aethersea asked: Could you do Brenneth for your ask meme maybe? I want to get to know her better.
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.
