va'esse deireádh aep eigean, va'esse eigh faidh'ar

A couple years ago, msbrokenbrightside gave me the prompt 'if you don't like this world, then change it: cult leader jester at her finest'. The resulting fic was to the willing souls, set in some undefined future after the then-just-a-date TravelerCon imploded the M9 and Jester was leading a Traveler cult loosely-aligned with the Kryn in Nicodranas with the help of a very Charmed Beau. It was always vaguely on my list of things to expand/return to, but for death of Avantika reasons various reasons I never did. But considering how poorly fandom's treating Avantika these days, she deserves good things, like being an alive pirate king and also the girlfriend of a greymoral cult leader.

The tolling of the harbour bell wakes Jester just as sunrise begins to break through the window. For a moment she lies still behind closed eyes, wondering why such a familiar sound has roused her this morning. Reaching out with all her senses she can feel the hard planes of Beauregard's back at her side, smell the tang of salt and fish drifting up from the docks -

And see, as clearly as if she were standing on the seawall, the towering wood and canvas silhouette of the Squall-Eater approaching the Restless Wharf, green Cloven Crystal flag snapping in the wind.

Avantika is back.

Jester's eyes fly open and she rolls over, burying her face in the crook of Beau's neck. "Beau," she whispers. "Beau Beau Beau Beau guess what."

If you like me are sad about Avantika's current canon state, tell me why she and Vess are fine!

Starting working on an 'Ahch-To is the Feywild' fic prettttyyyy much as soon as TLJ came out, seven separate vignettes around the theme of Rey and Kylo meeting on Ahch-To while looking for Luke, and how time moves differently there. I have three of those left to write, this one is from the one where the Knights of Ren (the ghosts of padawans Kylo killed at the academy) took him to Ahch-To to recover post-Starkiller, and have come to lead Rey to him as well as Luke.

There is a hole in the universe where the First Order should have been after their victory: instead, they have gone wholly silent, an empty inverse of the New Republic's scramble to put some semblance of life back together. Rey cannot shake the feeling that her ghost has crawled out of that hole, a trade for something no one quite knows how to speak.

No one has quite spoken the fact that Rey will not leave to search for Luke just yet, either, but the First Order's oppressive absence hangs over D'Qar like a shroud, and Rey knows that she must stay until it's lifted. She doesn't mind, not even though it means the ghost remains glued to her side. It's easy enough to stay out of the way, for the most part. There is no shortage of things to be repaired, and while the pilots are not precisely trusting of someone they still call Jedi like a curse, her hands are not bleeding and her belly is full.

The ghost in this case being Macha Ren, borrowed with deepest love from valsansretour and in my defence, Nina killed her first.

I was not prepared for how much I would love this, especially as someone who's generally lukewarm re: Brian W. Foster's entire existence! But it's SO GOOD, even though I'm nnnnnnot happy about either how little Arabella/Miriam fic there is or much of the fic that does exist is background to stories that are actually Matthew/Clayton! Be the change, give the universe the werewolf!Arabella it deserves, who cares that I am only 50 minutes into episode three.

Arabella's never been much for small rooms, and she knows full well how much trouble she might face in the morning if Mr Whitlock knows when she slipped home. But with a night as full of crazy shit as this one's been, she thinks maybe one thing more can't hurt.

"I think I just might," she says, and Miriam's smile grows. It's the real smile, the one she's only worn for Arabella all day that says nothing about power and everything about things Arabella hasn't seen much of in her life.

It's enough to ease the burn of the silver at her waist as she steps over the hotel's threshold and casts one last glance at the moon, enough that once she's inside she immediately accepts Miriam's proffered arm. Enough that, as Miriam leads her up the stairs, she can put aside the familiar ache in the hinges of her jaw in favour of remembering the sweet burn of Miriam's whisky on her tongue.

Missing scene from night one? Futurefic where things have distinctly not settled down? WHO KNOWS.

Miriam icon is by me and free 2 steal if you'd like.

Receding back into my fandom-of-three a little bit, working on some post-canon Cathy/Mab for my 'sleeplessness/insomnia' square for ladiesbingo. It's nice to have something not-exchange related to talk about for once!

I stopped dreaming after we set foot in Pivot.

No more did Ariel sit at the foot of my bed, her knitting a pile of snakes writhing in her sunlit lap. No more did Mab run through the mists with my brother clinging to her hand, with myself alongside them stretched across the back of a grey horse still unable to keep up. No more did I stand in empty doorways, waiting for the fish-moon or Catherine Helstone's sister or Mab's owl-faced couriers or -

It should have been a gift. It would have been, if I had slept soundly in the dreams' stead.

But in Pivot, the wheels of the great clock ticked over in the place of my sinner's heartbeat, and I did not sleep at all.

Not sure I will ever live up to the wonderful gift pendrecarc wrote me earlier this year, but I've missed thinking abt this lovely weird book.

Absent the ability to post snippets of any of my ongoing exchange fics, have the beginning of the Ana/Mei first time fic meme prompted me for an embarrassing number of months ago and also a complete tonal whiplash from last night's Moira/Mercy murderfic.

She sleeps in Ana's bed, her first night back. Three sweatshirts, a pair of Ana's old gloves with the index fingers worn down from too much screen use, and as many blankets as the two of them could scavenge from the half-filled closets, and Mei thinks, as she curls so far into a ball that her forehead nearly touches her knees, that this might be what warmth feels like.

Ana's there when she wakes up, too, her hand heavy on Mei's thigh through the blankets. "Some of us were thinking about going down for breakfast together. Unless you'd like to sleep longer? I imagine your body still needs time to adjust to being outside of cryo."

Mei blinks away sleep, taking a moment to revel in the simple pleasure of opening her eyes - of opening her eyes to a face she'd never thought she'd see again. "I don't want to sleep. And I don't think you want to see anyone else for breakfast either."

Bets on whether this becomes the first of my #unwritten smutswap freeforms prompts to actually merit an E rating?

You know that thing where you desperately need good angsty emotionally-driven porn of yr faves from that brief window of time when they were trying to keep each other alive before they had to start trying to kill each other but the war was still There and everything was filled with so much longing even though nothing had really gone wrong yet, but no one wants to write that so you decide to write some yourself, but then you remember you don't actually Get anything, emotionally out of writing porn even when you feel like writing it, so you start a bunch of the setup for one of FFA's 100 words prompts (here: '100 words of the post-workout shower') and then just. Leave it. Gathering dust. For who knows how long? Yeah.

Anyway, have some Ana/Amélie.

"You did very well today, Amelie," Ana says, brushing her hair out of her eyes and smiling down at the other woman.

She's gratified to see Amélie smile back - one of her training room smiles, not quite a real smile, but it's something. "I wish I did not have to," Amélie sighs as she pushes herself to her feet, and Ana's heart twists at the words. Sometimes, when they spar, they can pretend it's just for them, and not for the war outside.

Today was not one of those days.

"Come on," Ana gestures towards the changing room. "Let me make it up to you."

Amelie needs no further encouragement, bounding forward with a grace unhindered by her workout - or by how much of it was spent on the mats with Ana kneeling her over, pinning her wrists. What they have is not regular enough to be a ritual, but has happened enough that they both look forward to it, that Ana knows to follow at a slightly more sedate pace.