An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Interviews take time. Good interviews may even take months. The best ones, though, take three seasons' worth of changes to really understand where the story is.
Turns out the story is less in the blood-red glory of battle, more in the soft pinks of springtime flowers & one best friend's palm in the other's. This is a story to remember.
Where the story goes, well— so does this reporter. Even if it does mean entering the most foreboding part of camp there is (& maybe running an extra pair of laundry. Pants run out quick around here!)
Felix pranced restlessly across the bars of the Eiffel Tower. Even under the cover of dark night, he was impossible to miss in his restlessness. "It's all my fault. I can't believe my father got ahold of her! I should've been more careful. I'm sorry, Ladybug. I failed you."
"You haven't failed me at all, Confête!" Ladybug rushes to reassure him. "We knew it was a risk when I asked you to take the horse miraculous home, with your... father, and all..." The name hangs heavy in the air; after the revelations of the last week, Felix has hardly dared to breathe at home, terrified of his father turned terrorist more than he'd ever been before. Ladybug had offered him the horse miraculous as a ready means to escape, but Felix, in his infinite confidence that absentee Gabriel would never step foot in his room, left her behind as he spoke to Nathalie in the hall. By the time he returned, she was gone.
Only a few days later, half-drowned in water until Gabriel had broken her enough to capitalize on such exquisite fear, Kaalki had been akumatized into Kelkie and was newly terrorizing the city, jumping from portal to portal, emerging in a new unrecognizable shape with each new emergence.
Felix growled. "I should've been more careful. You know it's true."
"C'mon, cupcake, don't be so glum." Ladybug bumps her shoulder into his, nearly sending him sprawling over the edge of the tower; she grabs his fluffy tails and yanks him back up. She starts the familiar process of untangling her fingers from his curls. "We'll reign in our friend in no time! She won't be able to stirrup trouble for long."
Felix can't help himself: he laughs.
On cue, a roar of flame ignites across the city, followed by the flash of another portal. They've lost her again. Every whisper of joviality drops from their grin.
"Let's go, Ladybug." Then the worst happens: Felix feels his throat constrict, his tail and hair and sleeves puff a little puffier. When he opens his mouth again, it's by no will of his own. "Ah-hyuck!! this is no time for hoRSING AROUND, hee-haa!!"
Piinkie Pie has taken over his hero self again, and there is no new low he can sink to. This is the worst possible time for his kwami to possess his body, and for a joke? Now? Ugh.
Ladybug stares at him. He wishes the neon pink of his suit would hide his blush, but of course his mask leaves his cheeks open for vulnerability.
At long last, she snorts, then giggles. "C'mon, party pooper. Lets go get our..." she pauses, looks him up and down, then adds meaningfully: "other horse friend back."
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Thalia Grace/Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano, Thalia Grace & Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano
Characters: Thalia Grace (Percy Jackson), Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano, Artemis (Percy Jackson), Nico di Angelo
Additional Tags: mentions of the Hunters, cw: mentions of depression, Nico & Reyna are BEST. FRIENDS I will die on this hill, ace characters, Sapphic Characters, ambiguous relationship but they liiiike each other :3, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, War Trauma, cw: head injury, cw: panic attack, CW: implied PTSD, qpps, mentions of Hazel & Frank, mentions of Percy & Luke & Annabeth, mentions of jason, Portfolio
Summary:
underneath the spinning stars, Reyna and Thalia talk about doors, death, and defiance — why Reyna joined and why Thalia's leaving.
luckily, their relationship transcends the bounds of the Hunters.
With art from @gibz-n-things!!! Check out @campsapphozine — their leftover sales open in just 1 week :]
seven heroes answer the call (it is to love that war will fall)
A snippet from one of the interviews I’m writing for @cosmiccowzine!! Come check out our POs when they open <3
Percy: Do you remember being up there, at the top of the world after we defeated Kronos? When the Gods asked us what we wanted as a gift. We could see all of Manhattan from the throne room.
Annabeth: Honestly, all I could see was Luke — the blood when the knife went through, and the gold in his eyes fading back to the blue I grew up with.
Percy: Yeah, the city was a bloodbath. I’m glad the monsters at least disappeared into dust when they die, but all that was left were our friends. I’m not sure that’s better. But we could see it all, and maybe we should have felt better about it — cooler, or something. I should have felt cool. I could have been a god!
Annabeth: You gave it up, though. You said no; I remember you looked at me, dead in the eye, and said no to the Gods like it wasn’t a lifetime of safety — a lifeline of peace. You could have skipped Tartarus, you know.
Percy: Nah. That’s what it was, though, right? I felt like… for the first time, I could do something. You would tell me how camp used to be, like it was a bandaid you had to rip off to get to the good stuff. You’re the one who taught me what it’s like to be the kind of camper the Gods and Fates don’t care about—who was on the run half your life, who watched your friends die and be reborn and turn traitor over the Gods’ games — dammit, Annabeth, I did it for you. For everyone, but I gave up immortality for you, so that things could be…I don’t know. Different. Better, maybe. Like I could make a difference for another you, in another world.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Luke Castellan & Nico di Angelo
Characters: Nico di Angelo, Luke Castellan
Additional Tags: Mentions of Percy Jackson - Freeform, mentions of May Castellan, cw: depression, cw: set during a war, they are like... IN tartarus friends he is SO depresso, exploration of Nico's relationship to the camp, and the prophecy and his family, canon non-compliant, i do not comply with canon., POV I write a Nico motivated by familial love and wanting to be seen and appreciated for his actions, CW: implied PTSD, again... the boy is in TARTARUS for MONTHS he is Not Okay!!, Luke is also not okay, I said major character death but the majorly dead character is Luke, which hopefully we been knew??, anyways. thank you for reading my tag rambles, if you have so far, Hope you enjoy!!, Portfolio
Summary:
That voice, so full of hope and horror, is shouting now, banging and scratching and tearing itself raw against the bars of his compartmentalization. Something is wrong, and it wants Nico to know — to notice.
Nico doesn’t care. His bones have calcified this quiet numbness, and his body saps strength from the hellscape of Tartarus, and his heart glitters red like a pomegranate’s shell. He survives.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Luka Couffaine/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Luka Couffaine/Nino Lahiffe, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug/Nino Lahiffe
Characters: Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Nino Lahiffe, Luka Couffaine
Additional Tags: OT3, Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Lovers to lovers, music metaphors, Portfolio
Summary:
Nino and Luka weren't meant to meet, but if they did, shouldn't they get along? Marinette thinks so: they're both sensitive, and kind, and musical.
Yet when their eyes meet across the music audition, sparks fly. Luka thinks Nino is lazy, imprecise, and nontechnical; Nino thinks Luka is stuck up, unimaginative, and repetitive. Both of them are certain that the other person is boring.
On the other hand, Marinette loves them both. Isn't that endorsement enough?
So a lot of people have been talking about sentiAdrien, and @arcadeology brought up the point that many times, the very thing that someone is hurt by is what is part of them to begin with:
Those of you who’ve read this delightful fic will understand exactly why this post about pigeon feather allergies has prompted me to write.
cw: sentiAdrien crack theories, pregnancy, miscarriage, blood, illness, Gabriel AgrestexPigeon Man crack OTP, crack taken seriously.
Emilie married Gabriel Agreste for the money.
It’s not a bad thing. He was sweet to her, attentive and kind if a little too coldly distant for her tastes, and Emilie was a model girlfriend-turned-wife in more ways than one: doting, flirtatious without being scandalous, affectionate, the picture perfect face for his up and coming fashion brand.
Besides, she was 24 years old and hadn’t even had a crush yet, and her sister loved magic so deeply Emilie was worried this mystical “career” would leave Amelie destitute. Gabriel was soft to her whims, and rich enough to support another family.
Emilie was just being practical.
Mr. Ramier was anything but. He was wildly passionate about anything and everything he loved, pigeons most of all. He dreamt of flying free, wild rebellion and dogged pursuit in the name of love. He was the best kind of crazy.
No one ever imagined he’d be crazy in love with a married woman.
He certainly never imagined she could love him back.
Emilie had always been practical, that’s all. So when the offer of a warm body came, a man who made her heart patter in her chest and bring to life the flutter of feathers taking flight in freedom as her wings, she fell into bed with him and loved and laughed and lied to keep her marriage safe. She loved Mr. Ramier for every reason she could never love Gabriel Agreste: he loved her back.
It’s just such a shame that practicality never prevented accidents. It’s such a shame Emilie could see herself loving this bastard baby enough to be impractical enough to keep him.
It doesn’t matter. Practical can mean anything, as long as it keeps her-- and now, her lover and her child-- safe. Magic, whispered her sister. Magic, she followed.
Gabriel, ever devoted servant of his wife, follows obediently.
Half buried in snow, fingers moments away from permanent frostbite, Emilie unearths her first treasure. It’s not half of what she wanted, neither wishes nor creation nor cat, but the butterfly and peacock miraculi wink and shimmer against snow, and the drop of blood that spills when the brooch pricks stands stark red against the fluffy white. She kicks black pebbles over the trodden snow to cover her tracks and grins, triumphant.
It’s a promise, Emilie whispers. Red for the ladybug, black for the cat she’ll have in her hands.
Promises are not practical, she remembers six months later. With every experiment on the brooch, Emilie finds herself coughing up blood and bile, black and red and horrible, horrifying.
It doesn’t matter. Emilie makes do with what she’s got. Gabriel searches harder, goes on longer trips and calls them business, because it’s his business whether she dies, whether she lives to represent his company, or to keep him company. He’s in Tibet when she succeeds, or manages something close to success. He has no idea the baby’s been lost.
He’s never known it wasn’t his, anyways.
Gabriel isn’t due back home before the baby comes; there’s a baby in her arms to greet him at the door and she’s made it herself. He praises her new choker, pigeon feather dusted in gold and glitter hanging down past her throat.
It’s the last time she’ll ever see Mr. Ramier. Emilie is practical, and her love is not. This gift, though, she will cherish for far longer than her own life.
She’ll cherish it long enough for her son’s.
Adrien is a perfect boy, a model boy modeled after his cousin and delightful to every sense; he grows in strange spurts and jumps, and Gabriel is too busy to notice. Emilie keeps her boy home, safe and protected and easy to mold.
It’s not enough. She sends Gabriel pacing the earth for the miraculi she craves, experiments desperately on the one she has until she’s coughing up more than blood: strength, memories, hope. It doesn’t matter. Anything is too cheap a price to pay for her baby boy, for the love she lost by the hand of her own folly.
When she gives up the last of everything, Adrien turns into a real boy: hard coded to love and grow and... rebel. He finds his own wings as his mother loses hers, and Gabriel goes mad in his grief.
After all, he’s lost the two people he’s ever known all at once.
When his empathy butterfly phases into Mr. Ramier, Gabriel is awash in a type of furiously determined love he's only felt twice.
