Young Asriel x Marisa > Based on the fic Trials (and errors) by @freuleinanna
[Exiled from the public's eye, young Marisa Coulter is preparing to go and stand trial for adultery. On the other side of Oxford, young lord Asriel Belacqua is preparing to go and stand trial for murder.
A lot has been said about how 'as soon as they met, they fell in love'. That is exactly what made the rest of it so hard.]
It is night in a new world, and you've lost a dear friend.
notes & etc: reader, lee scoresby, and john parry. oneshot. HDM series. canon compliant with events of book 2. ambiguous relationships. angst!! more writer commentary at the end. 584 words. on Ao3 here
It’s unreasonable to have expected your choices to take you down any other path than this. You were always going to find yourself here.
Mist touches your skin, permeating through the relatively thin layers of your clothing and down through to your bones. You’d like to say that the cold air numbs your distress, shocks you enough to calm down and jolt out of it, but… truthfully, it has little effect on why you’re here, crying and swallowing shaky gulps of air with your arms around yourself and a silver turquoise ring in your fist. You don’t notice the osprey dæmon that soars overhead.
The soft sound of familiar footsteps draws another shuddering breath into your lungs, your hand wiping shaky and surreptitiously—you hope—at your cooling tears. You want to greet him, as you normally would, but you know your voice would betray you. Although, if he’s here right now, he already knows, and you’re taking much too long to say anything anyhow, and he’d be an idiot not to know anyway—
He comes to a stop near your shoulder.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he says in that smooth, enigmatically charming voice of his. “Sayan saw you, and I thought you might appreciate an ear.”
Your dry chuckle is exceptionally soggy, and you take a deep breath to steady yourself, breathing it out through your lips with closed eyes.
“Jopari,” you greet, looking out at the foreign stars. “It has been an exceptionally trying time. I don’t think I was ready.”
“Ah,” he says, and you can hear the rueful smile in the sound. “I don’t think most of us are.”
You turn to look at him over your shoulder. “John.”
You’ve come to know him well over these last years. Sayan can journey far, that’s true, but even a shaman with a witches dæmon is reluctant to part too far with their own very self, and shamans and witches alike need unassuming individuals to be their knowing eyes and hands in far off lands. None of you would never have gotten this far otherwise. So you understand immediately.
“You knew Lee would…” your throat closes up on the words.
“I did. I'm sorry.”
The tears come fresh, the heat of the saltwater on your face due to more than mere thermodynamics. It’s as if the anger at the man by your side is finding the only escape it can, through the water of your eyes, leaving room for growing dismay.
“Come back to the camp,” he says, nothing but gentle. “You’ll catch cold and we’ve a ways to go yet.”
You turn away again, looking down at the small furry body of your dæmon by your boot.
“Ah, so I will be continuing on further?” You regret the spiteful comment as soon as it leaves your mouth.
“This is not the world you’ll stop in,” John Parry says, cryptic as ever.
You turn to face him, the stones making their small sounds underfoot. He looks at you, sharp eyes apologetic. “I know you were close with Mr. Scoresby,” he says. “If there had been another way—”
“Then we wouldn’t win, in the end, would we?”
One side of his mouth lifts, once again rueful.
You sigh, and nod. The two of you walk back to your small, humble camp, and John, Jopari, Stanislaus Grumman and all his names, sits with you in silence by the fire. Before you know it, he will be dead, and you will be left behind to tell his son about him.
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i have sooo much fun facts about this reader in my head all of a sudden. in my mind they were a little bit in love with lee (a longtime friend) and john (platonically? romantically? we'll never know about either of these for either fella and neither will they bc theyre kinda messed up about it all!!) and they work with john and the witches towards asriel's big plan to Kill God. yippee!!
Marisa - harder than most mothers, it's safe to say - often heard the words spoken with unbearable softness. Not in her family, but the words danced in the streets, touching her ears like a melody. Mama loves you. Everything's alright, child. Mama loves you.
She remembers wanting to say the magic words more than anything in the world. The golden daemon never blinked, never moved, just sat beside her. Mesmerized, he never, not even for a moment, looked away from little Lyra and her soul companion as though if he did, they might have disappeared. As though his eyes were the only thing keeping them in existance. He knew then, Marisa thinks. He knew she wouldn't say it. She wouldn't dare.
She remembers words dissolving quicker than a thin layer of ice on a tongue. She remembers being hopelessly, cruelly mute.
Some things should live in minds only, is appears. In beautiful what-ifs, and never on the lips. They give the vow of silence, and Marisa's soul never utters another words as if none would be good enough. Fine, she decides. Silence it is.
Until.
Until.
Twelve years pass before Marisa sees her child. She is armed to the teeth, oozing danger with a metal-scented touch, stunning in a way nobody dares to confront, fully prepared - and the girl, the girl wears raggedy clothes and hardly knows what soap is. She bites nails. She stuffs food in her mouth. She's got a scar on her forehead and exactly three random, unevenly placed moles on her left cheek. That little monster attacks Marisa's heart like a bloodthirsty Tartar. She's got hugs instead of rifles. Marisa would have preferred the rifles. Blades. Anything. Lyra is running about with a string tied around her mother's throat. She's a wind-borne kite. Every time the girl throughtlessly gets too far, Marisa feels her lungs being yanked out of the chest.
Words return. Words seize her, rattle through her to the point where she cannot bear silence any longer, and the only thing stopping Marisa from saying them is not having enough breath. That, and the impossible task of saying words you never learned to say.
So she finds other words.
Blue is quite your color.
Mama loves you.
I think you can be extraordinary.
Mama loves you.
I'm only trying to protect you.
It starts spilling in every conversation. It's everything she's able to say after twelve years of silence. My place is with her. I want her with everything I have. If you find her, please keep her safe.
Mama loves you, loves you.
Lyra grows up having never, ever heard those words.
Her mother is hopelessly, cruelly late for saying them. It doesn't stop her from living them till the last breath.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Fandom: His Dark Materials
Title: You're On My Heart Just Like a Tattoo
Pairings/Relationships: Will Parry/Lyra Silvertongue
Summary:
On his eighteenth birthday, Will gets his one true love's name tattooed over his heart.
Hello, loves! This idea wouldn't leave me alone, so there you have it. Title taken from the song "Tattoo" by Jordin Sparks, this fic actually came to me while listening to it. Enjoy!
Lyra’s on her knees in front of the bench–their bench–at the botanic gardens, contemplating the lawn in front of her and deciding how best to dig several deep, envelope-sized holes. Her scholars would be horrified. She looks away from the grass and finds herself staring instead into the big, unblinking eyes of her daemon. They consider each other without speaking; anyone looking on would likely imagine the two locked in silent conversation, but instead Lyra’s head echoes with painful silence. She’s the first to look away.
“It can’t work, Pan,” she says, hands on her hips. “It would take magic, and we ent got any. And I don’t think even magic can reach…” She doesn’t finish. She can’t say it, can barely even think it. She knows if she does she’ll cry, and she can’t do that.
Not today.
“Witches have magic,” Pan starts, but Lyra is quick to interrupt.
“We ent witches, Pan, and you know it. No cloud pine branch will let us fly, and we both get older just as we should.” It hurts a little, getting older. Another thing she doesn’t like to think.
“We’re like witches,” Pan mumbles, but he doesn’t push. Because neither of them likes to think about that.
Lyra can’t remember who first had the idea. They’d been in her little room, looking at the basket of letters she’s been writing to Will for so long. Letters with his address inked on the envelopes in ever neatening script; her handwriting has greatly improved in the years since they’d said goodbye. Since she’d felt his warm breath on her cheek. Since she’d started crying herself to sleep at night.
She can’t remember who had the idea, but they’d both agreed to try. Because seeing the letters there in her room, piling up day after day, broke her heart in ways she didn’t understand.
“Why do we even write the letters?” Lyra bursts out, burying her face in her hands. “We know he’ll never see them. Every stroke of the pen is like another piece of glass across our hearts, and still we write.” She reaches out and extracts a letter from its inexpertly tied bundle, tears the envelope apart, and reads from the paper that had once been carefully tucked inside.
Will,
It’s snowing today, the kind of big, fluffy flakes that feel like feathers when they land on your bare skin, soft and icy and yet somehow burning at the same time. How can snow feel both cold and hot all at once? It’s cold, so cold, but it burns too. I like things like that, thinking about the mysteries of the world. But these beautiful ideas always bring me back to the one mystery that will always break my heart: how can you be so close that I can feel your love wrapped around me, like a warm blanket or the smell of warm bread just coming out of the oven, but also so far away that I’ll never, ever feel your hand in mine again? Please tell me how to solve this mystery, dearest, because I’m afraid it’s making me cry again.
Yours always,
Lyra
Pan crawls closer, belly low, placing a tentative paw on Lyra’s knee.
“Oh Pan,” she says, and there’s a quaver in her voice. “It hurts so much. It hurts almost as much as it did when–” When you were torn away from me. When I left you behind. When I broke us apart. All things she feels, but she cannot say, lest she rend her soul into even smaller pieces.
“I know,” he says, and with those two small words, those two breaths of air from her daemon, the pain is a little less. Dropping the letter into the grass she buries both hands in Pan’s soft, thick fur. She feels his jolt of surprise, but then his eyes drift closed in contentment.
It’s good to build bridges sometimes, instead of knocking them down.
“Alright,” Lyra says, pulling away from Pan. He doesn’t pull back, though, but stays with one paw resting on her knee. She flashes him a small smile as thanks for the shared strength, then goes on. “Alright. The letters. We’ll try. And we’ll both believe as hard as we can. That worked all the time when we were kids, it can’t hurt anything now.”
Pan’s rubbing his cheek against her knee now, and she’s remembering him as a kitten. She’d been so small, only three or four, and he’d been a kitten a lot then because he loved the way she laughed when he purred. Any time she was sad he’d leap into her arms and change into a tiny kitten mid-leap, purring madly. Then, once she was laughing, Pan would pounce on invisible things to make her laugh even more.
Digging her hands into the rich, grassy ground in front of her, Lyra says absently, “You did that when you was a kitten, Pan. That cheek rubbing thing. Were a kitten, I mean.” She corrects herself with a small smile, thinking of how much she’s changed since her days running wild in Jordan College. Pulling herself back to the present, to earth and envelopes and expanding hope, she says, “Too bad you can’t purr anymore, I liked that.” Then, realizing what she’d said, she looks up in alarm. “Not that–”
But there’s understanding in Pan’s eyes. “I miss a lot about being able to change,” he says. “I miss making myself big to protect you, or being a tiny moth to whisper in your ear and hide in your hair. I miss flying. And I miss doing things just to be silly, just to see your joy. But it’s good to be settled. To be truly us.”
“Yes,” Lyra says, and for the first time in months she knows she doesn’t have to say anything more. For the first time in… well, for the first time in a very long time, there is no space between them.
“Let me help,” Pan says, breaking the moment. “My paws are clever, I can dig as well as you.”
Lyra grins. “Race you.”
So they start on opposite ends of the space, digging a line of holes until they meet in the middle, laughing and a little bit breathless. It feels so good to laugh with Pan, feels so much like the time before, that for the first time she begins to let herself believe.
They sit and wait for hours that feel like days. Lyra tells Pan it feels like years, but he tells her to quit being so melodramatic. Lyra gasps in mock horror and tells him that she’s never been melodramatic, not ever, and that he should find a job telling stories to children. Pan just huffs, but it’s a fond huff.
Lyra’s hope grows with every breath.
When the sun is at the right place in the sky, when the clock in the tower chimes the proper hour, Lyra moves automatically to sit on the bench and then she reaches for Pan. And he’s there, right there, reaching back for her. “Do you feel them?” It’s the same thing she asks every year, on every visit, and every year she gets the same answer, but she can’t help but ask.
“I–”
Pan leaps down from the bench, agitation clear throughout his body. His ears twitch, his nose quests the air. “She’s here. Kirjava. But she wants–” He flops to the ground in agitation. “Lyra, it’s not like I can ask her to repeat her thoughts! It’s not communication so much as–” But he must see something horrible on Lyra’s face, because he stops, jumps onto her lap, and nuzzles the underside of her jaw. “She’s there. I can feel her. And she wants us to wait.” He worries at her sleeve with his paws, carefully keeping his claws from catching on the material. “It’s never been like this. Never so real. Maybe–”
Lyra finishes the thought for him, her voice a breathy whisper. “Maybe we are magic.”
When it happens, Lyra thinks she must be dreaming. Must be painting her want in the air in front of them. But then there’s a tiny gasp from Pan, so maybe it truly is real.
“Pan, are those–”
“Paper flowers, yes. Do you think our letters–”
“Must have done. And is that–”
“Of course it’s Will’s handwriting. We know it like we know our own. Don’t be silly, Lyra.”
She flushes, because she is being silly; who else would be responding to her letters? Lyra kneels on the ground again, this time taking no heed of the state of her dress or the dirt under her fingernails. She runs a fingertip along the edge of one delicate petal, full of wonder.
Will did this. She and Pan had the inkling, but Will is the magic one. He knows how to turn invisible and how to wake a girl from a magic sleep. He’s the one who always knows what to say, and when it’s best to just be silent and wait. She turns to Pan, ready to let all these thoughts spill out of her…but before even one sound escapes she sees in his eyes that he already knows. So she just blinks her eyes, hard, to keep the tears from spilling out, and goes back to the flower.
“I’m almost afraid to pick it,” she breathes. “But I’ll never make sense of it all without plucking the petals.” So though it feels like breaking a spell, she wraps her fingers around the base of the stem and neatly tears it, as close to the ground as she can manage.
Nothing happens.
Lyra lets out a shaky breath. “I almost expected magic sparkles or something silly,” she admits. Pan nuzzles at her knee again. He did too, then.
It takes less time than she’d expected to arrange the plucked petals into something she can understand; it’s almost like the flower wants to be easy to read. Pure silliness, of course. But the entire day seems to be made of nonsense, so one more thing isn’t too much to believe.
And then she’s reading Will’s words for the first time in… oh, another uncountable length of time. Too long. But she can still hear his voice in her head as she reads.
Lyra,
You clever girl. How did you even think to do this? Kirjava is sure it was Pan’s idea, but I’m betting you both thought of it at the same time. The two of you do that a lot. Or you did when we were all together, anyway.
I haven’t read all your letters, of course–that will take days, or even weeks, you’ve been writing for a very long time–but I’ve read enough to miss you even more. Honestly, it only took seeing your handwriting on the petals–you’ve improved, but of course I knew it was you. Who else would be mad and brilliant enough to mail letters to another world by burying them in the dirt? Only my Lyra.
For now I’ll only answer one letter: it was the first to bloom and though it looked like a lily before I picked it, the words pierced my heart like the thorns of a rose. I too think about the mysteries of the world–not just my world but all the worlds. I talk with Mary sometimes, about everything we saw, about the world of the dead and your world with the giant armored bears and angels and witches and what it’s like to have our daemons when everyone else around us keeps theirs tucked safely inside their bodies. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far: I don’t have many answers, but it’s good to keep asking questions. That’s what science–your philosophy, remember?–is about, really, asking more and more questions even if you don’t get exactly the answers you’re looking for.
I may never get to hold your hand again, Lyra. But because you’ve found another mystery I can hear your voice in my head. I can see your handwriting on these paper flowers.
And I can hope.
Right beside you now,
Will
p.s. Kirjava can feel you. Or, she can feel Pan, but I think it’s the same thing. I don’t have much practice with daemons, you know.
“Oh,” Lyra says. She should say something more, something witty or important, but all she can think is Will wrote these words. Will is right here.
Every visit…it’s not that she ever doubted; Will is the most steady and trustworthy person Lyra has ever met. But it’s one thing to believe Will is sitting here, only tiny particles–and a whole universe–separating them, and another entirely to know.
She feels Pan’s rough tongue on her cheek and that’s when she realizes she’s crying. Why is she crying when she’s so happy? She scrubs at her eyes, trying to find a calm center; it’s difficult with her racing heart pounding in her ears, drowning out everything else. And then Pan licks the end of her nose, a deliberate and silly thing he used to do to make her laugh; she knows he’s trying to trick her out of her shock but it works and the laughter is good for both of them. Cleansing.
“Oh, Pan.” Lyra has her arms wrapped around him and her face buried in his fur, and her heart is full to bursting. “We did it. It’s impossible, but we must have at least a little magic. Or Will does.”
“Or all of us together. How many things only worked because it was all of us together?”
And this feels right. The magic wouldn’t work without all of them together, gathered in space so thin Pan could feel Kirjava. “Just like–”
“Yes.”
When she’s calm again she pulls the paper and pen and ink out of her bag, the things she’d brought with her just in case. I’m here, she writes. I miss you, she adds. After a moment’s hesitation she writes one more thing.
How do we break all the way through?
**
written for prompt #15–letters unsent–for @reverseprompts
prompt art by the amazing and talented @dragonpressgraphics
Back in Oxford, Lyra feels like nothing has changed since she went up North. As if her time away was a tiny moment in time.
But in reality nothing stays the same. She has to deal with what she left behind and her feelings of belonging, in a place she no longer considers her home.
