Summary: After accidentally destroying some public property, Bakugou agrees to work off the debt. Too bad he's not prepared for Uraraka to find out his embarrassing secret.
Notes: Happy holidays everyone! This is my gift to @senwe45 for the @kacchakosecretsanta! Yay! It was super cute and fluffy to write. I hope you enjoy it! Special thanks to MistyStarshine for helping me come up with an idea.
Bakugou was going to murder someone.
Of course he knew that he had a temper, but he liked to think, at seventeen, he knew how to control himself. He didn’t fly off the handle as much. He didn’t attack Deku whenever he said something smart. He didn’t even go off on idiot bastards like Monoma whenever they ran their mouths. No, he was better now. Even if he felt like exploding, he would focus on something else and calm himself down.
Except, apparently, the other day when Kaminari and Ashido had ganged up on him and he’d blown up. Literally.
MARRIIAAAA ♥♥♥ THANK YOU FOR SENDING IN ASKS AND JUST FOR BEING HERE
1. Favorite place to write.
my bed actually xD i like having my laptop on my stomach and being really lazy while i type. however, if im going at a max speed because of a deadline, i like to be at the couch
4. Do you have writing habits or rituals?
omg i kinda do? i have to find a good playlist or a steady stream of songs that i know i won’t be skipping or changing. i also need to crack my knuckles and relax my shoulders and have a glass of water next to me. its also very characteristic of me to wash my hands right before i begin a massive typing frenzy. during the writing process, i also usually have a show going on in the background such as kitchen nightmares or another show or anime that i know by heart already-- which also count as a playlist because of the autoplay
11. Describe your writing process from scratch to finish.
this ask is a little interesting because i never thought about this before? maybe if i do a step by step it’ll help me explain too
pre-ritual habits like washing my hands and finding a background noise show
closing all other tabs and solely having a writing program up like word doc or google docs
outlining things in its entirety to the points that i want to make sure to make versus where i want it to flow - often times this is a separate day if this is a longer fic, but for shorter fics i jump straight up step 4
begin writing anything that comes to mind and jumping straight into it, not worrying where i start
about 30 mins in i start to be more careful and deleting things that didn’t sound good to me, so i basically start back from scratch and start being more meticulous with the way things sound and are worded out
by the time i have four or so paragraphs and like where its headed, i go back to the beginning to give it a proper “start”
at this moment, writing is coming much more easily and so i edit as i go but even then its much more rare because i start to like everything that im writing-- it gets much more quick and this is when i get into the “zone”
since i never want to stop if im feelin it, i’ll choose this moment to send this to a couple of people who regularly beta my work if i want this to be a work that i will be proud of or something i want to be quality. if not then i skip this-- as of late ive been skipping betas
i will check in with betas to see if they like the progression as much as i do while also still continuing my writing frenzy; betas will message me or i will check their comments as i go because i multi task well
sometimes, i won’t follow my own outline because i put trust into the of the fic and so i will take it where it wants to go or what seems right to the character’s innate being, so this is where im close to being done but im fine tuning the contents
once i end the fic, i do a very quick spell check, but i don’t read through it again before sending it off to betas if i haven’t already done so. if i decide to not have betas, i will read it through 3 times and correct things and ship it off into the interwebs immediately
if i chose the betas, i let them all rip through it and then enter my fic with fresh eyes of either the next day or a few hours. i also begin to rip apart my own writing and truly polish it along side betas
once its all checked, i give it one more read through before posting
and finally, after all is over, i stop writing for a thousand years and hibernate until i suddenly want to write again hhahaaha
lately though ive had trouble wanting to write on my own so i have to ask people to keep y company in convos or work while others are working. just trying to write more while im stressed about other things doesn’t make me a productive person and so seeing other people who are motivated to do the same thing as i do help me a lot ^^
Unpopular opinion probably but I kind of like Senwe? Is she going to appear more in this AU? Or in any others? What does she look like? What did her memae do to get branded a traitor?
I’m glad that you like her! She’s definitely got a chip on her shoulder, one that is largely self-imposed. She sees her family’s shame as something bigger and all encompassing that it actually is. Most of Fen’Sulahn’s followers don’t care, because they know Senwe and her mother, but she’s internalized everything and it’s hard to just let that go.
She’s certainly got her own issues to work through, but I honestly think her new rivalry with Kel is going to help her on that front. She will definitely be appearing in the Fen’Sulahn AU and perhaps in a few others that involve Ancient Elvhenan.
The story of what her memae did will probably appear later on, so I won’t go into detail, but her memae was a member of a theatre troupe that made some questionable pieces and word got around to the Peacekeepers and eventually Elgar’nan and...it wasn’t pretty.
Also I doodled the curmudgeon, so here she is! Probably contemplating how she’s going to thank Kel without being TOO nice because she refuses to LIKE someone who is totally after Fen’Sulahn!
And a close-up without the vallaslin.
Thanks for taking an interest in her, she’d be flattered if she wasn’t so busy trying to reclaim her honor and discover a way to sweep Fen’Sulahn off her feet.
*flings a response to this at @feynites and somersaults away* Enjoy some more Fen’Sulahn AU!
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It is a difficult thing, living with dishonor. More-so when all those who witness it never die.
Senwe has lived with the title of ‘daughter of a traitor’ since she was 80 years old. Papae, at least, died in battle, and did not have to witness the event, or live with the shame.
Mamae lives with it. She and Senwe walk down the streets of Adahlan and know that if it were not for Lady Fen’Sulahn’s unending compassion they would have had their marks stripped from them and sent to one of the labor camps upon the border...or worse yet, suffered the same fate of her Memae before Elgar’nan.
But Fen’Sulahn fought for them; for Senwe and her mother, who had been a loyal subject for centuries. Lady Fen’Sulahn had stopped her father’s Peacekeepers at the gates of Adahlan and made them turn back, stood up to the Lord Elgar’nan in Arlathan and incurred his rage for them, so that they could remain within her territories.
Senwe will never forget that.
She hears the whispers sometimes, from the other dyers and weavers when she goes to visit her mother. That the reason The Lady Fen’Sulahn saved her is because she is one of the rare few that knows how to create Adahlan’s famous red dye.
Senwe knows better. She knows how kind and just and compassionate Lady Fen’Sulahn is. It is why she trained so hard to become one of her warriors. To be granted a hound by the Lady herself and to gain her favor.
The happiest day in her life was the one in which Lady Fen’Sulahn gave her Femen. An honor. One she had worked so hard for. To know she had proven herself and had been noticed. Not for being the daughter of a traitor…but someone worthy of Fen’Sulahn and her hounds.
It is all she has ever wanted, to have Fen’Sulahn’s eyes fall upon her with interest and admiration and…and more, if she is honest with herself. But she knows she does not look like those that Lady Fen’Sulahn prefers, and her gifts have never been in the realm of shifting features.
But if she just…if she just works harder and shows herself to be a worthy companion, perhaps—
And then the construct appears. Broken, ruined, hollow of all things. It follows Lady Fen’Sulahn around like a lost puppy after its mother, until Sympathy manages to tear the thing away from her side. Her Lady is kind, and pities it despite its inability to feel, and does not strike it down.
And for all its offenses, somehow, somehow it seems as though the Lady Fen’Sulahn likes its company. It is because it was crafted for her, Senwe knows. By Ghilan’nain or Dirthamen or perhaps even June, though the last seems the most unlikely. And it keeps its secrets—lies to their Lady about its origins.
It is a spy, undoubtedly. Meant to evoke feelings of pity, to make Fen’Sulahn let her guard down because it is only an unfeeling and ignorant construct, and then it will strike.
Senwe will not allow it to happen. She will not allow her Lady to be put in danger by this…this…thing.
She is not the only one who is unkind to the construct, not the only one who is disconcerted by the hollow air around it, or the uncertainties of its background. She is not even the most vocal, but somehow..somehow she feels as if she hates it the most.
One night, she sees the construct sitting beside the banks of the Valan. The river is large, separating the city in half; its waters can run deep and wide, and Senwe knows that it becomes rough and unforgiving, once it leaves the boundaries of the city itself.
It would not be difficult, she thinks, to push the construct in. It likely cannot swim. She could pull it out to one of the deeper areas, and leave it there. Or she could hold it down beneath the shallow waters near the riverbed.
It is to protect her Lady. The construct is dangerous.
Hemen wines beside her, and the construct looks up, and a large mass on its other side shifts; what Senwe had mistaken for a boulder is Haurshos himself. His eyes glow a bit in the dim light, and it feels as if he knows what she had planned to do. As if he can sense it. But only Hemen has ever known her so well. Surely…
The element of surprise is gone, regardless. And Haurshos has likely been ordered by his Lady to protect the construct. Senwe knows she would not get more than three feet with a blade drawn before Haurshos snapped her body in half.
It is not fair.
She has done so much, worked so hard. She has pulled herself out of the shame her memae made her suffer all by herself. While her mamae locked herself away in the dye vaults, and spent half a century with her head down and her heart closed. Distant and uncaring about the whispers, refusing to better herself, content to remain an object of derision.
Senwe will not do the same.
She will make them all see, make Fen’Sulahn see, that she is worthy. That she is needed. That she is not the next in a legacy of traitors.
The Lady Andruil organizes a hunt. A hunt large enough that Fen’Sulahn calls on nearly half of her hounds. She stands proud and tall and beautiful, and Senwe looks down at her feet, so that she is not caught staring. Impulse had seen it once, and had only recently stopped teasing her over the matter.
And then her Lady calls for her. Her. To join the hunt with the others, despite her age. The youngest in Adahlan aside from Eloen, who is still a baby at 50.
This is her chance to prove herself once and for all. She will take the hunt; she will outdo Andruil’s hunters, and her Lady will finally notice her. The construct is not allowed outside of the city, and even Senwe knows how badly things would go if Andruil were to discover it. So there is nothing to deter her, or dampen her mood, as the party sets out for the eluvian to meet with Andruil’s hunting party.
It is her fault.
She had been faring well with the smaller prey, before the last day when they had finally tracked down the large beast that Ghilan’nain had crafted for the occasion. She had seen an opening, seen a chance to claim glory for herself in front of her Lady.
She should have remembered that Andruil was there as well…and that Andruil does not allow another to claim her kill without consequences.
The arrow was meant for her.
But Hemen took it instead; an arrow with a poison that would have killed her in minutes leaves Hemen in agony for hours, as they trek back to Adahlan in the hopes of saving him. Fen’Sulahn and Cymael the kennelmaster had done their best to stop the poison’s path to Hemen’s heart, but Cymael claimed that Sympathy could do more, and would be needed if they were to save him.
She knows the look in Sympathy’s eyes, the way his shoulders sag when he looks Hemen over, and she begins to sob as the hounds around her begin to whine and whimper, feeding off her own despair. No no no, this is Hemen, he cannot die. He is her dearest friend, he is…he is…
This is her fault.
She does not remember much of the night. She curls up on the bed beside her hound and weeps, and falls asleep with tears still leaking from her eyes, too exhausted to keep them open.
It is the construct that saves him, in the end.
When she awakens to Hemen licking her face clean, she throws her arms around him and cries all over again, before she turns to see Cymael sitting at the table near the door, grinding bitter smelling herbs in a mortar. “What…?” She manages, before coughing, and then swallowing to wet her dry throat. “What happened?” She does not let go of Hemen, as he tries to wriggle off his own bed and onto hers.
“Sympathy left a few hours ago,” Cymael replies, not looking up from his work. “He said that Hemen needs to eat the antidote once more, to fully purge the poison,” he shakes his head as he continues grinding, “it’s a miracle that the construct recognized the poison.”
Senwe pauses. “The…construct did this?” That can’t be right. Why would it help, even if it were able to?
“Sympathy made the antidote, but the construct Kel was the one who pointed out the poison used,” Cymael explains.
Senwe’s fingers tremble, as she buries them in Hemen’s fur, and she’s overcome with more shame than she’s ever felt in her entire life. More than when she’d been called ‘the traitor’s daughter’, or when one of Elgar’nan’s followers had poured acid into one of her mother’s dye vats and she’d refused to say a thing when Sympathy had asked what could have stripped the skin from her arms.
It was never the construct’s fault that Senwe has gone unnoticed. It has always been her own. She has not behaved in a manner worthy of Fen’Sulahn. Hemen nearly died because of it.
The construct—her, her name is Kel.
I will need to apologize, she thinks, as she presses her face into Hemen’s neck, and her hound gives an encouraging woof. She will never like Kel, she thinks. But she can…she can at least behave in a manner that does Fen’Sulahn proud.
Hmmm… I really love red velvet cake. But it needs to be vanilla icing on it. I just can’t get down with the cream cheese icing. And believe me, I’ve tried
Pomegranate: when do you feel the most confident
Um, well I guess I am the most confident when I am in my punk gear (my denim jacket is like my security blanket and recently I’ve been wearing it weather be damned). I also feel confident when I am in cosplay because I am enjoying myself 100%
Tangelo: if you could be any mythical creature, which one would you be
A mermaid! I just have always wanted to be one (and I am already a dragon because I hoard blankets like nobody’s business)