Fandom: Overwatch
Relationships: Ouihaw (Ashe/Widowmaker)
Rating: M
Wordcount: 118,214 (27 chapters, complete)
A gothic romance Junkenstein-verse fic featuring Countess Widowmaker, a vampire, and Warlock/Little Red Ashe, cursed to be a wolf. Featuring fairy tale curses, pining, falling in love and a defiance of the fate bestowed to you... and vampire bites, of course.
Preview of Chapter 1 and full list of tags/warnings below the read more.
Read at AO3.
Thunder looms, and out on the lake through the floor to ceiling window lightning strikes. The room illuminates for but a single solitary moment, but it's enough.
A shock of white hair and flecked deep red on her clothes to match the lipstick on her mouth, and the white of her teeth as the human wolf grins up at her.
"Now that wasn't very nice of you."
Feminine. Werewolf. Bandit. Thief.
"Outlaw," the countess recognises. Another defender of the Door in it for the money, who had vanished into the darkness of the night the moment Adlersbrunn was saved – or to the depths of the dungeons and quite a few vaults, given the immediate spate of petty robbery in the days after, written off as inevitable after zomnics take the town prisoner.
Her doing, as it happens. Her doing still. The outlaw had asked her, once, if she'd run into any thieves, and she'd told her hounds had.
It makes sense now why that doesn't and didn't bother her.
Another crash. Boom, boom, boom, like shotgun pellets. The outlaw does a dignified miniature rolling wave with her good arm, only it's not so good, as she winces and cradles it back toward her body. Her shirt hangs limp across one shoulder, with the majority of it wrapped around her torso, covering her ribs. Even she's surprised by how many scars she has. Wrapped around every bone and healed over, a thorn patch of ivy or roses. Yes, the perfume's odour makes sense, now. She vaguely recollects the fondness with the ink of a vine around her forearm, about the one place that isn't scarred. Clearly, this isn't the first scrape the outlaw hasn't perished in and lived.
No matter how much she heals, the reminder never fades.
It's different to a vampire. Or maybe just the same. The wounds on her neck pulse, faintly, and the countess rolls her shoulder. Regardless of her scars or her underdressed state, that still doesn't explain what exactly she's doing in her chateau and her parlour other than getting blood all over the upholstery.
"Why are you here?"
"Because someone," she labours, clicking her tongue, "shot me."
"I shot the wolf that stalks the town," the countess says cooly, folding her arms as she stalks into the room but stays standing, and the outlaw is still quite at home despite her presence, and she has the gall to shrug. She wonders why she tore her shirt to bandage herself, and not the intact hood and cape, still up over her head. "You are not innocent in this."
"I'm not here to talk innocence," the outlaw sniffs, dismissing her with a flick of her fingers. "I'm here to patch myself up. And I know an opportunity when I see one. I wondered how you'd been keeping since the door incident. So. Whatever scheme you're running, I want in."
An unstable Kingdom, its regency on the brink of collapse, plagued by the Dead. A man who wields bells against them in chill waters. A hunter who knows little of the future, save that a necromancer will be the one to kill her. It always leads back to Death - doesn't it?
Interregnum is a multi-chaptered, novel length prequel fanfiction set twenty years prior to Sabriel, the first book in the Old Kingdom series by Garth Nix. Terciel, presently Abhorsen-in-Waiting, and Nerysiel, a hunter, are thrown together in the Old Kingdom’s final hours prior to the fall of the regency, and an old adversary of the Abhorsen bloodline wakes to see it through...
Alternatively: the story of how Sabriel’s parents meet, fall in love, attempt to save a collapsing Kingdom, and send many, many Dead back into Death in the process.
An unstable Kingdom plagued by the Dead, a man who wields bells against them, and a hunter who knows little of the future, save that a necromancer will be the one to kill her. It always leads back to Death - doesn't it?
Interregnum is a multi-chaptered, novel length prequel fanfiction set twenty years prior to Sabriel, the first book in the Old Kingdom series by Garth Nix. Terciel, presently Abhorsen-in-Waiting, and Nerysiel, a hunter, are thrown together in the Kingdom’s final hours before the regency’s fall, and an old adversary of the Abhorsen bloodline wakes to see it through...
(Alternatively, the story of how Sabriel’s parents meet, fall in love, attempt to save a collapsing Kingdom, and send many, many Dead back into Death in the process.)
fic writer meme: 3, 4, 31, 35! or any question that you like if these don't spark interest
thank you for the questions! tbh I may answer more on my journal at some point, they're all very good 🤔
3. Is there a trope you wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole?
there's probably a lot. the only one I can actively think of is miscommunication - I want characters to resolve and trust and say what they're thinking, and a premise based on not communicating properly does not interest me at all. many others are circumstantial or fair game, depending what a story needs: but it never needs this imo, lol.
4. How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Care to share one of them?
There's a few I have as backburner ideas and some that I'm purposefully kindling, but none that are really at a point I can talk about... that and I'm not thinking about them in big detail with posting rarepair fics/working on Ashe site/PEM flare and almost no sleep all week, brain is too small.
31. Do you take liberties with canon or are you very strict about your fic being canon compliant?
I'm generally compliant. Sometimes I'll write something that's a "what if" or a divergence of a particular event, but I like to write something that seamlessly slots into an established timeline and that readers can picture as actually happening. I want it to make sense within canon confines.
However that's for stuff like, FFXIV. Overwatch barely has a narrative in the first place: it's a mess, it's scattered all over the place in tie-in media and things are constantly being retconned or adjusted when previously mentioned events are fully explored, but it's a fascinating blueprint to work with. I like working with established settings and fleshing the characters out for myself. But I base all of what I do on their behaviours in-source, be it voicelines with others and their reactions to things. I'm just building on what's already there.
The biggest compliment to me is when people say they can hear the characters voice. Or when later canon proves a prior read as correct.
35. Would you ever kill off a canon character?
I have, but it wasn't permanent :')
This is an interesting question because I once wrote a prequel novel for a series where one of the characters dies at a specified point - that would be my ending. However, this was not a choice I made for myself, but one made for me. The only time I've ever written a non-canon death for a character is for Ashe during Bloodstains... and that's because it was thematically appropriate and, being an AU seeped in magic and destiny and fate, I could fairytale fake-out it and do thematic soul-searching and self-acceptance with it. And resolve it through true love's kiss, obviously.
I've also written an AU where the wol dies instead of (redacted) during HW, but that's like? A very specific circumstance. See above about divergence: it is not what I would consider "canon". I would be reluctant to remove any canonically named character forever, even in something long form, and even when writing about an assassin and an outlaw who would do these things and Ashe vocalises she wants Cassidy dead (she doesn't mean it, though).
...although I do have one idea for if that did happen, so never say never. Again though it's not what I would consider my own series' canon and deliberately a what-if. Like a thought exercise. I've also thought at length about what Ashe or Amelie would do if they lost the other, but that's mostly idle musing; I'd probably never actually write it because it would ultimately upset me too much.
tl;dr no. but yes if it's strictly a divergence or in a very specific context.
If we go by AO3 statistics, it's 147,999. This is incorrect because it includes all of Bloodstains - which I wrote in 2022/23 and posted the final 8 chapters of it this year. That removed, it's 27,999... which is still incorrect because three of the remaining five fics posted I didn't write this year (one I was holding for my January 1st ouihaw tradition, another I left for a few months and came back to later to touch up and post, another is a very dusty threeway I wrote as concept exploration that I am even now still uncertain about) and i have fic yet to post this year. What is it about wraps and not including December...
The next number problem is... i write a lot of words on my phone. Some of these are musings and dialogue and whole passages which have successfully been incorporated into fic. Others are editing thoughts for things I haven't begun touching up in earnest. A significant number of these are never-see-the-light-of-day words that I don't ever intend to share; I genuinely do not know how many of these there are. Somewhere between 50-100k if i had to guess. (I know one of them is 30k because i checked when the notes app got extremely slow in loading it, lmao :'))
The actual number of words written this year, in documents, that I can feasibly track, is 93,899. This includes nanowrimo. This does not include two websites worth of notes, one which is around 9k words and the other in excess of 23k. Guess which of those isn't finished.
3. What work are you most proud of (regardless of kudos/hits)?
almost crystal, almost ascian, an FF14 fic about a potential friendship and the parallels between Minfilia and the Crystal Exarch on The First.
Minfilia and her role in those 100 years before the wol arrives is not really explored in depth in game and the two of them are so similar and alone, pursuing the same end but with different means, and they didn't have to do what they did but they did. for the person that inspired, inspires them the most. Frankly I don't think she gets enough credit or consideration at all so this is me addressing the balance; and I still think about this fic often. I have inspired other people to think about this too and that's all I could ask for really. Forever feral about it.
I'm also really proud of lay your curses out to rest but for entirely differing reasons, because I really nailed the feeling and exploration of grief I was going for.
12. How many WIP's do you have in your docs for next year?
Let me answer this in a roundabout way: I want to post Midnight Hour (11k) - the final fic in the ongoing arc of Viper's Kiss - before the end of the month, so I can post the accompanying spice element (3k) on January 1st. See ouihaw fic tradition.
Then I have two more spicy fics to post at some point. I don't anticipate them needing much in the way of further edits, which is why they have escaped notes app purgatory and landed in their own shiny documents.
There is also. Zero spice. That I would like to free, I think. idk if I should change Ashe to be more generic, but it has some solid vibes. I just really like writing Ashe with women rediscovering their humanity, what can I say.
I guess Ashe site also counts for this question?? I wrote about half of it in October, took a break for Nano, didn't go back to it yet because I'm waiting for the new hero release next week, because Hazard effects a lot of what I previously wrote - she might have a whole person she knows in the roster that isn't the man who betrayed her - and I need to hear their interactions, as well as just, his in general. Because she's less out on a limb with her gang than she used to be. I also need to see if all the potential that could be given to her if she was utilised in lore has been transferred on to their new poster rebel and his found family instead. I'm not optimistic it hasn't because lol, she's a woman. Don't you dare forget about Ashe's familial relationship with an omnic, Blizzard. We'll see if I need to make angry grumblings.
I'm also going to start hopefully editing a 121k behemoth, Let's start some trouble, that I wrote in 2021, sometime next year. I read it back in September: my nonsense, she needs help. I have to rework a lot of motivations based on lore drops and me having written it way out of order. It's kind of daunting if I'm being honest; with my health I like to have at least a second round of edits done for the whole fic before dividing it into chunks of maybe four chapters at a time to fully focus on for final round to aid my poor memory and really get it right, but I might have to tackle this one chapter by chapter, which will make an upload schedule very erratic to say the least, and again, my memory is poor...
18. The character that gave you the most trouble writing this year?
Amélie. She isn't difficult for me to write at this point, but writing Amélie is always slow because she's very methodical and precise and kind of blunt - one word sentences, less is more, very felt. Ashe in comparison is very breezy? It's less a trouble thing and more just specifics. Sometimes writing Amélie going through the human experience requires me to be in an exact mood, or sit and painstakingly pick raw words to use, or to wait for the Amélie Hours to even try, which are usually in the middle of the night. She is simply a unique challenge.
Only the best for my love, though. She deserves it.
@farfromdaylight tagged me re: my current writing wips so i guess i’ll tl;dr some more about interregnum (and a couple of other things)
Interregnum, old kingdom series fanfic set twenty years prior to sabriel when the regency falls, because it’s a good timescale to have her parents meet. inspired by the the prevalence of fate and choice (my faves) and the “what if sabriel’s mother had some of the sight and had recurring dreams of her meeting with terciel and then it actually comes true?” and “what if terciel knew his wife was to die in childbirth since he accepts it so quickly?” and a plan came out of that. i’ve thought about this a lot, okay. (then i had to write it. damn.) it’s taken a lot of turns and had plenty of additions and some happy coincidences, and a lot of my build up is now paying off (and hopefully is, as i’m getting to write all the stuff i’ve looked forward to). this is probably the longest concurrent thing i’ve ever written and perhaps the first multi-chaptered thing i’ll ever finish, which should say something when it’s not like, idk, five chapters at most. this thing is a beast of a fic and my chapter estimate is at 37 - 35, actually, as the final two chapters are self indulgent epilogues - and i’ve currently written 31 chapters, posted 27. as of right now, it’s also about 125.5k words long. it’s that one insanely long fic you write and people talk about reading this level of longfic and you hope people might actually read this too since this is such a small fandom because it’s a book, lol, and it’s largely about ocs since terciel (whom i love) has such limited screentime in sabriel :’) i’d like to finish it (if not post it) prior to november, but with the advent of my cfs it’s been very slow going compared to what my wordcount used to be (that or it’s just so long and there’s so much i have to double check on). i’m in the home stretch now, though!
also as an aside (and not really something i’ve planned out) is a prequel to the prequel (rems please) which would be about a teenage terciel and the lover he mentions a couple of times in this fic but again that’ll end tragically but mainly i just want to write about boyfriends i’m ngl. (the only though i have for it is that the abhorsen family is friends with this old money tailor family (think clariel) from belisaere and he meets the oldest son and it’s mostly just a case of “holy shit i’m gay? i’m gay? holy shit” but more eloquently (he’s bi but you KNOW WHAT I MEAN OK he likes beautiful things and he knows what he likes fingerguns))
Thirteen Effect, final fantasy xiii/mass effect crossover in which the cast of xiii is flung into the original mass effect trilogy and takes on various cast roles and others are created to cater them. (so an au where it’s mass effect but with xiii characters. it works great i wrote a string of tweets about this and also throw thoughts up on its tumblr when i remember.) the goal of this would be to write the whole thing, all of it, but that’s... unlikely to happen, so at the moment my main focus is on “important relationship beats and/or first meetings”, which is a series unto itself. so far i’ve written about the estrangement of the farron sisters and their (sort of, not really) reconciliation just prior the attack on eden prime, but i have a few others in progress (the two below) and a few more in the pipeline (lightning and sazh at the blitz, for instance, and the first time fang met vanille).
the first of these is about serah (obviously, she’s my girl!!) when she leaves home and is on her way to the citadel, where she bumps into noel for the first time - noel being a turian who is also extra nervous because he’s on his way to meet yeul for the first time, who he’s been charged by the shadow broker to look after. also she meets snow on the shuttle and snow just falls absolutely head over heels in love with her which isn’t so much an au but actually canon that i get to write about because damn can you imagine how head over heels snow was for serah. can you even imagine. so tl;dr serah’s first meetings with her boys. i’m about a third? half? of the way into this one - i’ve got the current draft up on ao3 and am debating to split it into two halves, we’ll see.
the second of these is with team nora, which will be perhaps 3-4 chapters long, and basically detail how the each member of team nora wound up on eden prime. lebreau’s the disgruntled turian c-sec officer (think garrus) who asks for a posting and accidentally is assigned a human colony, but takes it anyway; gadot, local krogan mercenary, runs into quarian maqui who’s having a hard time on omega and they have some wild and wacky adventures which also lead to eden prime because maqui is a sweet quarian who deserves better than this; and yuj is a rebellious biotic teen from bekenstein who dyes his hair and joins the crew because he’s all about what’s Cool and In (also i guess his parents are at their wits end and if him being Cool means defending eden prime why not just take him). snow is the marine protecting the colony and mostly in charge of shuttle runs and defense exercises. i just really like the dynamic of this group and boy am i going to make them all super important in this au. look at this little multispecies family. look at it. (this is also my plan; i haven’t started this one yet.)
THAT’S IT, THOUGH... i don’t have anything else of merit to mention, haha, most of my writing energy goes into interregnum at the moment, but it’s been a good year in terms of actually writing things and i’d like to write more one shots. (or work on fansites. go do that, me.) i need to think of something for nano, but as of yet, i don’t have any ideas...
