Mareven Role Swap (Maven Joins the Scarlet Guard Part Two)
Lyric from Glory and Gore by Lorde
Nominee for Best Fanfiction and Best Alternate Universe in the Red Queen Awards
In war, healers are the first to die.
House Skonos stood tall and proud before the Newblood uprising, a noble house that served the highest titles in the land. Their head would heal the king himself, easing wrinkles and gray hairs for all his days. Mother liked to grumble about it in the mirror.
Then came the mutations.
Their sister house, Blonos, was able to flee. As their ability was to heal themselves, they thought they had nothing to fear when the rats came pounding at their door. But one arm was grabbed, then another, the life force draining from their skin. Leechers, they were called. House Carver, they named themselves.
Skonos healed others.
They could not heal themselves.
_
Mareven Role Swap AU where Newbloods rule, Reds are still oppressed, and Silvers exist in a hazy space in between
Newblood Queen - Chapter 49 - beforeIlearnedcivility - Red Queen Series - Victoria Aveyard [Archive of Our Own]
Fade has been my OTP for ten years – okay, ten years probably apply to all RQ shippers – that has made me joyfully, enthusiastically, devotedly and unceasingly write hundreds of pages of fan fiction as they’re this inspiring mix of insinuated longing in the shadows of the main plot that urges me to fill in the blanks with vibrant love.
Fade are tropes but specific ones, and also full of facets. It is now, and maybe always was, rare to find ships of two people with a similar background. Shade and Farley find fulfilment in sharing a cause, in someone who knows what the other endured, and keep watching out for each other. But they’re also seemingly opposites. A grumpy woman and a sunshine man (rare enough as well) who are also more than that, who don’t simply clash for their differences but grow with each other, accepting and cherishing the hidden parts of themselves because the other finally sees them. They bring out more of each other.... (Con't under break)
Ada Wallace/ Diana Farley:
There is the trope of the one who got away. This is my ship who got away. Usually, I would reserve this for Thomaven, but I am a woman of sapphic yearning, and I believe there is nothing more wholesome and sexy than two adult women raising a kids together, holding a state in the background together, competent and intelligent. Ada Wallace remembers everything. Imagine a competent partner who NEVER forgets things. Self taught, smart beautiful. Seen enough shit. The same goes for Farley. FARLEY DESERVES TO MOVE ON. She deserves to have a happy wife and a happy life. They can stay in Montfort together with the Barrows and Clara. They can rebuild and heal. Farley is more than just Shade's gf, or the mom. She is a goddamn general. And Ada was always in the background of her story in the book too. Will this ship bomb bc no one else wants this? sure. But let me go out in a blaze of glory kneeling and praying bc I believe in Ada/Farley supremacy.
Round 2, Poll 3/8
Diana Farley/ Shade Barrow
Ada Wallace/ Diana Farley
Voting ended onMar 22
Farley starts out as a woman fully committed to the rebel cause and despite her concern for her team as their leader, she appears distant, cold and thorny. Yet between the lines of Steel Scars, she loathes how her father has taught her to bury her heart to create her sole focus on the Scarlet Guard. She knows it means solitude and it’s only Shade who dares her to break her loneliness, and only Shade, the newcomer, cares enough for her to ask how she feels beneath her icy glaze of efficiency and ambition that fights the silver supremacy. Farley can be more than that – she wants to be more than that because if she doesn’t open up, all her heart feels is the pain of losing her home town and family and even that loss she must use to further the cause. Her heart is so deeply embedded in her mission its feelings have to serve it as well.
Shade must’ve been impressed by her, inspired to follow the model of a strong and self-confident red woman as a leader who flaunts all the rules and still he starts to rile her, challenge her. He isn’t like the rest of her soldiers who simply trust her to obey her orders and leave it at that to support her. He also doesn’t offer concern directly, asks about her worries. He approaches carefully, courting her as if he was chasing the huntress herself until she is willing to be caught – not in a trap but like saved from a fall. With him, she can stop falling into a deeper hole of loneliness but fall for his affection, granting herself not just a respite. Giving in to their desire is defiance, against her father who expects single-focused commitment, against the silvers who can’t take away their pleasure as well as their freedom, even as Shade and Farley fight against them.
And Shade, too, is a man of many facets. Or shades. Of sunshine, the fun caring brother and friend with the ability to save them in time, to his own risk. He has eyes like honey, yet he is all nurturing words and art or can he build dangerous, sticky traps? Farley showed him to strive for more and fight and he will make use of the power he has. His ability can save but also be employed for sabotage and murder, to kill before anyone can notice or strike back, to protect his loved ones mercilessly. He can be warm light and also a killer in the shadows and Farley treasures both sides, as he not just treasures all of her but yearns to uncover the ways to her soul buried deep within a casket.
They keep their love secret at first which I find hot, personally, because it speaks of disobedience, of taking what you crave without asking for permission. Mare says Farley isn’t one for hugs yet Farley casually touches people all the time. Rather, she longs for touch, to give and receive reassurance, but has become too used to cover that need and limit the physical affection, the intimacy in the dark, to Shade. The secret relationship burns on its own flame but in obscurity, as if from hesitation, a fear of open commitment.
That is all for naught of course when Farley gets pregnant and hiding turns futile so she just stops trying to, even if, in canon, she’ll be a walking tragedy whose child’s father has died. Still she ceases to lock away her feelings and dares to embrace the vulnerability that comes with having a child. She won’t let her child doubt her only surviving parent loves her – in contrast to how the colonel treated Farley – and protects her at all costs.
With Clara, Farley will have a family again, one she starts herself, she’ll give life instead of kill and never be alone again.
For Clara, Farley will reveal the love she holds inside because Shade gave her the courage to, so she can be gentle not just to Clara but to all those with her, to challenge her thorny side and turn it against their enemy instead of herself.
Farley is a woman who continues to grow into all she can be, gentle, cold, calculating, outspoken, brave, ruthless, passionate, secretive, caring, competent, questioning, innovative. But there remains the thought that never leaves me – that they both could still be more – if they got to be together, that Shade could be more, too. He’s remembered as perfect, warm and loving although he didn’t even get the chance to doubt and move beyond that, to find his own unique way to love his daughter (or more children in the future). Clara will always carry Shade’s memory although she never knew him or could ever be him. A baby to take care of is the opposite of a boyfriend who stands by your side raising her. When Farley grows kinder, who is kind to her, seeing into her heart and looking out for and after her? Has Farley re-found joy in her child after the numbness of grief only to be lonely again?
Maybe I relish the tragedy of Farley and Shade but just the same, I’ll never let go of the idea of what they could have been, of how Shade would’ve supported Farley as ambitious general and besotted, playful mother, amazed by even more facets of her. They have come so far, with so much dangerous hope, and they could’ve kept growing together.
I could probably say more but I suppose this is the essence and more details are described in the aforementioned hundreds of pages of fanfiction. Just one last note: I’ve avoided most of my personal headcanons here but canon Steel Scars Farley reads as demisexual/romantic as she doesn’t realize or interact with Shade’s flirting until she has become closer to him and for myself, I imagine both Shade and Farley as bi, too, and that would be another angle to my favourite ship – they could be attracted to anyone of any gender but they chose each other.
Drabbe: 12.- I'm pregnant 18.- it's okay to cry... Farley and Cal friendship
This took long but I did my best! Please take this piece of fictional angst in these times of real life angst. 3721 words.
The Want
After weeks in hiding and on the run, nights spent awake and alert, in thin tents – or in a cave –, a real bed was a luxury she couldn’t suffer. The air, always cold and damp in the base of Irabelle, she was used to, even on their first night, having arrived only hours ago. So was sleeping in rooms with a dozen others, as either was an improvement to their way here, from the evacuated island of Tuck. Diana Farley had endured hardships for a long time and taken what small comforts and safety she found in the rests she was offered.
What unsettled her were those who weren’t safe.
She lay awake, her mind spinning in pointless circles that demanded her to act yet still eluded any options how to. Her teeth grinded, her fists balled. She squeezed her eyes shut but one didn’t fall asleep when your whole body and soul were so tense you wanted to shout.
Oh, the want.
Give it up or stay in restless rest?
Experience advised her to pick the latter. But her most important finding was not to rely on the usual.
“Fuck it,” she murmured. Opening her eyes, she assessed the dark room before she rose, stretched, and put on clothes. I’ll get to pull back more than soon enough. There wasn’t enough light to assess her belly as well, but she knew its rounding shape well enough anyway. She sighed as she touched it one more time. Not round enough to be obvious yet just big enough to draw attention. It was the worst time in that regard, probably. She should simply announce she was pregnant to undermine any gossip, though she also knew that wouldn’t stop it, only replace curious with pitying glances. And pitying herself, she could do well on her own.
She moved her hand off her belly to push herself up – and hesitated. She stayed seated, palms on the warm blanket and blood pumped fast by her racing heart.
You should be here.
It was the one thought that paralyzed her the most. As if dreaming, she remembered the softness he’d given and woken in her in return, the tenderness that had turned into stinging pain now that he was gone, like everyone she loved, apart from their child.
You should be here and hold me, soothe me, kiss me … Stifling a screaming sigh, she shook her head, fists tightening again. Shapes that had appeared as her eyes had gotten used to the dark became indistinguishable as she blinked – no, not at tears. She wouldn’t shed tears. It didn’t help, did it? She rose, finally. The only option was the way forward, and that was saving the ones left.
“Captain …?”
Surprised by the unusually sleepy voice, Farley turned back to the bunk bed and grabbed its upper rail. She looked up at Ada Wallace, half risen and wrapped in her blanket.
“Sorry I woke you,” Farley said, startled by her own hoarse voice. “I’ll be in the control room.”
Ada bent forward to cover Farley’s hand with hers. “Is that so?” she asked.
Her pulse throbbing at the touch, Farley shrugged. “A captain has her duties,” she replied, neutrally, but the corner of her mouth twitched. Ada always called her captain since her rank had been restored, apparently a politeness remaining from her housemaid occupation, though Farley had learned in their weeks travelling together from Tuck to Irabelle that it was also Ada’s kind of wit. With her Newblood ability always the smartest person in the room – without exception –, Ada had developed her own methods to stay under the radar as she withstood the Silvers’ disdain, and one was a delicate sense for irony.
I am no match for her, Farley thought. If we hadn’t found her, she would’ve joined the rebellion on her own, sooner or later.
Now they held each other’s gaze despite the dim room, both filled with tension and held breaths that bespoke the opposite – the concern of friends. At last, Ada relaxed. “You’re okay?” she asked.
For an instance, Farley lowered her eyes. “I’m not,” she confessed, adding, and you know that, in her mind. “But I’m well enough.”
Ada audibly released a breath, her fingers squeezing Farley’s and brushing over them like the tickle of a feather before she let go. “Then I’ll go back to sleep, captain,” she replied, and Farley nodded.
“I’ll see you at 0600, Wallace.”
She glanced around as she left the bedroom but took no notice of anyone else awake and overhearing their exchange – which didn’t mean there wasn’t any. If so, she couldn’t care about them. She entered the underground corridor of the base, lit with meagre lights, smelling moist and so quiet the silence had an oppressing quality. For a while, the base had been the best excuse for a home she’d had, but that was before the Notch. Before Shade. Although it had only been him and not the place that had carried such a notion.
His love had ruined the persona she’d carefully carved at for years. Now it kept her hand tingling from Ada’s touch. She was glad for it, their conversation, really, because of its normalcy, the support, and the forgiveness it meant after their last, awkward, talk.
Ada knew about her state, of course, having figured it out quickly, so she, Farley, had asked her a few days ago, “have you ever been pregnant?”
She’d asked with the wish for sharing common ground, for the understanding of someone who knew how the current strangeness of her body felt, and in that moment, she’d picked Ada because she didn’t dare to try with Ruth Barrow who was both too distant and too close to her.
She’d had rued it the same second she’d asked. Ada, of all people? As a housemaid, she might’ve very well taken care of babies. As a Newblood minder, she could’ve gathered all kind of knowledge on pregnancy and childbirth. But Farley had inquired about neither; she’d asked about the private story of Ada Wallace, the person, who had no children, and who might’ve been hurt by a question that could’ve very well been a question about loss or pain.
Ada’s face had gone blank before she said no and Farley apologized and glimpsed a smile so tiny, she must’ve imagined it. Maybe it was real, Farley considered now, relieved. But only a little.
They were friends as well as comrades yet she couldn’t fully appreciate it. A touch was a gift she craved and feared because it couldn’t be enough. As good as it felt, it wasn’t the touch she wanted – Shade’s touch. She wanted him to turn up, see her, hold her and hold their baby in due time. She wanted her baby, period, healthy and safe and with a different future. Many Reds – and the few Silvers she’d had part in bringing over – came to the Scarlet Guard out of despair or anger. Those were emotions she was used to as well, but they weren’t her motivation. What got her here was longing, raw and demanding want. She, Captain Diana Farley, was filled with it to the brim.
Another memory rose, carrying more desire and urge with it: Shade embracing her from behind, his face leaning against her neck and his breath nuzzling her skin. He held onto her, he kept her up – and walking ahead. “I don’t know how to help Mare,” he’d whispered that day. His hands hugged her so tightly, she’d reacted to his touch just by breathing. Uncertain what to say, she’d covered his fingers with hers, entwining them.
“I’ll do better,” she whispered now. Back then, their closeness had been enough – for them, in their infatuation. Now Shade was dead but she could still do her best to free Mare for him.
Her fists balled. In the control room, the colonel would wait for her, the father who always told her all she couldn’t do – until she would succeed and he’d find another thing to take away from her, only for her to get it anyway. She could do this. She’d save Mare and everyone else she was able to keep safe.
“‘Morning,” greeted a voice behind him, and Cal’s head spun, aching as his neck had been stiff and unmoving from staring in the same direction for hours. He knew he was not welcome, couldn’t gain traction here, so all he could do was staying, determined and obstinate. Now his eyes could hardly follow Farley as she broke into the control room. Her entrance shattered the words of dispute, said and unsaid, still hanging in the room although Cal, the colonel and the two remaining operatives had fallen silent more than half an hour ago, tired from discussion that went nowhere. No point was made yet Cal couldn’t leave, couldn’t call it a night like Kilorn or Bree. He was a thorn in the side of the colonel, and he knew the older man wanted him gone. Cal wouldn’t give up this night of insisting on Mare’s rescue, he stubbornly remained because he suspected he wouldn’t be let in again.
He hid this suspicion though, he was versed in that: never show insecurities, always maintain royal dignity. It didn’t endear him to the Guard operatives, though. Often, their faces plainly revealed how Cal’s habit and demeanour chafed against them when he didn’t even guess what it was this time.
He shifted in his chair to watch Farley stride in while she assessed him and the others in the room. She didn’t meet his gaze, her eyes passing over him after a glance. I deserve this, he figured, I could’ve gone to welcome her as soon as I heard of her arrival with the others left on Tuck.
Though she assessed wrong, he thought as well. She walked to the colonel like she didn’t even notice how her cold presence froze the flammable atmosphere in the room.
“You’re late,” the colonel said rudely but Cal had witnessed enough of his grim miens by now to find the needy relief he tried to hide beneath his frown and barked words.
If Farley did as well, she snorted at it. “Better safe than sorry,” she replied and secured and sat down in the chair next to her father in one fluid motion. With the next, she reached for the papers on his desk. “What’s the current operation?” she inquired, but the colonel stopped her, slamming his palm on the papers and pulling a folder out of a drawer as if he’d just waited for the moment. “I think you need to catch up at first, captain,” he said in a dangerously low voice.
Cal stretched his neck, wishing Kilorn or Bree, anyone from the Notch or Mare’s family, had been stubborn enough to linger here with him, so there might be three voices present to urge for freeing Mare –
No matter. Then this had to be his moment. Cal rose, catching the attention of Winters and Williams, the other two Scarlet Guard operatives, as he sidled to the desk.
The conversation between Farley and the colonel had turned only quieter, more private. “… I’m not surprised you hold this against me,” Farley said, clearly piqued.
“Please –”
“I owe him …”
“Sir,” Cal interrupted them, and it sounded like a hiss. Heads spun to him, he swallowed. “Colonel, I agree with Captain Farley” – he looked at her – “she should participate in the mission and share her thoughts.”
He’d considered calling them both by name but decided that reminding them of their relation they liked to blur so much would rather work against him. Yet stunned they were, as he’d intended. At last, Farley fully acknowledged him. The corners of her mouth twitched. “There you are, Calore,” she said. “Stopped sulking?”
Her taunt irked him; until he saw her own fallen face, her exhausted demeanour. She was taunting herself as much as him, commiserating with him and mocking herself in an attempt to keep them both over water.
He made a face and inclined his head, she sighed. She spun her chair, hands folded in front of her. “What is the objective?” she asked.
“Free Mare,” he replied without hesitation.
She raised her eyebrows but withstood glancing at the colonel for confirmation. Cal didn’t read only surprise but anticipation as well on her face. “Tell me of your plan,” she demanded.
His heart raced in excitement. Finally! “We know Mare is alive, for now. So the sooner we act, the better –”
“That’s not a plan.”
“Well –”
Farley frowned. She glanced at the colonel’s files while the man’s expression was a very clear I told you so. Turning back to Cal, she continued. “Excuse me, I didn’t have regular access to most news, but I haven’t seen broadcasts or announcements regarding Mare for weeks. Thus, your information is coming from spies, right? What else do they say?”
“What else?” he repeated, flustered. He moved closer, leaning toward her. “I know Whitefire best, and by my colours, do you like to imagine Mare under Maven’s torture? It’s been a month, and time to act –”
She jumped from her chair, forcing him to step back. The ten centimeters he had on her meant nothing, her eyes burned no less. Only then did he realize his words: as if he hadn’t watched her getting tortured.
“All I understand you’re saying is we should run into Whitefire without a plan, without preparation, on a suicide mission! Endangering ourselves, our spies and Mare!”
He gaped. Had he said it like that? But he couldn’t believe her – he’d trusted Farley to support him, yet she denied him, him and Mare. He tried one last time and reached for her shoulder. She shoved him away.
“Oh, fuck it,” she muttered and pulled him with her, out of the room. As he stumbled after her, he caught the sight of Winters and Williams, staring at him, aghast, and of the colonel, looking annoyingly smug that his estranged daughter served this one purpose: finally removing Cal Calore from the control room.
In the corridor, Farley pushed him against the wall. Her face was pink with anger and Cal couldn’t guess which accusation she’d throw at him first. Thus, he took his chance while she still caught her breath. “Is Mare just like any other operative to you?” he snapped. “Or are you uncertain what happened, Farley? Because I was there. You weren’t. You stayed back while –”
“I did what I could! How dare you fault me for ….” She stopped, her voice losing its spite. “I did what I could,” she repeated. “I will do what I can, because it’s right, and for Shade. I’ll get Mare out of there, I’ll bring the Scarlet Guard to success, but I won’t run into trap after trap by being rash. I’m done being rash! I’m pregnant.”
What?
She was too close suddenly. He felt wrong here, wrong to bear witness to this moment. Did she mean to tell him this? She seemed too charged to even be surprised by herself. He blinked, forcing his eyes to stay on her face, not to move down. He suspected she’d slap him if he did the latter.
Her agitation waned slowly. “You see,” she went on, quieter, “that I’m unwilling to run into death?”
He nodded carefully.
She sighed and from one moment to the next, her anger was gone, replaced by sadness. “Shade wouldn’t want this, he would …” She couldn’t go on. She cleared her throat, looked down, trying to hide her glistening eyes.
He made a dare. He lifted his hand to her cheek. “Hey,” he said softly. He couldn’t congratulate her, could he? Instead he said, still as tender as he managed, “Farley, it’s okay to cry.”
She gasped, for seconds frozen in shock. Then she clasped his hand – instead of pushing it away. “Do you … do you cry, Cal?”
He swallowed, stalling to answer as he was as frozen as she seconds before. A shiver woke in the hand that touched her cheek and spread through his body, both sizzling and freezing him. But he wasn’t frozen, not anymore; he dared even greater than cradling her cheek. As before his shiver gave way into sobs, he hugged her close.
One more time, she didn’t shove him away. She pressed her face into his neck, breathing heavily. Did she cry? Did he? He couldn’t tell, could only smell her, sweat, sleep and gunpowder, skin and hair – hair that scratched his face. It didn’t annoy him, there was some comfort in her, and also his, physical presence felt in this moment.
He’d thought Farley in sore need of touch and closeness, but he was as well. Mare wasn’t dead like Shade, but her absence stung, piercing and wearing him down and pulling the ground away from him. He feared for her. He needed her. He swam in danger and loss of purpose he’d never known before. What was he doing with the Scarlet Guard without Mare? These people mistrusted, if not despised him. The colonel had locked him up and would’ve sold him to the highest bidder; now Cal as good as begged for his support in his mission to bring Mare back.
Farley hadn’t been a friend, but she was an ally, and he was glad to have her back, at least. He liked to give her some of this relief in return, although she now had her own insecurities and fears. To have a baby in this chaos? Mare’s niece of nephew? Mare would want to meet them desperately. And Farley …he hoped she was happy about this at least. He didn’t want to imagine how she fared, with feelings wavering like a wave, between grief and love and anticipation. She was brave.
The moment passed like an eyeblink that lasted on hour. Farley pulled away tentatively, without letting go fully. She still had her hand on his arm when she spun to lean against the wall, forcing Cal to slide down next to her.
They were quiet, yet hardly calmed. He wiped his face with his hands, covering traces and enjoying the brief darkness before he glimpsed at her. Farley’s face was flushed and her eyes similarly pink – he concluded she did cry, though the weeks before might’ve been as much a cause for her look. Pain spoke from her whole being, pain born both of grief and yearning. Her panting might stop, her brow might frown as if scheming, but Cal recognized the emotion all too well. From familiarity, he realized. What he saw in Diana Farley in this moment was how he’d always felt about his mother he’d lost and never known.
“I want him to do this with me,” whispered Farley.
He swallowed. The urge to reply rose in him yet he didn’t know what to offer. Yes? How lame. He hesitated. His fingers twitched so he extended them slowly, carefully, to rest on her thigh.
She breathed in and tensed.
Now his whole body twitched.
It wasn’t aimed at him. “He,” spat Farley, her chin jerking toward the control room. The colonel. “He doesn’t understand. That we were in love. He thinks I had some nice bed sport and have to deal with the results.” The last word dripped with venom. “By myself, he means, on my own, but most of all away from the Scarlet Guard.” She grimaced. “And even if … “
He had to clear his throat after the breath he’d holding during her outburst. He’s been worried about you, he thought. He couldn’t say that. What use had she for the colonel’s worry if he shamed her? Noticing his hand was still on her thigh, he wanted to pull away, but she covered his hand with hers, meeting his eyes. Determined. Distraught.
“You’ll do it,” he said. “Your way.”
For a second, she looked aghast, then grateful for someone to understand. She inclined her head, he held her gaze. “I owe it to Shade,” she said, softer now. “I want our child to have it better, and … I can’t do nothing.”
“Yes,” he agreed eagerly, relieved to enter more common ground.
But was it? Farley wouldn’t abandon Mare; he was sure now. She was stressed, mourning, he saw why she reacted strongly. So had he.
He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said, meaning several things. Then added, “of course we need a valid plan.”
He was aware freeing Mare was one operation among many. The Scarlet Guard officers didn’t know what to do with him – fill him in and use him or treat him as a better hostage? This indecision was obvious, clear on all their faces, but it wasn’t their confusion alone. It was also his.
Cal had almost always lived under large expectations and he’d come to embrace them. To be intelligent, regal, shrewd, skilful with ability, versed on the battlefield as well as in tactics and strategy. He was a prince, a son, a brother. A betrothed, and he’d lost all of it. He was hanging by a thread to stay alive and the Scarlet Guard wanted him to cut the thread and fall into their net.
You never become used to falling, especially not if you’d always stood high.
Farley next to him, who yearned so much for the love she’d lost it hurt to watch, would tell him to do it. Let go and commit himself to the cause.
If Mare was with him, he thought he would. He’d laughed with her, danced with her, kissed her. They’d run and fought for their lives, protecting each other. He’d slept next to her and hadn’t felt lost and so he could, almost, imagine he just wanted to hold her in his arms and it’d be good enough – until she faded away, again and again. Maven was the cause, but Cal feared she’d always slip away from him, intangible in heart and soul.
She was her own person. Would her sparks vanish or ignite, along with his flame?
“I’ll make sure of it,” said Farley. She almost smiled from conviction as she squeezed his hand, a squeeze that helped ground him in his drifted mind and reminded him he wasn’t completely alone after all. “We’ll defeat Maven and free Mare.”
me about to pull an all-nighter to revise for an exam: okay brain, activate ada wallace mode
my brain: literally what the fuck, if you had spent the last three days studying instead of binging that goddamn series again maybe we wouldn’t have to go aDa WaLLaCe mOdE
