#i like the idea of celestrians giving it to her!!#as to why they have something darker hmm... given they're akin to stars in the sky I wouldn't be surprised if ->#some celestrians have a darker aesthetics to be at one with the night sky maybe..?
@beeon sorry to quote your tags like this but this PERFECTLY inspired me, thank you so much
We do already know that black is not entirely off the table for the Celestrians; Aquila and Pavo both use it in multiple places on their outfits, as does the male model for the player character. I really like the link you've made to the night sky, though - I can very much see that being something prominent amongst those senior Celestrians who have grown beyond being Guardians of specific towns, and now must fight monsters across the entire Protectorate. Something, something, showing solemnity and seriousness - but, also perhaps showing how their duty has become more focused on the "protect the mortals" aspect instead of what their purpose actually is, which is to prove the good in mortal hearts and gather benevolessence for Yggdrasil.
This got me thinking on it further, and.. The Celestrians are the sentinels of the starry sky; they are named after the stars themselves, and ascend once more to become them at the end of the game.
So what could that then make Aria, an entity of darkness so wholly unlike these divine-created Guardians, yet who nevertheless uses one as her vessel?
..Well, how about a black hole? A dark devourer of stars, so powerful that not even light can escape - yet by the same token, was once a star itself.
Plus, the images we have of black holes as observed from on Earth depict their accretion discs in an orange-red colour, due to their brightness temperature. And Aria already has amber eyes, so.. overlaying one on them works absolutely perfectly ^-^
I am deeply fond of this now and am thanking you profusely for the inspiration, friend. I'm so glad we can have so much fun with this by sharing it here!!! ^-^
summary: "a single act of love makes the soul return to life." - saint maximillian kolbe (OR: soft moments in the relationship of patton, remus, and virgil, as a birthday gift for the lovely @bumblebeekitten)
a/n: HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY BEE!!! i give you intrumoxiety being soft little shits
CW: shedding of skin (akin to a snake), nightmare mention, bones, one (1) innuendo, nonsexual nudity
wordcount: 2.7k
ao3 link
“Babe? What - are you doing?”
Virgil, who is busy trying to plan out the best way to strategically approach a nest of wild sirens in the middle of molt to gather their discarded feathers, opens their mouth to reply, and then the low rumbling baritone of their newest lover hits their ears.
“I . . . you’ll laugh at me if I tell you.”
Virgil’s one-of-my-loves-is-on-some-self-deprecating-bullshit-and-requires-reassurance, which they take pride in having almost as fine-tuned as Patton’s, begins klaxon-blaring in their mind. They mark their page and carefully untangle themselves from the web of work they’ve been doing and head into the other room.
Patton is sitting on the kitchen table, swinging (Virgil narrows his eyes at the colored orb charm hanging around Patton’s neck) her legs back and forth, and Remus is standing in front of her, blushing. She has a small wreath of white things in her hair - are those bones? - with a bright jewel studded over her forehead. Remus is holding more small white things in his hands, claw-tipped fingers curled so delicately to avoid shattering them.
“You - I just -”
“Honey, I promise I’m not gonna laugh at you, no matter what,” Patton says. She reaches forward, assortment of rings glinting and clinking as she touches Remus’s face. He lets out a soft rumbly noise and turns his cheek to press into the touch more, gently rubbing his nose against her palm. “We all do stuff that other people think is weird. You don’t have to worry about it.”
Remus flicks his eyes up to look at Virgil, who slow-blinks at him in the clearest nonverbal communication of I love you, you massive idiot they can give. “I . . . uh . . . it’s a weird dragon thing.”
“Re, we’re not gonna be species-ist towards you, that would be super mean and also stupid, considering that no one in this house is human or cisgender,” Virgil says. Remus smiles, hesitant, and then exhales out a puff of gray-black smoke.
“It’s . . . a claiming thing. When dragons get serious about courtships, they . . . combine hoards a little? They’ll pick out choice pieces from their hoards and exchange them. So, by me putting pieces of my bone hoard on you, it’s like . . . me saying that I’m serious about this, and I want it to last.” Virgil reaches out and takes Remus’s hand, not reacting at all when their skin hisses and steams against his. The benefits of having a partner who’s half ice nymph and half selkie, they suppose.
“Don’t I get any bones?” they tease. Remus waggles his eyebrows at them; they promptly drop his hand and smack his shoulder. “Not like that, dirty dragon.”
“Yeah, it’s not fair for only one of us to get fancy bones!” Patton says. “Although I certainly do appreciate this . . . tiara? I’m gonna go ahead and say it’s a tiara.”
“It was supposed to be,” Remus says, kicking the floor. “I got Ro to help me with pickin’ out the gems and stuff. That’s part of what he hoards, so we went and looked for them together. He told me that one’s a moonstone, and I thought, y’know, werewolf, perfect, right? And - and I’m working on something for you, Virge, I just didn’t wanna find anything that screamed VEE to me on that trip, y’know?”
“Well, I absolutely love it,” Patton coos, leaning forward to kiss Remus. “Thank you for the tiara, sweetie!” She pauses. “You cleaned these, right?”
Remus laughs, deep and echoing, and something inside of Virgil uncoils.
*~*~*~*~*
Their skin itches and burns, and someone in front of them is setting their sealskin on fire, and they can hear Patton screaming high and frantic and Remus roaring deep and feral but they can’t move, they’re screaming, convulsing as they burn up with their sealskin and then then then then then -
“Virgil!”
They sit upright, ice flooding around them, and a dark shape looms in the distance and they fling their hand out to cast a massive shard of ice through the heart of their night terror, but the night terror opens its mouth and green fire rolls out like a current, licking along the ice and dissolving it into water without burning anything else. “Virgil,” the night terrors says, and why does Virgil know that voice?
“Virgil,” the voice repeats, lower, and then again, and every time it repeats their name it drops lower and lower until they aren’t so much hearing their name as they are feeling it reverberate in their heaving chest.
The night terror tips its head back and exhales a jet of flames towards the ceiling. It catches on a saucer of oil, spreading down troughs to ignite other saucers spread around the ceiling, and the night terror looks down with fire licking around its teeth and oh, that’s not a night terror at all, it’s Remus. His leathery wings are awkwardly stuck together behind him like he’d just woken up, his hands are up like he’s warding off an attack.
“R - Rem?”
BELOVED, he rumbles, mouth barely moving. Virgil sways a little under the force, blinking as Remus thumps at his chest a little with one hand. ARE YOU WELL?
“I . . . nightmare,” they manage. “Hunters. Hurt you, hurt Patty, stole my skin . . .”
Remus takes a step forward, then another. MAY I APPROACH? Virgil is pretty sure he’s actually speaking Dracon, which would explain the oddly formal address and grammar. They nod, too out of it to speak more, and Remus carefully climbs onto the ice-covered bed. He opens his arms, and they collapse into his chest, shaking.
“Patty?”
ON A NIGHT HUNT WITH HIS PACK, BELOVED. HE WILL RETURN ON THE MORN.
“Oh . . . did I hurt you?”
NO, BELOVED. HOW ELSE MAY I COMFORT YOU?
“My . . . my skin?”
Remus scoops them up into his arms, easily navigating the iced-over bedroom floor and taking them down into the basement. He exhales a plume of blue-green fire into the magical lock, and Virgil leans forward as the door spins and swirls open. The hoard room is full of perfectly-articulated skeletons, bones in cleaning vats, and the other treasures that Remus collects. He navigates through the piles skillfully until he reaches a dark wooden chest with an intricate sapphire-and-golden inlay on the top.
YOUR KEY, BELOVED?
Virgil traces a sigil across the chest, and it glows under their touch. The array lights up with a brilliant violet aura, and the chest pops open. They reach into the chest hurriedly, panic when they don’t feel fur, and then slide their fingers across to the latch that opens the false bottom. They flip open the false bottom and pull out their sealskin, pressing their face into the softness.
Their sealskin is beautiful. It’s black as pitch, studded with flecks of silver and white. Remus hugs them against his chest as they rub their cheek against the fur and inhale the scent of the sea. Remus rumbles underneath them, gently rubbing his face along their hair and neck to gently scent him.
“Thanks,” Virgil says, nearly twenty minutes later, sealskin draped around them like a blanket. “I . . . sorry I woke you.”
“It’s alright,” Remus says, voice hoarse and growly. “I don’t mind. It’s kinda hot when you go batshit, even though I wish you hadn’t had a nightmare.” Virgil snorts, shoving at his chest.
“I can’t believe you slipped into Dracon.” Remus ducks his head in embarrassment.
“Yeah . . . it . . . lots of dragon moms do it to try and soothe rowdy hatchlings back to sleep. I didn’t realize I was doing it until my larynx dropped, and once it goes that far down it takes a while to relax my muscles enough to release it back to normal.”
“I like it,” Virgil murmurs, leaning up to kiss him. “It’s . . . nice.”
Remus rumbles with pleasure and kisses them back.
*~*~*~*~*
“Patton, what are you doing?”
Patton is staring out the window, eyes narrowed, mouth set in a thin line of displeasure. Virgil pauses, arms full of books and random spell components. “I don’t trust that woman.”
“What? What woman?”
Virgil follows their gaze down to the end of the walkway leading up to their cottage, all the way to the woman at their mailbox. “Patton, what -”
“I don’t trust her,” they mutter, ears pinning back in their fluffy hair.
“Patton, she’s the mailwoman. Debra’s been coming here every day for the past seven years.”
“Suspicious.”
“It is literally the opposite of suspicious, you ridiculous werewolf.”
*~*~*~*~*
“Poor baby,” Patton croons, pulling on thick rubber gloves and tying her hair up out of the way. Remus whines, rolling around the kitchen buck-naked. His body is almost completely covered in thick, glistening scales, with few patches of human skin peeking through.
“Why are you naked?” Virgil asks.
“Shedding season,” Remus moans, swiping irritably at his torso. A thick sheet of scales flakes to the ground, and Virgil picks it up. “You can have whatever scales come off if you help me, it itches so baaaaaad!”
Virgil looks at Patton, who’s carrying a bucket of magic salts and a scrub brush towards the bathroom. “You got a spare brush and gloves, Patty?”
“Under the sink!” Virgil is quick to grab the supplies. When they return, Remus is still rolling around the kitchen floor, and Patton is prodding him with her foot.
“Babe, if you don’t get into the tub, I can’t help you feel better. Your dad sent the special salts that your family uses during sheds from the sea caves near your family home.”
“Papa sent them?” Remus’s eyes are wide and liquid, and he almost looks like a hatchling. Virgil bends down and brushes his sweaty hair off his forehead.
“Yeah, Reem. We asked him for the salts and the lotion so that you’d be more comfortable the next time you shed your scales. We know how much you hate the feeling, and we want you to be comfor - mmph!”
Remus grabs the front of their shirt and drags them down into a kiss, brief and passionate. Virgil leans back, mussed and flustered, and Patton leans down and drops a kiss into their hair. “Let’s get you into the bath, mister.”
They finally manage to get Remus into the hot bath, and the moan he lets out when Patton tips the salt into the water is positively lewd. Virgil tugs on the thick gloves and picks up their scrub brush. “I’ll take the left, you take the right?” Patton nods, picking up her rough sponge, and they get to work.
Virgil puts their back into the scrubbing, careful around Remus’s newly healed top surgery scars. They create a transport sigil next to them and pass any large sheets of scales that flake off of Remus through it, sending them to their work desk. Remus wriggles around in the hot water, making it difficult to scrub, but finally his skin is clear and red-pink from scrubbing and the heat.
Remus flops gracefully onto the bed, sighing in relief as he rolls around the soft comforter. Patton pulls off her gloves and picks up a tub of thick, pink goop. “Alright, buddy, it’s time for the lotion.”
“You guys don’t have to do all this,” Remus mumbles, sleepy from his bath. “I know it’s kinda gross.”
“We love you, Remus. It’s no trouble,” Patton says, gently stroking his hair.
“Of course it’s not,” Virgil adds. Remus lets out a low, pleased rumble, and Virgil kisses Patton softly.
Virgil, whose name is sounding more and more like gibberish, even to their own ears, looks up from the sigil they’re constructing to see Remus bouncing eagerly in front of them. “Learn something new?”
“Yeah! Patton’s at the grocery store, can I infodump to you?”
Virgil looks down at the array they’re working on. “Give me two minutes to make sure this sigil won’t explode if I leave it alone, okay? Then you can talk all you want.” Remus nods, sitting down next to them. He’s practically vibrating with happy energy - flapping his hand, tapping his feet, snapping his fingers, rocking and humming. Virgil quickly changes a few of the components of their array, pulls their power out of it, and writes down where they were so they can pick their work up later. “Okay, Remus. Go ahead.”
Remus jumps to his feet and begins pacing around the living room, telling Virgil all about the new deadly creature he’s discovered, and Virgil watches him fondly, smiling.
*~*~*~*~*
“You know how Pat has his bone tiara?”
“Yeah?”
Remus reaches into the pouch at his waist and offers something to Virgil. “For you!” Virgil takes the token from his hands, gasping when it comes into view. It’s a necklace with a braided leather cord and a dangling pendant. The pendant is painstakingly constructed of dozens of tiny bones, all arranged and articulated to form an ornate snowflake. In the very center is a gleaming piece of icy pale blue-green topaz, carved into a hexagonal facet.
“You . . . you made this?”
“Yep! I - do you not like it?”
Virgil stares at the necklace, running their fingers over the edges of the snowflake and the ice-cold smoothness of the gem. They slip the pendant over their head with trembling fingers before dragging Remus into a kiss. “Bedroom, now.”
“As you wish,” Remus purrs, scooping them into his arms.
*~*~*~*~*
Virgil tightens their grip on the strap of their messenger bag as the gates swing open, revealing a tall, imposing figure. Half of his face is covered in glittering golden-green scales, and one eye is a golden brown with a slitted pupil; the other is dark brown, almost black. He wears a long-sleeved golden dress that falls to the floor, intricately embroidered with dragons and flames along the hem, and his wings are fanned loosely around him.
“Papa!” Remus crows, sprinting up and leaping towards the figure. He catches him, managing to make it look elegant as he hugs Remus close and rubs his back with a small smile. Remus and his father press their foreheads together, rumbling softly, before Remus hops down. “Virgey, Patton, this is my papa! Papa, these are my loves!”
Virgil flushes, seeing Patton go pale pink beside them, as Remus’s father comes forward and extends a hand. “You may call me Janus. It is a pleasure to formally meet you. My son speaks quite highly of you.”
Virgil shakes his hand. “The pleasure is all ours, sir. Thank you for letting us use the private beach on your estate.” Janus smiles as he shakes Patton’s hand.
“Anyone so highly beloved of my son is always welcome on our family’s ancestral home.” His eyes linger on the bone tiara and pendant before turning to Remus and asking him a low, rapidfire question in a tongue Virgil doesn’t speak. Remus turns redder than Virgil’s ever seen him and spits back a swift response, and Janus laughs.
“The path to the beach is that way. When you are done, I will have a meal prepared in the house. Take your time. The weather will be favorable today.”
Remus grabs their hands and drags them down towards the sea. “What did your dad say to you?”
“He’s just being embarrassing,” Remus mutters.
“Must have been serious if it embarrassed you,” Patton teases.
“Shut up!”
They crest the cliff and spot the sea, and all of Virgil’s teasing leaves them in one breath. It’s beautiful, and the longer they stare at it and smell the salt water, the stronger the call of the ocean in their bones.
Remus goes flying down the stairs, dropping his bag in the sand and shedding all of his clothes to reveal a lime green speedo. Patton takes a little more care, spreading out the towels and setting up the umbrella, before carefully taking off their tiara and clothes and transforming into a wolf with a fluid, rippling motion. They leap into the water as Virgil descends to the beach. They set down their bag, strip down, and carefully tuck their pendant in a pocket of their bag before reaching in and pulling out their sealskin. They take a moment to watch the way the sun glitters on the ocean’s surface, listening to the crash of the waves and the call of the gulls and the shrieking laughter of Remus and Patton’s joyful barks.
Then, they wrap their sealskin around their shoulders and join their loves in the sea.
Of course, Bee! Thank you very much for these, and sorry they took so long to get to ;w;
(question source: "♡ S/I Ask Meme ♡” by s-e-l-f-s-h-i-p)
..Again, my answers got a bit long, so I hope it’s okay to put them under a readmore.
4. How did your self-insert feel when they first met your F/O(s)? How do they feel about them now? - The first thing she felt when she saw Pavo was surprise, because hello there’s another Celestrian in this random inn I’ve just stumbled into, how are you here, swiftly followed by having no idea how to actually talk to her because she wouldn’t have necessarily been sure whether the other people in the Quester’s Rest would be thinking she’s talking to thin air. So, things were very awkward to begin with =P
Now, though, there’s just this overarching sense of peace and trust above all else - I like to think of this selfship as the type of relationship where we could just be sitting in the same space doing our own things in silence, and yet still be really content? Not really as lovey-dovey, because that’s not what either of our personalities here are like, but still very close to each other. Ardea trusts Pavo a lot, and she is very grateful to have her as a constant companion for all the time they’ve spent travelling the Protectorate together - and Pavo definitely feels the same way, regardless of whether she makes that particularly outwardly clear.
7. Give us 3 random facts about your self-insert! - okay, hmm.. Ardea hasn’t really been an established character for very long, so I don’t have a ton of miscellaneous things planned for her, but hopefully these are okay!
Ardea’s name is the Latin word for “heron”, as well as being the scientific name for a genus of herons. This fits the naming convention of all the other Celestrians being named after birds, though unlike most of the other important named Celestrians who are actually met in-game (Pavo, Aquila, Corvus, Columba, Apus Major, etc.), Ardea does not share her name with a constellation named after a bird.
Her preferred hairstyle of wearing all of her hair on top of her head as she does (..I don’t really know what that style is called, which is making it a pain to find something like it for her MMD reference model) causes exactly as many problems with wearing helmets as it looks like it would. She sticks to wearing hairbands and similar headgear because of this.
She has a keen eye for clever puns and wordplay, which is a very well-fitting trait to have in the context of DQIX having a metric ton of those things scattered all throughout the game, but it also means that Stella’s regular ability to misuse every idiom she tries to is a great source of.. something between endearment and irritation for her.
8. Does your self-insert have any kind of powers? - I mean, she sure is supposed to! Being a Celestrian in origin, Ardea is able to activate and ride on the Starflight Express, as well as communicate with spirits of mortals who have yet to fully pass on. She used to be hidden from human perception due to her halo, and also had wings to fly on, and an array of powerful light magic - however, the impact of the attack on the Observatory that caused her to fall through the sky stripped her of those latter three powers. It’s less of a power and more of an ability, but during her time down on the Protectorate, she has also learned how to wield claws for fighting with. Something, something, kite’s claws, bird metaphor.
I hope these answers were okay - thank you so much for sending the questions in!! ^-^
virgil blinks down at his keyboard, where a grey-blue kitten has sprawled itself over his hands. “patton, i need to get this done.” the kitten mewls at him and bats at his nose with a single white paw. “patton, if you want snuggles, i’m gonna need a human form today, this isn’t something i can put off any longer than i already have.”
the kitten flops onto the couch next to him, and in a puff of smoke his boyfriend appears next to him, grey-blue ears twitching in his tangled hair and tail winding around his legs. “fiiiiiiiiine,” he pouts, pushing up under virgil’s arm and nuzzling into his shoulder with a deep, throaty purr. virgil kisses him between his ears and leans his head on patton’s.
🥰✨🌱if you receive this, you make someone happy. go and send this to ten of your followers who make you happy or somebody you think needs cheering up. 🌱✨🥰
as;dlfk ja;slk al;kjs;lkdfj ;alskdfj oh goodness, thank you so much, sweetheart!!!
id just like you to know that ive loved hearing about your dqix s/i, and your crush on pavo !! I'd love to hear more !!!!! dq has been my favourite franchise for like a decade now and 9 is one of my fave games ever haha ^_^ (corvus was my fave character ever for the whole of my teens mfhdkshslshsh—)
aaaaah bee you don’t know how happy this made me feel to see this, thank you so much for sending this ask!!! I always worry I’m kind of just talking to an empty room when it comes to my selfships in series that others don’t also selfship in (Void speaking into a void, or something, there’s a pun in there somewhere). I notice it more when I talk about Luna too. But, to know there are people who also know of and are also passionate about the same series that I am really does make me happy!!!! (You are super valid about liking Corvus, he is pretty cool, haha)
When it comes to Pavo, the reason I realised I had a crush on her was because I was playing a lot of DQIX recently for an AU I had for my XC2 selfships, making a party out of Sapphire, Vandham, Pyra and Perun where Pyra (or technically actually Mythra) was the Celestrian in the group. It just kind of stemmed from the fact that Pavo is really cool and I wish she had more presence in the game, though I’m in the process of unlocking the quest which involves her and Aquila so that will be neat. Also when I looked her up on the wiki and saw her actual official artwork, then saw she was in some other game where she has an awesome finisher move and an incredibly pretty new artwork (as well as a pretty cool voice!), the feelings just sort of kept avalanching .w.
As for my self-insert, Ardea, I’m still not completely settled on how I want to play her. I was thinking maybe an armamentalist with a bow, but I’m not actually very good at playing support like that (I find it way too tedious constantly re-buffing everyone after Disruptive Waves and would rather leave that to the AI) and also if I were to make a stand-in for Pavo so that I get to travel around with her, I think I would make her either a ranger or sage (with heavy strength investment and cool spell access) with a bow, because she uses a bow in her finisher from another game. Possibly I might make Ardea a martial artist with claws, just to make her nice and fast and really able to deal lots of damage which is always fun? I’ve not really played as that before either. Currently the rest of the party is Avalon as a warrior with a spear (since I just really like bringing him into different series with me apparently) and Iris, a luminary with a fan, since again I’ve never really used either of those classes before.
I have played a lot of DQIX in my time, I even have a bit of detail about the three other party members I always end up using (who are, I think, recreations of the first ever randomly-generated party members I got on an early playthrough!!) It’s one of those games where I have no idea where I got it from, but I’m so glad to have played it so much, especially more recently since I have a save editor that lets me access all the extra DLC-unlocked quests from years back that I haven’t ever really seen before!
I’m.. still very tired so I’m sorry I can’t think of much else more to say, and I wrote this in a lot of bits and pieces so it probably doesn’t flow very well, but seriously, thank you so so much again for this, Bee - it really means a lot, and if ever you want to talk about DQIX or the other games in the series, (do you have any self-inserts??) I’m always more than happy to listen and talk with you!!~
Hello starshine, could I please just have some fluff with Virgil? Any fluff will do
“your hair is so pretty,” patton coos, carefully pulling a brush through virgil’s long waist-length curls. “thank you for letting me braid it for you!”
“listen, it’s probably easier for you to work with it than me,” they say, yawning and relaxing into the soft touches against their scalp. “and you’re much better at doing hair. and i just - i just like you touching my hair. it’s relaxing.”
patton kisses the crown of their head, and virgil couldn’t stop the smile on their face if they tried.
“i know this is a far cry from your usual style,” dolos says, erasing a line in his sketchbook, “but i need a model, and you’re the only one around on such short notice, and i have to get this design in by midnight, and - and . . .”
he lifts his eyes from the sketchbook and is barely able to string a sentence together. his boyfriend is dressed in a stunning cascade of thin, gauzy, pastel mint green layers of fabric, sewn together into an elaborate summer dress.
“does it look okay?” remus asks, fiddling with his fingers. it takes everything dolos has within him not to tackle remus to the ground and kiss him senseless. the only thing stopping him is the fact that remus is wearing his only prototype. “deedee . . .?”
“god, i want to kiss the shit out of you, you look so good in pastels,” dolos breathes. remus grins, flashing his bright white teeth, and curtsies dramatically.
