#jadeinary au

[romijuli]

jade/tallronica for 46?

“Hey, have you seen the..? Oh.”

THANKS FOR ACCIDENTALLY SOLVING THE JADEINARY AU SHIP CRISIS, NED. Beeeeeeg act 2 spoilies, which is to say this is NOT SAFE FOR STAR. Does this take place in the middle of that Serena one I did? Yeah.

Veronica isn’t in their room. Which, perhaps, isn’t entirely unusual, given her insistence on keeping watch when they’re on the road, but all the same...they’re not on the road, they’re in Arboria, and considering her sister’s funeral was but a few hours before, Jade can’t help but fear the worst.

Though, considering Veronica’s hairbrush is also missing...well, it’s best to search anyway.

So she ventures into the too-dark too-wet Arborian plaza, searching for any sign of Veronica, muddling through the endless whispers from too many still-awake townsfolk. But the town itself shows no sign of her companion, which means that either she’s left town or perhaps...Jade chooses to venture into the grove, back towards where they found Serena.

And, sure enough, Veronica is there, one hand clutching the flute Benedictus had given her before Yggdrasil’s fall and the other wrapped around the missing hairbrush. “You didn’t need to follow me,” she mumbles, carrying her usual snark but with no real bite behind it. It almost sounds empty, which Jade can’t say she doesn’t understand.

Jade’s all too familiar with loss, even if some of the people she lost did, somehow, find their way back to her.

Jade sits down next to her, and whether Veronica consciously leans her head on Jade’s shoulder or not is known only to the stars, now.  She grumbles on, “They’ve always had ridiculous expectations. Not just on Serena, either. I remember them getting on my case for not figuring out healing...” She sighs. “Well, that was before they remembered Erdwin could heal himself...”

“It’s almost as though they wanted you both to be Serenica,” Jade muses, before her train of thought collides to a halt. Oh, goddess above, that’s exactly what they want, isn’t it? And with everyone telling her how she hadn’t fit the image of Erdwin, either...

“Got it in one,” Veronica replies, and this time Jade can clearly hear the bite in her voice. “Everyone thinks, oh, you’re both going to be just like Serenica, and the Luminary will be just like Erdwin, oh, you’re going to be squabbling over him in no time!” She mock-retches, scrunching up her face in a way that probably shouldn’t look as cute as Jade finds it. “No mind to what we think, no, not a single care!”

Jade idly toys with one of Veronica’s braids, murmuring, “But neither of you are Serenica. And I’m not Erdwin. Those who came before us don’t define us.” All too suddenly, she seems to realize what she’s doing. “I...I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me—”

Veronica doesn’t move her head from Jade’s shoulder, giving Jade a peculiar look. “No, that’s...actually…” She presses the hairbrush into Jade’s free hand. “This is going to sound batshit ridiculous, but can you brush my hair out of these braids? I mean, if everyone here is going to thank their lucky stars that I’m still here, I may as well remind them of my own loss, right?”

Jade nods, untwisting the hair ties holding Veronica’s braids in place and combing them gently with her fingers before running the brush through them. She spares a look at Veronica’s face; she looks mostly at peace, for once in all the time Jade has known her; if it hadn’t been for the tears, it would almost look as though she was asleep. She keeps murmuring even with her eyes closed, and Jade briefly hears “I always thought that if it came down to it, I’d be the one lost to Yggdrasil…” Jade’s heart breaks even more than it already has today.

She doesn’t quite want to disturb Veronica, but it’s late enough already, and surely they’ll have to set out tomorrow morning in search of...whatever their next step may be. “All finished,” she whispers, and while she certainly expects Veronica to shift her weight off of Jade’s shoulder (as much as Jade may miss it), she does not expect her to kiss her.

Veronica draws back, suddenly uncharacteristically shy. “And after all that talk of us not being our predecessors…I suppose I’m exactly what they wanted after all—”

Jade tips Veronica’s chin back up, looking straight into her eyes. “Well, did you kiss me because I was Erdwin, so many lives ago?”

Veronica doesn’t hesitate. “Goddess no, ugh. It’s...well, it’s because you’re you.”

“Well, then,” Jade begins, scooping Veronica up into a bridal carry (as Veronica shakes her fist in mock frustration; it’s certainly not real, because Jade can see her blushing) to spare her the effort of walking, “I don’t think you have to worry about that, then.”

[romijuli]

Jadeinary Swaps Cause I Cannot Be Stopped

i don’t think i’m gonna write this anywhere else, unless i do a lot of these and put ‘em up on Ao3 or something. idk ANYWAY there’s some spoilers as always

The name of the game here is Sibling Swaps! Whenever a character has a sibling they will be swapped. If they don’t, uh, things happen.

Jade takes the place of our dear Luminary. I still have no idea how she’s taking this, but I think she was old enough to have some memory of the fall of Heliodor, so that colors a lot of it. She has spears still!

Mia is our resident thief, but still the younger of the Sniffles kids. She didn’t trust herself with the cursed necklace once she realized it has midas powers, so she gave it back to Erik, who wound up wrapped up in its curse instead. Obviously, she blames herself underneath her Hell Child flair. She has claws.

Twin swap! Twin swap!!! Serena’s still the younger twin, still stuck in Veronica’s shadow, so when she gets shrunk she actually sees it as a sort of blessing, something to make her stand out. In a certain sense, her Heroic Sacrifice is also a little bit of her wanting to do something more to make her Not Just Veronica’s Little Sister.

Veronica is still just as sharp as ever, but I think she expected to be the one to give up her life to save the Luminary if necessary. She softens up after they find Serena’s staff. Instead of getting a Sweet Haircut, she ends up unbraiding it; it’s curlier than Serena’s as a result!

Clown Hendrik. I have no idea what goes on other than Clown Hendrik.

Eleven, obviously, is our Jade here, in the care of her bio dad, Carnelian, ever since Heliodor fell and took his parents with it. He punches things because I said so. If you read the two little drabbles i did on this, you can tell that Eleven...has some issues...related TOOOOOO

Carnelian and Rab have swapped. Sorta. See, Carnelian got Rab’s role in the party, but Rab is one hundred percent Mordegon-free. Guess who played too many Tales games and always expects a traitor in the RPG party and put on in here? It’s me!!!! Hell yeah Carny’s been toting around Mordegon since Heliodor fell eighteen years ago. (Eleven is 21 here, making him barely able to remember Jade and also his parents. Ages are Whack in this AU.) This makes his act 2 stuff WILD.

Dundrasilian knight Sylv!!! To consolidate bullet points, Dave is his Jasper. Yes this means Jasper is now steering a boat, idk why i find this funny.

Rab, as un-retired Dundrasilian king, is spreading the Darkspawn rumor not because he’s Mordegon or because he actually believes it, but because he wants to keep Jade safe from Mordegon’s reach until he can find where he is and eliminate him. Unfortunately, he didn’t run this plan by The Seer.

[romijuli]

So back in fuckin AUGUST the lovely @nedryn-laughs sent me three prompts and I finished ONE, and then...never did the rest, lmao

TODAY....I finally do one. The word was “nightmare”, at least according to my notes. I have NO idea where that post is now so you’re getting...jadeinary BIG SPOILIES, including, apparently, how I address DQXI’s giant elephant in the room. Also a content warning for implied violence. Rip.

The nightmares are, sadly, familiar territory for Serena. They’ve plagued her for a long time, since her (first) childhood, since she knew what kind of task she and Veronica were expected to take on.

They were never quite the same, each one twisting some as-of-yet-undiscovered bad possibility into an apocalyptic horror. One particularly-brutal night, it’s a tiny Luminary’s broken body, outside the ruins of Heliodor where their predecessor had fallen all those years ago. Another night, they’re there, all grown up, and they’ve chosen to walk the path of darkness, as Dundrasil had claimed they would.

She had supposed they’d lessen once she and her sister had finally met their charge, but they only seemed to worsen. Within them, her companions grow in number, their blurry faces sharpen as she grows to know them and to love every bit of them, and thus their falls hit harder.

Even at her now-tiny stature, she knows she’d do anything for those she loves.

And when faced with another nightmare, with too-sharp claws and unsettling swords and her friends in danger far greater than she had ever been warned of, she chooses, of course, to save them. It may be a nightmare, of course it is, but it feels real, and if she can be their guiding light even just in her dreams, then that is more than enough for her.

She faces death with a smile, waving her wand and sending her friends to where Mordegon can’t touch them, not until they’re ready.

To her surprise, the nightmare continues, and she watches as the world’s end plays out before her eyes. Her friends, disheartened (or worse) as they scour the world to find the Luminary—no, their friend. And she watches with endless joy as Jade rises, as she always does and always will, and fights with all her heart to save what’s left.

Serena guides them to what’s left of her, to her little staff in the grove she and Veronica played in when they were younger, and that’s where the true nightmare begins, she feels. She can hear the relief in her neighbors’ voices when Veronica returns, their little prodigy, always shining while Serena walked in her shadow. “Well, at least it wasn’t Veronica,” a few even dare to murmur when her parents are out of earshot.

Veronica’s subsequent explosion is, at the very least, a bit amusing to her sleep-rich mind.

She guides them to Mordegon’s fortress, past the horrid illusion that Dave erects in her image, into the final battle—

She awakens suddenly in front of Yggdrasil herself. Silly Serena, taking a nap before the greatest moment of her life.

She rubs the sleep from her eyes, waits for Veronica’s chiding...but it never comes. Instead, seven (seven? Oh, Sylv is here, it seems he’s changed his mind on the Darkspawn business, how nice) bodies crash into hers, hugging her tightly.

Is Veronica crying?

“Serena, I thought—I thought you were gone forever...”

She shoots upright. Had...had that truly been a nightmare? Or had she truly guided her friends through a literal apocalypse?

And if she had...what price did they pay for her return?

[romijuli]

hey @nedryn-laughs :3 (there be spoilers under here, but this one has VERY enthusiastic consent!)

“She didn’t cause you too much trouble, did she?” Erik mumbles, so softly that Eleven almost doesn’t catch it. “Mia, I mean. She can be a handful…”

Eleven shakes his head. Mia’s certainly high-spirited, and it can be hard to keep her sticky fingers off of any valuables they don’t want to steal, but her presence has always been welcome, and the two of them in particular had become pretty close once El had found her and Jade. He’d spilled his guts to her one night, about how he thought it was his fault that Jade had been separated from him and from her father, and she’d seemed to understand. Even in her memoryless state over the past few weeks, she seemed to get it, somehow, when he vented about his perceived role in Yggdrasil’s fall.

And, well, now he knows why; she blamed herself for Erik’s condition, too.

“Glad to hear it…” Erik trails off; when Eleven glances at him, his face is a twist of so many emotions that Eleven doesn’t really know what to make of it. “Look, I’m…I’m sorry about what happened in the Gyldenhal. That…wasn’t cool.”

Eleven shrugs. “You weren’t yourself. I know what that’s like, believe me.”

“No, I…it’s not like Mordegon made me do that! I wasn’t not like Grandpa over there, asleep in his own head while Mordegon pulled the strings. He didn’t make me turn Sniflheim to gold, or Mia, for that matter. That was me. I—”

Eleven cuts him off. “Let me guess. He took some little part of you and twisted it, so it clouded your head and made you do some stupid stuff.”

Back in Octagonia, Eleven saw how things could have gone if he wasn’t in the picture, if he had seen through Mordegon’s puppet show, if he had spotted Dave before Yggdrasil’s fall was set in stone…he’d wanted to forget, and forget he did. He understood all too well what Mordegon and his minions are capable of doing to the human mind.

Erik pauses a moment, but nods, almost imperceptibly. “Yeah. That.”

“No one blames you,” Eleven tells him, scooting his chair closer to Erik’s bed. “We get it. You were a statue for five years, no one expects you to be completely free of bitterness.”

Erik sighs, apparently having been defeated by Eleven’s nigh-flawless logic. When he finally opens his mouth again, he just mutters, “Yeah, it’s real weird to look at her now. My little sister’s not so little anymore!”

Eleven laughs for the first time since Yggdrasil came crashing down. Something in Erik’s face softens at that, and he murmurs, “You know, I wasn’t lying back there. I saw your face when you first looked at me. And, uh, I’d be lying now if I said I didn’t look at you the same way.”

Oh, goddess, Eleven isn’t prepared for this, either. (Spending eighteen years in constant training with Carnelian—well, Mordegon, technically—didn’t leave much room for romantic exploration of any variety.) His face feels warm, and judging by Erik’s smirk, it’s probably a vibrant red now.

“So, uh,” Erik begins, pushing himself into a seated position on the bed, “can I get a do-over? You know, now that I’m not trying to sway you to the side of darkness or—”

Eleven silences him with a kiss, and even though he has no idea what he’s doing, he knows that this is a far nicer experience for both of them than their kiss inside the Gyldenhal. Erik pulls Eleven into his arms, almost falling backwards from Eleven’s great enthusiasm towards this idea.

The door creaks open, Mia peering through the crack and then immediately slamming it shut once more. Eleven can hear her faintly through the door, grumbling, “Can’t leave them alone for five minutes, can I?”

[romijuli]

I need to name this thing WHAT DO I NAME THIS THING

[romijuli]

No Idea if you're still doing this au, but for the jadeinary au can you do some fluff of Mia and Erik while Erik is still recovering from the curse necklace?

anon here’s a secret: i LOVE writing jadeinary. literally any time someone gives me a prompt i at least consider writing it in jadeinary. (and i guess also forest fires now?) and this? perfect. anon your brain is HUGE i love you

act 2 spoilers if it wasn’t obvious, watch erik call his sister various flavors of short

“Hey, short stuff.” Erik ruffles her hair for a moment before almost immediately pulling his hand back. As though he’s scared he’ll break her. (Or turn her to gold, which almost happened a couple times just a few hours earlier.)

“Not so short anymore! I’ve done a lot of growing while I’ve been away.” Mia rolls her eyes, sticks out her tongue, fixes as much of her hair as she can while making a face at him, but for all her show of being Too Cool For Sibling Affection, she really is worried. Five years as a statue, plus whatever Mordegon put in his head…

Ugh, if she melts into mushy sibling goo, it’s gonna kill her image. She’s got a reputation now, Erik. Goddess, she has so much to fill him in on.

He runs a hand through his hair, which means he’s embarrassed about something stupid. “Look, what I said about you ditching me, I didn’t—”

She waves him off. “Yeah, yeah, Mordy made you do it. I get it. We had to fight that pretty boy you kept hitting on because one of those other fuckheads broke into his brain. Hell, Mordegon was puppeting around our group grandpa. It’s kinda what he does.”

“I…I mean, not really, in my case, but…” Erik sighs. “Alright, fine, don’t accept my apology, munchkin.” He elbows her square in the ribs.

“Hey, don’t try that if you don’t want a knife in your gut.” No real bite behind it of course; she’ll never say it, but she missed these moments with Erik. “Anyway, uh. I’m sorry ‘bout ditching you in the first place. And the whole ‘turning everything to gold’ thing.” After all, if she hadn’t gone too far with that magic, he would have never taken it off her, and then—

“You were a kid, squirt. What else could you have done?” He messes with her hair again. “Nah, I’m not mad at you for it. And trust me, I know what that necklace does to people. It wasn’t you. And speaking of…” Erik brandishes the aforementioned necklace. “It doesn’t make gold anymore, so you might as well take it with you, right?”

She blinks. “Wait, you’re not coming with us? I thought you’d be itching to fight Mordegon.”

“Oh, I’ll find you guys later. Once I’m used to being human again. I’m not staying away from that fight.” There’s something burning deep in his eyes that Mia can recognize as oh, I’m gonna beat the shit out of that guy.

She shrugs. “Well, if you’re sure. Enjoy your nap, bro.”

Goddess, she’s happy to have him back.