#like ever ever

[the-silliest-lad]

I’m in da pitt

[mythmerth]

daily I-can’t-believe-how-incredible-footloose-is post. this author writes banger after banger. how am I still on edge after 500k words into loaded march, how the fuck do they do that. I would read ten billion stories from them if I could. footloose, wherever you are, I owe u my life

[cherry-pop-elf]

“This is why I do not like Nifflers. Always cock blocking-!”

My end of the trade with the WONDERFULAMAZINGAWSOMEINSPIRINGCOOLBADASSSTUNNINH @chemzee with our favorite lesbians

[landoncrris]

i?? sir???

[quenchiestzukka]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Nothing happens. The solution stays yellow, not a drop of pink in sight. Neither of them say a word, with only the sound of the chemicals falling into the conical flask filling the small space they’ve made for themselves in this tiny corner of the science lab.

Zuko’s the first to break the silence. Tentatively, as if anything less than the most careful of tones would shatter the fragile atmosphere of anticipation and confusion they’ve created, he says, “Is this… supposed to be happening?”

Sokka’s eyes flick to Zuko’s, blue meeting gold, both equally confused, as he slowly turns his head towards him and says, “I don’t… know?”

Piandao frowns at their set up and hums.

“Hmm,” he says, his voice coloured with a few drops of disappointment but none of surprise. “These are both… sodium hydroxide. You just titrated an alkali… into an alkali.”

OR

Zuko and Sokka lose all their brain cells and clown around during their chem lesson

i um?? wrote a fic??😳😳 i hope u like it hehe okay that is all thank you<3

[spacelabrathor]

Cee!! I'm so so glad to hear that your day was good and that you're feeling happy! You deserve it, don't pressure yourself to write, take the time you need! We'll be here to scream about your future masterpieces anyway 😌

Also, I caught up on Quiet Rapture and you were right, I did NOT regret it one bit 😵‍💫

[theuntamednarrator]

The Last, Best Doctor

Inspired by this post and this gifset

~~~

Wen Ning and Lan Sizhui had just finished visiting the Burial Mounds. They had not really had any time for sightseeing during the recent siege, after all, and the boy had only remembered who he was very recently.

The fierce corpse had looked anything but as he showed Lan Sizhui, a-Yuan, their old home. Smiling as he pointed to where the lotus shoots had sprouted, and amusing the young man by re-enacting Wei Wuxian’s crowing delight that he had proved them all wrong, miming cradling the delicate shoots between his cupped hands and kissing their tiny leaves. Lan Sizhui had laughed, Wen Ning’s mimicry perfectly echoing Wei Wuxian’s wild, infectious, if often inappropriate, delight.

“JieJie even said it was worth putting up with his gloating to finally see a smile on his face again,” Wen Ning continued, before a brief spasm of pain clouded his pale face. Lan Sizhui drew his brows down and reached for the other man’s sleeve.

“Wen Ning? Who?”

“Ah! It’s getting so late, we should be getting on,” his tone had not changed, but Lan Sizhui saw deep pain in his cousin’s eyes. Jin Ling or Lan Jingyi would have pressed for details, mouths running far ahead of their brains.  Lan Sizhui only smiled and nodded a short ‘mn’ of agreement.

Hours later, as they walked along the winding path, he felt Wen Ning’s steps begin to slow, faltering beside him. Glancing over, Lan Sizhui saw a faint path arching of from their comparatively broad one. It looked as though no-one had passed that way for at least ten years, but Wen Ning stared into the trees with that deep pain now written clearly on his face. Lan Sizhui stifled the thought that, if a fierce corpse could cry, tears would have been coursing down his cheeks.

Wen Ning turned his head, and met Lan Sizhui’s questioning gaze, before he stepped off onto the faint track a few paces, hesitantly at first, but his steps quickening as he heard the young disciple, heard a-Yuan, following him. He didn’t know what had possessed him, but he was almost running now, and his heart would have been pounding in his chest if it still beat. He wished wildly that it would pound. Could pound as it always had when he’d run home to his JieJie, late always late, his bow bouncing on his back and his arms covered with scratches from retrieving arrows from prickly bushes. She would sigh over the state of him and begin pulling her salves from their various drawers, boiling certain herbs for tea as she bandaged the worst cuts. He can almost hear her, the soft murmuring of her voice as she read though a particularly difficult passage in one of their family medical texts, left hand scribbling notes while her right turned pages.

JieJie

He isn’t panting, as he comes to a halt in front of the gates. Couldn’t, now that he no longer breathes. But Lan Sizhui, a-Yuan, sounds a little breathless as he comes up behind him. The boy might be a powerful cultivator in a respected sect, but even so keeping pace with the Ghost General is no easy task. Craning his neck he reads the faded characters over the gate with some difficulty.

“Yiling Supervisory Office?” His soft voice is a question and a confusion. Though the words ‘supervisory office’ mean little to anyone who did not live, or not live, as the case may be, through the Sunshot Campaign he must wonder what they are doing here.

Wen Ning takes a breath as he turns to his cousin. His voice doesn’t tremble, and he thinks sadly that it should.

“This was my sister’s house,” he began, uncertainty making him abrupt. But the boy’s, a-Yuan’s, face is open, and his eyes are curious, and suddenly Wen Ning can’t stop the flood of words. He drags the other behind him as they cross the courtyard from the kitchens, to his old room, the archery yards, the gardens, and the main hall, chattering all the while. Stories of Wen Qing, of her watchful eyes on him as he grew, of her worry as she tried to shield him from Wen Ruohan growing madness, her kindness to those who came to seek her aid. If he hesitates, a soft question nudges him into more stories, wide eyes and eager ears drinking it all in.

Wen Ning refuses to linger at the guest chambers where Wei Wuxian and his siblings had stayed in those awful days after their home burnt and Jiang Cheng’s core was crushed. Even so he swore he could taste the faint echoes. Jiang Yanli’s overwhelming grief, Jiang Cheng’s hopelessness, Wei Wuxian’s frantic frenetic guilt, which had engulfed their little bubble, forcing them to finally take a side, tipping his JieJie off the knife’s edge she’d been walking and oh, hadn’t it sliced them all to pieces on the way down.

At last, they arrive at the bottom of the steps leading to the library. Wen Ning doesn’t know if he can make himself go in, face the decay and rot of all his family’s years of gathered knowledge, their wisdom. But Lan Sizhui, a-Yuan, has already climbed the steps and is pushing open the door. He has no choice but to join him.

The first thing he notices is that there is no decay, and little dust. Confused, he sweeps the room for possible intruders, possible danger, until his eyes catch a flash of gold on the central supporting beam. A talisman, for protection and preservation. Wen Ning feels a warm surge of gratitude to his master. He knows it is Wei Wuxian’s, for who better to recognise his tricks than he, the man’s greatest trick?

The second thing he notices in the scroll for the core transfer, lying on the low table where he had rolled it and placed it after his JieJie had finished her meticulous copy and annotations, unwilling to risk the original on the mountain side. He felt a sudden pang of loneliness. None of the five of them had come back to this place, before now. Four of them had died, and two of them, the best of them he privately thought, remained dead. He suddenly desperately wished he had not talked his JieJie into Wei Wuxian’s desperate plan; but he’d been enamoured of the older boy’s confidence and sure that nothing he dreamed could be beyond reach, was sure his fire would light them all up. Instead, it had nearly burnt them all down.

Lan Sizhui ran his fingers along the scrolls, the studious Gusu Lan disciple in him burning him to drag them from their shelves and devour them. He can already tell these are texts their Library Pavillion does not have. His fingers itch, and he forces them still.

“What,” his voice is soft but it still seems to shock his cousin, who he realises had been very far away. “Sorry. What did our family do? Wen Qing,” and he knows the name now, from the stories Wen Ning has just told him, though he does not feel that he knows her, not yet. “What did she do?”

“She was a doctor,” there is pride in his cousin’s voice, and it almost masks the grief. "She was the best doctor is all the five sects.”

“What happened to her?”

Wen Ning tries to stay focussed on the boy’s face, even as the clamouring grows in his memories. Sharp, pointed swords, ringing and cutting in soft flesh. Sharper eyes over a smile that never reached them. The notes of a flute, loud, but not loud enough, never loud enough to drown the screams.

“a-Ning! a-NING!”

“I don’t know,” it's whispered, shameful, a confession of grief and guilt long held. “We, we got separated, at JinLin Tai.”

Lan Sizhui, a-Yuan’s, smile faded slightly, and he nodded thoughtfully as he turned back to the texts. He pulled a few scrolls to him and turned to Wen Ning, his face shining with a bright determination.

“I would like to study our family’s teachings Ning-xiong,” he said formally. “Please may I take some of Master Qing’s writings for further study?”

He has your eyes, JieJie. Wen Ning thinks, and he feels another warm surge of gratitude.  For Hanguang Jun, for sheltering a helpless child, for his master, for protecting them all, but mostly for the young man, a-Yuan, standing in front of him.

“Mn” he nodded, enthusiastically, and was rewarded by a bright laugh.