Fabian's getting a sibling. his friends are all excited for it. Hallariel and Gilear are over the moon. he burnt all his baby clothes and as a result, everyone has been shopping, been preparing for the new baby. Fabian hates it.
once it's born, everyone coos over it, adores it, makes it laugh and looks at it. there's pictures being taken left and right, handmade blankets and shirts with embroidered initials and the softest plushies imaginable gifted from everyone around.
Fabian doesn't want to look at it. he avoids going near its room in the house, starts training and dancing even more and avoids being home as much as he can, so that he doesn't have to watch his mother smile at the little creature, doesn't have to listen to her coo or sing to this child that she loves.
Riz remarks to him that his sibling is cute. Kristen keeps trying to get him to hold it, tells him how you're supposed to keep one arm under and one arm across to ensure it's steady. Fig tells him he must be so excited to be a big brother, and that even though they're step-siblings, it must be thrilling to finally have a biological sibling. Fabian doesn't respond.
he had siblings. numerous ones, all without names and faces, all dead. he never met them. they never got to live much of their lives, murdered by Whitclaw for his father's feuds. no one speaks of them. no one thinks to remember them.
this baby will be the first Lomenelda-Faeth baby, his first biological sibling that doesn't share his Seacaster name, and he feels it viciously. good. it doesn't deserve his name. his legacy.
his friends coo over this baby, this stupid little thing, and his mother has spoken more to this child than she has to him in the past 18 years combined, and it's not jealousy fueling him when he sees his own baby blanket in its clutches. it's grief.
this baby doesn't get to have his stuff. it was a gift from his father, his family, and it doesn't belong to this new creature. it's done nothing to deserve this affection, this adoration. love is earned. love is what happens when you make a mark on the world, when you write your name on every place you've been and are respected and admired.
love is what you get if you become Maximum Legend. it's what you get when you defeat your enemies, or defeat your mother in fencing, or come out in victory after a harsh battle. love isn't freely handed out just because you exist. it's hard earned once you're enough, and Fabian is so, so close to earning it. he's done it all. he's saved the world. he's worked so hard, and done his best, and gotten his mother to stop drinking and be ready to be a mother. so why is she devoting her time and affection to this stupid little thing that hasn't done anything yet?
it's not fair. and he thinks about it when he slams the door behind him in the morning, the unfamiliar lilting notes of his mother's lullaby burning in his ears, until the roar of the Hangman finally drowns it out.
it must be so exciting to have a sibling, Fabian! it echoes in his ears. he thinks of Captain James on Leviathan, his grotesque tentacles crawling over his head, his foul breath just inches from his face. "Oh, I have so many of your siblings’ brains in me stomach already." how many of his siblings met their ends like that? how many of his siblings died without ever getting to tell him their name, without making their own mark on the world or knowing that there were more of them?
the wind howls around him and the Hangman furiously blasts down the roads, Elmville rushing past. he has enough siblings. none of them survived long enough for him to ever learn their name. this child, this baby, this stupid little sibling has done nothing to earn all the affection it's been getting, this love that's now handed out freely where he's never ever received a scrap without fighting for it tooth and nail. it's got enough.
he takes his crystal out, debates for a moment, and deletes all new notifications. he puts it on Do Not Disturb. he owes this new child nothing. he never got to learn the names of any of his other siblings. this baby, he decides, has done nothing to earn that privilege. there's nothing special about it. he's had enough of siblings, and he doesn't need another. he's a Seacaster, the last of his name. this child is not. it's a Lomenelda-Faeth, two people whose name he does not share and two people who haven't looked at him in weeks. he doesn't need them. they don't get to need him.
the Hangman's engine roars, and he thinks about his mother's singing. how he hasn't heard her ever sing before. he tries to recall it, and the song slips into a Halfling accent before he can stop himself. the motor revs, and he drives on.
Lol it’s all ‘we should center the voices of the victims of Imperial core’ till people here realize that this has to be a sustained effort that would need the same energy from beginning to end, no matter how many days, months or years go by. Really crazy that just when so many Gazans are on the site trying to reach out to us, Palestine seems to be falling out of relevance because the coverage of protests in the imperial core has begun to die down
I love a good class swap au and because they have been on my mind and won’t get off it recently here is some of my favourite class swaps and how they change the bad kids early story’s.
Artificer Gorgug - he got his rage under control much earlier in life meaning he wasn’t as scared to break things smaller than him. This lead him to watching and helping his parents a lot more with there tinkering. When it came time to join Aguefort he did not feel forced into being a barbarian due to his rage and became an artificer.
Paladin Kristen - not much change her except she’s not the chosen of Helio (probably still favoured by him but not the chosen one) which means that so much less pressure is put on her. I also think that she would start questioning her faith sooner not having the entire church’s focus on her.
Monk Adaine - her anxiety issues where a lot worse in this version (sorry Adaine I don’t see a way in you changing from wizard without bad things happening) so bad that she couldn’t even cast spells. Not surprisingly her parents are not happy and force her to mediate and trance most of her time. Eventually she manages small arcane workings through intense focus (Ki). After failing to get into hudol even worse than in canno she joins Aguefort as a monk.
Rouge Fabain - his training was just one more thing put onto Cathilda’s job list. She takes his training seriously, training him how to fight like a pirate causing him to become a rouge (with the swashbuckler subclass later)
Sorcerer riz - one simple change here, being born with the shadow cat in his system causes some of her magic to be infused into him. Shadow sorcerer Riz is just as sneaky as rouge Riz if not more as most of his spell are focused on infiltration and support (misty step and invisibility are his main two)
Ranger Fig - after her tiefling nature shows itself her parents don’t have a massive fight and somehow resolve it peacefully (Sandra-Lynn had told Gilear fig might not be his way earlier in Figs life). this causes her family to be a lot more stable and results in Fig asking there mum to train her rather than locking herself in a room with her guitar.
Ooo i love these.
A realization I have had about Riz and Adaine living together; Adaine would probably be the last one to see Riz before he dies and then would probably have to go through his things afterwards.
Adaine was the one to go through most of her friends things in the end but Riz was for sure the first. She could never throw out all of it though, most of his stuff ended up in storage boxes then placed inside his briefcase that lived in the spare room of any house she ever lived in.
Her kitchen cupboards always had a good half-dozen mugs she never used because they were Riz's too and every time she moved his furniture would be put right back the way he liked it.
Gorgug has tusks and Riz has fangs and they are such creatures and they are. Friends. Gorgug growls and Riz hisses and they actually both do some variation of a chirp or chitter and Gorgug's rage is a frenzy and Riz's bloodlust is a fury and it is. Good. They are not human and they do not have to be.
Also Riz claws and tail. Also you know how dogs and I think other canines but idk I'm not a mammal guy start drooling/foaming at the mouth because of overexertion or stress or anxiety? Gorgug when he's raging. This is less because he's half orc and more because he's specifically a berserker* and that subclass goes crazy. Frenzy, mindless rage, okay bitch we're snarling and drooling and animal and taking a level of exhaustion afterwards. Love that.
Solace is fantasy racist sometimes and I think they both separately had some trouble accepting themselves and their less palatable features and I probably rambled about that in a long post I can't remember rn but they do now and they are so good and I adore them.
*"For some barbarians, rage is a means to an end – that end being violence. The Path of the Berserker is a path of untrammeled fury, slick with blood. As you enter the berserker's rage, you thrill in the chaos of battle, heedless of your own health or well-being." - The Player's Handbook
If your 13 or older and still sleep with a stuffed animal please rb this im tryna prove a point to my friend.
My mother is starting a business to reintroduce buffalo into Southern Texas. To do this, she needs help making money so her loans will get approved. We are a part of the Lipan Apache Tribal Band of Texas, a state recognized tribe, so bringing the buffalo back to our homeland means a great deal to us. For more info and if anyone is willing to donate, please visit the link in the reblog.
Thinking so deeply about Evan basically going "i wanted to live in a magical treehouse with the three of you forever" and the way it made me feel the exact same way as I did when I heard the "everyone will find someone that matters more to them than you" quote out of context from Fantasy High (i still havent even seen it i really need to). It speaks so deeply to me as an aroace person in a way that i cant fully explain. I'm never going to have a family in the way that is expected, and to me it feels so incredibly likely that everyone I know and love will have someone else to go back to, some other better, realer, relationships to fulfill. Having those childish dreams in your highschool years where you're so sure that all of your friends are going to be by your side forever, and that they're always going to be the same people with the same interests (like how Evan placed them all into neat distinct categories of sports and shadows and sparkles and pink) because you're so scared that everything is changing and before you know its going to be gone. And you know that once that's gone for you, you might never find anything like it again, because you're fundamentally different, maybe even fundamentally broken, and maybe that's okay because your friends deserve something you can't really give them.
Number 16 for Alfred plz
Short, contemporary set fic. Alfred wakes from a nightmare and Matt knows what to say. On ao3 here. From prompt 16. “Are you afraid to fall asleep because you think you’re gonna have a nightmare?”
21st Century, Ottawa.
Mathew's bedroom was still and dark when he woke, and he stared at the dim glow filtering through the blinds. The light of the streetlamps was tinted blue in the storm, and he wondered why he'd woken. Kuma was still dead asleep on his memory foam sheepskin bed just next to the vent. If there'd been any intrusion in his space, he'd have been up, hackles raised and howling. Oh. He had to piss. Fuck, he must still be drunk. Groaning and cursing himself for not taking a pit stop when he and Alfred had finally put the beers and video game controllers down to go to sleep, he finally peeled himself out of bed. The room was cold, and peeling off the duvet made his thoughts switch languages and wish for a quick death in French.
Shaking the drama off, he shoved his feet into his indoor boots and shuffled down the hall, rubbing at his eyes and letting the. Business completed, he was turning off the water and drying his hands when he thought he heard something. He stumbled, still groggy, down the hall, away from the bedroom. Again, Kuma didn't howl or join him.
The TV, mounted above the fireplace, was on and thew an eerie cast over the living room as Matt approached, poking his head in. There was Alfred, hunched over.
"The fuck are you doing up?" Matt asked, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Alfred glanced up, expression inscrutable.
"I couldn't sleep," He said, sounding wrecked, like he'd been throwing up or crying.
"You good?" Matt asked, frowning.
"Fine."
"Fucken liar," Matt replied. Alfred's gaze flashed up, the hint of Cherenkov radiation flashing in anger.
"Don't give me that face, o mighty superpower." Matt laughed, rubbing a hand down his face, incredulous. "Christ. You know, I'd normally be happy to do the usual song and dance where you deny everything until I hit a nerve. And then you can have your semi-annual mental breakdown on my couch, but it's 3 in the fucken morning. So get your ass up, turn off the TV, put your butt in a chair in the kitchen and spill your guts while I make us hot chocolate, and then we can go the fuck back to sleep. Okay?"
Whatever it was that made Alfred their kind's weird undying version of superman seemed to drain from him, and his shoulders slumped. It was like watching someone drain the water from a nuclear reactor and shut it down.
"Yeah, all right."
In the kitchen, Alfred sat at the old kitchen table. Matt raided the cabinets and dumped milk, cream, and chocolate into a pot, breathing in a bit of the soothing steam as it warmed.
"You going to start talking?"
"I'm organizing my thoughts," Alfred said as he stared at the kitchen table, tracing the grain of a knot Matt had sanded smooth himself with two fingers. He glared at the wood. "Or I'm trying too."
"Okay. Take your time. This will take a minute." Matt's heart ached, and he opened another cabinet. There was vanilla extract there, but glancing at his brother and full of something softer, he selected one of the vanilla beans he had purchased on his last trip to Mexico and scraped it clean. In it went with the chilli and clove and cinnamon to simmer away.
"Doing okay?" Matt asked. Alfred's hand had gone still on the table, balling into a fist.
"Yeah," Alfred said.
Deciding his brother needed more time, Matt took down a bowl and whipped the living hell out of the rest of the cream until his arm shook. It was always a process. His brother's emotions were structured with the strongest joy on earth on a delicate pedestal of half-processed memories. He stirred the hot chocolate, and now melted together and velvety, it clung to the sides of the pot.
"Okay," Alfred said at last. "Okay, fuck."
He quickly poured two terracotta mugs, scooped on the hand-churned whipped cream and even dusted them with more cinnamon. He sat across the table from Alfred, shaking his left hand out. It was sore from all the whisking now.
"Damn, Matt. You were busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. That's amazing."
"Have to do something while you brood," Matt replied, pulling his hoodie sleeves back down. "Now, what's the fucken problem?"
"I had a nightmare," Alfred said plainly. Well, that'd been easier than usual.
"The 'showing up to the Armed Forces Committee with no pants' nightmare or the 'I got hung for witchcraft and dad presented the head of the fuck who sentenced me on a silver platter' nightmare."
"Neither," Alfred said, scrubbing a hand through his hair. He sighed and took another long drink.
"Alfred," Matt said. "Talk."
"I'm trying," He whispered. "It feels like if I say it, it'll come true."
"That's bullshit," Matt replied. "Out with it."
Alfred sighed. "You're a piss ass when you don't sleep, you know that, right?"
"I'm going to be puking chilis and tequila when I wake up. I'm allowed to be cranky." He countered. "Saint Bibiana can't do shit about it. Now, what was this nightmare?"
"I dreamt I woke up, and the world ended while I slept," Alfred said. "Russians yeet some ICBM at me, I tossed some back, the world burned."
"You've had that nightmare since the Russians dropped their first bomb."
"Yup," Alfred said. "But usually, in the dream, I cross from New York into Quebec, and you're there. A little crispier than usual, but there and mostly okay. This time..."
Matt stared at Alfred over his mug.
"This time, what?"
"This time... nothing. No survivors. No glowing zombies, no gas-masked raiders, nothing." He paused, and Matt was silent.
"No you either," Alfred said, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes and leaning into the table. "Just ash."
"Alfred," Matt said gently, softly. His brother didn't look up. "Alfred, look at me."
Watery blue eyes appeared from behind his hands. Alfred sniffed, and Matt gave him a sympathetic look. "I'm not going to die,"
"I'm stronger than you," Alfred said. "I'm stronger than everyone. If anyone would survive and be alone, it'd be me."
"So you're afraid that if you go to sleep, you'll have another nightmare about this?"
"I'm scared that if I fall asleep, I'll wake up alone." Alfred scrubbed his hair and looked on the verge of tears again. "Just me on planet earth."
"Alfred, you didn't die on me. I won't die on you, much less the entire planet."
"When the hell would I have died?"
"Does the American Civil War ring a bell?" Matt replied. "You were dead for four days after Gettysburg. But you lived."
"No one was firing nukes at Gettysburg."
"No one is firing nukes now," Matthew said. "If you're okay, I'm okay."
"Can you just... can you promise me you won't die?" Alfred said. Sometimes there was something so childlike about his mind. "Just promise you won't leave me here by myself."
"Cross my heart and hope to live, bud." Matt made the motion of the cross over his heart. He smiled. "Happy?"
Alfred nodded. "Swear to god, though, I will fucking kill you if you die before me."
"Hard same." Matt returned. "I'll set your ass on fire and make DC look like a bathroom candle if you leave me here alone."
Alfred took another sip of hot cholate and shook his head. "You're a firebug, you know that, right?"
"Well yeah, I had to settle for pyromaniac since my big brother is the one with the nuclear hellfire in his back pocket." Matt knuckled his chest and swallowed bile. "But I might be getting there. Holy shit, this is giving me heartburn."
"It's not even spicy." Alfred laughed.
"You know damn well chilli powder, and I don't get along." Matt exhaled, trying to get rid of the taste of bile in his mouth.
"Why'd you make it if you knew it'd give you heartburn?"
"I'm not the one who needed cheering up," Matt shrugged. "Hang on a second. I need antacids."
"Jesus Christ, gringo."
"Hey," Matt flung open the drawer he kept various bottles of over-the-counter pills and tablets and popped something he'd hoped would help. "That's tabernaco to you, Tex-Mex."
Alfred snorted. "Did Mari start calling you that before or after you vomited Salsa Verde all over her nice floor?"
"I put in that floor for her," Matt said. "And it was before if you must know."
"You've got too much slav in you."
"Eh," Matt countered, sitting back down, this time with a glass of water. He shoved his still-hot mug at his brother, and Alfred took it to finish it off. "Katya hasn't pegged me in a while, actually."
Alfred snorted hot chocolate so hard he choked. "Ew, dude, gross."
Matt smacked him on the shoulder. "Finish that up, and you can come huddle for warmth like we're fucken four,"
"Fucking heat-seeking missile,"
"Goddamn right."
I only drink hot chocolate.I don’t actually like coffee or tea.I’m Ace.It might have been faster to start with that.
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