#mare dulaman

[gingeart]

behold: wips (blaze au mare because i miss my wife, and a divo who really just needs me to learn how to shade leather, sorry queen, we'll get there eventually)

[gingeocs]

Mare Dulaman

Mare was 9 when her life was turned upside down. Her parents and their team hadn’t been given some information, or there were missing details, because the amount of Grimm they encountered was far more than they had been told. Leo was killed, Borea was flung far into the forest and presumed dead, and Kristall’s back was broken by an alpha Ursa. Taro had to flee from the fight to get Kristall to safety, barely escaping with their lives. Kristall and Taro, working mostly as commissioned Hunters, had nowhere near the funds to afford the Atlas prosthetics that would be needed for her to continue her work as a Huntress. Wheelchair-bound, she turned to teaching at a school, while Taro took up a more stable job as an accountant.

Kristall found that she couldn’t keep up with the stresses of being a teacher while she was adjusting to her new life, and turned heavily to alcohol to help. It didn’t take long for the alcohol to bring out the cruel streak in her: she had always been at least a little bit manipulative, and the drink allowed her to wallow in self-pity enough to excuse all kinds of actions. What was once asking Mare to do the dishes was now demanding that she do them, and losing her temper if Mare tried to point out that it was unfair (this could range from screaming to breaking a plate over her head). Taro, seeing this behavior begin, started to stay later and later at work, leaving Mare to take the brunt of her mother’s abuse.

As Kristall sank deeper and deeper into her depression, she quit her job as a teacher and began to only stay at home and drink. Her alcohol consumption became so great that she cut off Mare’s piano lessons (one of her only sources of joy in those days), and eventually sold their piano. Mare was only 12 when her mother determined for her that she would never be the pianist she thought she might be.

Eventually, as time passed and Kristall’s drinking problem only continued to grow, the inevitable happened: her liver failed, and she died of alcohol poisoning. Whether it was an accident or suicide, without a note, no one knew; so everyone hoped it was an accident. Following her mother’s death, Mare was in a state of numbness. She was 14, and had decided that she was going to go to Signal Academy to begin her training as a Huntress. Nothing about that changed; however, in the three months between her mother’s death and the start of school, she only saw her father thrice: his initial discovery of Kristall’s death, her funeral, and sending Mare off to school. Alone for so long, pushing herself and her training was the only way she could keep from going insane.

Signal Academy presented its own challenges. She made friends, one of whom she fell in love with without realizing it; and with Qrow as one of her main teachers, Mare was exposed to the smell and effects of alcohol far too often, and learned to drown it out entirely so as not to shut down every single class. Qrow, intrigued by her unusual semblance of auto-dodging, began to push her in her training to wait until the last possible second to dodge, to give her the element of surprise. Mare, for whom training had become an unhealthy coping mechanism, turned copiously to it. She pushed herself day and night and ignored her friends and their attempts to help her; and by doing so, lost them as friends. Her response was simply to turn her attention to any boy who was nice to her, even if he didn’t stay that way. By the time she graduated Signal, Mare was an expert at failed relationships, both romantic and platonic. Entering into Beacon Academy, she had no idea what was in store for her.

[gingeart]

DIY Bullet Removal

oneshot / 795 words / mezzy based on a prompt from here / cw for detailed description of pain

“Sssssshit,” Ezra bites his lip, closing his eyes as waves of pain begin to wash over him. Arm hanging loosely at his side, he sits, missing the chair just a little bit and stumbling.

He feels a hand behind his back steady him, and looks up to see Mare by his side sitting next to him as soon as she’s sure he won’t fall. “Aw, sweet fucking Dust,” she swears when she sees his shoulder. “How much mobility do you have?”

He winces as he flexes his fingers. “If you want my arm on the table, I’m gonna need help.”

Coming around to his other side, she bends forward, gently taking his forearm and his wrist. She lifts his arm quickly; it’s only when it’s on the table that he finally starts to process the pain, eyes welling with tears. With his good arm, he scrubs them away, careful not to move his other side at all.

Mare looks over his shoulder carefully, with a clinical eye. When she’s not injured herself, she’s the best at first aid on the team (the problem is, she’s usually injured). After a couple of moments, she lets out a deep sigh. “Bullet in your shoulder. Muscle, thankfully, not bone; I can definitely patch it up, we just… have to get it out first.” A twinge of pain crosses her face. “I don’t have any anaesthetic, I’m sorry. It’s gonna hurt a lot. And I need two pieces of your metal to get it out– scalpel and tweezers, if you can.” They’ve tried having him remove the bullet himself before via his semblance: on others, it works well enough. On himself, he passes out before it’s anywhere close to done.

Ezra just grits his teeth. “It’s fine.” A small chunk of his metal floats in front of her, shaping itself into what she needs. She plucks it out of the air, taking a bit of fire Dust to heat and sterilize it before waving it in the air to cool it off.

“Close your eyes,” she says, and he does. She hands him something, a piece of cloth he thinks, and he puts it between his teeth. They’ve done this before, if not often. “Alright, brace yourself. One… two…”

He doesn’t even hear her get to three, because the scalpel is already in his flesh and he just wants to scream, the cloth is muffling his voice anyway so he lets out a high-pitched pain-filled noise that barely sounds human to him. He is so acutely aware of the blade moving through his muscle, of the bullet sitting in his flesh, the visceral rooting pain of the tweezers digging to find something solid. His breathing is quick, shallow, and he sees black spots begin to dance around the corners of his eyes. Then the bullet moves, and he is overwhelmed with a combination of the agony of it moving out and the relief of having it gone. The cloth in his mouth is nearly torn in half, and he spits it out, taking deep breaths.

Carefully placing the bullet and the metal on the table, Mare pulls out something that looks like– a flask? He barely registers the meaning of this, too busy recovering from literally having a bullet pulled out of his shoulder. Mare, however, looks a little ashamed. “It’s, um, it’s for this reason,” she says as she unscrews the cap. “But it is going to hurt a lot. Again.” She offers her hand this time, not needing both of them; and he takes it, his own hand shaking. “Here we go.”

While still terrible, this pain is one he’s more familiar with, the cleansing overwhelming sting of antiseptics being applied. Of course, alcohol is still his least favorite of these; the tears that had built in his eyes spill freely now, and he squeezes her hand until the worst of it fades. When he looks, there are nail marks embedded in her skin that quickly fade as her aura washes over her; and then he sees her aura wash over him, and feels the pain begin to ease. She gives him a reassuring smile, and after about thirty seconds of aura transfer, drops his hand to examine his shoulder again. Sure enough, the muscle and skin is mostly knit together. Still tender, absolutely, but leagues better than just a couple of minutes ago.

Ezra lets out a deep sigh, taking his arm off the table. “Thanks, M. Dunno where I’d be without you.”

To his mild surprise, she pulls him into a tight hug, though she is careful to avoid his shoulder. “Please be more careful, Ezra. Your semblance doesn’t make you invulnerable to bullets.”

He can’t help but chuckle. “Yep, remembered that the hard way.”

[gingeart]

a quick mare because i love her and i missed her

[gingeart]

a lot of kisses

[gingeart]

a couple shitty snapchat doodles because sometimes you gotta

[gingeart]

quick mezzy doodle based off this

[gingeart]

it’s been ages since i’ve done mare in accurate color so here’s finally an updated ref for her! i love my baby girl a lot