Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

Anonymous asked: Micheletto for the headcanon meme!

wildehacked:

Headcanon A: what I think realistically

Micheletto decided to pledge himself to Cesare Borgia in under sixty seconds for a variety of reasons, most of which were reasonable, like: 

1) Working for the pope’s son is a better gig than working for a cardinal who may or may not succeed in killing the pope and then staying in favor once a new pope is anointed

2) Probably it would pay better

3) Cesare seems wayy more competent than Orsini, since Orsini hired Micheletto specifically to do this poisoning thing that Micheletto’s kind of doubtful about, which has resulted, obviously, in Cesare catching Micheletto in the act

4) and Micheletto absolutely values competence, and would rather work for someone who knows what the fuck he’s doing and won’t send Micheletto on assassination trips likely to get him killed.

5) This particular assassination attempt is doomed anyway, so why not make the best of things

Headcanon B: what I think is fucking hilarious

Micheletto decided to pledge himself to Cesare Borgia in under sixty seconds because:

1) Cesare looked at him like this: 

grinning and breathless and visibly having fun, almost as fast as Micheletto and just as cruel. 

2) Cesare kept grinning at him when he shoved Micheletto into a wall with his hand on the back of Micheletto’s neck like he was a fucking dog

3) and Micheletto, an obvious masochist and brutally stupid romantic, fell in love instantly. 

4) While I think this is fucking hilarious, I also absolutely believe it’s true. 

Headcanon C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends

There’s a world where Micheletto chooses Pascal instead of Cesare. 

He’s happy, in that world. 

Headcanon D: what would never work with canon but the canon is shit so I believe it anyway

Micheletto, the most A Poet a person can possibly be while being absolutely illiterate, ghost-writes the poems of Pietro Bembo while living in Ferrara as Lucrezia’s personal bodyguard/secret pet assassin, Cyrano de Bergerac style. As in, he sits there and brusquely, scowlingly dictates these lush gorgeous love poems to Bembo, who writes them down and sends them to Lucrezia. 

The poems are all subtextually about Cesare. 

Lucrezia loves them. 

lucreziaborgia asked: fave lucrezia borgia anecdotes?

felicedellarovere:

i don’t have many of my sources with me rn so this is entirely from memory - so forgive me if i get any of the sourcing wrong

• the fact that her second wedding was ENTIRELY unicorn-themed
  
• christopher hibbert describes her and sancia as “giggling like schoolgirls” and, at one point, interrupting mass bc they were gossiping and i just love that so much i love female friendships in history
  
• on the other end of the spectrum…. fucking isabella d’este’s husband after it was WELL ESTABLISHED that isabella hated her…. when will your faves ever be so #petty
  
• lucrezia wasn’t a clotheshorse in the way that isabella was by ANY means, but some diarist - i think it was sanudo but i’m not 100% - said that when she arrived in ferrara to meet the d’este court she wore a white dress with black velvet musical notes embroidered all over it that wrote out a song composed for the occasion and i would have loved to see that!
  

Anonymous asked: so uh this is gonna sound like a loaded question but i'm genuinely curious: how are you okay w the incest in borgias?

Um…you’re correct, that is a loaded question, and ultimately my answer boils down to ‘because I’m confident in my own ability to tell right from wrong in the real world’ but sure, we can do this.

First of all, I don’t have any personal issues centered around incest, which, like, I tend to think is the important part of this?  Obviously, if you’re uncomfortable with a relationship in a piece of media, please choose to take care of yourself and not engage with it.  Ex: I have the show Rick & Morty comprehensively blacklisted because I can’t deal with it.  I don’t have any of those issues with the Borgias so…thus, I watch it.

Second of all, it’s history.  Like, okay, I know this is a pretty fragile argument, but it’s pretty much accepted historical fact that there were some…interesting familial dynamics happening with the Borgia family, as with many of the powerful families in Italy at the time.  And I generally believe that if you’re doing a messy part of history, you need to deal with the fact that it was messy.  

Third of all, I just care a lot more about whether a fictional relationship is interesting than whether it’s the picture of mental health and moral purity.  Like, I’m sorry, I just do.  The Purity Olympics that this blue hellsite likes to get into exhaust me, I have unfollowed people for it when I got too tired of watching the discourse scroll down my dash.  I care infinitely more about how interesting and complicated the relationship and the emotions are.  Even the ships that are genuinely pretty good and harmless, I generally care about them in terms of complications.  Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley is my jam, but I would be WAY less interested if they weren’t both child generals in a war they were born into and victims of possession and traumatized and scared and courageous and forced to fight separately in order to win.  The very first thing I said about Diana/Steve Trevor was “why are we even here if he’s not torturing himself with guilt for staining the purest soul he’s ever known with war”.  I’ve always been someone who loves stories for their messiness, because it makes the characters and their relationships more interesting.  And by far the most interesting available permutation of Cesare Borgia and Lucrezia Borgia’s relationship is the one in the show, where they’re so bent and misshapen by the pressures and demands of their father’s nation-spanning chess game that the only way they really know how to love is with each other.

Fourth and finally, this is the kind of complicated morally graphite stuff I grew up on.  The five other people on the internet who’ve read the Kencyrath know what I’m talking about, but more than that, this is always the kind of story I’ve loved.  For all else that it is, Harry Potter is a story about a profoundly traumatized kid and the grim reality that sometimes there is no one else to fight except for you.  The Hero and the Crown is a story about how sometimes being good at something won’t change the fact that you’re not good at the right thing and you might have to beat that into people.  Jesus Christ, Animorphs brings up the question of whether or not it’s morally okay to commit a war crime.  A lot.  The characters commit war crimes.  A LOT.

Basically, I’m an adult with the ability to make my own decisions about right and wrong who enjoys grim and messy relationships because honestly life is grim and messy.  If you yourself, anon, are not comfortable with the incest in the Borgias, then you are more than welcome to not engage with it.

wildehacked asked: UH tell me everything about the star wars au immediately

So this is the OTHER Star Wars AU.  It was the second variant I came up with and, while it ruins fewer childhoods (this is the one with Prince Cesare of Alderaan and Lucrezia as the first of a new Jedi Order), I feel like it’s much truer to the characters.  Plus Lucrezia still gets a lightsaber.  This time with 2x the Dark Side!  It’s been a million years because HA I forgot this was done and I didn’t want to work on it anymore.

Cesare, no last name because slaves don’t have them, is a very small boy on Tatooine when a pair of Jedi Masters and their padawans show up with a child-queen. Cesare is only nine, but nine is already nearly an adult among the slave quarters, and he brings the whole lot of them back to his mother before they can get in trouble.  Queen Bonadeo is shy.  She doesn’t matter in this story.  One of the padawans, a fierce woman named Sforza, is almost through with her training, but the other is a pretty girl like a shaft of sunlight, just a little younger than Cesare.  The Jedi, Padawan Sforza’s Master and Master Farnese, want Cesare to come with them, to be trained as one of them, and he goes for the sake of the golden-haired girl who promises a better life.

When they return to the Core, they are greeted by a man just beginning to pass middle age, steel-grey hair and a steady, trustworthy voice, who is very interested in Cesare.  Cesare has never been interesting to anyone before.  It is incredible.  The man introduces himself as Senator Borgia, and tells Cesare to keep in contact. Cesare does.

Padawan Sforza becomes Cesare’s Master after her own Master is murdered.  She and Master Farnese could not be more different—Caterina, which Cesare is forbidden to call her, is fierce and military, while Giulia is gentle and fluid and diplomatic—but their opposing styles are beautifully complementary, and they are often put on missions together. Cesare comes to know the golden girl as Lucrezia, and they are best friends, as like as two halves of a coin, and as they grow up, they train together, fight together, live together, until the entire Temple speaks of them in a single breath, as Cesare-and-Lucrezia.  

Lucrezia is the only one who knows about how often Cesare and Master Sforza clash, about the times that they shout at each other until Cesare is screaming and Master Sforza is all but glowing with rage.  If Cesare cannot control his emotions, cannot master this lightsaber form, cannot do this simple Force trick, cannot be a Jedi, Caterina shouts, then what did her master die for? Lucrezia is furious—she is shaking with it, she has never been so angry in her entire life.  She destroys Giulia in a sparring match and is advanced to her Knighthood trials at sixteen, the youngest Knight in living memory. And living memory stretches back quite far, with Master Innocent being several centuries old.

That’s not quite true.  One other person knows.  Senator Borgia.  He does not think Cesare is a failure, he does not think Cesare was an ill investment, he thinks Cesare is bright and clever and strong and full of potential.  Cesare tells him everything.

Keep reading

words-writ-in-starlight asked: For the fic thing: "men died for you (i bet you liked it)" for Borgias. Fuck me the fuck up.

wildehacked:

Ao3 Summary: “Him,” Lucrezia says softly, and nods her head at the man across the room. Tomorrow he’ll be dead, she thinks, and masks her shiver with a bright smile. 

Actual Summary: AU where Micheletto isn’t hired to kill Cesare at that banquet. Instead, he’s hired to kill Lucrezia after her marriage to Giovanni Sforza, and winds up swearing fealty to her instead.

This fic features:
-Lucrezia attempting to poison Lord Sforza’s wine, which is how she stumbles across Micheletto attempting to poison her wine, which is how she ends up shoved against a stone wall with a dagger at her throat, Cesare’s lessons in self-defense meaning she has a knife pressed to the big vein in Micheletto’s thigh. “God, you’re fast,” she says, with the same false laugh she gives the French king in canon, the one that’s charming and sweet and full of bravado and masking utter terror. “I don’t think even my brother has someone as fast as you.” 
-Lucrezia in her nightgown with her gold hair falling all around her, knees tucked up to her chest, sitting on the edge of her bed, with Micheletto on the floor. Covered in blood. Having a quiet conversation about Saint Paul and marriage and the evils of being compelled to marry where the heart and flesh are unwilling. 
-Lucrezia doesn’t hook up with Paolo. She doesn’t know he exists. Lord Sforza is dead in the ground, and Pesaro is hers. 
-There is no baby. 
-Lucrezia doesn’t allow Cesare to poach her assassin. 
-Cesare is deeply, deeply suspicious of the assassin his little sister brought home from Pesaro. Micheletto falls in lust with him more or less at first sight, but his loyalty is already given. 
-Lucrezia realizes Micheletto is in love with Cesare before he does, although obviously he’s aware of the lust. 
-Micheletto realizes Lucrezia lusts after Cesare before she does, although obviously she’s aware of the love. 
-Lucrezia is deeply impressed by watching Micheletto garotte a watermelon
-Cesare is deeply distressed and deeply turned on by watching Micheletto garotte a watermelon and then watching Lucrezia stick her pink thumb into the meat of the severed fruit and lick off the juice.

EXACTLY everything I could have wanted

marmolita asked: mini-prompt: I know you've got a way to do Borgias cannibalism. I KNOW you can work it in somehow.

wildehacked:

The end of the world arrives two years into Pope Julius’s papacy, with Lucrezia pregnant in Ferrara, Micheletto suffering in the Castello St Angelo, and Cesare plotting escape from a very tall tower in Spain. In very short order, the rule of law is overthrown, the Pope is fled to France, and all the dead have risen.

Lucrezia’s husband dies in the first wave, throat ripped out by his own manservant. She keeps calm, arms herself, and orders a solider to see if dead men burn as well as live ones. They do, as it turns out. She fortifies the Castle Estense against the town in a matter of hours. In some obscure way, she is in her element: pregnant and radiant and ruthlessly practical. She is a Borgia: perhaps she was always meant to reign in hell. 

She takes in the surviving townsfolk and orders that the ornamental gardens be immediately disposed of, and all the vegetables in the storerooms planted. She orders a constant watch on the walls, men armed with flaming arrows and muskets. Within a month she’s retaken the town, although she keeps the walls shut. Within six months, word has spread that Ferrara is a safe haven, although the Borgia bitch who rules over it will kill a man at the slightest provocation, not just for infection: for theft, for rape, for spoiling water. Her men are frighteningly loyal. It’s whispered that she keeps the dead away with spells. Soon Machiavelli is her vassal, and da Vinci, and the former bishop of Milan. 

They cannot hold the outlying farms. The dead roam freely in the countryside. Lucrezia has over two hundred mouths to feed, and only a few vegetable gardens to do it with. 

Machiavelli is the first to propose it, and da Vinci decides how it must be implemented, but Lucrezia makes the decision. Her children will not starve, and neither will her subjects. 

She is the queen of hell. There will be meat on her table.

* 

Micheletto is locked in a cell when the dead rise, which saves him. He might have died of thirst anyway, but a man is eaten alive not three feet from his cell, and when the bloodstained thing has had its fill and left, Micheletto tugs the corpse closer, steals the man’s dagger and picks the lock. 

All of Rome is a charnel house.  

It’s remarkable how easy it is, really, adjusting to the new world. He already trusted no one. He already knows how to part a resisting man’s head from his body. 

He wastes several weeks making his way to Forlí, but when he arrives he finds it a graveyard. Cesare Borgia had destroyed the walls on his word, and the city had no time to rebuild. He chases a walker out of his mother’s house, observes the smashed pots and the bowl of soup left rotting over a cold fire-pit. There’s a brown stain on the floor, but no body. It’s little comfort. 

It’s another month before he reaches Ferrara. 

He finds the duchess of Ferrara in the kitchens, a fetching smear of blood high on her perfect cheekbone, supervising the cookery of a feast-day supper. A man’s leg rests on a wooden table, skinned but still visibly human, surrounded by bunches of thyme and rosemary and bowls of skinned potatoes. None of the kitchen servants appear fazed, although more than a few of them cast him suspicious looks, hands tightening on their knives. No one trusts strangers these days, especially not those still covered in the dust of the road. 

“Micheletto,” Lucrezia gasps, her eyes filling with tears, and flings herself into his arms. It’s the first time he’s heard his name spoken aloud since the world ended; his own eyes sting briefly, Lucrezia’s fine golden head pressed into his neck, a relic of the world as it was. 

She makes him the captain of her guard, and he sleeps in her bed. They don’t speak of it, and it’s only sleep–she clings to him because he feels like the last living connection to her family, and he has always found it difficult to resist giving the Borgias what they want. It should be a terrible scandal, but the world has ended, heaven is barred, and the children of Ferrara eat human flesh. Lucrezia Borgia can take whomever she pleases to bed. 

So by day Micheletto kills demons for Lucrezia Borgia, and at night he eats at her table, plays with her son and infant daughter, and lets her pull him down into the duke of Ferrara’s bed. She rests her hand over his heart like the mere fact that it beats is a sign that Cesare is alive, that Micheletto’s return means Cesare’s too, that his worthless life is a thin thread stretching somewhere out to Cesare in the monstrous dark. 

He isn’t happy, but this isn’t what he thought hell would be like, either.

*long drawn out gasp*

HOW WAS I NOT AWARE OF THIS

Anonymous asked: the borgias for the asks?

FOLKS THIS IS GONNA GET NSFW FAIR WARNING.

For this meme, which I love.

name ur politically correct ship that no one ever questions

…is there even such a thing in Borgias?  Um…I think not.  How about my ‘supported by canon’ ship, which is Cesare/Lucrezia.

now name ur trash ship

CESARE/MICHELETTO.  But like specifically in this really complicated power dynamic where Cesare’s emotions are all tangled up with his overwhelming need to prove that he’s in control of something, of anything, and God, Micheletto offers up his throat to the knife as sweetly and obediently as a lamb raised for the slaughter and Cesare loves that equally as much as anything else.  And Micheletto loves Cesare like a man worshiping his god, inextricable and helpless and sacrificial, a love that’s all about loyalty and penance and going to his knees and blood on the altar.

and ur really trashy im-going-to-hell ship

Cesare/Micheletto/Lucrezia, in which Cesare loves Lucrezia and Lucrezia loves Cesare and Micheletto loves Cesare so much (see above) and he would die for Lucrezia, at first because Cesare loves her and later because Micheletto is loyal to her himself (he does not want her the way they both want Cesare, and cannot love her the way he loves Cesare because there is only space in his heart for one love like that, but they find a common ground in Cesare and Micheletto would do a great many things to keep Lucrezia’s lily-white hands clean of blood), and Lucrezia’s children calls them both Uncle and Micheletto is bemused by this while Cesare is pained and it’s just all really complicated and awful and yeah, no one is really at ease but they’re happier than they could ever otherwise be.

This ship gets 100000% messier better when you add the fact that both Cesare and Lucrezia are married to the mix.  Because can you imagine the deals and maneuvering that have to be done in order to keep the balance copacetic.

who is your cinnamon roll fave who everyone loves

Oh, Paolo, my poor boy.  And also Djem.  All these people Juan “Fuck-ass” Borgia has killed.  Does Lucrezia count, or does she lose Cinnamon Roll status after she commits cold-blooded murder?

who is your sinnamon roll fave who everyone loves to hate/hates to love

…I don’t…I don’t even know.  There is no fandom to speak of, so I’m not sure who would fall into this category.  Giulia.  Rodrigo/Alexander VI.  

who is your trash fave who is so problematic they probably have hate tumblrs dedicated to them

EVERYONE.  ALL OF THEM.  ESPECIALLY MICHELETTO AND CESARE.  BUT TBH YOU DON’T WATCH THIS DUMPSTER FIRE OF A SHOW FOR THE CINNAMON ROLLS.

what is ur  guiltiest guilty fave fandom

This one?????

what is the fic you want to write/read but can’t because it is too full of Sin

Oh my buddy my dude it’s all here?  Like, there is no fic I can think of that’s more sinful than the show.

…oh wait, no, AU where Cesare and Lucrezia happen sooner and she sneaks into the confessional and sucks him off while he’s wearing his cardinal’s vestments, and the whole fic is heavily laden with imagery of Lucrezia as both Madonna and supplicant and also of Intercession and some complicated feelings about God, and Cesare being very VERY conflicted about his sister’s glorious golden hair spread across the blood red of his vestments.

There, I hope that was gratifying for everyone.

what is the most sinful fic you have ever read/written

I swear TO GOD that I am still writing that one porn fic with Micheletto and Cesare and scars as heraldry and the giving of orders and sexually tense removal of vestments.

what is the worst thing you want to become canon (character death, trash-ship etc)

Literally every single thing in this post, but tbh all my darkest desires are fulfilled within like the first two episodes when Micheletto takes a cat ‘o nine tails and hands it to Cesare and looks him dead in the eye as he says, “So whip me, my lord.”

what is your most sinful headcanon

Cesare has always had a powerful preference for blondes, the more golden their hair, the better.  He has a recurring dream about a beautiful woman sitting above him on a bed of gold cloth, her hair falling around them both as she kisses his lips and he fucks her.  His preference for fair-haired women is common knowledge.  The fact that it stems from a dream about his sister is not.  

Furthermore, I definitely agree with Wilde that Cesare has definitely had a dream about fucking his sister’s hair.  Cesare has a thing for his sister’s hair.

As for Cesare/Micheletto, c’mon now, we can all agree that they’ve fucked while he was wearing his vestments more than once.

what is your cutest headcanon

Um…when they were younger, Lucrezia taught Cesare how to braid her hair.  He still remembers, it’s A Thing.  I also recognize that this is not so much ‘cute’ in light of the previous answer.

what is your heart-breakingist head canon

THE END OF THE MOVIE SCRIPT????

Oh, and obviously the fact that none of the Borgias really believe in God (they observe the traditions, but even the Pope doesn’t really have faith) save for Cesare, who believes with all his heart in the prayers and sacraments he says every day, and believes with all his heart that he’s going to Hell, and sides with his father and his family anyway.  I find that very tragic.

what is ur crackiest crack ship

Cesare/Good Sense, tied with Lucrezia/Consistent And Prolonged Happiness

what is ur marginally less cracky crack ship

Cesare/Craftiness, which is tied with Micheletto/Religion, because you want to talk about people who definitely believe in God and definitely do terrible things anyway and basically just have a profoundly complicated relationship with religion and kind of approach murder as a religious connection not unlike that of a confessor to a supplicant, Micheletto’s your boy.  CAN YOU TELL THAT I HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT THIS A L O T.

what is ur favourite ridiculous au

Um…this Temeraire AU from @wildehacked.  (Incidentally, in the Black Sails Temeraire AU, Miranda would be a dragon and Flint is her captain’s beloved and when her captain is cruelly ripped away from them both, she and Flint escape because Miranda can’t stand another captain and Flint just needs out and it’s all very terrible.  I digress.)

Also, I’m really a sucker for daemon AUs!  I have no idea what this one would look like except that Micheletto would have a hunting hound, the kind of rangy mixed-breed creature whose jaws can crack bone and whose loyalty stretches beyond the grave, and everyone believes that Rodrigo Borgia/Alexander VI has a white dove.  (The snake he keeps quite literally up his sleeve is a melanistic asp.  Cesare thinks this is funny, in a bitter sort of way.)

lathori asked: I hate you so much. As per our conversation, you absolute heathen: Borgias Star Wars AU Cesare as Leia Lucrezia as Luke Micheletto as Han Fucking go. I hate you so much.

This is the first of two Star Wars AUs, this one is mostly because I profoundly wanted an AU where Cesare was literally a prince of an entire planet and also I wanted Lucrezia to have a lightsaber.  I am currently working on another one for @wildehacked in which everyone is in the much more obvious position of being Sith.

Cesare doesn’t expect a rescue, as he sits in his cell, back to the wall and one leg stretched out in front of him with the other bent close to his body.  The ceremonial robes of Alderaan are heavy, uncomfortable at the best of times and these…these are not the best of times. Deep red cloth rubs against his skin, raw and tender from a few rounds with a torture droid, and he ignores it. He told them nothing—he has no profound alliance to the Rebellion, but the image of the great and terrible Darth Sixtus wading through the endless dunes of Dantooine had amused him, and after their young general turned their weapon on Alderaan…

Well. Cesare is (was) hardly beloved of his people, raised by the stern and austere Viceroy of Alderaan, della Rovere, but that was his planet, and after it was gone, he denied the Empire information out of sheer spite.  It had been worth it, to see the towering dark figure of Sixtus storm out of the room in a rage.

Still, though.  His planet is gone, and they didn’t love their distant prince, and the Rebellion trusts him only on the weight of his adopted guardian, who was well known in the right circles for his totally ruthless devotion to the cause.  Cesare sent away the information he had been told to care for with the droid, a PA-L0 unit more willful than was good for it. It might make it to the Sforza woman della Rovere had intended it for, or it might not—either way, it is out of his hands.  The Rebellion won’t expend the manpower to send a rescue mission, and the Empire has a new planet-killer to play with.  He’s confident he won’t live long enough to find out whether PA-L0 made it or not.

It’s something of a surprise, then, when alarms go off and his cell door opens to admit the shortest Stormtrooper he’s ever seen.  

Cesare silently arches an eyebrow.  Princes grow up in the public eye, especially on bustling Core worlds like Alderaan, and Cesare prides himself on the ability to show no response to any disaster. He’d had to cultivate it, after the second time he was caught with someone who, perhaps, should have been off-limits.

“Are you lost?” he asks dryly, and the Stormtrooper reaches up to wrestle off their helmet, and Cesare’s mouth snaps shut in surprise.

It’s not the hard-faced man he expected.  Instead it’s a woman, a girl, really, with a youthful face and hair like sunlight pinned up in a knot, and she smiles at him, perfect tiny teeth a string of matched pearls behind her pink lips.  She looks about his own age, maybe younger.  There’s a sharp tug, like a cord anchored somewhere in Cesare’s spine is pulling him toward her, and he has the sudden inexplicable urge to brush her hair back, the wayward coils of spun gold escaping around her face.

“I’m Lucrezia Borgia,” she says, dimpling at him, and he tries to assemble words to reply. “I found your Paolo unit.  I’m here to rescue you.”

Cesare has made worse snap decisions in his life than take a rescue wearing the face of an angel, he concludes in under a second.  They run.

They find another false Stormtrooper, and this one is far more like what Cesare expected, a man with eyes like stone and a dispassionate expression under the smudged blood on his cheek.  Lucrezia calls him Micheletto, and Cesare snatches a blaster off a dead Stormtrooper to toss at him.

“My lord,” Micheletto says with a slight incline of his head.

“This is Cesare della Rovere,” Lucrezia says, as if Micheletto doesn’t know who he is. “He gives your orders now.  Take us back to the Condottiere, and we’ll find Caterina on the way.”

They do find Caterina.  Just in time to watch Sixtus cut her down.  

“I knew her brother,” Lucrezia says coolly as they crowd into the cockpit of Micheletto’s ship, the Condottiere.  It’s a bit of a wreck, but he pilots it like a master, as skillfully as he had cut down any Stormtrooper in their path.  “He was an unpleasant man, to say the least.”  She fingers the silver hilt at her hip—a lightsaber, she tells Cesare quietly, apparently once the possession of her father.  “You’ll forgive me if I don’t shed any tears over her corpse.”

“Of course,” Cesare says, and she smiles at him, and he takes it like a blaster bolt to the heart.

Some other highlights…

Lucrezia brings down the Death Star, her eyes closed and her X-Wing guided by something at the center of her chest, something cold and bright as a Tatooine moon.  When she lands, laughing and giddy with triumph, Cesare snatches her up around the waist and spins her around, and he smiles at her, and she thinks idly about kissing it off his lips.  Micheletto smiles his faint smile and kisses her cheek like she’s a lady of status.  Lucrezia gets an award.  Micheletto, a killer and a criminal and a bloody hand for hire, insists that he should not, and Cesare does not argue with him.

Cesare finds the leader of the Rebellion, an ex-Senator named Machiavelli, very much to his liking.  It is common knowledge that Machiavelli has something of an affection for the ex-Prince of Alderaan (it’s something Cesare asks himself often—is he still a prince at all, if he has no planet?), and Cesare is not above leveraging this to his purposes.

Lucrezia kisses Cesare on Hoth, after she almost dies in the cold, her skin still flushed from the incredibly hot shower she just took, and he clutches her to him like she’s as ethereal as sunlight.  Her golden hair hangs around them like a curtain, in her quarters, and the red lines her nails trace over his shoulders and chest sting bright and clean, and Cesare thinks that he has never loved someone like he loves this woman.

Cesare kisses Micheletto in an asteroid field, during an argument, and again on Cloud City, where an old acquaintance turns them over to Sixtus, and it’s harsh and bloodied and hungry.  They fuck in dark corners, still half-dressed and breathless, and Micheletto swears allegiance like he’s praying to a god, like Cesare is a force of nature, like Cesare is the Force.  Cesare leaves bruises shaped like finger-lengths and the curve of his lips, and they’re still there when Micheletto is frozen in carbonite by Darth Sixtus.

Lucrezia spends all of thirty seconds training with a withered old Jedi named Orsini before she rushes away again, not even pausing at his warnings as she takes flight for Cloud City.  When she arrives, there are terrible revelations about her family—Darth Sixtus, once Rodrigo Borgia, a power-hungry general from the Clone Wars.  On the Condottiere, she cries into Cesare’s shoulder, her severed hand aching, and he kisses her tears away, her sunlight curls spilling over them both.

Cesare saves Micheletto.  He does not care to be asked why he takes such a risk for a man he professes to be a simple instrument.

Lucrezia, with a new silver hand like a piece of art, discovers that there is another Borgia—there was a third, an elder brother gone missing as a small child, before the Death Star was destroyed, but the young general died with his weapon and now there is only one.  Her twin brother, Cesare Borgia, Prince of ex-Alderaan.

Cesare does not care.

If you see this, post the last three lines you’ve written.

wildehacked:

genufa:

crossroadscastiel:

bokuno-jinsei:

cannibalharpsichord:

mnemonicmadness:

michaelssw0rd:

theragnarokd:

dsudis:

cesperanza:

polizwrites:

everyworldneedslove:

arukou-arukou:

Some way to stop seeing bowler hats or glowing cigarette butts from the corners of his eye. Sometimes he swore he could smell them, unwashed bodies muted with mud, a godawful stench really, but his godawful stench. His men.

“And he did indeed look very fine. You’re still better.” He rocked up onto his toes and kissed Bucky’s cheek. “Go tell ‘em Mister Stark approves and appreciates the rush job.”

Thankfully, Pepper simply laughed instead of taking offense.  “Good heavens, your mother is almost as bad as mine!  I didn’t even know she read  the New York papers until she called and asked me all about you after the gala.   Next thing I know she’s going to be  unearthing the hope chest she started for me when I was sixteen.”    

“Jus’ go to the tenth floor,” he said, he said, slurring a little; vodka always went to his head, along with whiskey, tequila, and scopolamine.  “I can get you the right sort of gun.”

“These are special, aren’t they?“  

 Steve raised his eyes to meet Buck’s, then, and he held Buck’s gaze for a long, still moment before he nodded and turned away. He carefully laid the two pennies in the exact center of the big table, side by side, two bright glints in that dark expanse.

“Yes, Master,” Harold says. “Forgive me, Master.”

He lets John take some of his weight, walking down from the stage. A bittersweet feeling: trust John doesn’t deserve.

There’s a wry expression on Arthur’s face as he watches the two of them leave, Merlin hanging on Cenred’s arm. He hates himself for putting Merlin in this position.

Unbeknownst to him, someone else is also watching them leave from across the room, and the smile playing on her lips signals doom.

“There is no such thing as dignity in death. Their brains have stopped functioning, everything they are, were or ever could’ve been is already gone, all that’s left is a rotting pile of meat.”

He gave his sister a disturbed look and watched her cringe, aware of her own morbidity.

“Sorry, that was… insensitive.”

Nothing about him particularly was in disarray, but he felt rumpled.  The stain on his shirt, garishly red under the fluorescent lights, had already set but he couldn’t bring himself to care.  

 There were more difficult things to deal with now.

“You are not among the plethora of the faceless. I know you may not have wished it, and perhaps I am partially to blame for the circumstance, but your involvement with the auxilia has undoubtedly caused many to notice you as an individual. All it takes is a particular person recognizing you as a man with an identity and your value alters its state.”

More vultures moved in, and a flock of gulls gusted away with the wind. In the corner of Will’s eye they appeared a great winged cloud, flapping and calling to each other. The stranger closed his sketchpad and stood, his feet meeting sand as he walked away.

Dessert was passion fruit mousse and chocolate ganache tarts, served with a selection of cheeses and sweet wines. It was well past midnight, and when he was accosted by the ruckus of guests falling, uproariously, into the swimming pool fully clothed, Will Graham decided abruptly that he had had enough.

He showed himself to the kitchens.

Thomas touches the tips of his fingers to his jaw, just beneath his ear. The barely-there contact sends a stubborn shiver of yearning through his chest. “We have never been able to keep each other safe,” Thomas says quietly. 

Micheletto’s gaze flicked down to follow the path of Cesare’s hand, then looked back to his eyes, patient.

Cesare pressed his lips together, considering.  He needed…he didn’t know what he needed.  

“What would you ask of me, my lord?” Micheletto asked quietly.

wildehacked:

wildehacked:

wildehacked:

today i have been quietly worrying about who would be a dragon in the black sails temeraire au. 

having finished the show i am no nearer to a solution, except for the practically useless knowledge that charles vane would definitely be a dragon in the temeraire au. 

i’m no nearer to an answer, except that 

in the BORGIAS au it would be easy. 

 Micheletto “I was a masterless dog once, but no more” Corella is a mad unharnessed dragon and Cesare is supposed to get eaten by him as part of an assassination plot but then silvertongued Cesare starts talking to him and after about three minutes Micheletto abruptly decides to devote his entire soul to him, and to the horror of his enemies Cesare becomes a dragon captain. and at some point Cesare is imprisoned by Pope Julius and Micheletto goes wild with grief and rage and Lucrezia has to temporarily become his captain so he doesn’t raze Rome to the ground/get murdered by the papal armies, and then Lucrezia and Micheletto form a political alliance that becomes an emotional alliance that becomes an uneasy undefined quasi romantic alliance (and also Micheletto is a Catholic dragon who quotes St Paul and grimly assumes that he doesn’t have a soul), but anyway yeah the Pope’s daughter probably burns down Naples while very publicly flirting with her dragon and making everyone uncomfortable and when they eventually DO get Cesare back and raze most of the Romagna to the ground, Burchard dutifully writes down that the most evil family in history were also a bunch of dragonfuckers, and the historians argue incessantly about whether or not it was true or whether Italy just hated the Borgias that much.