A/N: I have played not even a whole game of D&D, so I apologise if this is total garbage (and if this is garbage for any other reason), but here’s a little Soul Mate drabble :)
“Working on a new character sheet, Henderson?” Eddie asks as he sets up his DM’s screen in the rec room one Friday. “That’s a little defeatist of you. Not giving up already, are we?” He smirks; he knows his latest campaign is a bitch – never let anyone say Eddie Munson made things easy for his little sheep – but it isn’t like Henderson to throw in the towel so soon.
“I’m not giving up! I just want to be prepared in case Nog doesn’t make it out of this next boss fight – he’s still wiped out from the last. I thought you’d want me to be prepared. Besides, I’ve been wanting to use her for ages, she just needs a little polishing up before she’s ready.”
“She?” Eddie asks, not bothering to hide his intrigue.
Dustin slides the sheet of paper up the table. There’s a drawing – probably one of Will’s – next to the unfinished stats table that immediately catches Eddie’s attention. What started as mild interest gives way to unfettered curiosity. All for one minuscule detail.
Dustin’s creation is wielding a bat studded with nails. A very familiar bat – one he’s seen every day, etched into his skin, just above his heart. The only tattoo he didn’t spend hours picking out, sketching and re-sketching, but easily the most important mark on his skin.
Greedily, he takes in the rest of the picture – the ridiculous Farrah Fawcett hair, the smattering of beauty marks covering her face – she’s pretty, but not in an overly feminine way; not drawn through the male gaze (way to go Will). She looks a lot less zany than Henderson’s usual style (Pardonme Belchin, I’m looking at you), and even though Eddie lives for Henderson’s crazy imagination, he already knows that this character is going to be his absolute favourite.
Eddie’s mouth is dry when he asks, “This–” he glances at the top of the character sheet, “–Queen Stephanie wouldn’t happen to be based on a real person, would she?”
Dustin smiles, “You bet she is. Coolest person I know,” he says. And Eddie, well, Eddie doesn’t doubt that for a second.
Still, that doesn’t stop him from assuming an expression of faux affront, clutching a hand to his chest dramatically. “You wound me, Henderson. Who could possibly be cooler than yours truly?”
It’s a miracle he’s not tripping over himself literally to wring the answer out of Henderson; a true feat of self-control. But maybe that’s not the worst idea in the world when the kid hedges like Eddie’s isn’t hanging off his every word; like his heart’s not racing like a hummingbird’s.
“Why do you wanna know? So you can key his car or something?” And as much as Eddie would like to take offence, that is actually straight out of the Munson playbook.
But the confirmation that OG Queen Stephanie is a guy is the final nail in the coffin. “Or something,” Eddie agrees faintly. Definitely something – definitely not whatever Dustin’s thinking, however.
But he doesn’t have the guts to explain that, so Dustin refuses to elaborate at all for the rest of the session, the butthead. Eddie feels zero remorse when – coincidentally – later that evening, Nog dies a gruesome death to bloodthirsty cultists. And if that just so happens to accelerate Stephanie's debut, Eddie certainly had no hand in it.
This photo shows King Pedro V and Queen Stephanie in the courtyard at Pena Palace near Sintra, around 1858. The picture was taken during the wedding festivities of Pedro and Stephanie.
The daughters of HRH Prince Karl Anton of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen (7 September 1811 – 2 June 1885): HSH Princess Marie of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen (17 November 1845–26 November 1912), later Princess of Belgium and Countess of Flanders. She is the great-greatgrandmother of King Philippe of the Belgians, who was named after her husband Prince Philippe, Count of Flanders. HSH Princess Stephanie of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen (15 July 1837 – 17 July 1859). She married King Pedro V of Portugal but died just a year later due diphtheria. The King followed her in 1861.
