Hey Tink! I have questions!^^ For the emoji ask thingy: 🟥, 🦗, 📈, and 😁.
Hello Ely! Hopefully I have answers. XD
🟥 How long do you spend in edits? - Lol, a mix between probably not long enough and damn girl when you gonna post this?! There are times I wish I'd sat on something longer, just so I can change things if the story changes, but otherwise... I go wherever the wind takes me.
🦗 Do you write in sequence or jump around? - Tends to be sequentially. That way I'm not getting all the good stuff done and dragging my feet with the connect-y bits. (Saying that, both Detente and Slumber Party were written in a jitterbug jump about way, and I think that's worked for them. :))
📈 Which are your top three most popular fics by bookmarks? - Ooooh. *Goes to look* Now this is when I actually look like the fandoms I write!
Of Sequins and Scalpels - Teslen (T)
Ghost of the Machine - Sam/Jack (M)
Words Don't Come Easily - Teslen (M)
😁 What makes you happiest? New fic comments, kudos, bookmarks, user subscribers, story subscribers, or Tumblr asks? - Comments, Tumblr asks, and Kudos emails all give me the happy wiggles!
This would have been from Enigmatic Confections if I'd actually written on it since my last posting. 😅
But have a bit from a WIP I'm passionate about but only allowing myself small doses of until I actually finish a story.
But the island--Helen's island and she could call it that, because she had dwelt on it longer than any had or ever would--offered safety and life where it otherwise wouldn't have been possible.
So this is for @the-goofball, just because, and for @ladyelysandra for her fan-rambling and encouragement. I wanted to write this before Valentine’s Day, but, hey, it’s still Femslash February. *cough* That’s what counts, right? *sheepish grin*
Contains, uh, D/s overtones, Helen being her usual emotionally repressed and control freak self, uh, mistaken perceptions of others? Not at lot to tag I don’t think.
Basically Kate attempts to organize something for Valentine’s Day. Helen learns about it, and has a couple of things she wants to say.
"Kate, do you have a moment?"
Kate turned to find Helen standing in the doorway to her office, forearm braced on the doorjamb, hip cocked, a posture she usually only took during other moments. She swallowed, darting her tongue over her lips — by now a pavlovian reflex. Helen's smile widened.
"Uh, yeah, of course." Kate stepped into the room, turning to face her as she closed the door. That tiny click, significant and yet not all at once, the sound both setting her at ease and setting her on edge, rife with echoes of past meanings. Kate shoved her hands in her pockets. "What's this about?"
Helen settled against her desk, not quite sitting, fingers curling around the edge. "I called Alfredo's yesterday, to request a table for the 14th. Imagine my surprise when I'm informed there's already a reservation for that evening, in my name."
Kate opened her mouth, almost prepared to protest, and then she just shrugged slightly. "Yeah, I wanted to do something. I mean, I'm not really into the schmoopy clichéd Valentine's Day stuff, but I figured..." She searched for the right words. "You kinda have this thing about being 'courted properly'," and she made sure the fond air quotes were audible, "And I figured doing something for Valentine's Day was part of that."
"Kate..." Helen shook her head, with something gently coaxing in her tone Kate couldn't quite pinpoint. "Why?"
Kate shrugged, feeling a little helpless, off-balance yet again. Helen's specialty, almost like an aura. "Why not? I thought — I was trying to do it right. " She shook her head, glanced at the floor. "It seemed like something you'd like, and, like, care about."
Helen straightened, pushed herself gently off of her desk, and held her hands out. "Come here?"
Kate went, and was kissed: softly, thoroughly, until she threaded her fingers through Helen's locks and flicked her tongue across Helen's lower lip.
"I appreciate what you've tried to do. The forethought and intention behind this..." She brushed a lock of hair behind Kate's shoulder, fingers ghosting over that sensitive patch of skin on Kate's neck. "But is this you?"
"What do you mean?" Kate shook her head, taking half a step back, to create space for her confusion.
"I mean, are you doing this for yourself, or out of some attempt to do what you think will please me?" A quiet quirk of her eyebrow that drove the breath from Kate's lungs.
She looked down, embarrassment flooding her face. "You don't like it?"
"May I be frank?" Helen ran her thumb along Kate's jaw, tilting her chin up.
Kate laughed, meeting Helen's eyes for only a brief moment. "Since when have you ever not been?"
"Touché." Helen smiled, that truly pleased smile that brought out her dimples, that Kate never got enough chances to bask in. "What I mean to say is, I want to be romanced by Kate Freelander. Not by some person who Kate Freelander might think I want to be romanced by. Now, which one came up with this idea?"
"I — I don't know." She really didn't. Because she wanted to please Helen, wanted to be the sort of person who pleased her. And she had nothing against chocolate and champagne.
"I've been wined and dined by kings, czars, celebrities, and millionaires." Kate hunched her shoulders, sullenly kicking down the self-recrimination rising up at Helen's words. "I don't say that to belittle what you've arranged, not at all. It's the intention behind it that counts. Which is why I don't want you to feel as though you need to arrange something fancy for me. Kate, please look at me, if you can." Slowly, Kate raised her eyes to meet Helen's, to meet that soft gaze of hers she could get lost in. "Anyone can arrange a fancy dinner. Not everyone can offer me an evening Kate Freelander's way."
She never knew how Helen managed to find just the words, just the tone that made her feel small and loved and powerful at the same time. "How do you do that?"
"I most certainly can't tell you how to do things your way." There was the arched eyebrow, the wry amusement.
Kate snorted, half a relieved laugh. "That wasn't what I meant. But, I'm confused. Like, you want effort, but you don't want this kind of effort. What kind do you want?"
"Please don't confuse effort and forethought with extravagance. And don't lose your originality, either."
Kate exhaled, nodding to the rush of another small puzzle piece slotting into place. "I got it. I think."
"How are you?" Quiet, caring. "I'm aware I can be... exacting, at times."
"Hey, I knew I was getting into something with a woman who knows her own mind." Kate lifted one hand, and let it fall to her thigh again. "It just takes a bit of getting used to."
"I didn't want you to —" Helen stopped, and pressed her lips together. "No, that's not quite it. I'm aware I don't exactly perceive high society as 'your element,' and I doubt you do either, but I am confident you could navigate that environment perfectly well if you needed or desired to." Helen glanced down, that Victorian reserve flashing across her expression for a moment, before she took a deep breath. "I'm afraid my motivations were somewhat selfish. I'm not all antiques and fine wines, despite whatever lines I'm sure Will has employed when Nikola and I spend an evening reminiscing. You know I also appreciate leather and keen weaponry." Kate swallowed, acutely aware of said appreciation as it rose to her mind's eye. "My view of romance has... evolved over the years, and I was rather looking forward to being courted your way. So... if you were seeking to please me..." Helen tilted her head, and the gesture filled in the rest of the sentence more elegantly than words.
"You really aren't used to asking for things, are you?" With a strange sort of elation filling her, Kate surged forwards, to kiss Helen again. Helen let out a small, surprised noise, and curled her hand around the nape of Kate's neck.
"I'm really not," she admitted when they broke apart for air. "I hope you can make your peace with that."
Kate laughed, grinned, shook her head with something approaching fond exasperation. "Already have."
The last of my trick-or-treaters this year! Welcome and please accept your treat of the prologue and first part of chapter 1 of the WIP I call my 'Island AU', where abnormal women are shunned and Helen and Ranna butt heads over what is best for their daughter.
🍬🍭🍫🍬🍭🍫🍬🍭🍫🍬🍭🍫🍬🍭🍫🍬🍭🍫🍬🍭🍫🍬
Prison. Forbidden land. Island of Sin. Isle of Monsters.
Those were only some of the names it was called.
Helen Magnus had another name for it.
Sanctuary.
In truth, it was still very much a prison and she was well aware of the fact. But the island--Helen's island and she could call it that, because she had dwelt on it longer than any had or ever would--offered safety and life where it otherwise wouldn't have been possible.
The island was home to the women that were said to be cursed, the abnormals that weren't accepted in society simply because a man had dictated that only men could possess any sort of perceived power.
Abnormals, once upon a time, had hidden themselves from society. Lived beneath the eye of the public, for fear of persecution that they always inevitably received. Then, at some point, the abnormals had realized that they had power and come into the light.
Society had accepted this, after much violence, well before Helen had been born. For a brief time, all abnormals had been accepted. Then some man had decided that women were not meant to have such abilities and powers and they were to be feared. They were 'hellish'.
There was always a religious angle. Men used religion to put women in the places they wanted them. It was the witch trials all over again.
But somewhere along the way, someone had gotten uncomfortable with the idea of murdering all the female abnormals--probably because a daughter or wife had turned out to be one-- and decided that the ones discovered in Britain would be sent to an island to live out their days, to repent for their sins.
Helen had never been able to figure out what their sins were, considering that they had been born this way. How could what you were born as be sinful in any manner? If people considered God to have had a hand in the creation of each person, then by that reasoning God had made them the way they were.
She had always been prone to such sinful and unacceptable thoughts, long before she had discovered that she was an abnormal.
She had been a dreamer, a lover of science. She had wanted more for her gender and she hadn't wanted to wait for those things to happen before she did what she wanted.
Her father had indulged her, teaching her medicine and how to be a doctor. It had been through their medical work that Gregory had discovered that she was an abnormal. That her aging, once she had reached a certain point, was slowed or had stopped altogether.
Gregory had probably only noticed it because he was a doctor. Helen certainly hadn't noticed it, considering that she had never paid that much attention to her appearance other than making herself presentable for everyone else.
Her father had performed multiple experiments and tests on her and her blood, trying to figure out, desperate to keep her status as an abnormal concealed. Which had been very dangerous, considering that there could be legal repurcusions for haboring a female abnormal.
She had no idea what had happened to him. All she knew was that by now, he was gone.
Her last memory of him was of him arguing with the men that had come to take her, putting himself between them and her, trying to hold on to her, trying to protect her. Then that tender kiss on her forehead, because they had to say goodbye, no matter what.
Some nights, Helen still felt that kiss on her skin and would touch the spot, grief coursing through her veins as she remembered.
When she had been left on the island, to repent for her sin of being a female abnormal in a man's world or to simply die, there had been other women here.
But that….had been a very long time ago.
They had all gone now.
But Helen was not alone.
<><><><>
Helen stood knee deep in the ocean water, letting the waves surge around her as she stared out towards the empty horizon.
The water was chilly--in truth, it almost always was--but it was something that she had grown accustomed to long ago and it didn't bother her now.
This was something Helen did often, staring back towards the world that she had left behind, the one she had been exiled from for over a century. She wondered, sometimes, but felt no true pull towards it.
Sanctuary, as she had named the island, was her home. It was Helen's place in the world, where she was able to care for and protect the people that the world had thrown out, had left to die, were afraid of.
There had been a society of sorts when Helen had been thrown on to the island in the eighteen seventies, but most of the women had fended for themselves and most didn't survive more than a few years on the island.
Shelter and food were scarce, not entirely through lack of ability--though quite a few of the women, like Helen herself, had never been expected or taught how to get their own food, either due to higher status or city living. Most of the lack was due to lack of cooperation.
There had been arguing, refusal to do work, expecting more than their share and other things.
It had taken Helen years to organize the island to what it was, a place to actually live instead of repent and die in prayer to a God she was fairly certain didn't exist at this point. But her years of effort had paid off.
"Helen!" a voice called, making Helen turn back towards the shore.
Ranna stood in the sand, just out of reach of the lapping water, holding a slate against her stomach, watching Helen with an intense gaze.
Helen waded out of the water to where she had left her boots and a towel, drying herself off before she slid her shoes on and approached her.
"You'll catch your death one of these days." Ranna said in lieu of greeting her, tone almost scolding.
Helen nearly rolled her eyes at this. It wasn't the first time she'd heard this, but she knew how long she could tolerate being in cold water, for God's sake.
She was about to respond when she really looked at Ranna.
While she had clearly cleaned herself up, Helen still saw the traces of blood around her nostrils and the faint smear above her lip. The paleness of her face was also indication enough.
"You exerted yourself too far."
Ranna's expression immediately changed.
"I did no such thing."
"Ranna…"
Helen gave her a look, which Ranna returned.
"What was it this time?"
Ranna pressed her lips together for a moment and Helen thought that she may not answer simply because she didn't like the way that she was acting.
for the procrastination ask list: 2, 8, 10, 12 (sending several because real procrastination takes time^^)
Lol, thank you lovely! I have procrastinated long enough on this, so quick fire answers!
🍄Decriscribe your wip/one of your wips in the format of “___ + ___ =___” - Vampire!Nikola + Vampire!Helen = not quite sure because I didn't leave any notes but I'm assuming smut. XD Oh! I'll do a different one. Helen Magnus + Rebecca Welton = two boss ass babes tracking down an Abnormal.
♻️A scrapped idea for your current WIP - The whole letting Nikola know who Bancroft was in the Roommates fic. *Sweatdrop*
🤡How many Wips are you actively working on? - Three? Roommates AU, a Teslen teaching Will to be a better everything for Abby (ok, that's still in the active planning stages but it's there) and... Oh. Two. The Sanctuary/Ted Lasso one isn't so actively being worked on.
❤️Not a question, just a second kudos to send. - *Squeeeees* Thank you! XD
