assembled writings, take two: the ones i did!
brody asks aloysius his intentions, for ariel
Aloysius stares at the ceiling for thirteen seconds precisely, sighing, before he says- "No, it's all right, I've got - Caroline?"
"Half an hour."
"-I've got half an hour, send him up."
The boy's name is Brody, he recalls; he lives with Maria and the rest of their housemates at the carriage house and Aloysius has met him in passing a handful of times, but never properly had a conversation. He knows his name, he knows what he looks like, he knows that he's important to Maria - and to Gates, the mad Englishwoman that laughs at everything.
Brody is sitting across from Aloysius - there are a few chairs, away from the more imposing dark wood desk - and he looks young as hell, dead certain and simultaneously a bit awkward.
"I want to know what your intentions are towards Maria," Brody says, suddenly, before he can ask him what exactly he's doing here.
It's not that Aloysius had prepared an answer for this - frankly, he hadn't expected anyone to ask - but it comes easily and without his needing to think about it: "I'm going to marry her," he says, like and tomorrow the sun will come up, and water will still be wet.
Like it all you want it's fruitless
Night is in the way of progress for traci
"Regulus!"
The joy in her eyes gives way in an instant, but Narcissa's hand is cold through to the bone and leaves behind it the scent of salt water when it connects with his face. Regulus hadn't expected - any of that, really, and he catches her wrists to forestall the violence.
She's older, but it doesn't take him long to realize she's no more the living than he is. He thinks that's a different wedding ring than he remembers her wearing, and the perfect pale blonde curls look tangled when he looks at her from some angles. She shimmers like a seabreeze when he closes his eyes.
"Let's sit down," he says, inanely, and she touches his cheek (where she hit him) before she does. They talk a while.
Narcissa holds him so tightly before she goes that he thinks it's a good thing he doesn't need to breathe any more, but she never explains anything, and he never sees her again.
(Nikolai Mulciber, a few months later, doesn't know who he is as he smiles Regulus's cousin's smile at him, answering a question about family I wish I'd known my mother longer)
dessoir & henry, for liz
Timothy's a nice guy - they're all nice guys, actually, the bunch of them that he introduces Henry to. There's Kennath - and Henry thinks oh and he thinks about moving his flightplans and apologizing and Timothy will understand. He'll hate it, because he'll understand, because Henry understands, but this- this isn't a bad way to spend a week.
So there's Kennath, and there's Beverly ('Bev', but he says quietly he doesn't actually mind his given name, it's just - well, they think they're being nice and they're like puppies, really, he's so earnest about it, such love for them, such faith). There's Matthias and Karlton, inseparable, know all the bars in New York, some that Henry figured they would and more than a few outside Manhattan that he figured they wouldn't.
'The elusive Dr Dessoir' - that's Aloysius, he hears about him for days before he ever meets him. Matthias regales him with tales of baby brother's brilliance, his innovation - his clever methods of evading being pinned down and dragged out. 'Madre's little boy in the worst way,' Matthias laughs, 'he's just like her.'
He meets him a day or two before he should be rescheduling his flight (sorry, Timothy); the plans Aloysius has are engrossing, and he stays on a few days in a guest room, looking at things the younger Dessoir deprecatingly refers to as 'probably just a vanity project' and thinks of all the applications, all the ways this could be used-
The portals, sometimes, are so smooth you never realize you've walked through them. Henry goes home with good will and a business card, but it's like they never existed; like he dreamed it, the whole thing. There is no Dessoir Security, no Dessoir brothers (no Timothy, and no Kennath). He thinks he must be going mad when he meets Caius Roy (fast friends, but Caius is sharp and on and different, similar enough to someone who couldn't have existed, even, to catch him - he must have seen him somewhere, maybe it was the drink-).
It falls into place later. Aloysius blinks at him, laughs, and gives him a pinpoint number, the promise that Jem will always put him through, and a wedding invitation.
(They're just like he remembers, too. Even Timothy and Kennath, more's the pity.)
nuala & leia, i can see the city lights, for mary
"I didn't need to be a queen," Nuala reflects, leaning companionably against Leia's side, half-reclined to account for the difference in their heights. "Power is so - he is never alone, but I did not want him to be lonely."
Leia lies back in the grass, folding her hands on her belly and smiling (a little) when Nuala drifts down next to her. "I know exactly what you mean."
They watch the stars, for a while.
donna meets babbysnape, for claire
"Severus Snape."
The spittake at this point is sort of impressive, and Donna comes up laughing until she stops, and thinks how unfair it is that even when he looks like he can't be more than a year or so older than she is right now - look at him, God, she's not sure if she's terrified or turned on.
She remembers that from him, though, only he was older and different and - tired. "Severus," she says, rolling it around on her tongue, and then she adds - quickly, because he's starting to look impatient, as well, "I'm Donnatella, I - um - well, I mean, you know how it is - no, no, obviously you, uh - boy, is this awkward, or what - um, I slept with you. Not, uh, not you - do you have to look at me like that, seriously - I mean he was a lot older...than...you are - Jesus Christ, I'm not saying you're a - I mean, it was recent, for fuck's sake." She's half-laughing again now, despite herself, at the utter absurdity of what's coming out of her mouth.
He stares at her for a while, and then he gets another shot, wills her to go away. She doesn't.
"So can you actually hold your liquor any better now?"
"Let's find out, shall we."
(The answer's no, and Severus tells her later it's bloody cheating to use things she learned on his alternate's body, and he notices that sometimes in the right trick of shadow she laughs like a swansong. He's gone before she wakes up, but she sort of expected that, and just calls - Remy picks up - to let the house know she didn't actually get left in a ditch overnight.)
enfys/mordred, for mhari
Mordred ("You must be Michael, I'm so sorry we didn't get to meet earlier-") buries Enfys Morgan in a Friday's late afternoon summer sun. Dr Eddings doesn't weep openly, but he can see tears when the Eddings brothers walk by as pallbearers, solemn and silent. He stands next to Alex and Henry outside the church (she'd hate this, he tells him, and Alex already knows what it's like to bury Keel women - hard), with his daughter's tiny, chubby fingers curled around Fred Abberline's hand, sandwiched between "grandmum" and "Auntie Candice".
Summer weather leaves a rainbow in the overflowing gutters as they leave.
theme: my love for you is a hate crime, for bob
Nuala wakes abruptly, her hands pressed to the scar above her heart, still hidden by the fabric of her nightgown. The phantom feel of golden blood spilling through her fingers remains, cold sweat of a nightmare (a memory) making her hands slip against each other and she shivers. She can feel him there, in the shadows by the window; she reaches out blindly and Nuada's eyes glint wolfish in the darkness before he gathers her up out of her dreams and tucks her robe around her shoulders.
{Walk with me, brother,} she requests, his steps already falling aligned with her bare ones. Atop a rising tower he rests his hand on the back of her shoulders and she watches the sun rise until she finally closes her eyes and forgets the muscle memory sensation of a fall.
She never draws breath to blame him for it all, but the knowledge she could hangs between them in its ugliness. Sometimes she simply locks the door.
sagramore/enfys, for soujin
Enfys doesn't know why she didn't go back.
(She does; it was the feeling of having disappointed someone, of a fight that she couldn't control. There's a difference between the fight that makes your blood race and the fight that makes your stomach clench and Enfys, Enfys walked - ran - from it. Just like she always has, she didn't look back. Wind away into shadows and stay there, wrapped in them, choking.)
Only, here she is years later and her hair's tangled with mud and rainwater and she thinks that's probably blood, fuck, so she sits away from the porch in the rain and lets it soak her to the bone until she feels clean (she's not, but the blood's run away into the dirt around her and god, she's just so tired). She's cold, and he's yelling at her, he yells her name and something so familiar in a language she kept promising herself she'd learn and all she can think to say is 'but it isn't mine this time' and, incoherently, 'oh God, you do remember me' and he yells at her a little more, for that, only she's too tired to listen. She beams stupidly at him until she passes out.
He's not yelling any more when she comes around, although oh fuck me, the baby does get his attention in a fairly serious way - it takes him three hours to get her to stop talking about why she was muddy and bloody in his front yard (ugh, men, she can't leave Garath Eddings alone for ten fucking minutes, apparently, do you have any idea how much damage a mob can do to a farm, what the fuck was he thinking, why doesn't he know just when to close his mouth and she's talking too fast for him to call the hypocrisy inherent) and finally explain that she's pregnant. She doesn't tell him whose, and maybe it doesn't matter; she doesn't tell him she's terrified, but that's a little easier to figure out.
"But you're - I mean - I wanted a daughter like Annuska," she says, bone-white fingers twisting a still-strong grip in his jumper, "I mean, you did that, you're good at - parent...ing - oh God, I've finally lost my fucking mind."
(She figures out a few years later that what he'd said meant 'finally, she says' and when she gets home from a 'business trip' with Candice and the mercenary, and a little side-trip on the way back to Corellia, catching Beattie up in her arms and onto her hip, she hits him hard upside the head as they pass on the way into the house. "Say, ugh, men for Mummy, there's a good girl-")
martel & maryani, it's every good girl's fantasy, every bad girl's lament, for kay
To my dear friend,
It was with no small amount of regret that I had not the more time to devote to my family in these past two years that I bid my cousin the Lord General and his wife the Marquise farewell this morning. As you have no doubt already heard - though they have been unusually private on the subject - the Queen has approved their retirement from her court, and awarded them their honours due.
I can assure you that they were as surprised as anyone else present at the latter, though I certainly have my suspicions in some corners - I trust that you have met the Baroness Melidere and her Thalesian husband? Our friend the Tamul ambassador - you may recall the man - bore the good will of the Emperor and extended an invitation to attend Matherion before they settle. I confess that I have my doubts that either could truly settle, but they did accept and it was with Ambassador Itagne that they departed.
It seems to me a very short time ago that I had met them for the first time as a man - I believe that I will miss their presence here more greatly than I had first thought. My dear, dear Sephara has left with her parents, and I have assured her that she is most welcome to return as a guest with myself and my own wife - I suspect if she does she will return with her knight as a married woman, and I am unashamed to say I am no less relieved for the notion than my cousin. It is my hope to take my wife and our children to visit our family in the Empire - when they are old enough to appreciate it, at any rate, and perhaps when my presence is not so strictly necessary. Prince Sparhawk and I have yet to come to blows over Elenia's annual budget, but it entertains the Earl no end to insist it is a matter of time.
In closing I must thank you for your suggestions regarding the education of the girls - as a matter of fact I had spoken with Princess Danae on the very subject. She was most understanding.
Your friend and humble servant,
Ernest Morray
Duke of Thalened
mulciberspawn & antonin dolohov, for sophie
The day that Drusilla Mulciber appears at Antonin's door in tears is the day that he realizes she is thoroughly her mother's daughter. Dark-haired and bright-eyed, she is silk and salt tears, bundled in a pile of her own skirts and bemoaning the myriad cruelties of the world. It's a flashback to blonde curls and Septimus's chaise-longue; Antonin takes a leaf out of the Englishman's book and absconds on a whim to Venice with his best beloved god-daughter.
She's so like Narcissa; histrionic and easily distressed, willful and stroppy, but how simple it is to make her smile again. He can tip her chin and buy her something pretty, then charm her with a story about having actually stolen it from pirates - wizarding pirates, naturally.
Drusilla writes her letters home sprawled inelegantly on the floor in front of his armchair, leaning against his knees and periodically demanding that he remind her of details of their exploits to most accurately record them for her mother and father. (And her older brother, over whom she will lord this outing for years. She asks him at one point 'or should I lady it, I suppose?')
When she starts trying to find him a pretty Italian wife, he takes her home to her parents with a slight tan and far more suitcases than they left England with.