Forward, But Never Forget/XOXO - Ch: 32 - Sunk Cost Fallacy

Forward, but Never Forget/XOXO - Ch: 32 - Sunk Cost Fallacy

Snippet:

A tiny tremor—a temblor—rattles the dishes on the table.

Vi is hit by a different quake. As if the floor, the walls, the balcony are falling away. Everything, except Silco's words. Throughout the night, they've strobed at the back of her mind.

Vander, saying the same things. Vander, warning her. Vander, and Blut.

Blut.

Vi's mind, struggling against the epiphany, bursts at the seams. Memories burst too: a red tide gone blue. She'd spent all this time fixated on him. The man who's ruined her sister, and her life. The man whose accent—when it lapses from sterling correctness—bares the serrated edges of the Lanes. Whose voice—when it's not spouting convoluted spiels—becomes soothing as a bedtime story. Whose eyes—red and blue—are a mirror reflecting more than her hatred back to her, but the safety of a simpler palette.

"You," Vi chokes. "I know you."

"What?"

Vi's lungs seize. Gods, she'd been so stupid. She'd had the puzzle sitting right in front of her, and hadn't seen it. Because she couldn't accept what it meant.

The man who's taken everything from her, the man she's hated for seven long years, the man she's determined to hate until her dying breath:

They're the same.

She remembers him—Blut—tossing her to the ceiling to her gleeful shrieks. Sitting, crosslegged, with a comic book open in his lap, and reciting the dialogue in funny voices. Scooping her into his arms and carrying her into the Last Drop, humming a tune that's now embedded into her bones...

Silco's knuckles rap on the table. "What's gotten into you, girl?"

She wants to say, "Nothing." Except her throat is glued. So are her eyes.

This man. This murderer.

The stranger... and who he once was.

"It's you."

"Me?"

"Blut." She points a quavering finger. "The one Vander always talked about. God, why didn't I—?"

Silco's expression morphs from surprise, to understanding, to the smallest iota of apprehension. "What did he say about Blut?"

"He was Vander's childhood friend." Vi can barely squeeze the words out. Her heart is racing a mile a minute. "He was—the smartest guy Vander knew. And he—he was my friend, too. When Mom and I were staying at the Last Drop, Blut was there. He'd call me Pet, and tickle me, and make me laugh. In the evenings, we'd play in the cellar. Hide-and-seek. Sock puppets. Whack-a-mole. Sometimes, he'd read to me. The old comics from the trunk—"

Very quietly, Silco says, "Mavis and Mutthead."

"He'd put on a show. Like a vaudeville act. He'd do the funniest voices." She tries, and fails, to replicate the squeaky tone. "'Hoy, Mavvy! What'd the ceiling say to the wall?' 'Dunno, Mutthead. What?' 'Hold me up, I'm plastered!'" The laugh is a paroxysm. "Vander told me... he'd died on the Day of Ash. Killed during the blast on the Bridge. Nothing left but cinders."

Silco's jaw works, as if his tongue has burnt to cinders too. "Vander said that?"

"Every year." Her breath hitches. "I never forgot. But I never put it together. He—you—"

Silco's expression holds a shadowed emptiness. The shark-eye inverts: a trick of light. The blue blooms: bright as memory.

"It's a lie," he says.

AO3 - Forward, But Never Forget/XOXO

FFnet - Forward, But Never Forget (XOXO)

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arcane cunt was served i fear

Six of Crows Historical AUs

There are some great Six of Crows fanfic recommendation lists out there, but I haven't seen any specifically on historical AUs (which are my kryptonite), so here are some of my favorites. Each of these have amazing character work and exquisite prose, and are wonderfully grounded in their time period. Enjoy! Hearts Starve by LinearA (Rating E; time period late 1800s): "Kaz and Inej crisscross state lines, organizing workers into unions. Sometimes they win. Sometimes they lose. And one time, on a cold night in Pittsburgh, they lie together in a very small bed, and they talk. And more than talk." save the undone years by Whitherward (Rating M; time period World War One): "Northern France, 1917. In a battlefield hospital, Corporal Kaz Rietveld lies gravely wounded. His nurse is determined that he will not be another thing she loses to this war." Confessions: A Sonata in Five Parts by rainstormdragon (Rating E; time period 1920s): "Wylan is a Catholic Priest in 1920s New York; Jesper is a sharpshooter for a local gang. Jesper comes into Wylan's Lower East Side church to hide from the police in a confession booth…" Devotion by cameliawries (Rating M; time period late 1950s): "Maybe Inej wouldn’t have been so irritated about Kaz asking her to bail him out of jail—again—if not for the rain, and the blister developing along her heel from the too-loose pumps she’d had to borrow from Anika, and the fact that she’s going to have to wash and hang these stockings to dry tonight because she’ll need them for tomorrow." to be lost and found (and lost and found again) by halfahint (Rating M; time period 1970s): "When Kaz tells Jesper that he wants to rob the FBI, his colleague leans in, eyes alight, and says, “Go on.” "

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fanfic rec six of crows kanej

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violetispersephone

1 year ago

"what would it be like, I wondered, to live with that heightened sensitivity of the lives given for ours? To consider the tree in the Kleenex, the algae in the toothpaste, the oaks in the floor, the grapes in the wine; to follow back the thread of life in everything and pay it respect? Once you start, it's hard to stop, and you begin to feel yourself awash in gifts."

-Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

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robin wall kimmerer braiding sweetgrass

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violetispersephone

1 year ago

Les sphinx au dictionnaire - Francine van Hove

French b.1942-

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art free the tiddy

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violetispersephone

1 year ago

Blood Meridian by violet_persephone

Chapter 1: March Rain in Colorado

Everyone west of the Mississippi knows the name Kaz Brekker. Kaz Brekker and his crew listen to the laws of no man, and have established a reputation in western America as infamous criminals. Inej, trapped by Heleen and her indenture, dreams of having the kind of freedom Kaz Brekker and the Dregs have. So when Kaz Brekker and his gang ride into town, Inej makes a deal with the devil. Though she had no idea she'd fall in love with him.

archiveofourown.org

Blood Meridian - Chapter 1 - violet_persephone - Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo [Archive of Our Own]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

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violetispersephone

2 months ago