I know genia has been paired with like.. everyone.. and the best choice is Tamlin obviously.. but when i first came across her lore and i read through her stuff i was wondering What if she had a mating bond with eris š
i wish i could properly express the synaptic event which occurred after receiving this ask my god!!!!! there are a few fixed factors at play to make this bond just absolutely diabolical for both of them: beron having had sex with (and having uhhh enslaved) iphigenia, beron having abused eris (while simultaneously molding eris into his image), iphigenia looking a lot like loa, eris looking enough like beron. because of these there are many many avenues to pursue with this bond but i think there are two overarching onsets to them: eris is young and so he leaves iphigenia to beron for a while before liberating her because he 1) doesnāt have the means to intervene 2) thinks itās better/safer to have her close by than somewhere he canāt monitor her 3) knows heās his mate and his match and so must be as resilient and hearty as he is; or eris is older/post-utm timeline and intervenes as soon as he is realistically able, but even that isnāt enough to spare iphigenia of beron completely.
first option is one of the worst timeline alive!iphigenias i think. every beat of her arc with eris is diametrically opposed to how she is with tamlin in renascence. because sheās known (of) eris so long before he intervenes and reveals their bond, his saving her has none of the inherent Goodness that endears her to tamlin. instead, itāsāhow could you have known we were mates and let this happen to me for so long? she gets so incredibly bitter and probably more than a little suicidal to know she wasnāt worth saving sooner, which manifests not as those overly careful fear responses to keep her alive but now as intentionally volatile responses to tempt death. her tongue is sharp. her emotions are weaponized. every revelation about what happened to her is shared with intent to hurt eris like he let her be hurt. she takes all her anger with beron out on eris. also ! she knows eris prefers maidens. which she is not. because he let her be made into a whore. which she would throw in his face All The Time
and for eris, who knows love to be pain, who has learned heās deserving of blame and violence and mistreatment, who is indeed culpable in this situation, who sees echoes of his motherās face every time iphigenia lashes at himāoof! big oof! real big oof!!! worst part? heās fuckin HORNY about it all. she is beautiful and vicious and hits such a good masochistic spot for him. one night iphigenia, drunk and wanting to hurt him, the wood of the forest house rotting all around her, lashes out at him. you will never be your father; you pale in comparison to him. eris snatching up her jaw. iphigenia thinkingāthere he is. finally. (because he hasnāt laid hand to her for pleasure nor punishment, not since he bedded her on their mating night.) but eris is just viscerally lustful because not only is she trying to hurt him but in her attempt to do so she actually ?? comforts him. cue FUCKNASTY TORRID SEX!!!!! which is the only way he subsequently knows how to feel connected to her. which makes her spiral out about being just a whore to him. itās very not good
second option is better ! he intervenes quickly, so she has more affection for him from the outset. in this scenario, the antagonism is more subtle. she looks like loa; he looks like beron. each of them looks away from the other for what they see of people who mistreated them, and that leads to lots of misunderstandings/small hurts between them. but always, iphigenia is uniquely suited to see erisāshe knows all of beronās cruelty, all of his little tells, all of his expressions and mannerisms, and so anything she sees outside of that in eris is absolutely glaring. some of it is loa that she sees, (who she uhhh does also hate,) but there are other elements to him too. little shards of who eris really is as himself. loyal. fiercely protective. shrewd beyond his years. a man of action, even if that action is hidden behind cutting word. angry, so angry, so quick to lash with his tongue but never violent with her. heās even sad beneath, if she cares to look.
eris feels immense guilt for what beron did/what he couldnāt prevent beron from doing + assumes she sees only beron in him. i really like the thought of eris trying to make this up to her and do right by her by doing away with the bed slave system in autumn as a whole, thinking itāll be a sweeping gesture of his care for herābut iphigenia becomes distraught. first time he actually sees her cry. she always felt a cut above the rest, being favored of the high lord, and this means that her mate sees her as any other whore. she doesnāt want justice; she wants revenge. she doesnāt say it outright, but the way she barbs at him is telling. eris is massively offput by this, but only for as long as it takes him to resonate with itāfor he was abused by beron, too. he knows her anger. that stuns him. he knows her anger, and so she must know his. he knows what has alleviated it for him in the past, if only for a while: blood, violence, power restored. so he finds the males who brought her to the forest house and presents their slow, methodical torture to her like a bouquet. sheās barely said a word to him since he told her about the abolishment, and he has to coax her into accompanying him.
but when she sees them.,,,,,,.,.iphigenia, even with tamlin, has vast propensity for violence/revenge when she feels itās deserving. so i mean she is literally bricked up over this gesture itās the first time erenia have that like . enthusiastic, carnal, lost in the sauce sex. possibly in an empty cell of the dungeons. theyāve had sex of course, but this is Different. iphigenia feels seen and loved and cared for. properly protected. eris feels like heās done something right between themāand now that he knows how best to do that for her, he can continue doing it. he teaches her not how to be soft and earnest like tamlin does but instead how to use her mistruths as weapon rather than defense. safe in the iron-grip protection of him, sheās free to be the autumn lady she should have been aka Maximum Cunt and Entitlement. sheās lying for fun. sheās got the nobility wrapped around her little finger. sheās saying everything to helion and loa that eris holds back, then sheās getting fucked to the gods because donāt ever, ever speak to my mother like that but also do that again youāre so fucking sexy i love you so bad
they come to complement each other, but beron and loa are always imposed over them in some capacity. eris does look like and talk like and make decisions like beron, and sometimes it freezes iphigenia up; that crushes erisāreactivates that Iām My Father wound. sometimes iphigenia says something harsh or gentle and eris grows distant and itās because he envisions his mother saying it to him. consistently, iphigenia has complex about not being a good enough lady of autumn, not like his mother, who the commonfolk all saw as their motherāshe is no mother; she is just a whore. you will not say that of yourself, he tells her. and why shouldnāt i, when it is the truth? and god bless em when they do have children together theyāre each otherās worst parenting nightmares
wow truly you have revolutionalized all things for me with this