#dark!guard

[andromacheofappalachia]

What are some of your dark guard au headcanons?

I have so many, some I have already posted about, but here are a few:

Andy likes to be worshipped, and although she doesn't expect her immortals to worship her quite so literally as countless mortals once did, she does expect them to worship her in other ways that echo it well enough. Gifts of treasures and indulgences, acts of service, bloodshed and deaths being left at her feet like a cat dropping a mouse for its owner, and pleasure in every sense of the word. Offerings like these make her blood sing and bring a coy smile to her face.

Joe and Nicky are possessive. They don't like it when mortals mess with them, whether the intention was bad or borderline flirtatious. When Quynh is lost to them, they raze the very village that had accused Andy and Quynh of witchcraft to the ground, slaughtering every person involved in the trial. They shadow Andy in the centuries that follow; enemies and mortals seeking just a night with her end up meeting their blades. They do the same to every soldier that they pass when they search for where Booker has been hung, and in the centuries that follow, leading up to Nile, nothing changes.

Booker is devout in his worship and indulgent in every sin he had once been told to avoid. There is a selfishness in his acts of selflessness, and he doesn't care. He does everything for himself, for Andy, for Joe, and for Nicky (for Quynh too, if she wasn't buried under the sea).

Andy orders them to "act normal" when she first brings back Nile. Not as their true selves, of course, they don't want to scare her off. So they play everything safe, luring in Nile with simple truths about themselves, while keeping the things that they've done, that they do, buried.

Of course, it truly is the little things that slowly erode how they truly are. Nile comes to the creeping realisation that she isn't allowed to leave anywhere alone; hell, she isn't allowed to leave. Her contact with her family, friends, and even associates she knew in passing is stripped from her. At first, she tells herself it makes sense, only it quickly becomes something else. Any connection she tries to make with someone new is somehow diverted. New contacts disappear from her phone. Joe or Nicky wraps an arm around her, giving a friendly smile at whoever she is with, before pulling her away. Potential one-night stands suddenly become unavailable once Booker finds out. And shadowing them all, waiting for her each time, is Andy, with a distant look in her eye and a knowing smile on her face.

[andromacheofappalachia]

Okay but we genuinely need more Dark!Guard in the fandom because I feel like everyone save for Nile has a reason to be vicious, feral, and bloodthirsty for each other.

Give us a Dark!Andy who has become possessive of the others after losing the first two immortals she found after being alone for thousands of years. A Dark!Andy who doesn't even like it when a mortal gets close to the others, no matter how good or kind they seem, because the loss of Quynh and Lykon isn't something she can watch repeat (even if it means keeping the others under lock and key within her reach).

Give us a Dark!Joe and Dark!Nicky who are overly possessive and protective of each other and the others while doing it all in the name of love. Because love can be volatile and bloody, it can be sharp teeth and sharper smiles, and making choices that seem extreme for the sake of love. As two romantics forced into immortality after experiencing religious extremism and severe war are going to have a dark edge to them.

Give us a Dark!Booker who kills and makes morally questionable choices to keep his immortal bond family tied to him because he can't lose his family again (no matter how much he wishes to lose himself still). A Booker who has become a wolf in a man, stalking alongside those that he knows is his, even when he knows full well that they are no better than he is.

And Nile (poor, sweet, innocent Nile) who doesn't realize what exactly she has stepped into because the bond and the dreams on the surface don't seem like much given the whole immortality thing. Until she notices the way that the others look at her, at each other, the very way they speak and act, and suddenly she begins to realize that she really is surrounded by wolves (and they wish to eat her too).

[andromacheofappalachia]

Do you have headcanons on dark! Booker & dark! Andy relationship?

I do! (NSWF warning for below):

When they finally find Booker, hanging from a tree for days with a burlap bag over his head, he is (understandably) a mess. Physically, he is filthy, and mentally, he isn't quite all there. So once they get to an abandoned farmhouse, with a tub and access to a well, it is Andromache who takes it upon herself to clean him and whisper in his ear that he's safe now. The mortals won't take him from them again.

It is Andromache who manipulates him into leaving his family during the first few decades of his immortal life. Yusuf and Nicolo are content to wait it out, but Andromache has always been selfish and possessive. She doesn't want Booker to go back to his wife or his children, no matter how much it pains him.

In truth, Andromache sees too much of Quynh in him.

It is Andromache who gives him the name 'Booker', an English form of his surname Le Livre, at least in meaning, when they are in America during the Civil War. Napoleon III favoured the Confederacy, despite France's official declaration, so Andromache felt it safer for him to not carry his name.

In turn, due to her disguise as a male Union soldier, Booker proceeds to name her Andy (a rising nickname at the time).

Some time after naming each other, once another war comes to an end, Booker finds himself killing for her. Of course, he has always killed for her, but this time it is different. There isn't a reason for the man before him to be dead other than the fact that he had followed Andy around after his life was saved. So fascinated with the short-haired woman who wielded an axe. It made something awful curl deep inside Booker and...well...he wasn't seeing an end to it that didn't end in death.

It doesn't help that Andy enjoys Booker being her shadow. She seems to thrive on him being jealous and possessive of her just as much as she is when it is Joe or Nicky acting in such a way. The pleasure of being worshipped as a Goddess once never did go away.

It goes both ways. Once the twentieth century rolls around, speakeasys and nightclubs form into existence. Booker has always enjoyed music, smoking, and drinking, and people gravitate to him. More than Andy would like. She takes to tying him up every night that she has to kill another mortal for getting too close. She reminds him that he doesn't belong to anyone that isn't immortal. That he belongs to her. She even threatens to leave him imprisoned, even though they both know she would never do such a thing.

They always commit espionage together. Which usually ends in a game of cat and mouse, predator and prey, once the job ends. Andy is always the better hunter, yet Booker enjoys being found, even if it means feeling her blade cut into him as she rides them both into a climax.

Andy steals books for him. Collectables and antiques that once would have been just out of his reach during the French Revolution. In turn, Booker risks the constant dreams from the bond being strained in order to travel across countries and continents. All to bring back oils, perfumes, and spices close enough to what she would have enjoyed in her original home (Andy is a lover of things she can smell and taste, as those senses hold great memory, even for immortals).

[andromacheofappalachia]

what would a dark!quynh be like in the dark tog au you mentioned? + the tog’s reactions especially andy’s if she returns 👀

I've been playing around with ideas for Dark!Quynh with my tog fic on ao3, so I am so happy you asked :)

To set the stage: Quynh spent roughly five hundred years in blinding darkness, the spikes of an iron maiden cutting into her body, holding her in place, extreme water pressure instantly crushing her lungs, sinuses, and ears, causing catastrophic internal injuries, all while drowning, over and over again, not counting her fingernails and bones being broken from trying to bust out, as her body heals itself over and over again...why that would make anyone insane (tog 2 robbed us of this, but the fandom likes to gloss over it as well).

So dark!Quynh comes into the world with a shroud of insanity and rage in her that not even finally being able to have relief was able to tame.

In this au, there are certain things she wants, or so she tells herself:

She wants Andy to suffer for not finding her, but she equally doesn't want to be alone. She doesn't see the point in saving humanity from its suffering, yet she finds herself enjoying the finer things that the 21st century has to offer.

Booker is the easiest one for her to find. His first death and the dreams she shared of him gave her enough of a glimpse of the passing world, enough of a tether, for her to hunt him first.

They kill each other multiple times. Quynh needs an outlet that isn't mortal, and Booker hates himself enough to endure it. Of course, Booker has his own agenda (1. To go back to his immortals and 2. To never let anything befall Quynh again), so he sets the two of them off on a game of cat and mouse. He spurs her on enough to get her to chase after him, killing her when he can, and Quynh kills him just as quickly and brutally, depending on how badly he annoyed her at the time.

Quynh isn't so easily manipulated, however, and Booker quickly finds himself in chains and servitude to lure the others in.

An inevitable reunion that comes to a point when Quynh sends a rather threatening message to draw them out: Andromache comes, or Sebastian takes her place at the bottom of the sea.

While Quynh and Booker meeting were predator and prey, Quynh and Andy reuniting is akin to a supernova.

Andy wants nothing more than to drag Quynh into her, into them, to ensure that nothing ever happens to her again. That she can never leave again. While Quynh is an opposing force to the extreme:

Quynh wants Andromache to feel an ounce of what she had suffered. She wants to throw her into an iron maiden with her bare hands and watch as she disappears beneath the waves. She wants to take the others from her, leave her alone for a thousand years, and take herself away from Andromache's reach, too. To collide into her until her bare hands are broken from breaking Andromache down piece by piece.

Only Joe and Nicky make it clear (eyes sharp, faces pulled into snarls at the thought) that they will not allow physical harm to come to Andy by Quynh's doing. Booker is no better, even in his imprisonment, and Nile...well, Quynh has many thoughts about the young woman who is Andy's new pet, with her sense of justice and forgiveness, yet she knows when she is outnumbered.

The most she can do is vow to herself that she will fight Andy and the others, even if it takes a millennium, to make them feel a mere piece of the volatile emotions that coil deep within her.

And she knows, deep down, that it will be a long time regardless. The bond they all share, the dreams, the connection, makes it to where none of them will ever truly be free of the other.

(That is something that not even time can fix.)

Bonus Bullets:

Quynh grows an instant fascination with cellphones, instant messaging, Google, and Uber Eats. She kills a man for his sports car and holds a woman prisoner for her clothes once she crawls from the seaside and gets her bearings about her.

Quynh has no issue killing mortals, especially the wealthy ones, for the things that she desires. It doesn't take long for her to acquire an entire villa and a yacht off the coast of the French Riviera. (She makes Booker hide the bodies while she stands over the graves in sunglasses and a silk robe, a glass of wine in hand.)

Joe and Nicky are a little too eager to kill for her (and cook and give gifts like a cat leaving a dead mouse on one's bed). She doesn't trust them at first, but she is equally keenly aware that they are willing to bite her to keep her in place (they make that clear when she tries to leave, once, to a club, only for her mortal plaything to wind up dead).

Nile is the most normal and mundane of the group. Quynh knows this is due to how young she is, so she allows the normalcy. Art museums, new clothes, perfume shopping, and endless music come to fill her days around Nile. Not that she will admit that she has grown a fondness for it. (This doesn't change the fact that Quynh wants to wrap her hand around Nile's throat until she forgets her name and comes to worship her, but Quynh has always been a tad selfish on that front.)

Andy is the one to take her back to Lykon's grave on a group trip to the Anatolian Steppes. Quynh allows it, knowing that it is psychological warfare on Andy's part, an olive branch that is meant to break her will. Yet she does her best to remind herself of five hundred years of promises between pain and death and visions of freedom. To not give in to how tempting it is to mold herself into Andy's side once again. For promises fall short in the dead of night when Quynh whispers prayers to the dirt. Blessing Lykon for not becoming like any of them, and praying for forgiveness. It is mostly forgiveness to herself, as she knows no matter how much she wishes to see Andromache's blood stain her teeth and hands, she will always find her path tangled back right to her. Just as the others have. (They're all each other has after all.)

[andromacheofappalachia]

do you have any dark au Andy hcs 👀

I sure do!

After the first thousand years, Andromache stopped caring whether innocent people lived or died. Not out of cruelty, necessarily, but because every mortal life kept becoming more fleeting.

Andromache had always been a leader, a Queen, so when all of those who knew her in her mortal life are gone, and her people have created an entirely new culture, with a new name, it is far too easy to manipulate them into worshipping her as a Goddess. Of course, during this time, she wasn't known as Andromache.

Andy still likes being worshipped even in the 21st century.

She is possessive of those whom she loves, almost to an obsessive degree.

After Lykon dies and doesn't come back, she swears to herself to never allow any immortals after him to leave her. After Quynh is lost, she refuses to allow the others to part. There is no leaving for another country or even another town. They stay together. Andy refuses for it to be any other way.

Andy is entirely responsible for Sebastian being separated from his wife and children. She doesn't allow him to return until she is certain that death is going to take them.

NSFW Warning

Dark!Andy has to have some kind of pain with her intimacy. Choking, cutting, and hitting. There are very few instances where she doesn't have it rough or slow and torturous.

As much as she takes charge of all things, there are times when she does allow the others to dominate her. She loves it more than she admits, but at the end of it all, she is still the one in control.

She loves to mark the others. The marks never stay, though, so she uses it as an excuse to leave bite marks and hickeys and writing with a sharpie once those come into existence.

[andromacheofappalachia]

Dark!Guard AU only with time travel shenanigans.

Nile, Booker, Joe, Nicky, and Quynh wake up in the middle of the Anatolian Steppes with no idea how they got there. They put their differences aside to try to figure out what the fuck is happening and where the hell Andy is?

Only they quickly are captured by warriors on horses and dragged to a yurt-like home in an encampment and there she is. Andromache. Only it isn't their Andromache.

This Andromache sits upon a throne and is being called Artimpasa.

This Andromache is worshipped as a Goddess with prayers and bloody sacrifices thrown at her feet and she looks at them in shock when Booker (because of course it is his luck that this should happen) heals from death and comes back to life.

She looks at them all with shock, and then a maddening glee that comes with a smile with too many teeth. Because this Andromache has been alone for nearly two thousand years and suddenly she isn't alone anymore.

She is quick to tell her people that these new strange people are Gods too. That they will be hers. Even if they don't seem to understand that just yet.

Even when they look at her and call her 'Andy' as if begging that word will change anything.

[andromacheofappalachia]

how do dark guard react to Booker betrayal

This is an interesting one :)

I believe their initial reactions would be similar to canon: distraught, heartbroken, and enraged.

Andy is initially heartbroken and distraught by his betrayal. She has never had one of her own do such a thing. Yet with Booker, it is somehow worse because he had been the first found after Quynh, the first to be found and saved in a trapped punishment by mortals, and it wasn't exactly a secret that she kept him on a shorter leash than Joe and Nicky because of it. Joe and Nicky, on the other hand, are furious. Booker has hurt Andy, risked her being taken from them all forever. He has hurt Nile, who is so new to them, and he has hurt Joe and Nicky just as much for trying to go against everything they had been through together. All for the sake of trying to fix their immortality. As if there is anything to fix. That is what angers them the most because it is Booker trying to erase the bond they all share, the dreams, the very string of fate that connects them. So in that fury, Joe and Nicky press for Andy to do something before they do once they are all free from Merrick.

Nile, a voice of reason in her youth, with her connection to humanity still fresh, insists that they must fix things to prevent it from happening again.

The solution, as Andy declares, is to begin by pulling out the problem. Root and stem.

Booker's punishment isn't exile. Instead, it is house arrest.

Booker is to not leave the safe house unless they are moving to another one. His connection with the outside world, from verbal news to technology, is cut off. He will find no distractions, no reprieves with alcohol, no potential flings with mortals. He will only find them. He will only have them.

A perfect solution, in Andy's opinion, to remind Booker of his bond to them. Of where his loyalty and heart must lie.

(Because in truth, none of them can stand to part from each other, and they are all selfish, greedy creatures.)

Nile doesn't see the twisted nature of the punishment at first. She tells herself that it is fair, that it is better than exile, and Booker needed therapy and forgiveness far more than he needed isolation. Yet as the months turn with the seasons, as she comes to understand the others around her, the more she begins to think of words like 'Stockholm syndrome' and 'trauma bonding'. It isn't hard to notice how Copely watches them with perplexity and then fear when he sees them interact. It doesn't help that when the first year comes to an end, Copely watches where Booker sits between Andy and Joe, and then he looks to her with a question on his lips. Concern furrowing his brows.

'I once asked if they were the good guys or not,' She wants to tell him, but she doesn't. He never bothers to ask the questions that were on the tip of his tongue, either, as Nicky comes over to lure Nile back into the fold.

Bonus NSFW bullets (Poly!Guard):

The first few weeks in house arrest are not peaceful. They fight more often than Nile would like.

Andy kills Booker several times, quick and brutal, just as often as she sinks her teeth into his neck and plants almost apologetic kisses along his forehead.

Joe and Nicky are no better, perhaps because they are more enraged. Joe's anger is that of a wildfire or a great sea storm in how it spreads and consumes. Nicky is the opposite. His is as silent as winter eroding over the earth and as deadly as the Russian winter that froze Booker's fellow soldiers to death all those centuries ago. They kill him far more than Andy until she steps in to nip them back into place. All teeth with little reprieve, as their kisses are not apologetic as much as they are a claiming reminder.

By the sixth month, for the first time in centuries, Booker begs to not die again the next time his body hits the floor of the safehouse.

Booker has always been a gentle lover. His blood-stained hands have brought enough violence and pain into the world. The others do not share that same temperament, not always, he reminds himself. Even if he doesn't deserve that kind of peace, not yet.

[andromacheofappalachia]

say more about dark! Andy?

I wasn't sure where to begin, so here is more dark!Andromache leading into her time with Quynh and Lykon :)

Content warning: mild graphic mentions of murder, graphic mentions of cannibalism, mild graphic mentions of torture, mentions of animal sacrifice.

Despite what she tells the others, Andromache remembers her mortal life well enough: the husband she had taken, their daughter. How her daughter had died with an arrow stuck in her only for her husband to fall in a battle the next year. She remembers leading her people out from the mountains and into the steppes, and watching them develop into a civilization just to watch them turn to faded memory and dust. She remembers becoming a God, and then becoming nothing more than a shade of a woman passing through. She remembers how she received the name Andromache, and she remembers when she lost what little care she held for the world. An eternity of witnessing mortal atrocities will do that to anyone, at least, that's what she tells herself when she realizes she has changed entirely.

If there is one thing that Andromache has learned in her long life it is this: everyone breaks in time.

When she first dreams of Quynh and Lykon, before she knows their names, she tells herself that she will treat them no differently than any other mortal she dared to interact with. (That promise doesn't even last a decade).

Quynh is stubborn at first. Despite saving her in the Gobi desert, and dragging her across Central Asia back to the West, the younger immortal doesn't yield to Andromache. Not when Andromache threatens to drag her from her horse should she try to turn back. Not even when Andromache finally does it, dragging her for several days, does she give in.

Lykon lives up to his name. Unlike Quynh, (who spent several weeks stabbing and kicking her) Lykon doesn't bother to run his spear into her heart when she orders him to heel. His teeth sink into her neck until he kills her. They battle in the dirt like animals with Quynh prowling on the outskirts until Andromache finally gets him to submit.

The two become her greatest companions in ways that not even her husband or Hector of Troy could be.

In turn, Andromache learns that she has a volatile possessive nature.

There are countless faces who desire Quynh or Lykon, and many of them stain her hands red by the time she is done with them.

Quynh is more accepting of her nature than Lykon, but Lykon is the better of the three of them. Whatever dark nature grabs hold of immortals doesn't seem to taint him.

It makes Andromache and Quynh covet him even more.

When Lykon doesn't heal and dies in their arms the two of them do not leave his side for days. They prepare a burial chamber for him in the only style that Andromache bothered to learn. Andromache positions his body as if he was atop a horse. They give him gold coins and jewelry and pieces of their hair. Andromache slaughters his horse for him, butchering it enough to place the offerings in his grave, and even that isn't enough to quell them.

They curl up against him on each side and cling to him as if it would suddenly bring him back before contemplating covering him with the earth. They eat his heart together, raw and bloody, and they lay there still until the vultures begin to come. (Even once he is buried they do not leave the dirt that covers him for the next week. Until they are forced to move.)

Andromache will spend the next few centuries trying to remember the taste of his blood in her mouth.

It is easier to swallow, to remember, than to picture his face and the hole he left in her chest when she lost them. A feeling that she never wishes to experience again.