Melime

For seasons_of_fandom's round 1, challenge #24: triptychs.

Title: 1. Blight; 2. Calling; 3. Peace
Fandom: Dragon Age: Origins
Relationship: Female Warden
Rating: M/Gen
Word count: 100 x 3
Tags: Major Character Death, Angst, Past Tense, Present Tense, Future Tense
Summary:
1. The Warden had to believe there was a reason for this.
2. The Warden fights her Calling, and searches for answers.
3. The Warden will never know the origin of the Blight

1. Blight

There had to be a reason for this, some explanation lost to time. The Grey Wardens were an order of secrets, and the frequent violent deaths might keep them from passing those on to another generation. She nearly went to face an archdemon without knowing what that would cost, so she had to believe that there were other things that she didn’t know, that even veteran Wardens didn’t know. She wouldn’t just wait for her Calling, accepting it and future Blights as inevitable. There had to be a better way, and she wasn’t going to stop until she found it.

2. Calling

When she hears the Calling, she’s determined to fight it. She knows all horror stories of what happens when a Warden ignores their Calling, but she’s not ready to give up. It’s too early, it’s not even fifteen years yet, there has to be more time. She doesn’t follow the Calling, and one day it stops, just as suddenly as it started. It’s another mystery that leaves her with more questions than answers, but that’s a good thing. As long as she has questions, she still has something to chase in this hopeless hunt for a cure for all Wardens.

3. Peace

When the true horrors of the Blight are finally revealed, it won’t be to her. Her rotting body won’t stand more than short trips anymore, and she’ll have long since abandoned daylight, so she won’t be the one fighting when Weisshaupt falls, she won’t meet the creators of the Blight or learn how it came to be. But she will know, without being told, that the worst is over. The taint will still be in her blood when her eyes close for what will be the final time, but the Blight will be calmer, and she will be at peace.

Title: 1. Jamie; 2. Zoe; 3. Doctor
Fandom: Doctor Who (1963)
Relationship: Second Doctor & Zoe Heriot & Jamie McCrimmon
Rating: T/Gen
Word count: 100 x 3
Tags: Episode: War Games, Amnesia, Angst
Summary:
1. Jamie fights the Redcoats, he never gives up on a fight.
2. Zoe has too much on her mind after the attack to remember what she was thinking of doing.
3. The Doctor knew their memories would be taken, but he needed them to accept surrender.

Jamie

Jamie feels disoriented for only a second, but he can’t waste any time to gather his thoughts. There’s a Redcoat there, and Jamie knows one thing, he was fighting, and he has to keep on fighting. That’s something too important to forget, he would never willingly give up, no matter how hopeless the fight. Dying for a cause is better than staying alive for nothing, and he wouldn’t want to survive if it meant that he had to abandon what’s important to him. He wouldn’t do it unless… He doesn’t have time for this, he has to get to safety.

Zoe

Zoe thinks that there’s something that she wanted to do, but just as soon as the thought forms in her head, it’s gone. It couldn’t have been that important if it’s gone so easily, and she has more important things to worry about. They might have survived the attack, but there’s still damage to survey and repair, and that’s something that she can help with. She never let herself be distracted before, and she doesn’t understand why it almost happened now, but she returns to her tasks. Unlike those men, she can’t just run away after the threat is gone.

Doctor

The Doctor sees Jamie and Zoe back in their own times, and at least he knows that they’re safe now. He couldn’t save himself, he couldn’t even save their memories, but they are still alive and somewhere safe, relatively speaking. It’s because of them that he had to admit defeat and convince them to surrender, rather than risk what the Time Lords might do to them if they resisted. But it’s because he knows the two of them well that he lied by omission, and convinced them to go, knowing and not saying that their memories would be taken away.

Title: Some nights
Fandom: Batman: The Animated Series
Relationship: Bruce Wayne | Batman's & Harley Quinn
Rating: T/Gen
Word count: 360
Tags: Abusive Relationships, Violence, Guilt
Summary: Some nights, all the he could think about were the people he couldn't save.
For seasons_of_fandom's round 1, challenge #1: Royal Rumble

Some nights

Some nights, it doesn't matter how many people he saves, the ones that stay on his mind are the ones that he failed.

It was another one of the Joker's plans, and thousands of people around Gotham were poisoned and could have been killed. He's never been so grateful for the fruitful hours that he spent finding an antidote to the Joker's newest toxin, which he could only do in time because he had found a sample in an abandoned warehouse a couple of nights before.

No one died from the toxin, as far as he knows, and from what Gordon told him. The antidote was delivered in time, and a few people were still sick enough to need medical supervision, but even they should recover in time.

Harley Quinn is another story entirely.

Physically, she'll recover. Twenty-six broken bones and the worst case of poisoning they had, but she would recover. But as it's often the case, the cause of her injuries is worse than the injuries themselves.

It's not the first time that the Joker throws her away either in Batman's direction or to her death, knowing that he'll catch her rather than letting her die, regardless of what she did. This time, thrown from the top of a scaffolding, even though he was able to catch her before she hit the ground and take her to a hospital, there was still too much damage on her way down.

She'll recover, she's resilient enough for that, but when he tried talking to her about the Joker, she refused to listen. Those were the same excuses as always, he didn't mean to, it was an accident, it's all Batman's fault, the Joker really loves her, she was the one who lost her balance, the Joker will come back and rescue her.

Each time he tries talking to her, but he knows that there's no point in forcing the issue if Harley isn't ready for this. And once again she isn't, and soon enough she'll be not only committing crimes again, but suffering at the Joker's hands.

Some nights, it just felt as if nothing he did made a difference.

Fandom: Doctor Who (1963, 2005, Scream of the Shalka)
Rating: T
For seasons_of_fandom's round 1, challenge #15: Fandom Fest
Points: 15+25+40+50+75 = 205 200

Green Beans (a drabble) [Third Doctor/The Master (Delgado), 100w]

It’s only because the Doctor is unconscious that he allows his touch to be tender, and even then only for a moment. It happens almost by an impulse, the moment of panic when he realises that the creature inside the machine might be more powerful than he feared, or maybe that the Doctor isn’t as strong as he had hoped. He’s not so weak as to allow feelings to get in the way of his plans, but still the relief lingers. He tells himself it’s only a matter of wanting to use the Doctor’s help for his escape, nothing else.

Mashed Potatoes (at least 250 words) [Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan, 250w]

Future knowledge is such a dangerous thing. Knowledge of one’s personal future even more so. Acting on it is almost sure to cause a dangerous paradox, one that might even risk the very fabric of reality if left unchecked. The Doctor knows all of this, far too many times she had to ignore what she knew and allow something to happen that she wanted to stop.

The Doctor knows this, but when he tells herself, “You never do,” she stops for a moment.

To her horror, she considers using this, making it the impetus to finally tell Yaz what she should have told her a long time ago. To do something because her future self had told her that she hadn’t, that’s a paradox that the TARDIS can’t naturally stabilise, and to do so based on a point where reality is particularly fluid, still struggling to reassert itself, there’s no telling what the consequences for that would be.

Still, she considers it, only for a moment, before she deems the damage that would come from it inacceptable. She can’t risk reality to make up for taking too long to realise what she should have said, and she learned her lesson when it came to thinking that the laws of time didn’t apply to her.

As much as it hurts, and it breaks both her hearts, she has to let herself forget, so she’ll still make that mistake. Even if it means adding one more regret to her very long list.

Stuffing (at least 400 words) [Tenth Doctor, past Doctor/Jamie McCrimmon,409w]

It strikes him suddenly when they're walking back to the TARDIS, the sort of thought that should have come to him earlier, but the Doctor has always been good at pushing thoughts out of the way to make room for other ideas, and at the time having guns held in their direction was a very solid distraction.

Still Jamie was clearly on his mind, from the accent to so blatantly deciding to use his name, saying James McCrimmon with such confidence although it might have been the first time that he said it like that. His Jamie was always Jamie to him, but before he could think too much of his choice of name, he had a monarchy to save.

But now that the lycantrope is gone and Queen Victoria is as saved as she could be – contaminated or not, it remains to be seen, but if that changed anything he's sure that he'll notice sooner rather than later –, there's nothing stopping the thought from completing.

Jamie must be buried somewhere around there.

Around is a relative concept, somewhere that could be reached by train or horse, if the Doctor knew where he settled when… And if he lived a long life, and the Doctor hoped that he had, then it might be relatively recent enough that the grave might still stand, maybe with markings faded in time.

Jamie is dead, of course. In a way, Jamie has been dead since the Doctor stood by and watched as he was taken away, knowing that he would have his memories erased and tossed back in the middle of a battle.

But the Doctor hopes he had a good life. He never found it in himself to check, and he could now. He hopes Jamie died of old age, surrounded by family, the sort of life that the Doctor could never have, and could give him. He hopes he fell in love and was loved in return, that he was happy and never thought that there was something missing in his life, that he had a better life than the Doctor could have given him.

He could find out. Historical records, of course, or a quick trip, if he kept the TARDIS out of the way just to be sure, since Jamie wouldn't recognise his face. The Doctor walks back to the TARDIS, and he doesn't check, he would rather live with the hope that Jamie's life was better without him.

Turkey (at least 500 words) [Ninth Doctor/The Master (Shalka), 514 w]

“A cigar,” the Master says, apparently unprompted, without looking up from the calculations that the Doctor asked him to do.

The Doctor is ashamed that it takes him a moment to understand, and he's sure that had been the Master's intention. Everything with the Master is calculated, and this wouldn't be different.

He's answering a direct question, which the Doctor posed a few days ago. The Doctor can't remember it verbatim, but it had been something to the effect of what could be done to improve his mood, less of a true question and more an expression of his exasperation.

“I didn't know you smoked,” the Doctor says to buy himself some time, although he's not sure how strictly true that is.

He's unsure if he ever saw the Master smoking on any body, but the idea of a cigar does suit him, and Time Lords can avoid the cellular damage. He can just imagine the Master sitting on a black leather chair with a cigar, maybe a glass of a rare alien liquor, his features obfuscated by smoke, aside from his mesmerising eyes.

“When I still had a body, of course,” the Master says, another pointed reminder of his condition, and by implication, of the Doctor's role in it.

In the weeks since dying, for a lack of a better word, and needing his consciousness to be preserved in this body that the Doctor built to the best of his ability, trying to mitigate a terrible situation, the Master had been prone to some explosions of irritability, which was why the Doctor asked him about it in the first place.

He had assumed it was simply a matter of the Master struggling to adjust to his new circumstances. The Master was trapped in the TARDIS, agreed to submit to the Doctor's control, and lost his organic body after deadly injuries. It's understandable he might be bitter over it. And although that's likely the greatest culprit, the Doctor does wonder now if a sudden unavailability of his methods of stress relief might bear some of the blame.

There is an obvious problem. The Doctor exceeded all his own expectations in designing and building the Master's body, but it was still electronic, and the cigar smoke would do nothing to it except perhaps spread particulates over his internal parts. If he already thought that the Master was irritable, then that's the last thing that he can point out now.

The Doctor almost suggests an electronic version, perhaps programmed to disrupt the Master's system in a similar way to nicotine, but stops himself in time as he realises his mistake.

It likely isn't about the chemical reaction, if the Master is asking for it now. It might be about the ritual of it, the process itself relaxing despite how little effect the nicotine would have on a Time Lord. Or it's about regaining control, or normalcy.

“I still have a box from Alpha Centari, a diplomatic favour,” the Doctor says instead, hoping that, as it seems, this is a harmless enough request for him to grant.

Pie (at least 700 words) [Sixth Doctor/Jamie McCrimmon, 910w]

It seems as though everything these days reminds him of Jamie. Of course by these days he means the last several years, but he tends to think of everything that involves his most current self as recent, but after so long trying not to think about what happened, now each instance of refreshed memory glisters with a glaring glow demanding attention, signalling with a flashing flare a farewell that he would rather forget.

It all started with meeting him again, rescuing him from the wretched recesses of space. Seeing Jamie again and finding no trace of recognition in his face, finding that near absolute trust that he certainly didn’t earn replaced with mistrust, it broke his hearts. He wanted nothing more than to hold Jamie in his arms to reassure himself that at least for the time being he was fine, but he wasn’t Jamie’s Doctor, and he doubted that Jamie would let him hold him casually, almost without noticing that he was doing it, like they used to do.

No, the only thing that he could do for Jamie was return his past self to him, and leave them without even saying the things that to this day he regretted nothing having said. He saved his past, and Jamie left with him, convinced that the Doctor was who he said he was, but that was it.

They hardly even had the time to talk.

Afterwards, he became hyperaware of everything that might remind him of Jamie.

He found a kilt in the TARDIS’ wardrobe that he didn’t remember putting there, not even one of Jamie’s, and it’s so telling that he would know, but what seems more a future model in relation to Jamie’s time, what might have been a modern take in the centuries after Jamie was gone, and even in the TARDIS Jamie still kept to tradition about these things.

Peri found Jamie’s sporran and took his money, and all that the Doctor could think was how careful Jamie was with money, trying to understand each alien currency and make sure that the Doctor didn’t just wander off after paying with the wrong ones. The Doctor had taken for granted what a skill that was, and it might be because he didn’t bother with it himself, but he couldn’t even claim the same knowledge.

Then there was the boy named Jamie that he met with Evelyn, and even that only made him think of how he never told Jamie that he was brave, although he should have. Jamie, who was willing to fight the Time Lords to stay with him, who would have fought them despite the odds if the Doctor hadn’t told him to stand down, who would put himself in front of a gun to shield the Doctor without being asked or expected to, who faced Daleks and Cybermen without hesitation, and the Doctor never told him that he was brave.

He couldn’t even visit Venus without thinking of when he took Jamie and Victoria there, telling people around him about that as if they were supposed to know who those were. At this rate he wouldn’t be surprised if his next face came along with a Scottish accent for all that he can’t take Jamie out of his mind. And yet that’s exactly what he must do.

There is a reason why he tries not to think too much of the people that he left behind, especially someone he…

If he allows himself to think about it, he’ll set the TARDIS back to Scotland, not caring how long it has passed for him or that Jamie won’t even remember him beyond the time they first met and he had another face. He’ll set the TARDIS back and find Jamie then tell him like a madman that he must follow him to go back to travelling through time and space. And Jamie won’t believe him, he might even fight him, and he’ll certainly tell him to go away, which would be more than he can bear, but that isn’t the worst part.

He lost Jamie, that’s part of his personal history. He tried to help humans who were suffering unjustly and in return he had Jamie taken away from him. He had to tell Jamie to go knowing that they would take away his memories, all the wonderful things that they experienced together, erased as if they meant nothing. Jamie went back to a war that he lost, and he didn’t even get to keep the knowledge of how brave he was, how many lives he saved.

It’s horrible, but it’s done, and if he starts to change things of his past because of who much they might hurt, then he has quite a few other companions to save, and by the time that he got to the last of them, the fabric of time and space would be chewed into nothing by moths.

He had his time with Jamie, and it might not have been enough, it could never have been enough, and he might still have so much that he wished he could have said, but that time is over.

No amount of reminders from the universe could change that, but that didn’t stop that everlasting longing from lambasting his lonely hearts.

He could resist the temptation, the universe might depend on it, but that doesn’t stop him from seeing reminders of Jamie at every corner, and from wishing that he was there.

Title: Never enough time
Fandom: Doctor Who (2005)
Relationship: Fifteenth Doctor/Rogue
Rating: T/Slash
Word count: 1039
Tags: Canon Compliant, Introspection, Major Character Death, Guilt
Summary: The Doctor always reaches regeneration thinking that he didn't have enough time, but there's one thing that he doesn't want to let his future self forget.
For seasons_of_fandom's round 1, challenge #14: The Graveyard. For this I went with both technically a character death and a cancelation, the Doctor of course always comes back, but Fifteen is dead, and the Disney era of the show is over even if BBC is making promises about the future. Also, I'd say that Rogue counts as a dropped storyline, especially after his brief cameo from the hell dimension, presumably never to be seen again (Big Finish I'm counting on you)

Never enough time

There's never enough time. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad, he can live for fourteen hours or hundreds of years, and that's not even counting the billions of years of a few looping hours, but when it's the end, it's never enough time. Even when he's so tired that he welcomes regeneration, it's still with the sensation that he has more to do, but priorities shift, and before he knows it, he forgot all about what was important to him.

Going back for Susan, finding a way to retrieve Jamie's and Zoe's memories, continuing to help UNIT as he regained his freedom… from the start, or what he thought of as the start, his most important plans were unceremoniously abandoned as soon as he was settled after a regeneration, and he couldn't let that happen now.

He always says that he's still just himself, and it's true, he's always the Doctor, but changed, rearranged, some aspects pushed back while others are brought to the forefront. And it's a gamble, he doesn't know what he'll get, what he'll care about, what loose ends will only come back to haunt him centuries later.

But he can't let that happen now, not with this.

It’s too important to let this be one more promise that he meant to keep only to forget about it, one more regret that he can never let go of, especially not now. He couldn’t find Rogue, he didn’t have enough time, or much of a clue as to how he could even do it, but Rogue still found a way of reaching him, not even to save himself or ask for help, but to help him. A reminder of reality when he needed it the most, and maybe if he had enough time he could try to use that message to interface with the TARDIS’ telepathic controls, or trace the psychic imprint to a particular dimension, the ideas keep bubbling inside his head now that he doesn’t have time for them, as always seems to be the case. He always did think better under pressure.

Now he has a few minutes at most, and that’s not enough for any plan, but it is long enough for a message.

He sets it up on a delay, so it’ll trigger after whoever he becomes has enough time to settle in their new body, after a couple of new adventures, but not so long that they’ll be too busy doing something else. That is, if he programmed it right, since he tried using the TARDIS’ sensors to make sure that it won’t pop up in the middle of an universe threatening emergency or something of the sort. There’s always a chance that it’ll trigger five faces from now and whoever he is then will have forgotten all about it until hearing the message, but it’s the best hope that he’s got.

“Alright, here we go,” he says aloud, then starts the holo-recorder.

“Hello there, Doctor. It’s me, or rather you, you know how this goes, babes. Doctor, here’s the Doctor, and you know that if I’m using this it’s because this is important to me. You have to find Rogue. Not later, not when you have time, not when you get to it. Drop whatever it is you’re doing, and find a way of tracing his message. I have a few ideas I encoded in this message, or maybe you’ll have a better idea, what matters is that you have to do it. He’s only there because he was helping us, and he saved us. The only reason you had a future is because he got me out of the Rani’s fantasy world in time. And so you save him, even if it’s to let him go. You have to save him,” he says, stopping the recording as he feels the tears starting to form.

It feels like doing nothing, like less than nothing, but it’s all he can do with the time that he has left.

It’s not enough time, there’s never enough time.

There was still so much that he wanted to do, so much that he had to do, so many mistakes that he still has to set right, and he doesn’t know if he won’t go right back to ignoring them the next time around, and all the other ones that will come after.

It’s not only Rogue, although that’s freshest on his mind, how he told Ruby that there was no hope like that meant that he wasn’t going to try, but he’s had the TARDIS scanning nearby dimensions since then, and he protected the subroutine so it’ll keep going on its own. Who knows? If his message takes too long, the TARDIS finding something might be the necessary reminder. Better than trusting that he’ll remember thinking about this as he’s already dead, regeneration energy flooding his cells even as he tries to hold it back, to claw back a few extra moments after his time is over.

There’s also Susan, he saw her when he was freezing, and that had to mean something. What the Master did, it was meant to have killed all of them, but it didn’t kill the two of them, and it didn’t kill the Rani, and there are reasons for all three, but maybe there’s also a reason for Susan. She was always so clever, she could have found a way to protect herself, there might be hope, and he was too afraid to look and realise that it was just wishful thinking.

And all the other things that he left behind before. Dealing with what he let in when he used salt at the edge of the universe, finding out what he did before his memories were taken from him, finding out where he came from, all the promises that he probably forgot about. Now he gets to add one to the list, whoever he becomes gets to deal with the consequences of tilting reality just so, and he knows better by now than to expect there not to be unintended consequences when he does something like this. He just doesn’t have the time to find out what they’ll be before they become a problem.

Title: What will happen now
Fandom: sense8
Relationship: Kala/Rajan/Wolfgang
Rating: T/Multi
Word count: 352
Tags: Post-Canon, Fluff, Poly
Summary: They won, and now they could decide what they would do with their lives.
For seasons_of_fandom's round 1, challenge #1: Royal Rumble

What will happen now

Kala watched as Wolfgang took everything that he needed from the cabinets, not having to ask where anything was, even if that was the first time that he was seeing any of it, at least in person.

It was just one more way that he fit so well into her life, in ways that she could never have dreamed of when she first thought that she was being haunted by a naked man.

So much in her life had changed in that time, starting with gaining a whole other life, all while her regular life was also changing so much.

For so long she was confused and afraid, and learning that what she was seeing was real only proved that all that danger was also real. They were fighting for their lives and it seemed as though they would never be able to stop, that they would never feel safe again, that they would be picked off one by one until there was no one left, that there was no way for them to win, and they could only try to delay the inevitable.

It was still hard to believe that they won. It all happened so fast, and she was afraid that she might wake up to learn that it was all just a dream, but each day made it a little easier to believe that this was true. They could finally breathe easy, and that meant having the time to find out what would happen to their lives now, what they wanted to happen to their lives.

She watched as Wolfgang moved through the kitchen, and she didn't need to visit to be able to hear him from the bedroom, despite how he was trying to be quiet, and so focused on his task that he hadn't noticed that she was watching him.

Kala left before he saw her there, staying only in the bedroom where Rajan was still sleeping. If Wolfgang wanted to surprise them, then she wasn't going to ruin it. This sort of thing was exactly what they needed now, and she could get used to it.

Title: Gone fishing
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Relationship: Rodney McKay & Carson Beckett
Rating: T/Gen
Word count: 356
Tags: Friendship, Guilt, Regret, Major Character Death, Canonical Character Death
Summary: Rodney still thinks about what happened to Beckett.
For seasons_of_fandom's round 1, challenge #1: Royal Rumble

Gone fishing

He still thinks about it from time to time, even now that Beckett is, well not actually really back, but something close enough to it, and certainly more than most people can hope for when they lose a friend.

A Beckett is still alive and he's not quite Rodney's friend but he's a good enough clone to seem just like him and he has most of his memories, so it would be easy to pretend that it never even happened, that Beckett never died. He could tell himself that the reason why Beckett was always away from Atlantis was just because of trauma, or because he could help more people this way, and then Rodney could just erase all that time before they found him.

Instead, he finds himself thinking back on that stupid fishing trip.

He didn't know, he couldn't have known what would happen, but Beckett wasn't even supposed to be there because Rodney was supposed to have gone with him to fish, only he made up an excuse not to go. One of his best friends, and he couldn't even bring himself to pretend to like his hobby for a few hours, or even to go and complain the entire time about how much he hated it.

Things might have been worse for Atlantis if they had gone, leaving the others without Beckett to deal with the exploding tumors, but his friend wouldn't have died, and maybe that was worth something. They're always risking their lives, even Rodney risked his a few times, although he was very much opposed to the idea, but that didn't mean that he had to accept it as just part of life in the Pegasus galaxy.

And it even came down to seemingly inconsequential decisions like choosing not to go fishing with a friend.

Rodney had to accept that there was nothing more that he could do, that he had to just grieve and move on, but from time to time he still thinks about that, what he could have done differently that day, and what would have happened if he had just gone fishing like he promised.

Title: I’m glad you weren’t alone
Fandom: Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Relationship: Rook/Lucanis
Rating: T/Slash
Word count: 2204
Tags: Male Rook, Mourn Watcher Rook, Developing Relationship, Demons & Spirits
Summary: In a visit to the Grand Necropolis, Rook decides to show Lucanis a little more of the place where he grew up. And having grown up mostly around spirits might explain why Rook is so awkward with the living, but so relaxed around Spite.
For seasons_of_fandom's round 1, challenge #11: HAPPY HALLOWEEN (a story featuring paranormal elements, via the Necropolis, spirits, demons, crypts, and of course my favorite necromancer/abomination pair)

I’m glad you weren’t alone

When Rook left the Grand Necropolis, he thought it was never to return. No one was overly cruel about it, and he had a feeling that Myrna was trying to be nice, she might have even shielded him from the worst of the nobles’ complaints over his behavior, but they also said in no uncertain terms that he was to leave, and no perspective was given as to whether he would ever be allowed to come back.

It took him months to accept that the Necropolis wasn’t his home anymore, and the life that he thought that he was going to lead wasn’t possible anymore. He mourned the loss, but he accepted it, because it didn’t feel like he had much of a choice. Then everything with the gods happened and all of the sudden the fate of the world might depend on the help of a fade expert, and that meant going back to the Grand Necropolis to ask for help, which also happened to be a good opportunity for him to offer his help against the venatori.

By now it’s clear that he’s welcome to come back whenever he wants for a visit, but also that there isn’t really a place for him there anymore. Like a childhood home that he outgrew, he can come back, but things will never be the same, and that’s not enough to erase the fondness that he has for it.

For all the hesitation that he had coming back for the first time, now he wants his friends to know the Necropolis, and how it's not the scary place that outsiders often think that it is.

“Would you mind going ahead without us, Emmrich? I want to show Lucanis around when we aren’t fighting evil blood mages,” Rook says as they're walking back to the elluvian, suddenly taken by the idea.

One thing that he always loved about the Necropolis is how it's a living place, always changing on its own, but the mages who grew up there, who trained there for decades have an almost instinctive affinity to it, and he's generally confident in his ability to navigate the places in the Necropolis that he's familiar with.

“Oh, showing the sights is a splendid idea! I could,” Emmrich starts, but he must see the panicked look on Rook's face, because he amends, “although Manfred is surely waiting for me, so I'm afraid I must leave the three of you.”

Rook sighs in relief. He likes Emmrich, of course, and he's always eager to learn more about the Necropolis and necromancy in general, but with everything that they have to do, and how they’re all always running around from one place to the next, he doesn’t have a lot of time to spend with Lucanis.

They are… something to each other, he’s still not sure of what, with how hesitant Spite makes Lucanis. Their relationship is progressing at a bit of glacial pace, but it is a relationship of some sorts, which Lucanis has already confirmed, and he would like any opportunity to spend some time with him. Which may or may not be why he’s always making up excuses as to why Lucanis absolutely needs to come to whatever mission he has to go on. Killing darkspawn? Take an assassin. Investigate the spooky magical elven forest? Assassin. Deal with spirits at the Necropolis? Also assassin.

“There’s really no need, Rook. I find the Necropolis a little unsettling,” Lucanis says, and Rook knows that it’s not really a rejection because Lucanis wouldn’t even think of what Rook is proposing as a sort of date, the same way that he hadn’t realized that Rook giving him a dagger was meant as a bit of a courting gift, or that their coffee dates where, well, dates.

It’s sweet, really, how skillful and knowledgeable Lucanis can be at so many things, and the areas where he’s not so good at. Lucanis is charming, and he’s aware of that, it’s part of his Crow training to be able to charm his way close to people so he can have access to kill them or someone else, even if his speciality isn’t that. He’s also incredibly funny and caring and gets along with people when he doesn’t let his fear of Spite get in the way, but somehow his ‘earnest flirting’ skills lag behind the rest. Spite also happens to be terribly blunt, and Rook is a bit of a disaster when it comes to dealing with people in general, so all in all they aren’t at the best of positions, but Rook never needed things to be perfect.

“Nonsense, I’m sure Rook has lovely things to show you around the Necropolis, and Spite agrees with me,” Emmrich says, and Rook will have to remember to thank him in private.

He’ll also have to remember to ask Emmrich to teach him how to listen to Spite better. Rook can only reliably hear him when he takes over Lucanis, which isn’t ideal, and otherwise at most he can hear distant whispers that he can’t make out, but at least help him notice when Spite’s talking to Lucanis.

Rook has always preferred to make mistakes because he was too brave rather than being too cowardly, so he takes Lucanis’ hand. “Let me show you where I lived my first few months in the Necropolis, before anyone living found me. It’s only fair, since you’ve shown me your childhood home,” Rook says, which isn’t entirely fair because they were there rescuing Lucanis’ grandmother, but he’s still willing to say that counts.

Emmrich does seem concerned for a moment, but he thankfully doesn’t say anything. Rook is afraid that this might be a bit weird to want to show Lucanis something like this, but he is a little weird, and he doesn’t want to pretend that he’s someone that he isn’t. And if someone can understand a necromancer’s casual relationship with death it would be someone raised in a family of assassins. Lucanis might have some professional indignation at necromancers as a whole, but at least he’s not afraid of death.

Lucanis looks like he’s trying to concentrate on Rook, and not whatever it is that Spite is telling him, but Rook doesn’t know which of them convinces him. “Alright. Where do you want to go?”

Rook can’t help but smile. “Follow me,” he says, practically dragging Lucanis through the corridors, moving quickly through familiar corridors that aren’t quite where he could expect them to be, but he’ll know he’s in the right place when he finds it.

Finally, they arrive at a quieter portion of the Necropolis, sparsely populated by wisps, and with crypts that aren’t as ornate as the others that they passed through. All the bones and corpses in the Necropolis are treated with respect and cared for, but especially with older skeletons, unless they were very well known, still have living family, or were very rich or of a significant noble house, their resting place might not see as much movement as the others.

The corridor is dark, a few of the torches having lost their spell, so Rook renews it on the ones closer to them.

“This here connects a few of the lower crypts, and it has a connection to the outside. If you follow this corridor to the end, it connects to the sewers of Nevarra City, and it has bars blocking it, but they have to let the water flow, so they have some room between them. Enough for a small child to squeeze through,” Rook says, waiving the arm that isn’t holding Lucanis.

“You were found here?” Lucanis asks, clearly surprised, but something in his tone makes Rook think that there’s something wrong.

Alright, now that they’re there he has to admit that it’s less impressive than he remembered, but it’s not too bad. Certainly better than the city street’s, where he would have been alone, exposed to the elements, and have nothing to eat. Where he probably was all of that, although he can’t remember, and no one knows for how long he was without his parents, either there or before.

“Vorgoth said I lived here for a few months with some wisps, although they’re cryptic about everything, including my past. I think the spirits here taught me which mushrooms were safe to eat, and there’s this place further up where a fountain spills to the corridor, so there’s fresh water. Probably best not to drink off the floor though. I was about three when a couple of Mourn Watchers doing maintenance found me, and then the order took me in. I always figured that I was drawn to this place, by then I already had my magical awakening, I kept freezing things here,” Rook says, then stops as he realizes that he’s probably saying too much.

Lucanis is a magekiller, after all. He doesn’t seem to have a problem with Rook, or Neve, Emmrich, and Bellara, for that matter, but that’s talking about grown mages and well trained ones, not a little boy walking around with no control of his magic. That’s the sort of thing that makes people nervous about mages in some places, although in Nevarra they know how to value that connection to the fade.

“Rook, this is…” Lucanis drops off, looking around, and Rook suddenly feels self-conscious.

He extends a hand to a passing wisp, and lets the wisp climb up his arm as a way of greeting before moving away. He thinks it’s an interesting place, even if less impressive than the rest of the Necropolis, but he’s a mage and he likes the spirits, a few of which he can see passing through the corridor in the distance. But Lucanis was raised in a huge mansion for only three people, and even among the Mourn Watchers who have a lot of gold no one would have that much space only for themselves, so maybe this corridor just seems small and unassuming to him.

“I know, it’s not as fun as a mansion, or the noble crypts we visited, but my earliest memory is being fascinated by this place. The spirits would just come talk to me and help, and sometimes the other parts of the Necropolis get spirits that are angrier, like what everyone else calls demons, but not here. It was a good place for a child who hadn’t discovered how to protect himself against those sorts of spirits,” Rook says, trying to avoid the habit that he has fallen since leaving the Necropolis of calling them demons, although Spite doesn’t seem to mind it when he does.

A couple more wisps pass them by, and Rook hears the noises that come from Spite, and although he can’t quite make out the words they sound a bit like trying to shoo them away from either Lucanis or Rook, possibly both.

Lucanis looks at him strangely, and Rook feels the need to justify himself intensify, but then Lucanis says, “I’m glad you weren’t alone.”

It’s then that Rook realizes. Lucanis was raised in a huge mansion, but he only had his grandmother and his cousin. His grandmother had to be always busy, and his cousin, who was like a brother to him, betrayed him and wanted to have him killed.

“I never felt alone here, but I’ll admit that I didn’t really have many living friends. I got along better with the spirits, which is why if anyone was a parental figure to me, it was Vorgoth, and maybe why I can’t talk to anyone without shoving my foot in my mouth. But it was great, living here. It’s not home anymore, but it’ll always…”

Lucanis nods. “I think I understand,” he says, and he probably did, because it might be the same for him. “And that explains why you’re too relaxed with Spite. He’s a demon, you know, not a friendly spirit.”

That does get him what sounds like an angry rant from Spite, although it can’t be too bad if he’s not taking over Lucanis to say it. Maybe one day Rook can get Lucanis to understand that there isn’t really a difference, like how a venatori and a shadow dragon are still just people, Spite is just a spirit, and not even too bad a spirit, as long as he’s allowed to channel his murderous tendencies.

“Maybe, but he saved my life quite a few times, and more importantly, he saved yours, so I think he’s alright. But I really do think you should be nicer to each other, and that goes for both of you, Spite,” Rook says, knowing that there’s at least a chance that Spite will listen to him.

“I’ll never understand how you’re so good at getting through to him,” Lucanis says, so Spite’s reaction might have been good.

Rook squeezes his hand. “Maybe I’ll teach you some day. Now come on, I have other places I want to show you. There’s this fountain where Vorgoth taught me to swim,” Rook says, self-consciousness quickly fading away.

He might be a bit strange, and maybe he has trouble dealing with people, but Lucanis likes him how he is, and that’s what matters.

Title: Zagreus isn't so bad
Fandom: Hades
Relationship: Asterius & Theseus
Rating: T/Gen
Word count: 358
Tags: Friendship, Humor, Canon Typical Mentions of Death
Notes: getting them to half health then hitting them with Than may or may not be my go to strategy to deal with this fight
Summary: Asterius tries to convince Theseus that maybe fighting Zagreus is a good opportunity for them.
For seasons_of_fandom's round 1, challenge #1: Royal Rumble

Zagreus isn't so bad

“He's really not so bad,” Asterius says, despite knowing that there isn't much, or more likely there's nothing at all that he can say to convince Theseus of this.

Theseus has many good qualities to those who bother to get past his more heroic persona, which Asterius understands can be a bit intimidating otherwise. But one thing that he's not known for is the thoughtful reconsideration of his own opinions.

“How can you say that of that fiend? And after he so cowardly killed you no less, taking on the help of the god of death himself,” Theseus says, sighing dramatically. “I can't understand why Thanatos would help him in this way, when we were the ones to answer the call of Lord Hades to keep his willful disgrace of a son from running amok.”

Something that can be said in favor of Theseus is, even in death he's much too busy to worry about rumors, otherwise he might have known that Zagreus has been receiving help from death himself for quite some time now, for reasons that are between the two of them, and Asterius wouldn't want to speculate on, unlike most shades in Elysium, who in recent days seem more interested in Zagreus than the sparring matches that used to be commonplace. Asterius can only hope that this won't go on for much longer, although he would still hope that Zagreus might keep coming over for some sparring, as few other adversaries could ever provide him with this much of a challenge.

“He provides us time and time again with the opportunity to fight side by side, surely that's something to be appreciated,” Asterius says, ignoring Theseus' indignation in favor of trying a different approach.

This does give Theseus pause. Sadly, despite being the most formidable warrior of Elysium, by Asterius’ judgment, Theseus always had a hard time finding challengers, or getting other shades to agree to his challenges, and it would be even harder to find an opportunity to fight together.

“You do have a point. But I still don't like how he cheated by calling on someone else to help him in the battle.”

Title: A dead womam
Fandom: MCU (What If)
Relationship: Natasha Romanoff
Rating: T/Gen
Word count: 357
Tags: Survivor Guilt
Summary: She's living the life of a dead woman.
For seasons_of_fandom's round 1, challenge #1: Royal Rumble

A dead woman

Of all the things that keep her up at night, this shouldn't even make the list. She has so many mistakes, so much guilt, but in a way this is tied to all of that.

She took the place of a dead woman who was, in more ways than not, her. And for some reason that would never make any amount of sense to her, she got to survive while her entire universe died around her.

There are some people she knows here. Or not exactly knows, someone people she knee, some people who have the same faces and much of the same experiences as the ones that she knows. It hurts to see them, even the ones that she never particularly cared about in her own universe. But the worst are the ones who knew the Natasha of this universe before she was murdered.

These people see her and it's like they saw a ghost, not that she can blame them for it. It's what keeps her from looking up anyone who isn't with SHIELD, anyone from a past that isn't her past but is indistinguishable from it, anyone she counts on the list of people she failed.

It's easier with people she never knew, and who never knew her, in either universe. Aside from SHIELD no one even knows that she comes from another universe, and even if she could never have a normal life, nor would she know what to do with one, it could feel almost like her normal. Almost as if she could close her eyes for a moment and forget everything that happened, but it's never too far away from her.

She doesn't want to forget, she doesn't deserve to forget. As always, she has to keep going and move on, she shows nothing of what happened, and no one is close enough to her to know that it's all an act, at least not anymore.

And it still keeps her up at night, a recurrent thought that she can't shake. She's living the life of a dead woman, and she's the only one in her universe that gets to live.

Title: No answers
Fandom: FROM
Relationship: Boyd Stevens
Rating: T/Gen
Word count: 350
Tags: Introspection
Summary: He doesn't know what to do, but he can pretend.
For seasons_of_fandom's round 1, challenge #1: Royal Rumble

No answers

Change is the only thing that can save them, but it’s also what puts them at risk, and he has all these people to consider, all these lives to try to preserve.

When he first arrived, and it seemed like so long ago, another life even, back when he still had… back then, all the people in town could do was be afraid and hide, losing more people every night. They couldn’t do anything else as long as that was the threat hanging over them half the time, having to sleep during the day and spend the seemingly endless night hours hearing those things and the brutal death of whatever unfortunate soul was caught that night.

Then he found the talismans and brought them a semblance of normality. They could spend the nights in houses and sleep in beds without fear of being attacked as long as they learned to ignore what those things said.

They could have something resembling a life, and maybe that had been his mistake. Maybe that had been the worst thing that Boyd could have done for them, because it meant that they now had something to lose. It meant that they got cautious about the life that they have there, even though it didn’t change that they’re trapped there and always at risk.

He doesn’t have a life to go back to anymore. All he has is his son, and he’ll never forgive Boyd for what he had to do. His son is making a life for himself there, and that only means not even thinking about leaving.

Anything that they do, they risk this, and for the sake of the town he has to think about that, but then things start to go wrong and they finally start getting some answers. Some safety and plenty of ignorance, or risk it all for answers. Everyone is looking at him to know what’s the right choice, but the best that he can offer them is pretending that he knows what to do. While the truth is, he’s just as lost as the rest of them.