My brain refuses to tick over appropriately in order to ACTUALLY work on Alleirat, so here are some short li’l headcanons in the hope that it will kick something into gear. They’re not super detailed because it’s 1 AM and I’m trying not to think about the MCAT too much.
Oh, also, while I’m at this, I’m listening to Hopeless by Halsey and it’s just. The Most Brenneth and Crispin. “Cause you know the good die young, but so did this, so it must be better than I think it is.”
A: what I think realistically
Brenneth likes to sing. She picked it up while she was being trained as a blacksmith, because she doesn’t really care for quiet, and it just sort of became a thing. Crispin has real actual-facts voice training, so he used to bring her songs that he’d learned and they would sing them together while he lurked in the corner of her forge. It continues to be a thing to this day. Her voice isn’t anything special—low end of alto range, fairly limited range—but she can project and she has the feel for folk songs, you know what I’m saying. It used to be kind of Known that you could bring the singing smith a new song she’d never heard, and she would charge you a little less than usual for your job.
B: what I think is fucking hilarious
On Earth, once they’re—you know, once they’re speaking again, Brenneth calls Crispin Darth when she wants to get on his nerves. Most of their teachers and (later) their coworkers think it’s an inside joke. It kind of is. But an inside joke with a body count.
C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends
Torei, Brenneth’s right hand woman that first time around and her devoted amdri, wears Brenneth’s name like a brand on her soul and says that love should make you feel invincible.
Brenneth, who multiple times a week wakes up choking from a nightmare about the last time she told someone that she loved them—you’re my best friend, Cris, of course I love you, and then he says you understand, right and she doesn’t, and that’s usually where the choking starts, a scream that doesn’t make it past her throat—doesn’t agree. All love has ever done for her is open gaping holes in her armor, over vital organs.
Fourteen years and four centuries later, standing between that same person—of course I love you and then the choking—and a death sentence, Brenneth still doesn’t agree. This isn’t invincible. This is utterly, unfathomably, unspeakably breakable.
D: what would never work with canon but the canon is shit so I believe it anyway
Listen the book will never progress this far because I Do Not Like Writing Children and also this is highly unlikely because Crispin and also because Plot Reasons, but I like to think there’s a happy future for these poor kids where Brenneth owns a forge again and spends her time quietly making weapons and trinkets and whatever else she likes, and Crispin is basically her house husband. Given the opportunity, he would 100% like nothing more than to bring Brenneth meals and play with the kids who loiter in her forge and walk to the market while he tries to figure out how to keep the plants Krei gave them alive. Brenneth spars for fun, rather than because she needs to keep her skills up, and Crispin grows his hair out long again because he can stand to look at himself in the mirror. They sit on their roof at ungodly hours of the night—they have a deal with the local Lai Dase population, to the tune of try us, we dare you, so no one hassles them—and drink wine straight from the bottle and look at the stars and sing off-key and fall asleep in uncomfortable positions, with Crispin’s head in Brenneth’s lap.
Basically what I’m saying is that, despite whatever else they might be into, both Crispin and Brenneth have gotten to the point in their lives where their absolute top kink is domesticity. Like, once you’ve literally tried to murder each other, falling asleep on the couch together becomes Some Weird Shit. And as much as I’m enjoying putting them through hell sometimes I like to pretend that they will literally ever get to indulge in it.