Doting Grandfather Saturnus Heterodyne AU where he decides that the only guy with the pedigree to even approach his darling granddaughter is this Gil Teufel he’s been hearing about and kidnaps him from Paris so Agatha can get a better look and stop ogling those gross snooty princes.
Agatha is not pleased because she can shop for boyfriends herself UGH GRANDPA.
Gil doesn’t know if or when he should even mention that Teufel isn’t actually his… *castle flexes its traps* never mind. Mad. Bad. Dangerous. He can do that. Yep.
The thing that gets me about this hypothetical scenario is that if we’ve been mostly sticking with canon, Saturnus would probably be fine with Gilgamesh Wulfenbach – assuming that Klaus and Saturnus have not talked with each other in the past several years. Sure, the boy’s father went though that hero phase with his troublesome sons. But then Klaus had his heart broken and came back a changed man! It’s good to see that someone in this generation has the good sense to conquer Europa and grind it under his despotic heel!
I just want to see Saturnus Hetrodyne telling Klaus Wulfenbach that he misjudged him, and that he is happy to see that Klaus has found his place in the world (above Europa in a floating fortress) with utter, utter sincerity. Can you just imagine Klaus’ reaction?
In (almost?) no version of this has Gil not talked to Klaus before that meeting. In every other version, Klaus has the awareness not to show his reaction on his face (for too long). The comedy payoff will be in the 3 frames of Saturnus saying that, Klaus reacting and then fighting valiantly to have a straight face again before Saturnus turns back to face Klaus.
I feel like i don’t talk enough abt shindeku but hell yea I love my tired purple son and green cinnamon roll and I’m excited to see them wearing matching friendship bracelets after this arc uwu. I just hope deku doesn’t break another body part trying to befriend the guy tho. Shinsou teach him self love
date a selkie, but don’t hide her cloak. let her go home and visit her family now and then, knowing that she’ll come back and hang her seal cloak in the closet like she always does. trust is important.
The first time she lets the redhead take her home, she’s diligent about hiding her cloak. She folds it carefully against tears and rips and abrasions, and hides it in a sea cave whose entrance is concealed by the tide.
She does the same, the second and third and fourth times, careful, wary, mindful of her mother’s lessons. Remembers the way her mother’s hands had chafed on her soft cheeks, rough with cooking and cleaning for her fisherman husband, the way her mother’s peat-dark eyes had been tense and harsh with the lesson.
“Mind me, Niahm. Never let them find your cloak.”
The way her mother’s mouth had curved, a sickle of dissatisfaction and relief and envy, as she had escaped into the waves.
So she minds her mother’s lesson, and she takes care with her cloak.
Would that she had taken as much care with her heart.
The fifth time, she wears the cloak to the girl’s door, clutched about her throat, dripping along the darkened lanes.
She enters the home, welcomed with soft kisses and gentle touches and kindling passion. She drapes the cloak, artful in her carelessness, across an old wooden chair, the one that creaks and tilts slightly if you don’t sit just right.
When she wakes, in the wee hours of the morning, even before her lover, the cloak still rests, supple and dappled by the sea, on the back of the chair.
She frowns into the softening dawn, dons the cloak, and returns to the sea.
And again, the sixth time. And the seventh.
The eighth time, she finally breaks, prickling and hurt with longing, gripping a handful of russet hair in her hand, firm with emphasis.
“Surely you know what I am,” she says to her lover, the cool froth of sea foam and the call of gulls curling around her voice.
“Of course,” her lover responds, soft and tender in the dawnlight, throat arched willingly, pale as the inner whorls of a shell. “You taste of the sea,” the girl whispers, reverently.
She shakes her lover’s head gently, fingers tangled still in russet locks. “Why?” she demands. “Why won’t you keep me?”
A long silence that waits and fills, like a tidepool, stretches between them. Cool as a current. Deep as the Channel.
Her lover’s eyes are dark and tender. “Must I trap you to keep you, my heart? Is that the shape of love that you desire?”
She sinks into the thought, struck and stymied, remembering her mother’s harsh hands, her cold eyes. Her hand eases into russet waves, caresses where her grip had punished. Her lips press cool and damp as the sea against the arching curve of her lover’s shoulder. “What shape of love will you give to me?”
The answer is easy, quick, certain. “Myself. Only myself, whenever you should wish it. Your cloak by the door, your body in my bed, and the freedom to go, whenever you must. As long as you wish.”
It’s not an answer a fisherman could ever give, nor would think to.
The ninth time, she hangs her cloak by the door, draped in careful dappled folds next to a drying oilskin jacket.
i say this every time it crosses my dash but i’m so freaking happy someone liked my submission and Wrote Stuff and it’s so good!!! i love these girls so so so so much
This post is like the only Worthy Thing i have ever done on this website and you made that possible, you rock ❤
THIS is how you do it. this is how break down a people. like the beginning. strip them of their language, along with everything else that makes them who they are.
and then they are yours.
😞
White colonizers are evil
people in america think afrikaans IS the native language
but it’s actually mostly dutch and a little german. that’s why my translator friend picked it up in only a year from his native language, german.
then again, a lot of americans think africa is a country, not a continent, so
For anyone wondering what we mean by “decolonizing” ourselves, this is it. It’s the effort of undoing centuries of beating our own cultures out of us.
Learning our ancestral languages, cultures, and traditions is an important but very difficult thing for us to be able to do.
This is why I refuse to listen to ANYONE that says I must stop speaking my language around them.
tbh I’d love a horror-comedy about a retail worker accidentally becoming a ghost/demon hunter because they’re just so unfazed by difficult and weird and bellicose customers that evil entities aren’t much more of a challenge.
“sir or ma’am or neuter, I’m going to have to ask you to stop crawling on the ceiling, you’re disturbing the other residents”
“please leave this place before I call the exorcist to remove you from the premises”
“company policy forbids me from accepting power from customers in exchange for my soul or firstborn child”
“sir, if you keep speaking to me like that, I’m going to have to end this spirit board conversation. have a good day, goodbye”
the walls start weeping blood. our hero gives a long-suffering sigh, walks away, comes back with a wheelie mop bucket and biohazard gloves. hey, it’s better than bathrooms on the overnight shift, at least blood’s not smelly when it’s fresh.
After facing Karen of the Many Coupons and Screaming Children, Asgortoh the Reaper of the Damned is no contest.
at least it pays more than minimum wage
As per usual, it starts from spite. Keely got two write ups (one for being late, the other for yelling a guest that they can’t fish the ice out of her drink) and she’s wondering if she’s going to jump ship before the third or rode this one out. Career-wise, it’d be smart to find a new place before her glowing recommendation turns into a hell-ish one, but on the other…
Well, on the other, this place sucks biscuits and any amount of grief she can cause is a huge plus.
“I need you to stop saying no to customers,” her manager says. “Just for today, I need you to say yes and accommodate customers in any way you can.”
Keely stares at him. “Or else it’s a write up?”
He nods, exhaustion like claw marks under his eyes. “Or else it’s a write up.”
Okay then.
————
“Can you take the cheese out of the quesadilla?”
“But then it’s just going to be a toasted tortilla.”
“I don’t like cheese.”
Keely breathes deeply. “Sounds good.”
She pretends not to hear their offended Gasp when they’re confronted with a plain tortilla.
Of course, she’s the one who has to remake it, so it’s not really a win.
She begins to plot.
——————
She gets through six stupid requests when she’s about had it. She has wiped down a booth three times, floor and seat, for a concerned mother. She has torn the lettuce into smaller chunks for a man who, she sees, just picks them out anyway.
She has modified a burrito so far that it’s just a salad even after telling the customer they should just order a salad.
She is done.
“Remember,” her manager says from the office. “I hear one ‘no’ and you’re out. Today.”
When did he get psychic?
So when The Customer comes up, she’s pretty much ready to do whatever they want to absorb proportions. She’s almost excited for it. Triple the steak? For free?
Of course.
“Hi how are you?” Keely asks.
The woman looks up through greasy hair. “I haven’t slept in three days and my house is haunted.”
Okay. Keely pretends to look through her register. Not the response she expected. “What can I help you with today?”
“Making my house not haunted,” the woman says sarcastically.
Keely freezers. And, look, she’s not Ella enchanted. She doesn’t have to do things no matter what her manager says.
But…
He did say she should say yes the whole day.
An unholy grin sweeps across her face. Second shift won’t be in for an hour. Her manager would have to cover.
“Of course,” she chirps. She whisks off her hat and, when the woman takes a step back In surprise, she swings her legs over the counter and lands silently on the other side. “Let’s go!”
The woman blinks. “ I wasn’t serious, I just—it’s been a long week.”
Keely is already heading for the door. “Anything for our loyal customers! Right, sir?!” She calls to the back.
“Right,” her manager says reflexively. Then, when he sees her booking it, “wait, where are you going?”
“We are doers!” She says and hits the double doors hard enough they both swing out into the wall. “Coming, miss?”
“I, uh, I’m not going to argue?” The woman says, struggling to keep up. She clicks open her car and whimpers when Keely throws that door open too. “Careful, please, this is a Porsche. I really don’t want to go home alone.”
“Great!” Keely buckles her seatbelt. “What type of haunting we talking? Victorian lady? Texas cowboy?”
“The pig demon from that 80s horror, I forget the name,” the woman says flatly. She starts the car with the touch of a button. “Still wanna come home with me?”
Keely, after a moments thought, shrugs. “I had to unclog the toilet last week after customers neglected to tell us it was full of shit for four hours. I’m good.”
The woman nods, unquestioning, and whisks them away just as the manager comes storiming our the front doors.
(Inspired by that one tumblr post I saw years ago suggesting that Twilight wouldn’t have ended the way it did if Bella were conscious of the type of story she was in.)
It could be a love story. It could be the dark, mysterious boy in her class setting his eyes on her. It could be her looking back. It could be the pounding of hearts, sweaty palms, secrets in all the dark corners this town has to offer.
It could be a lot of things, but it’s never going to be more than a “story.” Dressed up and sanitized so that people can parse it, learn from it, take from it. It will never be her history or her dreams, never be her life or her purpose. It will always be a tale, tall or small, and she can’t forget that.
No matter how much he wants her to.
He laces their fingers together, his cold palm to her human heat. “I love you.”
She wishes she could exist in her body and believe that. She’s still a teenager and she wants love, connection, and intimacy. Growing pains and bleeding hearts with the promise of happy endings and worthwhile lessons.
Her mind, however, is a little too old to let the surface appearance pass for reality.
“I’d spend forever with you if I could,” she tells him. She means it. She would spend forever in the cold embrace of his arms, in the sphere of his love, if it really existed all for her. He takes it differently than she means.
“Maybe that will be possible,” he says slowly. He lets go of her hand to slide his arm over her shoulders, pulling her against his strong chest. “One day.”
She can practically taste how the thought excites him. He wants to change her to be like him—immortal and timeless.
After two months, she still doesn’t know if this is a story she’s willing to let play out.
On your last day on Earth, the person you became meets the person you could have become.
“Am I supposed to feel bad, seeing you?” You ask. The other you is taller. She doesn’t have the rake of werewolf claws running down her cheek, both her eyes are clear and blue, and she’s wearing classic biker leathers.
She shrugs. “You’re not supposed to feel anything.” Her eyes follow the line of your body, from the twist of your twice-broken collarbone, to the flap of your summer dress, to the converse you’ve got laced too tight. She smiles. “I think it’s safe to say that I’m the better hunter though.”
You stare at her perfect, unblemished face. Her eyes are smug and it infuriates you to know that—when you had both your eyes—they looked the same. “Because of the scars?”
“Well,” she says, “a werewolf never got close enough to touch me, much less maul me. Plus, clearly something went right with my development, squirt.” She touches the top of her head and pulls out her hand to where yours would be if you were the same height.
Comments about your height normally infuriate you, but there’s something about being so close to death that really mellows you out. It does more than that—it gives you insight. You know this other you better than you should having just met for the first time.
The same works for her.
“you actually tried college?” She asks, raising an eyebrow. “You should have listened to Puma, gotten the training you needed. Maybe you could have saved more people if you did.”
The dead behind you—acres of them—surge like ocean waves. You can feel them pulling at you, whispering to you, living here like they couldn’t live in the real world. You can see the girls from Atlanta, the ones who died under vampire fangs and your name on their lips. You can see Mark, your brother in arms, limping forever towards you, gargling seawater. You can see the couple from Dansville, forever burning.
You feel angry enough to answer her at her taunting, but something catches your attention first. She’s smiling at you, tall and beautiful and unscarred and behind her—
Behind her is an army. Your mouth runs dry as they come into focus, lurching through the fog until you can see each still, grey form.
“Can you see them?” You ask. Your voice is as rough as your mother one day promised it would be. “Can you?”
She looks over her shoulder. “See who?” When she looks back at you, her eyes are just as clear, just as blue.
They look like statues, her dead. Muffled and swaddled in stone, their faces smeared and wiped out by a careless sculptor. They appear this way because this is how she remembers them—bits of clothing, terror in their eyes, concrete around their feet. Too slow to be saved. Not her problem.
You’ve cried as much blood as you’ve spilt these past few years. Asking why your parents would leave you a legacy of violence and pain, why they hadn’t given you as a child to Puma to train, why they hadn’t prepared you for the wars to come. You’d resented the burden of your responsibilities to the world, a human police of the supernatural, but now—
This is what you would have been without your parents’ lessons. The perfect soldier, the perfect hunter, capable of standing so tall and strong and looking just like every single one of Puma’s army. Carbon copy.
Blind.
“You didn’t even try,” you say to her. “In Danville—did you walk into the fire? Or did you just watch it burn?”
“Nothing can stop a djinn fire,” she says. “Why try?” She sounds careless and unconcerned. Her eyes are watching you.
“Because—“ you bite off the word. Why? It’d never occurred to ask yourself what the point of trying to save them was. It’d been natural. You’d heard the screaming of the family inside and you knew you had to try.
She looked at the fire and knew she’d be risking her life before she even thought about who might be inside.
Maybe you could yell at her for this. Tell her that she has no right to stand there looking whole when she’s never felt the sting of loss. Of death. She has no right to act like she’s better than you—has done more than you—because she’s never had as much to lose.
But this is the edge of death and you’ve got a lot more to do before you find your way back here.
“Let me guess,” you say to her, “you fell honorably in battle?”
For the first time, there’s a different expression on her face. Unease. “They’ll pull me to safety before it’s too late.”
You watch the stone figures behind her. There are cracks running along their crowns and a white light is beginning to shine through. She won’t make it. Her dead won’t stay unconfronted for much longer. “That’s the real difference between you and me. I’m not afraid of my own mistakes.”
Her brow furrows. “What mistakes?”
You don’t answer her. Her world isn’t yours and you’re never going to be her. You turn and let your dead embrace you, whisper to you—forgiveness, hate, sorrow— and carry you back.
You’ve been undercover in the Faery Court for a while now, and although you had your doubts about the possibility of success at first, now you see: being the only one who is able to outright lie is a power to be reckoned with.
“Did you tell that human boy I was going to steal his soul and/or body?” Jani asks, hands propped on her hips. She’s not angry enough to have shed all of her human features, at least, but the fact that her large, black incisors are curling down past her chin is not a good sign. “Come on. There’s no certainty that I’ll be made if you tell me the truth.”
You and your roommate, Danu, look at each other. Jani is talking like she does to the younger fae, the ones who think that “no certainty” means that Jani won’t use her toxin to liquefy their internal organs and drink them like cheap beer just because someone tipped off her meal.
Yeah friggin’ right.
Danu’s been part of your college’s Court longer than you have, so he knows that Jani is a carnivore and knows better than to get on her bad side. Jani knows he knows, to be honest. It’s not a good sign that she’s even asking the question. It means she’s run out of other suspects and you two are the last ones.
Which means one of you had to have told the human to run, depriving the predator of her meal.
“That,” Danu says, “would be a dumb thing for me to do.” His sparkling, black eyes slide to you and away, implying that while he might not be dumb enough to do it, you are.
You’d be pissed if he weren’t right. Not that you’re going to admit that to Jani ‘no certainty’ Arachne.
Honestly, Danu should have just told her he didn’t do it. The problem with talking in riddles all the time is that, sometimes, there’s a bit too much room for interpretation.
“Wasn’t me,” you tell Jani baldly.
“You’re fucking kidding me,” Danu spits, hair flying straight up and eyes glowing with immediate panic. He turns to Jani, holding up his hands. “Wait, no, Jani, hold up, they’re not f–”
Jani lunges. Her fangs sink into the side of Danu’s neck, cutting off the damning words bubbling up from his lips. They’re not fae. Your last two roommates had realized the same thing. Only humans can lie to the fae and be believed.
It’s really not your fault that death came shortly after that particular realization.
You wonder when housing will run out of new roommates for you to go through.
“You’re alright, kid,” Jani says. She’s holding Danu’s body by the hair, blood dripping down her chin. Danu twitches. “So rare for other fae to play it straight like that. It’s refreshing.”
“I do what I do,” you say and watch her pull the body from your room and out into the hall.
During a LARP session, you dress up as a demon and go to the graveyard as your role demands. Little did you know that on this very night, an actual cult of demon summoners visits the very same graveyard.
Henrietta’s first hint that the other teens in the graveyard aren’t part of her campaign is the screaming. She’s not totally experienced when it comes to LARPing, but she’s been in enough of them to know how fake screams are supposed to sound.
The high pitched, nails-on-a-chalkboard squeals combined with the throat-ripping bellows of panic? Yeah, not fake.
Her second hint is what they’re screaming.
“We didn’t finish the incantation–”
“–circle isn’t done–”
“Salt! Salt! SALT FOR YOUR LIVES!”
Henrietta’s been waiting for the Orc Barbarian to throw foam rocks at her all night, so it’s more instinct than actual thought that has her combat-rolling behind the nearest grave. It must look a lot like disappearing in the flickering candles they’re holding, because the screams intensify.
“Where did it go?!”
“Quick, maybe if you finish the incantation, it’ll still be bound–”
“Salt, salt, saLT, SALT–”
Henrietta hears a mumbled mess of latin underneath all the screaming. She presses her back to the tombstone she’s cowering behind as the Latin cuts off. Dread sinks into her stomach as a mysterious fog rolls in and the smell of brimstone fills the air.
Oh, Henrietta thinks, peeking over the edge of the grave marker, oh no.
The cult is still in various stages of panic, but they’re no longer alone. Henrietta might have said what she’s seeing is impossible (because it IS, her brain screams), but she can’t deny that there is a woman standing in the middle of the candlelight where there previously had not been a woman.
“Did you,” the woman asks, voice rumbling, “really just summon me without a finished circle?” She pokes a black-heeled foot out over the spray-paint on the grass and looks incredulous when nothing happens. “Seriously?”
“But–” one teen in a long, black cloak says. He looks from the woman to where Henrietta last was. “But you–there was–” He spots Henrietta’s plastic horns, peeking over the edge of the grave. “There! There’s another one!”
Henrietta doesn’t have time to duck when the woman–the demon–turns. She’s got red skin, a black dress, and is dragging a long length of chain behind her. It’s shockingly similar to what Henrietta is wearing, to be honest, and if she wasn’t scared out of her mind right now, she’d be impressed with the authenticity of her costume.
The demoness grins, showing off quite a lot of pointy teeth. She crooks a finger to Henrietta, eyebrow raising. “Another…demon? Was it?”
“I,” Henrietta says, trying to stay in character, “was just–just in the neighborhood.” She stands, trying to mimic the way the demoness is standing, hip-cocked and lips pouting. “You know…so close to–to Halloween…”
“Of course, little sister,” the demoness purrs. She taps her chin. “Normally, I would flay your skin from your bones for interfering in one of my summons, but it is rather nice to not be bound…I’ll give you a pass. For Halloween.”
Henrietta very, very firmly doesn’t pay attention to the horrified whimpering that’s coming from the cult members behind the demoness. “For Halloween.” She takes a slow step back. “I’ll just leave you to–to that, then.”
“Please do,” the demoness purrs. She flicks a hand. “Off you run, little sister.”
Henrietta doesn’t need to be told twice. She takes off through the grass, her heels nearly sending her to the ground more than once. The demoness laughs and that, more than anything, keeps her going.
She meets her LARPing group at the gates to the cemetery.
“DEMON!” the orc barbarian shouts and Henrietta doesn’t have the energy to dodge the foam balls. Sally deflates. “Aw, I already killed you.”
“What’s all that screaming?” Akira asks Henrietta. He peers around her shoulder, trying to see into the heart of the cemetery. “Is that…fire?”
“Halloween ambiance,” Henrietta says. “Crazies. We gotta go.” She pushes at their shoulders.
“Damn,” Akira says, shaking his head. “Some people get too into that. Fire in a cemetery? They’re just asking to get the cops called on them.”
Henrietta finds that unreasonably funny and won’t tell either of them why until the sun is up.
Cheloneuniverse 