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

So because I like Dying and Being Dead, I was talking to @lathori about how every universe needs more time loop AU’s (like Groundhog Day but with more murder, given the kind of things I like), and that sort of led into her being like “Well, come up with a few then, be the content you want to see in the world,” and naturally the first thing I came up with since I’m rereading The Captive Prince was an AU where Laurent’s life resets every time he or Damen dies.  Soooo…this is the first loop.

Laurent is drunk when the doors open and the slave is marched through.  It is possible that this does dangerous things to his judgement.

He looks at the slave, dressed in the brief silks of his barbarian homeland with his face ornamented with gold paint.  The collar and chain are anything but decorative, and the slave’s carefully blank expression does not hide the revulsion in his eyes.

The slave is broad through his shoulders and trim through the waist, with the muscles of a soldier and a handsome face under the black curls.  Sharp jaw, full mouth, dark eyes that gleam under a strong brow. A scar, ragged and bold even in comparison to the others littering the slave’s body, rests at his shoulder.

Laurent feels something strike his chest, like being slammed with an open palm and pinned to the ground, and the room seems to vanish from around him.  All he hears is a ringing in his ears, and all he sees is the man in front of him, being pushed to his knees with a look of raw, hot hatred flashing over his face.  Laurent sympathizes.

He stands and walks forward, stops just paces from the Akeilon, and savors the words on his tongue.

“I knew the King of Akeilos had sent me a gift,” Laurent says, almost a purr, the most seductive voice he can put on.  He tilts his head, lets his hair fall away from his face and throat, summons every scrap of his brother’s proud nobility that he can touch.  “But I didn’t think even the barbarian king would send me his own brother, shackled and painted like a common whore.”

There’s a beat of silence, shock radiating palpably from the courtiers and guards.  Laurent and Prince Damianos stare each other down.

Damianos surges to his feet, shrugging off the guards, and Laurent moves.

His hand closes around a blade hidden in the stiff material of his collar, draws, and thrusts it unerringly into Damianos’ exposed throat.  Skin parts like silk, flesh like water.  Blood gushes out in a fountain over Laurent’s hands, the gleaming dark eyes wide as the Akeilon’s bound hands make an aborted grab for his throat.  Laurent drops to the floor with him, kneeling over Damianos as blood pools and stains their clothing.  Damianos jerks and shudders under Laurent’s hands, gasping, blood bursting red over his lips and tongue as if he’s been eating berries, or pomegranates.

The triumph that burns in Laurent’s chest is as hot and sick-making as the grief that floored him when they brought Auguste’s body back.  He revels in it.

He feels the moment Damianos dies, the sudden shivering loss of tension, and Laurent—

Laurent is drunk when the doors open.

WHEN YOU SEE THIS, SHARE 3 RANDOM LINES FROM A WIP

skymurdock:

poplitealqueen:

amaronith:

onemuseleft:

“Funny. I don’t recall that I was allowed to do much talking about it at all.” Tony met his gaze briefly, mouth twisted in an unhappy frown, angry-looking dark circles under his eyes. His eyes were dull and tired and Steve fought back the urge to wince. He’d never wanted to hurt Tony, that had never been the plan, but they’d been together for three years and things could only be so painless after that much time.

“Yes, I’m sure. I may be a jerk, but it’s not because I don’t listen.” It was because his superhero secret identity caused him to bail on plans at a bank robbery’s notice and gave him a predisposition to what could be called compulsive lying, but hey.

Sue gave Peter an amused look, but gave his arm a gentle squeeze. “At least you’re self-aware.”

He wrapped his arms around Bilbo and hugged him, and he thought that if he didn’t hug anyone else apart from the hobbit ever again, it would not be a terrible thing. Hugging Bilbo was like coming home. Thorin had lost too many homes; he wanted to keep this one till the end of days.

“How is he, anyway?” says Obi-wan.

“Dude, can’t you use the Force to check?” says Darcy. “Or, you know, you could just ask him.”

“The Force does not work that way,” says Obi-wan, depositing her cup of coffee in front of her with a sniff.

Grantaire lets out a slow breath and scrubs his hands back through his hair, feeling tangled curls catch at his fingers and yank at his scalp. “Okay.  I’m going to go take a shower until I feel less like I’m going to have a panic attack.  Help yourself to coffee or whatever’s in the fridge.”

“Give me your phone,” Éponine says, and doesn’t move from where she’s sitting in a ball on the floor.  Instead she holds out her hand, palm up, with a stern arch to her eyebrows—like she’s reclaiming something that’s already hers rather than blatantly commandeering Grantaire’s personal property.

He hands over the phone. 

(Source: post-and-out)

Anonymous asked: 7 and whoever you want

7: I do not believe in love at first sight.  But god damn. (Look at you.)

Two things.  First, it’s a very dangerous thing to say ‘whoever I want,’ because I go straight for the niche fandoms that I love the most. Thus: Animorphs.  Second!  It has come to my attention that I accidentally swapped two prompts—this line is actually prompt 17, and prompt 7 got used for the Sith!Padme AU.  Because I’m a fucking disaster area and my brain likes to pull switches like that on me.  (Math classes suck for this exact reason.)  But like the Sith!Padme AU is done?  And I was halfway through this by the time I realized, so I am VERY sorry but I’m doing this.

Tobias could give you the exact moment he fell in love with Rachel, as a bruised thirteen-year-old kid in a body he barely remembered.  Love at first sight was a fairy tale, but he could give every detail of the moment—it was like light being struck from a match, casting everything in a fresh glow.

Admittedly, he remembered everything about that night in the construction site, about Elfangor’s serious eyes and Visser Three’s terrible morph and the desperate giddy feeling in his chest of yes, yes, I knew it, there’s more to this world.  Which made a lot more sense, in retrospect, but of course at the time he just knew that something had clicked into place.  While everyone else was standing around being awestruck and wondering, Tobias had been too busy feeling a wash of relief that, oh God, he wasn’t crazy, there really was something else and it was exactly as spectacular as he had always believed it would be.

But even in that chaos, Rachel had been like a beacon.

He’d had a crush on her from the moment he arrived in town, of course, but then he could guarantee that about every boy at their school agreed with him, save the ones who were related to her.  He could list five girls off the top of his head who were probably head over heels for Rachel, having a crush on her wasn’t anything special.  She was clever and funny and fierce, her beautiful face was almost an afterthought.

And Tobias had needed something bright and strong to hold onto, and just being around Rachel, in the line of her sharp eyes, was a good start.

So it never did shock him, that he was in love with her.

It wasn’t her grip on his hand as they watched Elfangor die, although he was sure everyone would be shocked to hear it.  That was just…Rachel, scared half to death and still with strength and ferocity to spare.  She clutched his hand because it made her feel better, to steady someone else, and God Tobias had needed it.  He’d almost bolted right then, run back to the Andalite’s side, because he barely had a life to live anyway and he’d felt something from Elfangor’s thoughts he’d never felt before.  Some messy tangle of regret and pride and grief, all centered around a bright hard thing that made affection look like small fry. The loss of it hurt like broken glass in Tobias’ throat, sharp and bloody.  And it was Rachel’s grip on his hand as he cried that kept Tobias hidden behind the wreckage, kept him sane enough to live through the night.

But it was later, that it really hit him.

They were running and, at the time, Tobias had desperately wished for wings.  It was almost funny, now, but probably only to him—he’d never told the others how often he wished he could fly away, before he got a new appreciation for the dangers of wishes.

Here was something else the others never knew: he had three cracked ribs that night. There was no way, even with adrenaline pumping ice through his blood, that he would be able to outrun the Hork-Bajir on their tail.  Tobias’ forgotten human body was tall, but skinny and out of shape, not strong like Cassie or fast like Jake, he was slow and hurt and shocky.  And he had a moment of strange clarity, as if he could see the future as clearly as the Ellimist ever showed it to them.  He would die, and it would be awful, but the others would live and that would be…good.  They had people who would miss them, and he didn’t.  They would live to fight the Andalite’s war, maybe save the world, and Tobias would get to rest.

And then Rachel, tall, athletic Rachel who could probably have outpaced every last one of them, even Jake, slowed, and dropped back.  She was shouting, arms outstretched with a wild, ecstatic look of challenge on her face.  Tobias could only catch about one word in three, but they were…vivid.

That was the moment.  Tobias, tearing across the rough ground of the construction site with impossibility on his heels.  Rachel, screaming curses in death’s face in order to protect the people she cared about. It was more like being struck by lightning than anything so polite as falling in love, but.

Goddamn.

snakeassassins:

one thing that’s always bothered me about most people’s depiction of Holmes’s usage of cocaine is that most people in Victorian England were only just beginning to realize how badly it affected people???

like tbh I feel like a better modern equivalent would just be Holmes dumping a five hour energy into his fifth cup of coffee while Watson, a trained medical professional, stares at him in horror

All I can think of is some kind of reincarnation AU where, like, Sherlock and John have been getting reincarnated for a few centuries now and for a few lifetimes finding each other was a struggle because, A, no internet, and, B, “Do you know how many people are named John, John, this is absurd, please keep your birth name even if you like John better.”  But now it’s the modern day so one day this guy just starting med school rolled out of bed and was like “Well that’s different, also I’m changing my name” and immediately sat down at his computer and googled Sherlock Holmes because Sherlock is a bit of a dramatic prick and there’s no way he kept a bland modern name instead of Sherlock.

So they find each other on the internet and meet up and John’s happy, of course, because Sherlock is his soulmate whether you ship it romantically or not.  But also he’s a bit wary.  Because every lifetime has come with some sort of attached stimulant addiction, usually cocaine or something similar, and he’s worried that Sherlock is going to get them both arrested.  On the other hand, John’s made something of a career out of proving that, whatever the stimulant of the day is, it’s dangerous, so Sherlock has unknowingly been involved in a lot of medical revelations and John knows that there’s about a 97% chance that whatever Sherlock’s drug of choice is will probably be revealed as something very dangerous by their next lifetime.

John, a med student who in his last year of undergrad was Known for that one time he finished out finals period at a total of eight days with twenty hours of sleep all told, fueled by Monster and willpower, feels his heart sink a little when Sherlock orders a seven-shot coffee and admits that he drinks at least two a day.

(via skymurdock)

sroloc--elbisivni asked: OKAY BUT THE REAL QUESTION IS what does the marriage look like from the side of the elves when they realize "man our weird cheesy prince actually landed quite a catch"

It’s a VERY SLOW realization on all parts okay, I can tell you that.

Well.  No.  That’s not quite true.  It takes about three weeks for the dwarves to realize that Legolas is actually…nice.  Which is weird.  Like, he’s an elf.  Elves are not nice.  Elves are dicks (there are a few people who make this generalization in Gimli’s hearing and he gets very defensive of the Lady of Lorien and also of his favorite asshole elf), but more to the point, elves are serious.  And Legolas…is not.  Sure, he can pull it together when he needs to and comport himself like a stiff unsmiling statue, but Gimli stubbornly drags him to Durin’s Day and blatantly ignores every disapproving eye as he teaches Legolas one of the old circle dances.

And like.  There’s no rules that say only dwarves can know the circle dances, not like Khuzdul (”Better not tell them about that yet, amrâlime,” Gimli says, grinning up at Legolas), but there’s sort of an expectation.  And Legolas picks it up quickly but the circle dances are all stomping feet and clapping hands and smiles and laughter and shouting, and it’s just WRONG to see an elf doing that.  It’s weird.  It’s so weird that everyone in Erebor is too in shock to actually protest.  But it does do wonders for proving that Legolas, while kind of an asshole (”’I am going to find the sun,’ remember that?” Gimli asks, arching an eyebrow, and Legolas smirks), is also kind of a puppy.

But the elves.  The ELVES.  Listen.

Listen.

I have many elves I adore with my whole heart, including but not limited to:

• The Lady Galadriel, the Eldritch Being of Light Middle-Earth Needs
• The Lord Celeborn, her loving house husband
  
• Elrond, who has survived approximately one billion horror movies and deserves a goddamn Rest
• Arwen Undomiel, the love of my life who I will defend with my last breath
• Elladan and Elrohir, her brothers who probably don’t give Aragorn a shovel-talk so much as “good luck buddy if you fuck up she’ll end you”
• Lindir, Elrond’s steward who, wow, puts up with so much
• Celebrimbor, the previous elf who had a dwarf buddy and who was also probably considered very weird because he liked smith-work

But the majority of the elves who see Gimli and Legolas wandering around largely respond with “Oh dear Eru Legolas we know you’re weird but you’re going to marry THAT” and Legloas kind of fidgets and their eyes get really big and they go “YOU ALREADY MARRIED THAT?”  (Fun fact: Tolkien elves get married by having sex, the ceremony of a wedding is entirely decorative, and they can tell from the way someone walks if they’re married or not.  And also elf hypermonogamy is a thing, which is 200% my jam.)  And then Legolas gets really angry and protective because HOW DARE YOU INSULT GIMLI, ONE OF THE NINE WALKERS, WARRIOR OF EREBOR.  And Gimli pinches the bridge of his nose and wonders if elf wine is really as strong as Legolas claims it is, and, if so, how much it would take to get him drunk.  But I digress.

It takes the elves a while to figure out that Gimli is, by dwarvish standards, the Ultimate Catch, is my point here.

Years.  It takes a couple years.  Maybe two.  Three.  For the really dense and/or bigoted ones, it might take a decade or more.  

Thranduil gets hate mail, basically, before he understands why he’s getting the hate mail other than the fact that He Is An Elf.  It’s mostly to the tune of “CONTROL YOUR OFFSPRING” and Thranduil sighs and slugs back another goblet of wine (”My Lord, it’s not even noon,” reinstated-as-captain Tauriel says, very flat, and Thranduil glares blearily at her and holds out his goblet because children marrying dwarves justifies many things) because he wishes he had that option.

And then there’s a diplomatic negotiation that comprises the Greenwood and Erebor nobility, and it’s the first time Erebor dwarves have been peacefully invited to Eryn Lasgalen in…ever, maybe.  Certainly in living memory.  And of course Legolas and Gimli are expected to be there, not just because they’re a symbol of the new intensely awkward truce, but also because they have an incredible amount of status themselves by this point–Legolas is a prince and Gimli is Lord of Aglarond, two of the Nine Walkers and the Three Hunters, warriors of renown from the Battle of the Black Gate, trusted advisers and dear friends of the King of Gondor and Arnor…

And there’s Legolas, dressed in silks and an elegant cloak and a crown and a dwarvish clasp in his hair and a cloakpin from the Lady of Lorien herself, and all of Eryn Lasgalen pats themselves on the back because hey, their weird prince did grow up pretty well even if his taste in life partners leaves something to be desired.  

And then there’s the life partner in question, several steps behind Legolas because they’re representing their homelands rather than their marriage and this is Eryn Lasgalen and Legolas is still the King’s son.  And Gimli is dressed in the finery of a dwarf lord, with a crown on his red curls and his beard braided intricately and gold clasps in his hair, with the Lady’s clasp on his cloak and the lines of his tattoos and scars clear on his bare arms, with a finely-worded compliment on his tongue for even Thranduil himself and a laugh that lightens the sky–

“Yavanna save me,” mutters one of Thranduil’s entourage.  “I want one.”