does psych even have the reverting(???) ability anymore? is it just employed psych that has it??
He does have it in him technically but Psych is like at level zero.
Psych has no connection to his own spiritual magic or any control over his body, he’s just designed to be pumped and I guess refreshed atm. If he bled on someone he couldn’t even dictate what that blood does or how the magic affects them. His blood is a foreign product to him
But Later yes! He will have more abilities because he actually fucking learns what he is and what his body can do, but he’s like a noob rn.
It’s like in avatar how aang doesn’t start off with all 4 elements mastered- I thought it would be more narratively interesting if psych had to learn his capabilities. He also has more weird magical abilities then I had him have before so that’ll be fun
After the Winter Palace, ‘Nanny’ ( Aurelios head of staff ) will not return with Aurelio to Skyhold. Aurelio will also begin to act more bizarrely than usual, and is defensive to questioning. The Inquisitor soon after receives a letter from a ‘concerned friend’ who says some cryptic things about Lio being ‘’not all he seems’’, begs them to meet at a disclosed location in the Frostbacks. If this quest is ignored, Aurelio will ultimately die in the end battle with Corypheus.. soooo .. not ideal. Let’s continue !!
Inquis meets up with mystery party and BOOM its Nanny, who reveals her true name to be Safiya, and prefers to be called that by those she doesn’t consider family. Safiya reveals in very broken tradespeak that Aurelio has a ‘sickness’ to which she knows the cure. She details that she tried to reveal this cure to Aurelio, but he rejected it and cast her away, considering it a betrayal. If pressed: a cure to what? Safiya will respond that ‘they took his heart away, we will give it back to him.’
It’s natural to expect this to be some quest to retrieve Aurelios actual heart, but it isn’t. Safiya, Aurelios head of guard Nileena, and a few others close to him have been searching extensively for a way to get him to relive parts of his childhood through the fade. Lio is notorious for not wanting to do that, and rarely even seriously talks about it --- because, he doesn’t remember much of it. As a result of trauma, his developing brain blinked out big patches of his life before the age of around ten. He fabricated, to fill in the gaps. His father also gaslighted him a fucking BUNCH and would also fabricate things his family members / mother especially had said or done to him. Aurelios servants, then slaves, remember everything as it truly happened.
The Divine has spent his life aloof about death because everything was so black and white to him. Bad people deserve death, murdering people who do bad things is nothing to be guilty about, because they were bad. Aurelio convinced himself that his family were nothing but cruel, shallow people just like his father -- but they weren’t. Some of them were as young as he was. None of them, bar his father, were anywhere near ‘evil.’ They were in the same cage as he was, in many ways, he just never saw it that way and was ACTUALLY manipulated not to see it that way.
Safiya will insist the Inquis can get through to Aurelio, because Aurelio loves them ( she says this regardless of whether they are just close friends / romanced ) like no one he’s ever loved before, and they make him more of a person. She said she and the others have tried to help him see that in order to be his best, and begin to grow and achieve some closure about what happened to him, he has to face himself. They want him to be truly free. They want him to see that though his father taught him to be a mindless killer who suffers no consequence or guilt, he ISN’T that. They want him to be free of hate. Hate his father, hate him and wish he burns, hate Tevinter and what it did to him --- but not the innocents, not the ones caught in the crosshairs. It’s that hate that makes him nasty. Sadistic. But he never listens, or maybe he doesn’t know how to hear it from them. Maybe he’ll hear it from the Inquisitor.
Of course, he does. It takes convincing, but he goes along with it. Adamant that it’s pointless and it’ll lead nowhere and it’s a waste of time because he knows what happened blah blah. A small ritual is performed, and the Inquisitor, Aurelio and the party travel to the Fade. Thus begins a series of occurrences:
Aurelio and the party will begin to experience various parts of Aurelios young life. Siblings beaten for asking to see him. The Archon, Radonis, chastising / threatening his father for what he had done to ‘’the boy’’, his sister teaching him how to navigate his room, how she’d cried when they were found and he was dragged away. His mother lying in bed with him after the ritual had been performed, stroking her hands over his wounds, crying and just saying ‘’sorry, i’m so sorry’’ over and over again. Seeing how her relationship with his father, how she was treated, was horrific, just like his was. Obviously, at this point, Lio starts to almost --- dissolve into tears himself. Not that he comments on them. He can barely speak but he asks, firmly, to leave. He says he doesn’t want to see anymore.
When they return to the physical, Safiya, AKA Nanny, is waiting for them with some more of Aurelios servants. Aurelio at first will claim trickery, and try to weasel out of everything by claiming this was all some grand fabrication, but Safiya and the Inquisitor can talk him down. They assure him that he couldn’t have known, he isn’t damned, he is just human: like everyone, and that is their point --- that humanity has weight and consequence but humanity is all that stands between him and being just another monstrous dictator.
Aurelio becomes increasingly upset, understandably, as the weight of everything really does settle on him. With the Inquisition, he has begun to show more .. remorse, and empathy lately as it is, but this is just a whole new level of breakthrough for him. Safiya says they all loved him, and they all here love him now, and even though it hurts and it makes him feel sick and heavy and hollow all at once, wasn’t it better than hate? Safiya tells him that she loves him more than anything, and hates herself for being too frightened of him to fully tell him the truth. If the dialogue is successfully executed, and he is fully romanced / friendship maxxed at this point: quietly, he asks: my mother, she loved me? And Safiya says yes. Aurelio will break down in tears and is embraced first by the Inquisitor, Safiya, then slowly more of the people in the room --- people who have known him all his life, and love him anyway.
Aurelio will then be FULLY PROPER maxxed out friendship / fully in love at this point. It is also after this that he is considered more ‘human’, not unlike Coles companion quest, and begins to truly break apart and understand empathy and the gravity of taking life. He still does it. Just not as .. thoughtlessly, mindlessly. He is also focused entirely on redeeming Tevinter, and almost abandons the idea of destroying it, considering it more of a ‘’last resort’’ than an exciting second option.
Yo. Tagging these folks again for PART FIVE: @kat-atomic @tinybearswithjetpacks , @brooklynbetty, @mariastill plus @colorcoated01 @leveragehunters and @needmorefiction because they seemed interested.
Yet another installment of Sloth Spelled Steve. Jeeze, how the fuck much longer is this gonna last? Hopefully only one more part. Which I will write tomorrow, because it is late. (And now you all know why all my chapters in Whip Crack are so damn long. Just one more part to the story!!)
Again, everything is under the read line. Tagging for Poor Bucky’s No Good Very Bad Week, Troll!Steve, and non-sexy hand feeding.
Part one
Part two
Part three
Part four
--
“The fuck do you mean he doesn’t know how to take the curse off?!”
Bucky clenched his fists on the dinner table and barely contained the urge to stab something.
The rest of the Avengers sat around the table, with Steve on his right. Large bowls of pasta were being passed around, courtesy of Tony’s favorite Italian place. Every time one came near Bucky, he added a few spoonfuls of food to both his and Steve’s plate. Steve mostly just sat there, leaning on one arm and nearly falling asleep into his dish.
“Guy was a total idiot,” Clint said in between bites. “Seems he found some book and just…slapped together random shit from the internet.”
“You’re fucking with me.” Bucky gripped his fork so hard that it started to crumple. He wasn’t even holding it in his metal hand.
Natasha shrugged with one shoulder. “It fits, given what we know.”
His eyes burned with frustration and he ground his teeth.
The last few days had been both amazing and extremely frustrating. Because while he and Steve had got their heads out of their asses and started to physically get a little closer, Steve was still a lazy fucking slob and it was driving Bucky nuts.
Not only that, but Steve seemed to be doing his level best to drive Bucky to distraction with all the flirting.
Take right now for example. Steve wanted to join everyone for dinner, but didn’t actually want to get dressed. One sad look with big watery eyes later, and Bucky was attempting to shove a non-compliant Steve into a pair of sweat pants. It worked. Eventually. But the process had been memorable to say the least.
“So now what?” Steve asked. He absently poked at his plate with a fork.
“Now we look into other avenues. Local specialists,” Natasha said.
“Quacks and charlatans,” Tony added with a grimace.
“Specialists.” Natasha looked pointedly at him, and passed Bucky another bottle of vodka.
There were already three empty ones at Bucky’s feet. Turns out his shitty knock off Nazi serum was just good enough to keep him from getting drunk. So far anyways. With a nod to Natasha, he poured himself another pint glass and held out hope for the future.
“Steve. Eat.” Bucky poked at Steve’s side.
“Uggg. I want to. I do. But...I could just sit here, too. Sitting here is good. The food’ll be there later.” He heaved a big sigh. Bucky pinched the bridge of his nose and then downed his glass of booze. “Although…Hey, Bucky! You know, you could hand feed me.” Steve’s eyes twinkled hopefully.
“No.”
“But the internet says it’s romantic!” Steve grinned widely. It was the grin of con men everywhere.
“No. It’s not romantic if the person getting fed is just too fucking lazy to pick up a fork and eat.” Bucky refilled his glass and thought of sending Natasha a gift basket. Maybe with grenades. She’d probably like that. That’s what he’d want if he was getting a gift basket, and how different could Natasha be?
Steve pouted into his plate.
“What I don’t get, is why you two aren’t fucking like bunnies,” Tony said, eyebrows raised. Groans erupted all around the table. “Seriously! You two swap more spit than a free testing clinic. What’s the hold up?”
Before Steve could say anything awful, and he was opening his mouth to do just that, Bucky interrupted with, “First, because I’m not okay with doing anything serious when Steve is all messed in the head---”
“Buck, it’s not that bad,” Steve said with a roll of his eyes.
“Says the guy who got rolled here in an office chair because he was too lazy to walk! Second of all...a fella likes to have his partner be a little more involved…” Bucky pushed some food around on his plate and tried not to look at anyone. He was probably frowning, but fuck it. Frowning was better than sulking, and right now all he really wanted to do was sulk. Sulk and drink.
That wasn’t true. What he really wanted to do was toss Steve into bed and suck his dick. Hell, he was pretty sure Steve wanted the same damn thing, too. Unfortunately, Steve could barely stay awake during their make out sessions. Bucky didn’t want to face the hit to his ego if Steve managed to pass out mid- blow job.
Snickers erupted from around the table, making Bucky just frown harder.
“It’s fine, Buck. We’ll get to it.” Steve yawned. “Maybe later. Although, I can certainly offer easy access.” He waggled his eyebrows.
“Ugggg, man, no one wants to hear that.” Sam tossed a balled up napkin at Steve’s face. Steve didn’t even bother trying to dodge.
Something was fishy about what Steve said. Bucky narrowed his eyes, taking in the oh-so-innocent look on Steve’s face.
“You’re doing this on purpose,” Bucky said finally.
“What?” Steve looked baffled. It was almost convincing. Almost.
“The no pants. And the constant stripping. And the trips to the bathroom. All the whip cream. You fucker, you’re deliberately trying to get me to jump you.” Bucky poked a finger into Steve’s chest.
“Well, obviously.” Steve rolled his eyes. “I mean, it is a lot of work to put on pants, but there are additional benefits. Might as well multitask. Master tactician, remember?”
At the point, the rest of the Avengers weren’t even bothering to contain their laughter. Fucking great. Because this day couldn’t get any better.
“I’m not sure this is what the US Army had in mind for the results of Project Rebirth,” Clint said with a smirk.
Steve’s back straightened and he glared across the table, eyes sweeping up everyone present. “I don’t give a shit. I did everything they asked. I sold bonds. I fought. I died. Everyone I loved died. Bucky was hurt and taken and tortured. I was frozen and then brought back and then I fought some more. Years and years without end, for both of us.” He slammed his fist down on the table top, making everyone jump. “We’ve both paid our dues. We deserve a little happiness. And if that happiness means I spend all of my spell-enforced free time trying to convince Bucky to fuck me to unconsciousness, well so be it. Happy curse vacation for me.”
There was a moment of silence and then, bizarrely, everyone started grinning.
“Well said, Captain!” Thor beamed at them.
“’Bout damn time, dude.” Sam clapped Steve on the shoulder. Natasha and Clint just nodded along.
“Jarvis, did you get that on tape? I want that on tape next time Captain Tight Pants decides that he needs to be a martyr.” Tony winked at him and tapped his fingers happily on the table top.
Whatever energy had sustained Steve for that moment quickly drained out of him. He slumped over sideways onto the table, head pillowed by one arm. “Uggggg. Talking is hard. Sleeping is better.”
Bucky stared at Steve a moment, his mind running over what was just said. Interesting. Then he looked at the rest of the Avengers and shook his head them. “You’re all crazy.” More jeers and giggles. Bucky rolled his eyes and ate a bite of tortellini.
Steve pouted towards his plate, just inches away from his face. He strained his neck forward and made little chomping motions with his jaw. Clearly he was trying, and failing, to get close enough to the pasta on his plate to get a bite. This effort only lasted a few moments. Then he heaved another massive sigh and made the saddest, grumpiest face Bucky had ever seen.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Bucky said under his breath. This time he didn’t even bother with the pint glass, he just guzzled straight from the vodka bottle. Then he picked up a fork, filled it with food, and held it to Steve’s face. “Open up, punk.”
The pure happiness on Steve’s face almost made up for how much they were being laughed at.
