nose at the rumpled blankets on the floor.

“Bang won’t fit in the upstairs bedrooms.” I shut the door, “and can you please show me that?”

“What?” She holds her hand in front of her, reaching up and bending the fingers with her other hand. They hold whatever angle she puts them at and she grins, a shadow of her old confidence in it. “You have to be more specific.”

“Your hand, obviously.” I shove the rest of the roll in my mouth when she holds it out in my direction, dropping the blanket to hold it in both my hands.

“I brought you breakfast to be nice, you could at least chew it.”

“Where’d you get this?” I turn her hand over in mine, looking at the way the leather strap crosses her palm, holding the three metal fingers carefully in place over what’s left of her own. The clasp around her wrist is freshly oiled, the gronckle iron pounded thin and pulled smooth to make it lay flat against the strap. It’s stitched into place with what looks like sealskin thread, so that it won’t go slack when it gets wet and the fingers move smoothly with tactile little clicks.

“Smitelout made it,” she scoffs, “charged me about half my savings for it but hey, I’m not going anywhere else to spend those now so…”

“Smitelout made this?”

“Yeah, she said my axe was wrong for lefty wielding and it’d be a pain in the ass to change it so—”

“So she made you a hand?” I let go of it and she takes it back slowly, staring at it the whole time with a weird, almost content look on her face. “That’s a lot harder than switching a balance on an axe.”

“She did say that the next time she kicked my ass, she wanted me to be at my best so I couldn’t use this as an excuse,” Ingrid plops down into my normal chair, kicking her feet up on the chief’s table and picking up a piece of bread. “As if. But whatever her motives, I mean…I can swing an axe again. It’s a little slippery on the down stroke but maybe if I wore a leather glove or something…”

“That’s…that’s great.” I don’t know what else to say so I sit down across from her and pick up more food. “Does Arvid know you’re here?”

“Nah, he’s still asleep.”

“Well he’s off watch duty for the foreseeable future,” I take a bite and she rolls her eyes.

“Aren’t you the one who left me alone at the Ingermans’ last night so you could go make out with your girlfriend?” She wiggles her eyebrows at me and I blush. “And I don’t need someone to watch me, squirt, I’m fine—”

“You’re not fine.”

“I’m close enough,” she nods, like she’s telling herself more than me. “Closer now.”

“Did you and Spitleaf work things out last night?” I ask, because she really does seem better. Not good, not even normal, but better, and I know Spit was always good for her.

“We talked. Kind of.” She shrugs, “I don’t think it’s something that can be worked out and I told her that and she seemed to understand even if she wasn’t happy about it. I just—I’m busy, right now, with getting back into fighting shape and keeping you and Arvid from making fools of yourselves. Oh, and keeping Dad company. I’ve got a lot on my plate, I need to focus on that.”

“So, you’re not together anymore?”

“There really is no keeping you from making a fool of yourself, is there?” She says a little more sharply than I think she intends to.

“I’d say that’s largely true.”

“Does that mean you embarrassed yourself in front of Fuse?” She grins, “tell me everything.”

“What? No,” I huff, “I’m not telling you—did you do this with Arvid? Ask him all the sordid details—”

“No,” she snorts, “he’d just lie and give way too much information, frankly.”

“So then why ask me?”

“Because that’s not the face of a little brother with gross things to tell me,” she points at me with one neatly extended metal finger.

“Oh, shut up.”

“Stoick incoming!” Aurelia calls down the stairs seconds before Stoick sprints down them, tiny bare feet smacking the floor as he runs around the table to shout ‘good morning’ at Bang and nearly crashes into my chair, catching himself on my shoulder. He frowns at Ingrid.

“You must be Mom’s other kid.”

“Ingrid Hofferson,” she holds out her hand, her right hand, all the fingers extended, “nice to meet you.”

“Whoa!” He doesn’t shake her hand, grabbing her fingers instead and pulling hard enough that I reach out to stop him.

“Gentle, bud.”

“Sorry,” he grins, like he knows he’s cute enough to get away with it and honestly, he is, “cool hand!”

“Thanks, it’s new.”

“Mine aren’t,” he holds up his hands for her to see and Aurelia finally makes her way downstairs, braiding her hair over her shoulder.

“She’s not even my real sister and she brings me food,” Aurelia looks at me pointedly as she grabs breakfast and sits down. I huff, combing through my hair with my fingers and trying to reclaim the tie tangled in it.

“You didn’t ask me for food.”

“I didn’t have to ask Ingrid for food.”

“You got off of the wrong side of the dragon this morning,” I roll my eyes and Stoick finally drops Ingrid’s hand, satisfied that he knows how it works enough to leave it alone.

“She doesn’t have a dragon,” he reminds me, rolling his eyes with far too much intention for someone that young.

“Just a saying, bud.”

“Did you know that Eret looked exactly like you at your age?” Ingrid leans down a little bit to talk to Stoick and I wish again that she’d been here to help me when I was first getting used to him, “he burned down the forge though, you haven’t done anything like that, right?”

“No,” he shakes his head, “Mom would be so mad.”

“She was,” Ingrid nods. “You didn’t get to ride Bang for what? A week.”

“She said I wasn’t supposed to.” I wonder if I’m being a horrible role model when I look and Stoick and continue, “I did it anyway.”

“I always knew I was the good kid,” Stoick sighs and shakes his head at me and Ingrid laughs. Even Aurelia snorts at that one, even though I know it’s not quite a joke to her. “Can I play with Bang?”

“Of course, dude.” I almost regret saying it because as soon as he runs away and starts whispering secrets to a dragon on the other side of the room, both my sisters look at me like it’s a little disappointing how little I’ve embarrassed myself today.

I’d like to think that last night is enough for this lifetime but mostly I’d like to not think of last night in front of anyone, including myself, honestly.

Well, the bad parts of last night. And even the bad parts weren’t bad, per say, they were just uncomfortable because I was out of control and Fuse noticed and made me think about things I haven’t in a long time. And even then it was different, it was…incestuous, yes, but otherwise innocent. I didn’t want to be like Arvid, not really, I wanted it to be some romance from the stuffy section of Fishlegs’ library. And it’s not that I’d be opposed to a little more romance with Fuse, that’s not what I was so enthusiastic about last night.

I try not to think about her saying she was flattered or her shoving me back onto her bed like she really wanted me there. Last night, I had enough trouble holding back the idea of what might have happened if I’d stayed. I’m not sure how I feel about it and I don’t want to have that revelation with both my sisters staring at me like they’d love someone to advise.

Surprisingly, Aurelia cracks first, and just in time too because I can feel Ingrid reading my mind.

“I think Arvid is mad at me, has he said anything to you?” She asks me but Ingrid by extension, hesitant for a second like she’s not sure she can.

“He doesn’t have conversations with me that don’t start with asking if I’m ok,” Ingrid shrugs, “but he hasn’t seemed mad.”

“He doesn’t talk to me unless he wants a brawl,” I laugh before remembering yesterday, like that important embarrassment just got buried under the chronological next until this moment.

The good news is, I’m not blurting this one out because the only thing worse than my brother marrying my sister is being the one to ask her for him.

“He hasn’t said anything to you?” She asks again, nose twitching like she smells something suspicious and I shrug.

“He asked me if Ingrid is ok.”

“If no one asks me that ever again it’ll be too soon,” she huffs, kicking her feet back up on the table and freezing when Mom walks out of the bedroom and sees her.

“Feet.”

“Sorry.”

“What brings you up here?” Mom walks up to her and hugs her even as Ingrid makes a show of rolling her eyes. She notices Ingrid’s hand and looks at me but I just shrug, because I don’t know how to silently communicate that Smitelout has been hiding both her talent and smidgen of compassion remarkably well for someone who’s so loud and annoying all the time.

“I brought breakfast,” she gestures at the basket on the table, “and I wanted to see how last night went because Eret left the Ingermans’ to hang out with his girlfriend.”

“Fuse Thorston?” Mom turns that disappointed in dating look I’ve only ever seen her give Arvid on me for the first time in my life and it practically stings. “She’s your girlfriend now?”

“She’s not my girlfriend.” I shrug, and it’s true, because we haven’t said anything like that and she doesn’t want to get married. I just occasionally kiss her in her room on her bed and feel really…happy about it. That’s all.

And, you know, I’m currently trying really hard not to remember how her hip felt under my hand or how good she smells.

Not that I’m going to tell my mother that.

This is the first thing I’ve ever had that I really can’t tell Mom, isn’t it?

“Maybe not in so many words, but he does realize that she is in fact a girl.” Aurelia isn’t upset enough about Arvid not to join in.

“I’d wager that he might even think she’s pretty.” Ingrid pokes me irrationally hard in the arm with one of her metal fingers and that’s probably why Smitelout did it, to torture me from yet another angle.

“Well, maybe he should think about making decisions based on pretty,” Mom gives me that look again.

“Who’s pretty?” The chief walks out of the bedroom and Ingrid blinks at him for a second, alarmed like she never is. I realize it’s the first time she’s seen it, Mom and the chief so casually together like it’s not completely absurd after a lifetime of Mom and Dad. The chief puts his hand on Mom’s back and reaches for some bread. “Good morning, Ingrid.”

“Uh, hey Chief.”

“So, who’s pretty?” He kisses Mom on the cheek like that much is obvious, and I look and Ingrid and shrug. She’s a little pale and I don’t blame her, honestly.

“Fuse Thorston is, in Eret’s humble opinion,” Aurelia looks at me, daring me to argue with her and I know that’s a trap.

“I told him to think twice about decisions made on pretty.” Mom looks at the chief like she wants his support in whatever her problem is with talking about Fuse and the chief gives her a look that makes me feel surprisingly vindicated.

“I’m not sure that’s great advice, Astrid.”

“I’m just saying—”

“I get what you’re saying, Mom.” I leave it at that, because I do, because I’ve made decisions based on pretty and that led to following Aurelia around like a lost fireworm.

“You’re being respectful, right?” The chief narrows his eyes at me and it’s almost authentically stern. I laugh. “No, really, Fuse is a great girl—”

“You’re being serious?” I laugh again, waiting for him to stop and say he’s just joking with me or something. Because that’s another face that Arvid got, the ‘am I going to have to clean up your romantic mess’ face. I always got the go-get-‘em face with the bald implication that I would fail. This is a better new face. “You think I’ve got enough of a chance to be disrespectful?”

“She’s a good kid.” He reiterates.

“I know, chief. I’m not—I’m being respectful. Or whatever.” Or at least most of me is.

I did leave last night. I stopped as soon as it went further than I expected it to. She was the one following me out and talking about stuff and things and making me blush. And putting things in my head that probably should have already been there, but now that they’re new, they’re a lot harder to avoid.

“Glad to hear it.” He nods, still fatherly but a little less annoying than usual. “Also, get dressed, there’s a report of a Thunderdrum attacking some boats up north, we should go before it moves on.”

“Now?” I frown, “I’m not done eating yet.”

“Bring it with you.”

What the chief didn’t tell me at home is that the Thunderdrum was described as covered in flaky, white scales and that it’s nearly half a day’s flight north. The chief and I spend the better part of three days cruising around at low altitude looking for it. I have to physically bite my tongue a few times to keep from telling him we should go East, towards the sick dragon island, but having him on my side won’t help us now anyway so I don’t bother. That and it feels like laying out breadcrumbs for him to come find the plan we’ve managed to keep underground for this long.

“It might be about time to give up,” he shouts over the cold wind on our way back to Berk mid-afternoon on our third full day of searching. “It must have moved on from here, if it attacks any more ships, we’ll hear about it.”

“Thunderdrums don’t attack for no reason, it must have felt threatened.”

“Or it was old and sick,” the chief lets that hang for a minute and I look at him. He’s staring pointedly ahead. “Sea’s looking pretty empty these days.”

“I know that,” I pat Bang’s head urging him faster to keep up with Toothless’s easy gliding, “so are the forests.”

“I wonder if it’s some sort of disease,” the chief slows down and he’s still not looking at me, more thinking out loud and hoping I’d rather have answers than fight with him. Maybe I’d feel different if I didn’t think I already had the answers, but I’d rather get home than fight. “If it is, there has to be a cure.”

“What if they’re just dying?”

“Or going somewhere else,” he looks East like he’s been thinking about it this whole time, “maybe someone needs to bring them back.”

“If they want to leave, I don’t see how bringing them back could help anything.” It’s true but it feels like diversion too, because we’re so close and the problem should solve itself. I’ve got to believe it will, because otherwise, I don’t know what I’m going to do. All I know is that it feels wrong out here without dragons, too quiet, too still. Like I’m existing after the end of something.

“I don’t know,” the chief shakes his head and looks at me, a nostalgic smile pulling at the corner of his mouth and making him look older than he usually does, “maybe it’s because it’s a Thunderdrum. I always kind of look for my dad’s, I guess.”

“Could they really live that long?” I pat Bang’s head again and he warbles like he’s offended at the suggestion.

“I’ve seen them so big that there’s no way they could fly anymore. We know they become mostly aquatic after fifty years or so but…I don’t know. I hope so.” He sighs, “maybe I just like thinking parts of him are still out there.”

I get the feeling he’s talking about me. The comparison gets heavier every time I hear it and I clear my throat.

“How—how did he die?” The question falls out, clumsy, too loud over the dragon-less waves, “I know it was—you know, Toothless, and you told me when, I just—”

“Toothless was under the control of an alpha. My dad jumped between us,” he looks down at his hands, “we glamorize it for the plaque but…it was what it was.”

“He saved you,” I nod, thinking that through. It’s an instinct I understand better after Ingrid. Not that I didn’t understand it before, but there was always an element of heroism to it. I understood being the hero, taking the brunt, but always with something on the other side.

Spitleaf didn’t stay and Ingrid’s forever damaged for it. I would have stepped in front of that axe in an instant, but she wouldn’t have wanted me to.

Maybe sometimes, leading is making the hard choices for everyone else, but most of the time, it’s making the hardest one for yourself.

“He didn’t think twice.” The chief looks at me strangely for another second before clicking at Toothless. “Come on, let’s get home, I’m about numb from being in the saddle two days straight. I’m finally getting old, I guess.”

“I think that started a long time ago,” I joke because I don’t know what else to say and he laughs because I get the feeling he needed a joke.

In a way, the last couple days have been a slice of what was normal for so many months. Sure, I didn’t drop all chiefly duties while helping get Ingrid re-settled, but I can’t say they were an all day, every day activity anymore either. And even though it’s not as much work as when I was doing it alone, I’m itching for a break. Not that I even know what I break is these days. I don’t know what I even used to do when I had all that free time.

The good news is that the blasts of cold, salty air keep me from thinking too hard about Fuse, at least while we’re actively flying. The rest of the time, at home, Aurelia talks my ear off about how Arvid is acting strange and I help her hack through a few of the more difficult treaties she’s working on. It all has the feeling of filling time when I should be doing something else, something important. The next day, I take the first chunk of freedom I can get when the chief asks me to check in on the second round of dam repairs while he has a secret meeting that I largely suspect is with Arvid himself.

The dam looks like it’ll hold this time and it better because the next thing the chief wants to try is bracing it with a metal substructure, and that might lead someone to discover just how low the store of scrap iron is at the moment. Smitelout’s doing a decent job of hiding the lack of pile but if anyone really went looking for it they’d notice. Most of it is finally shaped into shells that Fuse should be filling and…

Fuse. There she is.

Thinking about her makes my hands itch. And my chest feels tight. And I think about her hair and her room and the way she kissed me with so much intent, like she’d been thinking about it even more than I had. How she didn’t get mad at me when she had every right to and how it felt like the edge of something new but in a good way this time. A way that makes all the nervous energy swirling around my head at the thought of her feel more like a promise. Like something resembling intent.

I almost wonder what I could get away with, but it’s different, it’s more wondering what would happen if I didn’t stop her. If she got to kiss me in private all that she wanted to.

Now, I might be a bit dense and damaged in this department, but I also grew up with Arvid as my older brother. And somehow, I can’t stop thinking about the brushed red patch on Fuse’s neck from my stubble and the way she kept running her fingers through my hair and it would almost be easier if she’d been offended. Hel, if she’d been anything but flattered. Because I’m a bit flattered that she let me that close to her. I’d kind of like to flatter her more.

Bang and I get to the edge of the village and I should go back to the chief’s house to hear the news about Arvid and Aurelia and figure out what he wants me to do next. That would be the right thing to do, but it’s hard with all these half thoughts about Fuse in my head, and I think about heading to her house to see if she’s there. Maybe no one else would be.

And like all of the other women in my life, Fuse must read my mind, because as soon as I land she appears out of seemingly nowhere, running up to me and grabbing my arm. She yanks hard enough to pull me off of Bang and I stumble a couple of steps to catch my balance.

“Nice to see you too.”

“I have to talk to you.”

“Yeah?” I can’t stop the dopey grin spreading across my face even though I know it can’t possibly do anything good for me in this situation.

“It’s serious,” she starts dragging me towards her workshop. “Come on.”

“Ok,” I catch up to walk beside her and she drops my arm, chewing on her bottom lip. “What’s wrong? Are you ok?”

“Why wouldn’t I be ok?”

“Because you look upset—”

“Keep your voice down,” she looks around like she’s checking if anyone heard, remaining mostly silent until we get to her workshop. She lights the lone candle on the counter inside and shuts the door behind us, ignoring Bang’s pathetic croon at being out of my sight for even a minute. “I talked to Spitleaf last night—”

“Is she ok? I know Ingrid broke up with her—”

“Why would I talk to her about that?” She shakes her head, “I was asking her about the dragons because she’s been way further out than either of us and apparently there aren’t any left on the mainland. Like, at all. And that’s why she and Ingrid got attacked, dragon leather’s selling for its weight in gold.”

“Dragon leather? That’s barbaric.”

“It’s disgusting,” she shakes her head, “and it’s worse, they flew past the island on the way back and what she described? There must be twice as many dragons there now, and she said she didn’t see any babies but some of them weren’t old.”

“So, it’s spreading.”

“It’s spreading and—and I don’t…” She looks at me, hands limp at her sides and I lean back against the counter. She rarely looks helpless and her eyes feel like a physical weight adding to the looming one on my shoulders.

“And people are going after dragons now. So that means…” I wave my hand at where Bang is surely crouched outside the door, “places with dragons are in danger too. And people with dragons.”

“That’s what it sounds like.”

And I can’t help but think about her encountering people like the ones who hurt Ingrid. I should have protected Ingrid in the first place, that’s what chiefs are supposed to do. I’m not going to let the same thing happen to Fuse just because she’s out on some dangerous adventure I prompted her into. Maybe she doesn’t even need to be there, maybe I can help the dragons and know that she’s safe.

“Is there a way to do this with less people?” I try and wrap my head around the whole of what Fuse just told me, of the fact that even leaving Berk with a dragon right now could be seen as an invitation for trouble. The fact that what happened to Ingrid isn’t an isolated incident and that it could happen again, so easily.

“Like less people in the air? Because I think I need everyone helping me build if it’s—if we need to rush it this much. Because if hunters are hurting the dragons, we have to get them out of there.” She looks at me more rigidly than she has in a while and I realize she’s pushing the timeline herself without asking me. That’s a relief, honestly, because I don’t want to ask for more from her when she’s already doing so much.

“Agreed. But what do you thing? Could we do it with less people flying out there.” I look at her face, slanted with shadows from the flickering candle. It makes her looks softer and that makes me feel more determined. “Like, could it be staged in phases from a single dragon?”

“It’s too heavy for a single dragon, let alone a dragon with two riders.”

“What about a Thunderdrum with one rider?” I regret getting there so quickly as soon as I do, because her brow crumples and her nostrils flare and I don’t think I’ve ever seen that brutally irritated face directed at me. She looks me up and down like she doesn’t quite recognize me and maybe it’s closer to fury than annoyance.

“You can’t do this alone.” It’s an insult, not a plea to come along, and I realize I made a mistake with a significant potential to be fatal to people she doesn’t like as much as me. I inadvertently stepped between her and her bombs. “You don’t know how to prep the charges, you don’t know—”

And if me standing my ground here keeps her safe from some crazy dragon hunting barbarians off island, well, this is my soon to be vaporized rock to die on. Fuse is quite the blast to jump in front of but I’m not letting anyone else get hurt.

“You could teach me. I could learn, it could be fun—”

“No.”

“Fuse—”

“No, I’m going, and if you won’t help, I’ll find someone who will.” She crosses her arms and looks past me, eyes flicking briefly to my face like she’s assessing the impact of her words.

It’s not small. It stings like a burn, a burn I don’t want to ice because I want to use the pain to remember not to touch that again. She’s the one person I’ve managed to keep on or near my side through all of this and to think that I’m messing that up now, so close to the end when everything’s only getting more dangerous and difficult. I bite back a bitter surge of exhaustion and sadness and pride that makes me want to tell her to go ahead and try. But it’s Fuse, and she’d take me at face value, and that means I have to make my face value higher. It has to say what I’ll always want to say and not what I want to say now, when I’m scared of how different it’s going to be out there when we leave.

It might be loud with barbarians instead of quiet without dragons and again, I don’t know how I’m handling all this change.

“You just said it yourself,” I look at my feet, boots muddy from examining the dam and then being dragged to her shed. Maybe I can only have one person with me at a time and now that Arvid’s finding some resolution to his slow swing back to my side, I have to scare Fuse off. “Just having a dragon is looking for trouble—”

“And if it finds us,” she picks up a clay jar from a shelf above her workbench and shakes it at me, not quite threatening but enough to make me worry if she’ll still even like me after all of this.

“What if it’s not enough?”

“I have dozens of those.”

“What if those aren’t enough?” I snap, “we don’t know what we’re going into and I can’t—I can’t stand the thought of something happening to you, alright?” I throw my hands up and sigh, “ever since I thought of it, I can’t stop. Just—me not being able to do anything about it and…”

“You’re trying to protect me?” She cocks her head, hair shining in the sunset light leaking around the door. The candle makes it bright enough not to trip over her but not much more than that and it makes it feel later, like we’re existing in the twilight of this big plan more than we are in today. “I don’t need you to.”

“Neither did Ingrid, until she did. Neither did anyone until…until every decision I made started to impact all of them.”

“You can’t decide anything for me,” she’s quiet like she’s trying to comfort me and I try to feel that. I try to feel the strength that’s always made her someone I could lean on when no one else was standing up straight. She’s the one tree in the forest still standing after a microburst or a timberjack tantrum and I try to let myself believe it.

“I just…I don’t want you to do anything stupid for me that gets you hurt.” I gesture at her, at the way she’s standing, Hel, the way she’s just existing there. Calm and furious and controlled, beautiful and dirt smudged, uneven braids and tangled hair. “I’m not worth that.”

“That’s not your decision to make either.” The corner of her mouth twitches and I want to wipe the smudge of soot off of her chin. I want the dragons to come back, I want none of it to be real and more, I want it not to sit so squarely on me. “Plus, it’s for the dragons. It’s only for you in a secondary way.” That’s almost a joke and I get that she’s trying to cheer me up on my level, even if it’s hard for her. I almost ask to go blow something up but she continues. “Who protects you? If you’re so cut up protecting everyone else, who’s protecting you?”

I shrug, “I don’t know, some chiefly aura that’s kept the chief alive all these years?”

“He’s missing his leg.”

“Yeah, but he survived.” I sigh, “and given he’s still alive even with all this messing with my family of all people, I’m just hoping it’s strong enough to be genetic.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Yeah, but it’s what I’ve got.” Part of me wants to ask her to protect me, but she’s right, I can’t decide anything for her. She can’t decide anything for me either though and that means she can’t stop me from doing everything in my power to keep her as safe as possible. To keep everyone as safe as possible.

“You still think it’s right for the dragons, right?”

“I think if it’s not, it won’t matter. I think they’re going there to die and whether they want to do it under or on the island, it’s happening.”

“And if doing this could make it better for them—”

“We do it. Obviously.” I look at my feet, “I think it’s time to tell the chief though. Not about the dragons or any of this,” I gesture around her workshop, “but…but if people are hunting dragons and they’re the people that hurt Ingrid…”

“We need to be ready for that too.” She nods, “especially because we have an alpha here, dragons should stick around longer than anywhere else.”

“Huh,” I nod, “I always forget about that.” I look back up at her and sigh, “start working on how to do this with three. Arvid might want to stay back if it’s this dangerous, or Aurelia might want him to. I don’t necessarily hate the idea of that anyway.”

“You, me, and Smitelout?” She doesn’t put any special emphasis on herself and she’s almost daring me to bring it up again.

“Yeah, and…and I should set up the interior charge, the one in the volcano on that lip?” I ask to make sure she understands and she looks like she’s going to fight for a second but seems to abandon that idea. She sighs and almost cautiously rests her hand on my cheek, like I’m the thing in this shed most likely to blow up if handled improperly.

“Ok, I’m not sure there’s room for two of us down there anyway and I can’t lift the baffle as well by myself.”

“You stay in the air, over the water, and hit the lava flows.”

“I don’t need you to protect me,” she says again, gentler this time, “you don’t have to.”

“Maybe that’s why I want to,” I lean my face against her hand, trying to find the right words, “because…because it feels like the only thing I can’t mess up.”

“There’s a lot you can’t mess up,” she leans onto tip toes and kisses me on the other cheek, “not that you haven’t tried.” She doesn’t object when I wrap my arms around her waist and pull her in to a hug, my chin fitting almost too neatly over her shoulder.

“I’ve got to go talk to the chief, don’t I?”

“Yeah,” her breath is warm even through the shoulder of my shirt and I must smell like salt and murky dam water but she doesn’t seem to care. I squeeze tighter before I have to let go and feel her heartbeat against my chest. “And I’ve got to start packing up everything.” She sighs and pulls out of the hug, slowly, like she doesn’t really want to. “That’s my least favorite part. I build all these bombs and it looks like so many until they fit into a few saddle bags.” She taps my chest with the back of her hand and takes a step back, “three people, right?”

“Three people.” I’m suddenly tired, just thinking about what I’m about to have to do, and I push away from the counter, finding a tired smile for her. “Next time when you come find me, it should be good news, ok? You’ve got to at least alternate or it really starts to wear a guy down.”

“Good news,” she nods, “I’ll try and remember that.”

“Ok, I’ll let you know how it goes.” I kiss her on the forehead again and it almost feels like habit, like the good kind of habit that I want to keep. “I’d say wish me luck but—”

“You don’t need it.” She nods at me and I get the impression that’s a nicer version of her saying I don’t have it but well, that’s the last thing I need to remember right now.

#eret iii #festerverse #ingrid hofferson #aurelia haddock #stoick ii #fuse thorston #feret #they are cute even if it's not like blaah #hiccstrid #because it does occur #they do act kind of couply

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tysonrunningfox · 6 years

Text

Chiefly Acting

This is a long chapter but I don’t care because I’ve been waiting and I needed feret, I’m sorry, so here is a very big chapter. I know not as many people got as caught up as I was hoping, but @goonlalagoon and @riverrockets (who drew FUSE AND NOW SHE IS MY PHONE BACKGROUND AND I LOVE HER SO MUCH) inspired me today and now I gotta throw this on you. Sorry not sorry.

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Mom makes breakfast. Aurelia reads, that odd accent becoming smoother and smoother as she mumbles things to herself under her breath and making notes on a scrap of parchment. The chief sits at the table, skinny and old without his leather armor and nibbling at breakfast like he can’t let himself starve and leave us without such a constant reminder that yesterday happened. That things were different then. That they’re always going to be different now, at some level.

Stoick is unusually quiet, playing on the floor with an old carved dragon, taping it on the hearth and whispering to Bang.

“Here, there’s more,” Mom refills my plate as soon as I clean it and I fail at holding back my desperation for her not to.

“No, I’m full—”

“You’re growing,” she gives me another scoop for good measure, “that shirt’s too small. I’ll make you some new ones.” She tugs at the seam on my shoulder and her hand is both clinical and affectionate and I get a flash of an impression that she’s wondering if what she lost would have looked enough like me for her to imagine. “Maybe I should have kept Arvid’s old clothes, I think you’re finally catching up.”

“Do you have to mock me?” I expect Aurelia to look up at a mention of Arvid, but she doesn’t. If anything she leans closer to the page and I wonder if she wasn’t just around more because Mom needed her. Or the chief needed Mom to need her. Right now it seems like everyone needs Mom more than she needs them and I don’t want to be on that list. I want to actually help, I want to make it worth it that I’m the one here, like somehow that’ll make it less sad.

Like if I turn it around I can be half a success.

“No, I’m serious,” she yanks at my sleeve and it doesn’t stretch all the way to my wrist. “I wish I had the pattern I used last winter.”

“We can buy clothes,” Aurelia glances at me, sullen and oddly committed as she shuts the book and sits up straight, “you can relax, you know.”

“Like rest will help anything now,” the chief drops the crust of the bread he’s been nibbling on and it’s so tense and pained when his face half crumples that Toothless doesn’t lick up the treat even though it’s practically on his foot. He’s curled around the chief’s chair and somehow I doubt anyone Toothless doesn’t approve of could get close to him.

“Hiccup,” Mom chastises, expression hard even though her voice is gentle, like she’s scared of breaking him. I think it might be too late for that, honestly, and another pang in my stomach signals the nonsensical cosmic connection between his pain and the part of me that’s him.

“My shirt’s fine,” I cough, pushing my still full plate away. My sleeves feel too short now that Mom pointed it out and I push them up to my elbows, looking pointedly at the list in front of the empty seat at the table. It’s the chief’s list, the master list, the one that he points at whenever he’s trying to get me to do something particularly gross or annoying, like I’ll believe it’s the list making me do it and not him.

I know that’s just Stoick’s seat, but it feels different, it feels like someone more worthy of that list is supposed to be there. A real heir, the one they wanted.

“Can we stop talking about Eret’s stupid shirt?” Aurelia snaps at me, like this is all my fault, and I almost reflexively apologize. But something tells me it won’t do anything and the part of me that would like to predict the next hit before it lands imagines forever in this house with her mad at me.

“Not the name I would have picked…” The chief mumbles, staring at me like I’m inanimate or he’s not quite sure I’m real and it makes me feel like I shouldn’t be.

“Hiccup,” Mom chides him a little more sternly, setting her hand on his and squeezing. She’s as pale as I’ve ever seen her and I look at the list again.

“Who’s going to do that?”

“What?” Mom looks at the empty chair too and I wonder if she sees it the way I am, as a place someone else is supposed to be.

“The list,” I almost reach for it but that feels like a decision I don’t know if I get to make. “Everything that’s supposed to happen today. Who’s going to do it?”

“That’s what you’re worried about? Some list?” Aurelia scoffs, “you’re just trying to ignore the problem—”

“No, I’m…” I fumble for the words, not because she’s wrong but because she’s right. I do want to ignore this. I do want to forget about it as long as possible and hope that a magic solution to the way I feel finds its way out of my subconscious at some point. But it’s more than that, I realize, it’s…I don’t know what to do about this. About the fog in this room, about Mom’s expression or the chief’s lack of one. Aurelia’s anger at me for some reason I don’t understand.

But that list? I might be able to do some of those things.

“Typical,” she scoffs, “this isn’t something you can plan away—”

“I’m not ignoring anything,” I stand up, my chair squeaking across the floor as I grab the list and roll it in my hand, “I’m just noting that other people’s problems still exist—”

“Because they’re easier.”

“Aurelia,” Mom’s voice cracks, almost angry in a tired, hollow way.

“Chief?” I ask, holding the roll out when he looks at me, taking a long second to recognize me. That must have been how I looked at him before I put it together, that sense of familiarity. I wonder if he’s going to see the ghost of someone he never knew every time he looks at me now. “Are you going to come help me with this or—”

“Oh, I don’t care about that,” he looks at the list, “it doesn’t matter like I thought it did.”

“Ok…” I look at Mom but her face is unreadable. She nods at me, almost imperceptible. “Well…I think it’ll matter if….” I look at the list and pick out a random line, “the barley field keeps flooding. So I’m going to go…fix that. Somehow. I have no idea how but—”

“Go.” Mom looks at Stoick, “can you get your shoes on? Eret will take you to dragon training.”

“Do I have to go?” Stoick shuffles his feet and stomps half a stomp. “I’m doing something important.”

“Shoes. Now.” Mom lets go of the chief’s hand, “any color preference on the shirts?”

“I don’t need shirts.” I grab Stoick’s hand and call Bang, holding the door for both of them and stepping outside feeling both lighter and more exhausted. I feel bad leaving Mom with all of that but I don’t know what else to do, I don’t know what else would matter.

Like yeah, I could stay and argue with Aurelia and snark back at the chief like it makes his blank eyes not matter, but that wouldn’t help anything. I can’t even guarantee that it wouldn’t make anything worse.

“What’s going on?” Stoick asks, yanking his hand from mine and scrambling onto Bang’s back. Bang doesn’t even pause anymore, just hunches his back slightly for Stoick to find the toe hold on his elbow, and there’s just another way I’ve been replaced. I never thought Bang would ditch me if I finally got a fraction of some supposed growth spurt.

Catching up with Arvid, my ass.

“What do you mean, bud?”

I’m glad Mom didn’t tell him. I don’t know why she made that choice, but it was right, even if it’s hard now to look at him being the same age I was when I was accidentally burning down forges and everyone noticed what I was and what I clearly wasn’t. He’s too smart to be lied to but so was I and it’s the passing of a perverse torch for me to do it now.

“Everyone is sad.” He lays down on Bang’s head, cheek smushed against Bang’s face. “Why is everyone sad?”

“Aurelia is more mad at me than sad,” I try and divert, “and frankly, I’d love your insight on that because I have no idea what her problem has been lately.”

“I think it’s something about a boy,” he wrinkles his nose, “but that’s not why Dad’s sad.”

“I think he’s sad because of a boy too,” I sigh, “not like that, but…well, you don’t need to worry about it.”

“I’m already worried about it.” He leans up on his elbows, head on his hands, comfortable like only a kid on a well trained dragon can be. Probably more even, given that he grew up with Toothless and the lack of fear that comes with that.

“Well, you shouldn’t.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m worried about it already,” I nod like I know what I’m talking about, “ok? I’ve got the worrying covered and plus, you’ve got more important sh—stuff! I mean stuff to worry about. Don’t you start Terror tracking soon? That was hard for even me.”

“It’s gonna be easy,” he shakes his head, “I track with Toothless all the time. He can find all my lost toys.”

“That’s because he already knows how to do it.” I scratch under Bang’s chin for a second before almost tentatively ruffling his hair. He doesn’t shove me off and I hate how I feel right for lying to him, even if I didn’t really lie. I just told him the part of the truth that he should know.

That’s worse, isn’t it.

“It’s gonna be easy.”

“You say that,” I push up my sleeve and show him a vaguely curved burn scar on my forearm. “Until you’re trying to train a dragon to find your clothes and they find you instead.”

His eyes widen, “really?”

“No, not really,” I laugh, “that’s a burn, but Arv—my older—a guy in my training class got bit in the ankle. It’s not easy to train a dragon to do the right thing even when you aren’t watching them.”

“It’s gonna be easy.” He crosses his arms, looking so much like Aurelia that I don’t quite know what to do with it, because I can’t remember where I exist in it anymore.

“I hope it is, bud.”

00000

Everything else, all of the rest of these changes happened overnight. I blinked and everything was different. But this takes time, apparently. This takes days. Days of the chief staring blankly at the wall in an empty house while I’m talking to someone, lips pinched into a tight white line when I stop in to ask him something. It’s days of picking through pathetically few items on that list, even as it gets longer and longer. It’s days of noticing that the chief’s handwriting looks just like mine except smeared, because he writes with his left and drags his hand across the runes. Once the whole list smears in my pocket or hand, I can’t tell the last thing he put on it from the first thing I did.

It’s the first time chiefing feels hard, unnatural, lonely. People look at me like they know something is wrong and like they assume I don’t and it’s like the first sixteen years of my life and something entirely different all at once.

It’s worse.

Because I’m alone and Aurelia is with Mom, probably prying, and winter’s creeping away just enough for people to come outside and look to someone for direction and I’m the only one moving.

“But Eret,” Gunnar Ericson explains with a calm sort of patience, like he’s not sure I can handle the conversation, “the west field flooded in the melt and I can’t get anything to grow anywhere else until summer.”

I know absolutely nothing about farming. Even fishing, I only understand at a magical, surface level where a net is put in the sea and somehow fish know to swim into it. But farming? Seeds grow things. That’s about the extent of my knowledge. And I know that there was something weird in the creek flooding everything and I know that Aurelia talked to Fuse about it and I don’t know what happened and the field might be poisoned or something, but maybe plants like flammable soil or maybe the soil isn’t flammable anymore.

Is it normal for the chief to answer questions with a question? I think I’ve heard him do it before but I think he always meant it, like he was looking for a particular answer. I don’t know what I’m looking for.

“Umm…Try?” I wince as it comes out and Gunnar glances in the direction of the chief’s house, closing his eyes and nodding sympathetically at me.

“Sound counsel, acting chief.”

“I’m not acting chief,” I shake my head, because that sounds official and I don’t know if anything I’ve ever done has ever been official. I wasn’t even born official. I’ve spent days pretending and it was exhausting without a title. “So I mean, if trying is going to kill your entire crop and starve the entire island,” I swallow and shrug one shoulder, “don’t?”

“More good advice.” He nods, “it’s ok to tell me to come back later, chief.” He smiles, his upper lip disappearing beneath his thick brown moustache and I remember the time Arvid and I stole an apple from his stand and feel endlessly guilty all over again about it.

“Yeah, that’d be good.” I realize need to talk to the actual chief and frown, “I don’t know exactly when. Probably not later today. Or tomorrow.” Or before everything falls apart in my uncapable hands.

“Maybe things will have dried out by then,” he nods before walking away.

I need to talk to the chief about this one. At this point, the questions I need to talk to the chief about is longer than the list of items I’ve managed to cross off of the masterlist on my own and I realize that means it’s probably time to go talk to him. I’m not afraid to admit to myself that I’ve been avoiding it, but I also can’t find it in me to beat myself up about it because as soon as I step into the house my stomach drops.

The chief is sitting at the table, exactly where he was when I left. He looks up and stares silently at me for a second before looking back at a document that he can’t possibly be reading because it’s the same thing he was pretending to read yesterday and the day before that. It’s like he barely exists, everything annoying but alive about him dead except for where it’s stuck to me like a stain I can’t get off and don’t think I want to anymore. Because it should exist in someone else too, it feels like a doubly applied weight on my shoulders.

“Hey chief.”

“Hey Eret.” His tone shifts across my name and I almost blurt out that I’d change it to Hiccup IV if he stopped making Mom take care of him.

I wouldn’t, I don’t think. That’d be shedding responsibility too and sometimes I think the narrow channel I exist in between all those responsibilities I can’t avoid is the only thing keeping me moving forward. Freedom feels dangerous, I don’t know what I’d do and I fear it wouldn’t be here and Berk would be different and worse when I got back. And more than sitting here, it would be because of my decision.

“I have a few questions about stuff.” I set the list down on the table, my hand thumping a little too loud against the wood like the sound will snap him out of it. It does, for a second, and he frowns at me like he forgot what I just said. “Around the village. People asked me a bunch of things I don’t know the answer to.”

“I’m sure the village is fine,” he shrugs, looking back at the top of the document like he hasn’t gotten any further than that. Or, more likely, like he’s rereading the first sentence again and again and absorbing nothing. “I’ll get to it.”

“Some of this is a little more urgent than—”

“I’m sure nothing is that urgent—”

“There’s flooding in the West firld that’s preventing planting and a delay in building that new dock because of a low wood pile and the dragon hanger isn’t warming up enough—”

“You don’t need to worry about any of those things right now.”

“Well…” I set my jaw, leaning further into the decision I already made once, “I’m worrying about them.”

“Nothing’s going to blow up in the next few days,” he says it like he’s mostly trying to convince himself and like he doesn’t realize that it’s already been a few days.

“That’s another thing, isn’t Fuse supposed to be working on that woodbin wall? Because that’s why I can’t get the wood for the dock—”

“I can’t do this right now.” He snaps and for a second and I think he’s going to cry. He stares at me for a moment, face blank like he knows I’m supposed to be responding and he’s hearing it even though I’m not saying anything.

“I think…I think it needs to get done.” I sigh and push a loose piece of hair behind my ear, “and people are starting to call me chief and acting chief like that’s a title—”

“Acting chief?” He perks up slightly, looking at a spot above my head like I won’t notice it’s not my eyes.

“Yeah, I didn’t tell them to call me that or anything—”

“It’s a great idea,” the chief makes a note on a blank page in his notebook and it trails off after the first few runes. They smear but otherwise they look like mine. “The village needs a chief and you’re acting like it. I’ll write up a notice—”

“Wait, no. I don’t know what I’m doing,” I shake my head, the urge to yawn and scream and stab him and stab something else all mounting at the same time, “I got asked about farming today. I don’t know anything about farming, I can’t…I don’t…” I shrug, throwing my arms in the air and he flinches when they smack back down against my sides. “Help me out here, maybe?”

It’s the thing I never said that he’s always wanted to hear. I expect it to work, I expect some magical realization that I’m his son too, that I’m a kid who needs him as much as that kid that never finished happening was. Or is. That I’m here in the present even though no one seems to notice.

That I’ve never realized how much I needed him until now. Not in the way he wants me to, of course, but it’s something and I need him and no one else can help me. I learned how to manage being dorky and small and awkward without him, but chief? I can’t delve deep enough into my well of vague but persistent self-loathing to figure that out. I need him to tell me. I need someone to tell me and he’s the only one who can and I’m asking.

It feels like begging and I hate that, I hate that I’ve ended up just as weak in front of him as I always told myself I’d never be.

“You’re ready.”

“Ok, but that’s not what I’m asking.”

“You’re ready, you’ve been ready. You’ve been helping me for months now, you haven’t made any big mistakes—”

“What are you saying?”

“I’ll write up a notice and put it—and you can put it at the great hall. Nothing’s going to blow up in the next couple of days—”

“If you’re titling me Acting Chief, something makes me think this is more than for a couple of days.” I flail and I feel more like him than ever, more animated and desperate and willing in a way that’s always been irritating. “I don’t know how to do this, I don’t know how to tell people what to do and have them do it and if it goes wrong, it’s all on me—”

“Just do what I would do.”

“That’s the whole point of me talking to you, I don’t know what you’d do.” Because I’m not as much of him as I should be. As I need to be. As the village needs me to be.

“Nothing can go wrong in just a few days,” he looks back at his notebook, “things don’t change overnight. They just don’t.”

“What do I do about the farming? And the woodpile—”

“I’m trusting your judgement.” He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t bore an invisible ‘don’t fuck it up’ into my forehead like Mom always does. He sits there like someone who needs to be protected, like one of those who will be affected by whatever wrong thing I inevitably do.

“Well…” I deflate, shaking my head and looking at the door, because the village is going to feel so different when I go back out there. When. Not if. I decided and this drags me further into it, not backwards like I wish.

I could leave. But what would I be leaving? What would it be when I come back?

It feels like everything changes because of me, what would change because of lack of me? I’m already seeing it, in a way, what changes when some version of me disappears. I can’t do that to everyone again.

“It’ll be great.” He shrugs, “you’ll see. I’m trusting you.”

“That…that makes one of us.” I huff, snatching the list—my acting list off of the table and stomping back outside.

00000

Fuse is at the woodpile. I see her first because she’s the only thing standing still, her hair glinting as she cocks her head at the side wall. I should go talk to someone about the stack, first, but I don’t, and I don’t know if it’s what the chief would do and that makes my hands shake.

“Hey Fuse, what’s up?” I walk up to stand next to her, “how’s it going with you?”

“I think it’s going to cave if I take from the front. I think I’ve got to take from the middle and work back but pillar this front corner. I think there’s a crack coming down from the point. See?” She points up and a little to the right at a bit of ceiling that looks exactly like the rest of the ceiling, “It’ll crumble if I don’t column the corner.”

“Then column the corner.” I shrug, “it’s about access from the new dock, right? It should be fine if the corner is a column.”

“Do you know where the chief is? He’s the one asking me to do this.”

“I do,” I sigh, “and he’s not going to tell you, so…so I’m just going to decree, or whatever, that as my first decision as Acting Chief, whatever that means, it’s fine if you column the corner. Because you think it’s the way it’ll work and I trust you.”

“Acting Chief?” She frowns, fully looking at me for the first time since I’ve walked over, “what are you talking about?”

“The chief is writing up a notice to make me official Acting Chief,” I laugh, feeling limp and tired and like I don’t have a chance to do anything but fail, “an ambiguous but surface level powerful title that means nothing but also everything.”

“Wait, I’m missing something, why would he—”

“You know how my Mom was pregnant?” I exhale through my nose, shaking my head slowly and wondering again why she’s not the one falling apart. How she’s not the one staring at a corner. How Aurelia and the chief are on some wavelength that I’m not for the first time since I’ve started looking for similarities. “She’s not anymore. The chief’s…I don’t know, staring at a wall and not deciding anything. My Mom’s…Aurelia…” I chew on the inside of my lip, reminding myself why being here matters more when it feels like everything would be calmer and better and newer everything else. Because this ominous grief-adjacent feeling is too familiar to be healthy. “It’s not the best.”

“My gods, I’m so sorry,” she sounds more typical than Fuse ever does, more broken record polite, and I hate it. I hate how her voice breaks and I wish she were still thinking about explosives. I wish things were going to blow up in the next few days and I didn’t have some undefined period of thinking about what the chief would do in front of me. “Is there—do you need a hug?”

I laugh. It comes out too loud and too painful, like my throat has forgotten how in the past couple of days and it has to half shred to remember.

“No one has asked me that.”

She hugs me, arms pinning my arms to my side, chin pointy and painful into my shoulder. Warm and smelling like black powder and squeezing tighter than she needs to. It’s good anyway, bracing, like she trust me being tough at some level other than just talking about it. She steps back, a little stiff and I wish she wouldn’t be, I wish she’d go back to talking about cracking rocks.

“So Acting Chief, huh?” She nods slowly, “I can column the corner, but that means nothing is stopping reloading the bin from the other side.”

“So I can get the bin catalog updated?” I throw my head back, “oh my gods, that’s the best. I can’t get going with building the dock until Sneezlet Hoarkson lets me take the wood and she’s not doing that until the roster is updated.”

“You sound busy.”

“The busiest.” I sigh, “now I’ve got to get the bin filling and then I can go tell the builders down at the docks—”

“I can do that,” she offers, “I need to get some stuff to start measuring to prep the wall, anyway, it’s practically on my way—”

“You’d do that?” I feel struck by it somehow, maybe it’s that I was just asking for help and didn’t get it and now it’s offered and it’s Fuse, so it feels easy. It’s genuine because she’s never anything else and I don’t know how to apologize for being so thordamned needy. “I might need another hug, that’s the best news I’ve heard all day.”

She sputters, like she never does, started like I’ve never seen her, “I figured you’d had a rough day.”

“That’s an understatement.”

“I’ll go talk to the people prepping the dock,” she nods, cheeks patchy like the enormity of my being Acting Chief just hit her. Like she just realized what she offered but she’s not backing down.

“Thank you.” I sigh, “now I get to tell Sneezlet how to load this up, but well, having that only be half the job is such a huge thing. Thank you.”

“I got it.” She turns abruptly and walks off and that makes me laugh even though I don’t know how anything could be funny right now.

Sneezelet fights the idea of my authority until I tell her to check the notice on the front of the great hall, the notice I haven’t seen or put up yet, but that’s enough to get her ordering people to load their dragons and get all that half green wood stacking into the half of the shelter that Fuse says won’t be affected by her blasts. It feels official, far quicker than I would have thought it could but just as heavy as I’d feared. If this messes up, it’s my fault.

If it messes up, I have to clean it up and that’s all on me, because I don’t think that the chief is going to be ready like he seems to think he is.

Honestly, I don’t know how the chief ever had time to annoy me so much. I’ve only been doing this for a few days on my own and an hour officially and I can’t remember the last time I was home before dinner or got more than half a nights’ sleep. I don’t mind the first part of that, really, because home isn’t my favorite place right now, between the chief staring off into space and Mom being almost frantically fake happy all the time.

And there’s the fact that Aurelia still won’t talk to me, or she’ll talk but it’s not like we used to, it’s not nice or comfortable. It’s like she wants me to be wrong because she’d get something out of it. It’s like every word out of Norse that she remembers, she gets further away.

So I’m happy to be out of the house, but when what feels like the seventh frantic worried face of the day approaches me as I’m trying to get across town to check on Fuse and the progress on the new dock, I may or may not hit today’s emotionally full point and snap at them.

“What? What do you want?”

“Sorry,” Mrs. Ericson takes a step back with wide eyes and her hands held up. I must have sounded fiercer than I thought. “Er, Chief?”

“I’m not the chief.” I blurt out automatically and shake my head, “but right, I’m Acting Chief, that’s why I’m so tired. Acting Chief is fine. What can I do for you?”

“My Winky chewed through their girth last night, the boy forgot to take the saddle off when he got home, and I was just wondering when I could drop it by the forge for you to fix.”

“I’m not actually putting in much forge time these days,” I sigh, “Smitelout Jorgenson is over there though and don’t tell her I said this, but she’s actually doing a pretty good job picking up the slack.”

“Oh, I know she’s been working with Gobber,” Mrs. Ericson hems and haws the way that Vikings don’t unless they’re talking to the chief, which is somehow me, as weird and uncomfortable as that still feels, “she fixed my dagger up last week, actually, and it’s fine, I just…well, I prefer your individual touch on the leather.”

“That’s…flattering, Mrs. Ericson, but I really don’t have time right now.” I try to feel like I’m not being crushed under the weight of her understanding disappointment. “I…ok, bring it by the forge and leave it with Gobber, I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you!”

“It’s fine,” I lie, because it’s a pain in the ass and I don’t have time and that’s what the chief would have said but he has me to cover for him and I don’t. “If I can’t get to it—”

“You’re trying, lad, that’s all we ask!”

“Right.” I wave at her and keep walking, looking down at my feet like it’ll make me less noticeable.

I remember when I used to want to be noticed, when it used to feel like something would change if someone just saw me. When I thought my ideas would matter and that somehow, that wouldn’t feel like a crushing weight plopped onto my chest.

I miraculously make it down to the dock without anyone seeing me, because checking in with what Fuse offered to do seems like the biggest guarantee for some level of comparative success in this overwhelming day, but of course, everyone is yelling.

“Fall?” Someone is yelling at Fuse, which makes me furious in a way I can’t quite comprehend right away, because I put here there, I told her I’d cover her, “we’re supposed to wait to do this with fall wood? That doesn’t submerge right—”

“I’m just telling you what I—”

“Well, tell whoever told you that they’re a thick-skulled moron—”

“You seem perfectly capable of delivering your own insults.” Fuse deadpans, completely unflappable as they move closer to her, shorter and angrier than she is and l move to step between them.

He pokes her in the shoulder. She blanches, suddenly alarmed.

“Do you want to blow us both up?”

“Is that a threat?”

“Whoa there,” I step between them, facing the guy who’s causing Fuse problems. He’s younger, but not young enough that I know him. Small enough that the weight of the axe against my lower back makes me feel like I know the only ways this could go. “What’s the problem?”

“She said—” He tries to point around me at Fuse and I check his forearm with my wrist, just enough of a hit to tell him I know where my axe is and could get it just as fast.

“I don’t care what she said.” I step towards him, “tell your boss that you can start building as soon as Sneezlet lets you have the wood. And don’t start fights you can’t finish.” I look at Fuse over my shoulder and she’s red and irked in a way she rarely gets without Arvid’s purposeful prodding. “That would have gone bad for everyone.”

“Says who?” He tries, but he’s faltering, and the combination of me and Fuse must mean something that I never used to because he doesn’t move towards me.

“Says the guy who’s got Acting Chief status according to the notice on the front of the great hall. Go check. I don’t care.” I make a mental note to put up that notice next, before I find a place to sit down.

“How soon are we going to get the wood?” He asks, narrowing his eyes at me, and I think I recognize him from Rolf’s dragon training graduation. Maybe there was something in the water that whole year.

“Soon, we’re moving into half the pile and can get it counted.” I take a step towards him and he backs off two, “go tell your boss. Seriously.” I hate how I sound like the chief when I aim for authoritative and I clear my throat, “and come to me next time you don’t like an order.” I try and shrug how Ingrid does, that little shrug that makes my axe handle stick out. “Preferably before you form that wrong opinion.”

“Alright,” he falters, looking at Fuse one more time like he wants to say something and stopping himself, “Acting Chief.”

“Good,” I turn away before he can pull me into more of this delightful conversation, hands sweating enough that I wipe them on my pants. Fuse is staring at me like she’s not sure if she needs to say anything and I look at the fullest pocket of her vest, “maybe next time leave the explosions at home when I send you on such a confrontational errand.”

“It wasn’t a confrontational errand.”

“I didn’t think so,” I laugh, gesturing back up the path from the dock, “but maybe I should get you out of here before that changes. What happened?”

“I just relayed the message.” She looks as embarrassed as she is distracted. “He just started telling me to insult people—”

“Ok,” I stop, reaching for her elbow and pausing before I end up in the same situation, my arms falling back slack as I step off of the trail and wave her to follow me. “Things like that don’t just happen. I’ve made enough happen on purpose to know that it’s not necessarily easy.”

“I didn’t do anything.” She stands in front of me, a little bored but not willing to ignore me and I hope it’s not just my almost title. Somehow, with her, I know it’s separate.

“You know, you’re one of the only people that I actually trust around here,” it comes out fast and honest and funny in a way nothing has really been lately, “but if I’m going to be Acting Chief, I’m going to need a bit of diplomacy.”

“It’s not my fault if everyone else is so sensitive.” She looks confused and angry about it and I sigh.

“Everyone isn’t sensitive, we’re Vikings. You’re just…shockingly direct and astute enough that your first hit usually gets the vulnerable place.”

“I didn’t hit anyone.” She crosses her arms, looking bored and red and out of her element the same way she makes me feel. “He just acted like it.”

“Oh come on, you honestly don’t know you can be…harsh?” I want to reach for her arm again, to tap her on the shoulder. It feels like no one else should hear what we’re saying, it feels like I want it to be a secret.

“You don’t seem to think so.”

I laugh at that, “that’s because I’ve already said all the meanest things to myself and you’re logical in comparison.”

“I’m not mean to you.”

“You’re frank.” I want to shake her even though it’s dangerous, even though it could evaporate us both and leave a crater. I realize I might know something she doesn’t, even if it’s still new to me, even if it’s still strange. Maybe I’ll understand it better if I say it out loud and I try to curb the urge to whisper it because that’d make it sound less sure. “You know, sometimes, when chiefly authority is involved, you have to say things so that people will like the idea of listening to you.”

“Why do I care if they like it?” She hesitates though, cocking her hip slightly, arms crossed but slack like she’s thinking about leaving but isn’t quite sure yet.

“Because someone just tried to fight you.”

“I don’t care if people want to fight me,” she scoffs, “it’s stupid.”

“Ok, how about I care?” I step closer, “because I like trusting you when to know when to blow things up and if people are trying to fight you, that decision is out of your hands.”

“I can’t control what people do.” She falters slightly, her frown cracking around the edges like she’s just realizing what just spun out of control. “People don’t react like bombs, they don’t make sense. I don’t know how I’m supposed to predict how people will react to things.”

“You’re pretty good at predicting me.”

She cocks her other hip and averts her eyes, cheeks red like she’s not used to me catching her by surprise.

“That’s because your face is obvious.” She shrugs and almost looks defiant, almost embarrassed. I want to fix this more than I want to check off anything.

“Yeah, maybe, I never said I was subtle.” I step closer, trying to frame what I’m about to say in a way that I won’t have to explain more than once. This all feels subtle. Important. And that notice still isn’t up anywhere. “Sometimes, you have to say it so that people will like you.”

“I just told him what you said.”

“Ok, I get that but…ok, ok, let’s practice.” I grab her elbows and turn us around so that she’s still facing me but my back is to the road. I don’t realize what I’ve done until I drop her and step back, waiting for that face that means she’s scared of an unpredictable ticking. It doesn’t happen. She just reddens slightly, arms slack at her sides. “Ok…pretend you have to tell me that I…hmm, that you can’t blow out a wall I need you to or like…a bunch of fish is going to spoil. Or something.”

“Why can’t I do it?”

“I don’t know, make something up,” I laugh, “something is cracked or something.”

“I’m not good at making things up.” She looks like she just admitted some secret more horrible than any I’ve heard already, which is simultaneously hilarious and impossible.

“It’s just me, it doesn’t have to be good.”

“Ok.” She shrugs and thinks for a second, two thirds of an eyebrow lowered over her right eye. “I can’t blow up the imaginary wall because it’ll take down the imaginary hill too.” She’s completely flat, awkward in a way that’s never been so palpable, small under all those packed tight vest pockets.

“Ok, now say it like you want me to like you.”

She sputters again, cheeks patchy, fingertips digging into her arms. I laugh and it’s more uncomfortable than genuine.

“Apparently a thought a little too far from reality,” I try and shrug it off but suddenly this feels weird. Ominous. Like I’m missing something obvious and it’s circling. “What did you actually say?”

“What Aurelia told me to.” She sighs, “she caught me halfway over and said you’d told her that you’d miscalculated and there wouldn’t be enough wood until the whole bin was full.”

There it is.

“She did what?”

“She told me that—”

“Yeah, I heard you.” I pat her almost reflexively on the shoulder and she doesn’t flinch, “I didn’t tell her to do that. I’m going to go…I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing.” It feels like less of a confession than it does something shameful I shouldn’t saddle her with. “I’ll…see you. I guess.”

“Yeah.” She pauses, mouth half open, “I…yeah. I’ll let you know if I need anything to column that wall. Acting Chief.” She uses the title like it means something and I hate that it does. I don’t want to leave but I have to, because I promised I’d keep things together and even though that was only to me and the half the chief still talking, it still matters. It still has to matter.

#eret iii #festerverse #fuse thorston #hiccstrid #aurelia haddock #dun dun dun #ok but I'm too stoked #I can't not rush #I'm sorry

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