Ryunosuke Naruhodo and the Six Months of Your Best Friend is Dead, Your Assistant Is Back In Japan, You Have Been Fired From Your Job and The Tall Handsome Prosecutor Who Hates You Just Found You Crying In The Library Closet
Cue Barok van Zieks not quite knowing why the strange-but-ultimately-good-hearted doe-eyed Nipponese Attorney is crying in a closet but feeling like he might Get It if he asks. He also Gets that he might not want to be spotted crying by any strangers since he somehow caught him after hearing a weird noise.
Thus he quietly escorts Ryunosuke to his office to let him infodump/overshare in relative peace and offer a neutral outsider's perspective. Nothing to read too deeply into, just helping a not-quite-almost friend in his time of need. He could just carve a few figurines for his crime scene model and—
What in the ever-loving Fuck did he just say about getting framed by that fuckass detective for murder After Being Drugged?!
Okay so I think there is something weird going on with Lenore
And it's not what you think. Well I'm not sure what I'm even thinking; tbh it feels like I'm pulling on a thread that's not meant to be puled yet but well hear we are.
So I think there is something about Lenore that is fundamentally different than the other students, and it's not just the prior bond she has with Annabel. It seems like, and this is going to sound completely insane, that she has some connection to nevermore, or something about her is closer to the entities that inhabit it.
Hear me out.
Warning: this is unhinged.
Upon entering the grounds of the academy she had that weird eldritch vision.
A vision Annabel didn't seem to have.
A vision the Deans knew she had.
And then there it the thing with the orbs. In chapter 45 Poppet stats them to be insentient, but they don't seem to act that way. They talk, and even try to protect Lenore.
Now it's unclear weather Annabel can hear what they are saying, as this feels like it's from Lenore's pov but I wanted to include it any way. These orbs feal sentient to me, maybe not sapient, but it feels like a weird thing for a teacher, do get wrong, or knowingly mislead us with.
And then there is the Raven. The mother fucking Raven. He is the first character we see Lenore with.
He states that the only reason that he talks to her is that she addressed him first. Something that no other student has done.
And then there is this.
Why would his curiosity about Lenore be destructive!? Like, Lenore is the person he'd said he would eat if she tried to escape. It cant be Merry and Mourn that pose a threat to him since he's snooped around the academy grounds before.
Now what I'm going to say next is going to enter thumb tacks and string territory but...
I think Lenore and the Raven have some weird connection.
First off, there's the obvious, Lenore has a bird motif, ravens specifically, and well she befriends a raven.
Then there is their mutual association with the color red. Lenore with her, well, everything, and the bird with his speech bubbles. And said speech bubbles seem unique. At first glance they seem like the speech bubbles we see with characters specters, but something about them seems different, and it's not just the colors. They seem more blotchy.
Now this is what character thoughts normaly look like
White text, with a colored gradient around them. But you wanna know what Lenore's thought's look like after she talks with the raven for the second time?
Red and blotchy, just like the ravens speech bubbles.
Now this is the only time her thoughts appear like this but I still felt like mentioning it.
Also you wanna who Lenore and the Raven's dynamic kinda reminds me of?
Merry and Mourn!
But like a Merry and Mourn that don't know each other well yet.
There is something going on here, but I have no clue what it is.
@blacknedsoul-blog Look you're one of the best meta writers in the nevermore fandom, and I feel like I'm going insane. HELP!
All this is really making my gears turn about what specter Lenore may turn out to have. I currently have three options in mind.
My first and favored option is Valravn. Between Lenore's chats and parallels with the bird and her regular bird imagery, this would make a surprisingly good pick. Valravne have two different stories. One is that a valravn is a knight turned into a raven by a curse, which can only be broken by drinking the blood of a child; a folk ballad exists where the valravn drinks the blood of the child in question straight from the heart before changing back. The other story says that ravens who eat the lost and unburied body of a king or chief after a battle turn into valravne, with special note, intelligence, and abilities given to the one that eats the heart, such as superhuman power and the ability to change other people in some fashion. Heraldry depicts valravne as hybrids between ravens and wolves — both very social animals with a symbiotic relationship irl. And of course, every wolf needs a suitable pack like Lenore's friend group.
The second choice is Nephilim. The hybrid children of angels (which become fallen angels specifically) and humans. Supposedly very strong and gigantic, or at least having great power and authority over mortals. Their skillset overall is pretty barebones because they're only talked about in official religious texts a handful of times, but various media have put their own spins on the concept, and thus their abilities. Some like the ability to understand and speak any language imaginable, possessing wings, and some capacity for various kinds of magic or the like. Basically they give the concept of "hybrid vigor" a supernatural/divine twist. Lenore's specter having such divine abilities might explain her varied interactions with other non-human creatures and her surprising natural charisma with her peers, though I'd understand if it sounds a little like a reach.
My third and final idea is Byakhee. These guys are full-eldritch beings from Lovecraft's famous menagerie of monsters. They're servants of one of the gods mentioned in the Necronomicon: Hastur, the King in Yellow. In at least one story, these guys could be summoned and used as mounts to take someone anywhere in the universe. They don't have an exact appearance because of the general nature of Lovecraftian monsters, but they are likened to all sorts of things: crows, moles, buzzards, ants, bats, and even human corpses. Some have switched out the likeness to ants for bees because a special enchanted mead, or honey-wine, is necessary for interstellar travel on a byakhee to protect the rider from the vacuum of space, in combination with the importance of the color yellow for their master. Naturally with Lenore, a shared eldritch origin with Merry and Mourn and an explicit connection to birds works pretty well to tie her to such a specter and various character moments up to this point, and only more so when byakhees are servants to an eldritch god of shepherds and are intrinsically linked to travel, leading into the bird explaining the original purpose of Nevermore's purgatory world.
Embrace the void. Probably the ending Silksong continues off of, or atleast in the true route, considering we see a glimpse of the shade lord in the ending cutscene. Which means this scene has happened in the timeline,
but what happened? will team cherry acknowledge this? is THK still alive? if yes where is it during the events of Silksong?
In all seriousness, he's probably aware that Hornet's missing, and she's been kidnapped by a foreign kingdom despite his sister's ability to take out a bunch of them.
And he, while spreading the word to the rest of the Vessels including Ghost, is probably worried sick.
Imagine Hollow coming across the massacre of Envoys (and potentially Choristers and Reeds) left behind by Hornet's capture, seeing all the brass and gold metalwork of their staffs and/or pins and embroidered white veils bearing the insignia of a kingdom he does not recognize.
There could be hints of Hornet's sting shards and silk in the general area, too. Maybe some of the dead bugs even have weirdly stringy hemolymph coming from their shells, like they were bleeding silk. Maybe there'd even be a forgotten Choral Commandment detailing the plan to capture similar to what Hornet eventually gets off one of her dead captors.
Naturally, the first thing Hollow does is make sure the others know: "Hornet's missing, and a huge group of outsiders are responsible." Of course, they don't know where she is or where she's been taken since the outfit is probably long gone by then.
Even if they prepared a search-and-rescue party -- or hell, even if they intended to declare war on the kidnappers' kingdom for taking Hallownest's age-long princess-protector -- they wouldn't know where to find her. At least not until maybe the events of the True Ending gave them an idea where she is that Ghost and the other Shades could telepathically share with Hollow.
Like how is this not absolute horror. Why isn't anyone pointing at thiiiiis. In a world where masks are considered identity, considered the 'face' of a person, the amalgamation of their being, Widow's being 'forcibly removed' and pins lodged through her spine... It's horrifying. It's absolutely body horror. If she had not been possessed, or driven mad by cult-like thinking, would she have attacked Hornet?
Honestly? Widow could've been a whole lot worse. She might've been one of those tasked with bringing in Weaver-spawn from distant lands, hunting them down to drag them kicking and screaming back to her beloved Grand Mother Silk. And the worst part is, if she actually had use of her Silk and her mask, she might've been scarily good at it, too.
Y'know why? Because literally EVERY OTHER FREE WEAVER IN PHARLOOM made the executive decision to try and create a new artificial god, lock down their already freaky-ass patron goddess, and eventually just leave a final note saying "Fuck this shit! WE'RE RUNNING!"
And what exactly was Widow up to in that entire situation? Well, unto that same god the Weavers were so desperate to see out of the picture, SHE WAS BEING A COMPLETE AND UTTER SUCK-UP to that TYRANNICAL WALKING SPINDLE! If she'd been allowed to continue living and acting as a typical Weaver, she would've easily chosen to work towards waking up Grand Mother Silk when every other Weaver wanted to keep her sealed and dormant. And she had some pretty frightening skills of her own wielding Silk that wasn't even hers when clotheslining all of Bellhart.
Quick comic because I'm in Bilewaters. And the next bench location is even worse than in Sinners' road or in Mount Fay...
Also also also I so much love how you get, like, little side dialogues with her from time to time, and here if you approach her while covered in maggots she will tell you that it was a bad idea to swim in it like if she believes we are experimental enough to try this water out
She also has an oddly sweet kind of concern if you talk to her while infected by the Twisted Bud curse/parasite. Far from the only one to speak on it if you approach them with the parasite, mind you, but probably my favorite of the bunch. (Besides Eva holding a metaphorical cross at the parasite in question from behind a force field)
She's basically like "Oh, girl! You don't look so good; what happened?" (Hornet explains the parasite issue.) "Eeeh, that sounds rough. If you can't just sleep it off or something, you'd best find help, chief. No one deserves to go down to shit like that; least of all, you..."
I've been playing Silksong for about the past week or so (like everyone else on the internet) and my fanfiction brain keeps bringing up a few specific things. Mind you, I've played the original Hollow Knight through to the Godmaster ending, SO...
While Hornet is exploring Pharloom, there’s a non-zero chance that she’s thinking about how her siblings probably realize she’s been kidnapped by now
Ghost and Hollow are both worried sick about their half-sister's safety, furious at whoever's responsible for her disappearance, and possibly whipping up a team of revived Vessels as a search-&-rescue party. (Ghost is the Shade Lord in this scenario, so I hc he can do that)
Honest to god wishing that at some point her siblings pull up on Pharloom ready to declare WAR on the kingdom if they refuse to return Hornet to her family safe and sound.
Yes, these thoughts came to me since the very beginning of the game. But they ESPECIALLY made themselves known while stuck in the frozen big house of a hellhole known as The Slab without cloak or needle to defend myself with.
So we know that N, Concordia, and Anthea all go on a journey together after the Plasma arc in the Pokemon anime, right? Seeing what the world is like now that they don't have to hide in Misty Terrain (yes I know that this was before Fairy Types were a known thing in the anime but I call it how I see it and Gardevoir learns the move anyway).
WELL, this opens up a whole opportunity to show them wandering around other regions that Ash has gone to and finding out just how much he and his friends have done for people all over the world. They could even make a game of whether or not Ash had been in the area and had any significant impact.
They go to Canalave City in Sinnoh? Turns out Ash and friends put a stop to a Team Rocket scheme involving a nightmare-inducing machine in a bid to sell fake Lunar Wings and eventually abduct Cresselia. They come across Cynthia at a library or set of ruins? She talks about the time Ash and his friends saved the world from Team Galactic, and stopped an enraged Dialga and Palkia from rampaging across Sinnoh with help from the Lake Guardians. The best part is the pokemon themselves are like "Oh yeah! We remember those kids! They saved all our hides!"
They check out the Banana Slakoth/Vigoroth Garden in Hoenn? Yup! Ash was there, too! And the park's curator will happily wax poetic about how Ash and friends helped his Vigoroth evolve to save the Garden from a wandering Snorlax that almost picked the banana groves clean, and now that same Snorlax is a well-loved, well-cared for part of the theme park. They meet Maxie and/or Archie and their teams after turning over a new leaf? Turns out Ash saved Hoenn, too, when they tried to make use of Groudon and Kyogre for their own ends only to almost get themselves killed.
And that's just in regions Ash had already been through up until that point! Imagine N and his sisters eventually winding up in Kalos and Alola finding Ash only continues stumbling his way through saving the world over and over again, getting on the good side of every Legendary/Mythical Pokemon he comes across, all the way to becoming Alola's Tapu-approved Champion.
Since I'm the special kind of weird who comes up with THE most random crossovers, I've started to imagine the demons of K-Pop Demon Hunters getting their shit ROCKED by all the horror media I'm familiar with, Gwi-Ma included. I'm talking the special kinds of monsters that the girls and their Honmoon can't do SHIT about!
The demons want to try their hand at the US fans in hopes Huntr/x won't be able to get to them in time? There’s no shortage of beasts who can thrash them to literal kingdom come! We are ranging from the many, more powerful demons of a far more violent mythos to good old-fashioned poltergeists, and ones of mostly children at that!
Just as probably the funniest and most "family-friendly" example, the FNaF crew can easily knock basically any demons on their ass and they'd probably know the animatronics are all possessed by children whose souls can't be sucked out. Imagine them running home after said beatdown, their tales between their legs, and screaming about how "HUMAN KIDS AREN'T SUPPOSED TO HAVE THAT SKILLSET!" And then they come back to the underworld only to learn that Gwi-Ma got his flaming ass usurped by a purgatory-forging pair of vengeful spirits inhabiting a golden bear.
You ever wonder how CR-S01 feels about his prison number?
Like, I know we all nickname him CR, his real name is Erhard Muller. You ever think he questions why no one told him his real name? He had to be in the system, they'd be able to match his medical records if they were making sure he wasn't infected... and his father was well known, we know for a fact CR was *living bait*.
Was this just to dehumanize him further?
Another twisted punishment for a crime, a boy of 16 years old couldn't have done on that scale?
And no one at Resurgam calls him it. They only refer to him as Kid, Doctor, or "You" if your name is Maria. Even Esha calls him "Kiddo", (which I love that?) which says they outright refused to use it. Maybe officially, when introducing him to his patients, but I don't picture them using it casually.
Maybe Gabe shortened it to CR at some point, so CR was used to it as a nickname, but when he remembered everything...
I can't help but picture how much *relief* he must've had rush over him, when he realized he had a name.
He had a full name.
Erhard Muller.
Erhard
Muller.
Not CR-S01.
Not "murderer"
Not "Kid"
Erhard Muller.
Dr. Erhard Muller.
And then once again, realizing even THAT was stolen... and unncessarily too.
If I had to guess, the justice system purposefully obscured his name. Him being seen as such a ruthless killer overshadowed him having total amnesia, so who's to say the same couldn't be said for his own voided identity?
By the time he first arrived at Resurgam, no one immediately recognized him, meaning his name and even appearance may have also been hidden due to him being a minor at 16 during the Cumberland College incident, even if he was seemingly tried and sentenced as an adult.
The same could be said for his name, seeing as no one who had contact with him (i.e. Agent Holden and the guards) called him by his bio name anyway. Just his prisoner ID, which in the end became so prevalent that the name "Erhard Muller" was completely lost in the shuffle. Resurgam's team might never have been told his name from the outset, and wouldn't learn it unless/until Erhard somehow gets a chance at a retrial to set him free.
Because hopefully this will make it SO much easier to tell you guys when I have something new out. This way, I can just add to it with a repost with each new fic. I guess this is as good a place to start as any!
Take note, those under Keep Reading are NSFW
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
three person poly relationship made up of two people who are already dating trying to coax someone with horrific self worth issues into a loving relationship. stray cat style
they’re all laying together in bed and the couple are both thinking to themselves like good, he stayed the night to cuddle and talk when we offered, he should know that we genuinely care for him and want this to be more then a handful of one night stands. and the stray cat guy is like wow this sure is nice i think i’m falling in love with them. it’s really too bad that they don’t actually give a fuck and hate me and probably want to kill me with hammers for no reason
I bet the JL has a “how fucked are we” metric that’s literally just how many of Bruce’s kids are there.
Like if he pulls up to the alien invasion or whatever with just Robin, then everything’s fine. More than fine, actually, because Bruce feels comfortable enough to bring his eight year old along for the ride. This battle will take approximately fifteen minutes and they’ll all get shawarma after. Not fucked in the slightest.
But if Red Robin shows up too… hmm, okay, this is getting somewhat serious. Tim is one of Bruce’s most trusted partners; he’s the smart Robin, the tactician, the loyal one, and so if Batman brought him along then it means he’s at least a little bit worried about shit hitting the fan and wants one his advisors around. But the combined brain power of Bruce and Tim is pretty much unmatched (DC plot armor for the win), so everything will be fine, basically. Superman might take a hit, but everything’s going to be fine. Just keep calm and you’ll all make it home in time to Door Dash some Panda Express before it closes. So not that fucked.
It starts to get serious after that. When Signal and Spoiler roll up the scene, shit has definitely hit the fan. Batman’s worried enough to call in reinforcements and he’s probably doubting the League’s ability to listen/obey his orders, so he needs a backup plan in case things go really south. But with Signal’s abilities and Steph’s superpower of turning anything into a joke, chances are you’ll be okay. Maybe impaled or something, but okay. But still, fucked.
When Nightwing shows, the JL knows it’s starting to get dicey out on the field. See, Nightwing’s got his own team, his own issues—the fact that he set that all aside to help out his dad is cause for concern. On a scale from 1-10, they are at a 7. Above moderately fucked.
And… oh God. Black Bat? Most of the time the JL doesn’t even see her, but once she makes herself known and starts fighting alongside her siblings, they all start to silently freak out. Black Bat is a fucking machine and if she’s breaking a sweat trying to fight the Big Bad, things are definitely not going to go well. They start praying that Batman figures something out. They freak out. They are intrinsically fucked.
But God Forbid you catch sight of the Red Hood. The prodigal son is a legitimate killer, and if Batman’s letting him blow out brains then the JL knows he’s desperate. And a desperate Batman is not good. At all. They are definitely fucked.
This happened. It had to; just as it had to happen that this be reposted.
If there's any scale to operations/ missions planned by Batman, is how many of his kids are out on the playground.
Gotham is a small doomsday area and they are it's own Justice League. For them to all show up, it's definitely the end times. Red Hood being last makes sense, though Spoiler and Signal has me laughing. Though, what level of threat are we talking if Batman were to bring his own rogues on the field? Blackmail, redeemed, etc?
Last I checked, in DC animated canon, the ONLY time villains have ever actually been entrusted with helping Batman, or the Justice League in general, was some apocalyptic, worldwide threat. Think Darkseid showing his face in JLU (see Atomic Skull's "It's our world, too!" on behalf of Luthor's Legion of Doom), or the Joining in The Batman 2004 (see Joker's "Forgive my inhospitality, but terrorizing Gotham is my job!"). Also, any point in any medium where Owlman appears and impersonates Bats, forcing him to team up with the Clown Prince of Crime himself to turn the bird into KFC and clear his name.
That said, if it's a relatively small-scale issue and the League is seeing rogues that have technically turned over a new leaf, it's usually not a huge deal. Maybe there was some sort of mystery that Batman needed a second opinion on who was an expert in that field. Like, say, if it's Harley Quinn, he might think it's something relating to psychology and/or the Joker.
If it's one of Gotham's regular recurring headaches from Arkham Asylum, then it's a really specific problem that relates to the rogue in question personally and the status quo is restored as soon as everything's settled.
But god forbid it's ever more than one villain being brought along for the ride, because that usually means we have a literally world or universe-ending threat on our hands and Batman decided they need every hand on deck that he can think of. More than the League, more than any helpers the League members can scrounge up, and even more than the entire Batfamily and all of their helpers, too.
Behold, my Genklintville headcanons and other tidbits
Yeah, turns out I ship two polycules in The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles. One is Asobaroryuu, and the other is this. I've honestly got a healthy number of headcanons for each, but I'll focus on this one for now. With that said, albeit probably not very well organized, on to the listing!
Genshin and his wife, Sayaka, were a failed arranged marriage romance. They were friends, but really couldn't bring themselves to be more than that even after having Kazuma. Even if they both loved their son to pieces, the lack of proper closeness between one another was a small point of tension that they had to hide from their son.
It would be considered massively scandalous and against most teachings of bushido for a man from a samurai family like Genshin to feel or act on any sort of need for connection, let alone via relations with foreigners. But before he left for Great Britain, Sayaka decided those taboos didn't mean shit to her, and ensured he'd leave knowing he had her blessing if he finally found someone to love him as he deserved.
Klint's prone to switching into this Julius Novachrono-level geek mode when it comes to swords; especially swords that aren't commonly found in the West. So when Genshin first met Klint, the first thing out of Klint's mouth was asking about Karuma. Luckily, this works in his favor, as the best way to befriend and bond with a samurai is talking about their beloved ancestral sword.
In the first attack on Klint that Genshin was involved in, he managed to break some of the attackers' weapons in the ensuing fight along with getting in the usual hits on the guys themselves. Somehow, the thugs themselves didn't learn all that quickly that taking on Genshin would mean losing their own blades against Karuma. As far as Klint was concerned, though, this just made Genshin his new sparring partner.
The maiden name of Klint's wife is Adelia Baskerville, known as the Bloom of the Baskervilles. She's all about tea blends, fusses over all of her boys (Klint, Genshin, and even Barok), adores animals, and first met Klint through a fateful encounter involving a runaway Balmung in a park.
Speaking of Balmung, Genshin's first meeting with the giant deerhound mix was also the first time he was brought to the Van Zieks manor for an introductory spar with Klint. Balmung knocked Genshin off his feet the second the door was opened and was inexplicably very attached to him from that point on. Don't worry; he warmed up to the big goober fairly quickly.
By the way, there are actually a bunch of hunting dogs on the Van Zieks estate. Balmung is just Klint's favorite since he's the only one he personally raised from puppyhood.
That being said, Adelia has an unexpected Mama Bear streak that EVERYONE forgets about. If you say/do anything that she reacts to with anything less than a smile, you should know you divinely fucked up and should absolutely start running. Not from the guys, though. No, not when the rest of the hunting dogs arguably listen to her more than her own husband, and she's also more willing to pull out the "sic" command on purpose than Klint.
Adelia has gone out into a dark London night alone several times because her boys didn't come home after getting attacked. Usually armed with her dogs and sometimes a pistol for good measure. It's the best way to track down where they are and avoid running into trouble herself.
As far as courtroom behavior, Klint is pompous and arrogant and unleashes all kinds of playful jabs at the Defense (i.e. Klavier-adjacent attitude, Simon-level snark). Private life is where he's a bit more mellow, especially with Adelia.
Klint's courtship with Adelia was actually fairly consensual for the time. By that point, he was already the lord of his household and decided to use his own status to take things at their own pace, allowing them to fall for each other before any marriage arrangements were discussed.
Genshin and Klint are a role-reversal of Kazuma and Barok. That is to say, where Kazuma is expected to be the one who annoys Barok in post-canon, Klint was the one who would annoy Genshin in pre-canon.
I might add more in the future, but this is plenty for now. Hope you enjoy!
EDIT: Here are a couple more
It's honestly not hard for Klint or Adelia to fall in love with Genshin. After several of his visits to the manor and even overnight stays, the two wind up confiding in each other about their attraction to him.
The van Zieks family hasn't had any religious affiliation for quite some time. If you ask them about their religion, you won't get anything concrete out of them. They're actually the closest you'll get to modern-day atheists. Among other nobles, they're the detested godless family, but they're legally and morally more respectable than every corrupt noble who wears a cross around their neck.
This is partly due to their legacy of work in the law and just generally disliking how various religious castes tends to mistreat certain people who've done nothing to warrant it, sometimes to the extent of twisting the law to their whims and letting actual criminals in the clergy get away with severe crimes.
The beginning of the non-platonic relationship between Genshin and the nobles happened entirely by accident. They were celebrating a hard-fought win with a really difficult case at the manor and wound up drinking to the point they all blacked out. Genshin winds up getting the full "Morning After" treatment the next day.
Genshin is very starved for affection and touch. He doesn't even realize what's going on with him when being held by his newfound lovers makes him weirdly sleepy and even subconsciously clingy. At the same time, however, the shame and internalized homophobia hits him hard, even while Klint and Adelia reassure him that there's no need to beat himself up over it.
By the way, Adelia's hair when it's down is basically the exact same as that of her daughter. Coral pink, very curly, and kinda puffed out. Klint and Genshin both admit that her hair looks better when it isn't done up into her usual tight bun.
Mmm... I'd say only in Season 2. I mean, a Miraculous and its Kwami are supposed to actually change their owner's appearance, right. You only get that with Kipperin in Season 2 with his new Powerbonded Winged Fusion thing. Like so:
In Season 1, Kipperin is really just a living backpack with wings you can basically put on and take off as you like. There's no outfit change or anything like Winged Fusion. I think that Kipperin only carried something or someone who wasn't Lok ONCE in the whole show anyway, so I guess it didn't much matter to the writers that we ultimately never see Powerbonded Kipperin outside his fused form.
I still love this bug, though. You'd just know that if he could openly communicate with people, he'd be a real peach
So this ship totally didn't sink its claws into me without any warning whatsoever when I played TGAAC, but I've officially adopted the hc that both Van Zieks brothers were poly, so that's... something. We'll see whether or not the new Tumblr community for this ship spots it. And one last thing: I personally challenge whoever reads this... (checks my doc word count) 900 word one-shot to figure out what book is being read in the italics.
~~~Have fun!~~~
“...They were good and kind to everybody and everything; not only to men and women, but to horses and donkeys, to dogs and cats, and to cattle and birds…”
Kazuma never really put that much thought into English literature even when he began his mission to seek London’s darkest truth. But ever since this new routine emerged between himself, Barok, and Ryunosuke, he found a very distinct appreciation for it.
It began in such a simple and fairly understandable way, when Kazuma himself was the only other person in the Van Zieks manor. A horrid nightmare had woken him late in the night; the contents of which, he couldn’t recall, but his body refused to rest after. He decided to go downstairs and see about brewing some tea to settle his nerves. Imagine his surprise when he found his mentor on a sofa in a room that was more like a small library, reading a book with his own tea set on the table before him.
Even with one blanket over his legs and another over his shoulders, it was all too easy to see it: the shuddering aftermath of one of the lord’s own terrors haunting him. And one could say that them both being awake at such an ungodly hour, shaken by nightmares and desperate for comfort, offered a sort of common ground between them. Barok invited him in by simply pouring a second cup of tea, for which Kazuma was immediately, if quietly thankful.
“I don’t think any man could withstand our mistress. I wish all ladies were like her.”
“That sounds just like Iris with Scotland Yard. Don’t you think so, Partner?... Kazuma?”
When he asked about the book, Barok was… embarrassed at first, trying to cover his reddening face. An uncharacteristically sweet look for him, in a sense that Kazuma had never quite noticed before then. With a bit of pressure, he revealed that it was a novel that was often read to him as a child -- some collection of short fairy tales similar to Iris’s plans to combine all of her short stories. There were a number of child-catering books he’d collected, often turning to them for some semblance of comfort, and Barok offered to read them to Kazuma himself, even offering a place within the blankets at his side.
That morning found them waking up from the best sleep either of them had in weeks. And after several other instances where a night of quiet reading together kept their nightmares at bay, the pattern was quickly recognized.
“It was a dreadful sight to me, for I knew what fearful pain it gave that delicate little mouth, but Master gave me the word, and we were up with him in a second.”
Naturally, when Ryunosuke returned to London a proper lawyer, after what felt like an eternity of the three figuring out how much they all meant to each other and what their feelings were from the beginning, he was invited to further share this new comfort. Hence, here and now, they lay together on Barok's massive bed, the shorter men resting on the tallest, reclined on the pillows. The lord’s deep, warm voice washed over them like waves with every word he read from the book in his hands.
This night was hitting Kazuma a bit harder than most, already worn from a long trial and a somehow longer day. Sleep started to drag his eyelids down almost the moment he found the comfortable position in which he lay. The arm that was settled around him and would every so often stroke his hair only made him sleepier, making the words harder to discern beyond that lulling baritone.
“…Remember, we shall all have to be judged according to our works, whether they be towards man or towards beast.”
A soft yawn that wasn’t the man reading. “I bet your brother would say something like that…”
A chuckle, rumbling the chest under Kazuma’s head. “Indeed.”
The movement jostled Kazuma from his sleepy haze, and he hummed in inquiry, raising his head.
“Oh, sorry. We didn’t mean to wake you, Kazuma,” Ryunosuke said softly in apology, taking one of his partner’s hands to kiss his knuckles. “You can go back to sleep.”
“I wasn’t even asleep yet…” Kazuma grumbled.
Barok chuckled again, pressing a kiss to his forehead before gently massaging his scalp until Kazuma settled back down on his chest, pulling the duvet back over his shoulder. “Still, we could tell you were on the edge of that precipice, beloved. Now rest, while I complete the chapter.”
Kazuma let out a sigh, eyelids drooping once more as Barok resumed reading. As much as he tried to focus on the words, sleep had a hold on him long before the mild rousing.
“He was just as free in speaking to gentlemen of his own rank as to those below him; for another day, when we were out, we met a Captain Langley, a friend of our master…”
There were so many things that they shared now. A warm and soft bed. These wonderful stories that averted all nightmares. This once lonely home. This love in their lives. It was better than anything he could’ve imagined. Even as he drifted away, Barok continued reading, hopefully lulling Ryunosuke to sleep as well. And when they wake up, he knows they’ll still be there, ready to share the morning of a new day.
