if you don’t have any I will also accept: favourite multigender canon characters, favourite multigender “other people’s OC”s, and multigender headcanons
(can be but *does not have to be* man + woman bigender, can include genderfluid identities if you want, can be anything you might broadly consider to fall under the multigender umbrella in any way whatsoever)
"I can't tell you, talí, because I'd only have to lie," he said, suddenly dejected.
[...]
"What does talí mean? Is it Aurenfaie?"
"Talí?" A ghost of the old grin tugged at one corner of Seregil's mouth. "Yes, it's an Aurenfaie term of endearment, rather old-fashioned, like beloved. Where'd you pick that up?"
"I thought-" Alec regarded him quizzically, then shook his head.
Stalking Darkness by Lynn Flewelling
I just love that moment where Seregil calls Alec talí without noticing. It is just too funny.
Yasmin Benoit is a British aroace activist and model. She is arguably the biggest aspec activist in the Western world right now. Because she is a Black woman who makes a living modelling, she has faced a lot of sexualization, being told she doesn’t “look asexual.” In response to this, she started the hashtag #thisiswhatasexuallookslike, to prove that asexuality doesn’t have a specific look.
There is a long history of Black people being hypersexualized in media, and many people have the attitude that asexuality is a “white thing.” Within the asexual community, Black aces are very often overlooked, excluded, and erased. As minimal as ace representation is, there is even less Black asexual representation, and what little does exist is often ignored even in the asexual community. Black asexuals deserve to see themselves represented and their identities uplifted, so for @creatingblackcharacters’s Black History Month event, I did some drawings of some of my Black asexual characters; however small my audience may be, I hope that for any Black asexuals who may (now or in the future) be part of it, you can see this part of yourselves reflected in Aros Against Fate.
I wanted to draw *all* the Black asexual characters from Aros Against Fate but I ran out of time, so apologies to Taehogh, Mkera, Yna, Wnahé, Abhaonai, and Kjotar, who were further down on the list and didn’t get drawn in time.
[ID: a drawing of Lí, a dark-skinned Black teenager with curly red hair. They are wearing a dark blue sweater-vest with yellow stars and using forearm crutches. /end ID]
Lí (they/them) is a main character and greyromantic asexual.
[ID: a drawing of Daanah, a Black girl with long locs pulled up in a bun. She has golden-brown skin and glasses. /end ID]
Daanah (she/her) is a main character and alloromantic aegosexual.
[ID: a drawing of Fiitsãn, a Black boy with rosy dark brown skin and a big pink Afro. /end ID]
Fiitsãn (he/him) is a main character and lithsexual.
[ID: a drawing of Līs, a Black teenager with blue braids and golden-brown skin . /end ID]
Līs (he/they/she/xe/fae) is a main character and demisexual.
[ID: a drawing of Maaziariitna, a young woman-man with hairy blue skin and her hair in microbraids. /end ID]
Maaziariitna (she/he) is a main character and lesbian asexual.
[ID: a drawing of Fiyavu Ozast, a young Black woman with dark skin and silver hair. /end ID]
Fiyavu Ozast (she/her) is Rovian and Daanah’s older sister and aromantic greysexual.
[ID: a drawing of Juraji, a Black teenager with long black locs. /end ID]
Juraji (xe/xem) is Halek’s queerplatonic partner and demisexual.
[ID: a drawing of Saafeera, a dark-skinned black woman with a very short Afro. /end ID]
Saafeera is Rovian and Daanah’s mother and recipromantic recipro-demisexual and sex-repulsed.
Honorable mentions:
Taehogh (he/him), Halek, Lí, and Maaziariitna’s grandfather, aroaceflux.
Wnahé (they/she), one of Halek and Lí’s parents, asexual.
Kjotar (he/they), teammate of Kaelía, Līs, and Zhe’ārani, lithromantic and listed in my notes as “probably acespec.”
Abhaonai (he/him), teammate of Kaelía, Līs, and Zhe’ārani, alloromantic aceflux.
Yna (she/her), princess seeking to marry Jue and later Sei, frayromantic asexual.
Mkera (she/her), betrothed to Jue, asexual.
One of my major goals in Aros Against Fate is to celebrate aspec experiences, and Black aspecs are so often left out in conversations around aspec experience. Here I have specifically asexual characters as it was inspired by #thisiswhatasexuallookslike, but (as the title implies) aromanticism is huge in AAF, and Black aros (and aplatonics, and afamilials, and all Black aspecs) of course equally deserve to see themselves recognized and uplifted. I hope that one day we have a vast amount of diverse aspec characters in media much more mainstream than my little unpublished, unfinished, tumblr-and-google-docs story, and that Black aspec stories by Black aspec authors can gain traction within and outside of our community.
Juraji had to cover them with an illusion to get into Moghrlai Gurodstadit.
Halek looked down at the uniform xe'd conjured up. "I'm going to puke."
"You've become the thing you hate most," said the voice.
Can you actually just shut up, Halek thought.
"It's just until we get to your house," said Juraji. "I changed your face, too. Just in case."
Halek examined his empty hand. It very much did not look like it belonged to him. The brown of his skin was way too light, the fingers too long and slender, the nails too unbitten. Morbidly curious, he extended his other arm slightly and found that he appeared to have a right hand, something that had never been the case before and that felt entirely disconnected from him. "Hmph."
"Is it okay?" said Juraji. "I've only been here once, when you brought me to meet your family last year. I'm not very familiar with-"
"It's fine." Halek closed his (real) fist and let his other arm drop. "Hurts to walk without my cane. Even with the brace. We'll have to go slowly so I don't pop my hip and fall."
Rāmian soldiers did not use wheelchairs or walking sticks, and changing their appearances was enough work for Juraji to maintain without having to alter Halek's gait too.
"I need you to look at me and tell me if I've gotten anything wrong," said Juraji. "Nicely."
Halek grimaced and looked up.
Looking back at him was- someone else. Nothing like Juraji at all, apart from the height. A fully-uniformed Rāmian soldier.
Without meaning to, he took a half-step back.
"Convincing?"
"Yeah." A little too convincing, maybe.
"Good."
"Wait," said Halek. He cautiously touched the name patch on xir chest. "That can't be your name. That's just Juraji in Rāmiloq characters. Well- As close as you can get. Jarajē. It's not a Rāmiloq name."
He'd shown xem how to write their names in all the languages he knew once, and xe'd shown him how to write them in all the languages xe knew.
"Oh."
Halek braced himself and looked back down at his own chest. "Everything else is basically perfect, but Halāq is also not a Rāmiloq name."
"Oh." Juraji's shoulders slumped.
"It's okay, we can fix it," said Halek. "It's not a big deal, and you don't speak the language. There's, um- The Younger Empress when we were born was Haishionā. Or maybe she was the Elder Empress by then… I don't remember, she didn't last very long. And- Jaision is a pretty common name with most age groups, I think. The examples in word problems at school were always called stuff like Jaision. They do stuff with prophecies, too, but I'm not Senci and I don't really know how it works, and there are still trends. Rāmiloq names are gender-neutral so we can just grab whatever and it shouldn't be questioned."
Juraji cleared off a patch of dirt on the forest floor with xir foot. "Can you write those for me?"
"Yeah. We'll need family names too so-" Halek took a stick and scratched out two names. "I just got these from books so I hope they don't have connotations that will cause problems."
Rāmiloq had a lot of class stuff baked into it. He wasn't sure how much was connected to family names. They needed to be unremarkable.
Juraji did xir best to copy the names onto the illusory uniforms.
"Good," said Halek, although if one looked too close the characters might look a little wrong. It was good enough for a casual observer, and a very good impression for someone who didn't actually know that alphabet and had to just copy the words as pictures.
The ghost of a smile flitted across Juraji's face.
"I'll have to do the talking," Halek said grimly. Hopefully very little talking, to avoid both his panic and his local accent showing through.
Juraji nodded.
"If we can get into the city without being seen, no one should question us as we move through it," said Halek nervously. "Patrols around the perimeter are groups of six but inside the city a pair shouldn't be noticeable. If we get the timing right we should be fine."
Halek hadn't expected to be so scared coming home. What if they blamed him for what had happened at Ykseis? They should, but he didn't want his family to hate him.
They stood in the back yard of his house. Their front door was being watched, but their back neighbours weren't, as far as Halek and Juraji had been able to tell.
"Drop the illusion before we go in," said Halek. He didn't want to scare anyone.
Juraji flexed xir hands and the illusion disintegrated in a shower of blue sparks.
Halek scratched at the back of his neck and tried to reassure himself that there was nothing really there. Just- his mind playing tricks on him again. No cause for concern.
"Come on," he said, lowering his hand to find his key. He'd had it in his pocket when- when he'd left. The blood hadn't washed out of the coat, but he still had the key. "They'll remember you, except my aunt Saujei because she doesn't remember anyone and maybe Aedrii-Nú because she's little and it's been a year and maybe my grandfather because he's losing his memory. Well, and, you met one of my dads, and the others might not know you-" Rambling again. Delaying.
"Halek." Juraji put a hand on his arm. "I'm not worried. You can just introduce me again. I've been working on my Ðíúharlaesoghk. Maybe I'll be able to talk to them directly this time."
"Okay."
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," Halek said rotely. He wiggled his key in the lock. This door always stuck.
Tepaan-Bríné and Talí were in the kitchen when Halek pushed the door open, cutting vegetables and putting them into a big pot. Aedrii-Nú was sitting on the floor, not helping.
Talí saw them, but just sort of blinked and shook their head and looked back at the tubers. Halek guessed they maybe thought they were hallucinating.
Aedrii-Nú screamed and burst into tears, which stung, but given the context of when she'd last seen him Halek understood, and Tepaan-Bríné was finally roused from his focus.
"I'm home," Halek said awkwardly.
Halek's room was the same. It felt so dissonant, alien, to have everything identical to how he'd left it before the party.
It felt dangerous.
His neck itched.
"Juraji." He took a step back out the door, pushing xem with him. "I think the room's bugged."
"…Are you sure?" Juraji asked gently. "It would be pretty hard to get in past all your family to plant anything."
Halek was jittering all over. "I think I'm bugged."
"Halek."
"They could have," said Halek. "They could have put something under my skin when-"
"I can check," said Juraji. "It's okay. I can use my magic and I check you and I can check your room and I can get rid of anything I find. Okay?"
"Okay." That was good. That would tell him if his instincts were right or if it was really a delusion. "Thank you. For doing that. And for taking me seriously."
Juraji nodded and squeezed past him into his bedroom. "Give me a few minutes and I'll have this sorted out."
Xe spun in a slow circle, examining Halek's room, then after a long moment, xe spread xir arms and an electric blue film settled like dust over everything.
The hairs on Halek's arms stood on end with the static. He chewed his lip in silence.
The blue slowly faded away. "Nothing," said Juraji.
"Okay." Halek tried to believe Juraji. He stepped back in and closed the door. "Can you check me now?"
Juraji sat down on Halek's bed. "Yep. C'mere."
Halek sat next to xem. He couldn't enjoy being back on his own bed until he knew. "You can do my head first. It would have been easy to put something in with- the tattoo."
Juraji raised xir eyebrows. "The tattoo?"
"On my neck," Halek said uncomfortably. "It's, um. My number. From- I didn't put it there myself. Anyway. And I have a little one behind my ear, actually, for stability, I don't know if it really helps but that was the idea. There shouldn't be anything in my head and neck except the ink and my earring."
"Okay."
Halek took off his glasses so they wouldn't interfere.
"Is it okay if I touch you?" Juraji asked. "The contact will make it easier to look precisely."
Halek closed his eyes and nodded.
"Okay. Stop me if you need to." Juraji's hands settled on Halek's face.
He shivered.
"All good?"
"Your hands are cold," Halek answered honestly.
"Bad circulation," said Juraji. "It's genetic. My mother's hands were never warm."
"I'm good. Keep going."
"You might feel a bit of a shock," said Juraji, and Halek's skin flooded with static electricity.
It's okay. It's just Juraji.
"Hmm."
"What is it?" Halek asked anxiously. "Did you find something?"
"None of what you were thinking," said Juraji. "But you have cataracts developing."
"What?" Halek said, thrown off balance.
"You know. In your eyes. You should see someone about that."
Things had been blurrier, lately. He'd thought he just needed new glasses.
That was an extra complication he really didn't need right now. Eyes were delicate. Juraji couldn't fix them, or xe'd have said so.
"Fuck," he said.
"Mhm. I'm going to put my hands in your hair now to get a better look at your scalp, if that's okay, love."
"Okay." Nonetheless, he felt himself get tenser when Juraji's fingers wove into his roots, and stay tense until xir hands moved down to his neck.
"I can probably get rid of this, you know, if you don't like it," xe said as xir fingers traced the ink.
He wanted to say yes. Oh, how he wanted to say yes. But- "You can't," he said. It hurt to say. "Not yet. Until things change… If I'm caught and they see I've gotten rid of it, it will count against me, even if they can't prove anything else…"
"Okay," said Juraji. "Right. That part's done."
Halek opened his eyes and settled his glasses back on. He tugged off his shirt, then, feeling a little nauseous, started unbuttoning his pants. "Do the rest now."
"Hey." Juraji held out a hand. "You don't have to take all your clothes off at once. If it's more comfortable for you to do it in sections-"
"Oh." Halek dropped his hand, embarrassed he hadn't thought of that. Of course he didn't have to strip down completely. Of course Juraji wouldn't require that of him to do a search. "Right. Yeah."
He had a creeping suspicion that Juraji knew, even though Halek didn't remember telling xem, even though he'd never told anyone. Maybe it was just his paranoia, or maybe he'd said something during the gaps in his memory in Meelasugaado, or maybe Juraji had just figured it out on xir own.
"I've got some more tattoos," he said, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice. "Obviously. And then my pump and I have a copper IUD. That's all that should be there."
"Okay. Gonna touch you now. Same thing with the mild shock."
Halek nodded.
Juraji was very gentle. Almost too gentle, fingertips ghosting across Halek's skin.
"I don't want you to have to compromise your principles for me," Halek blurted, partly because it had been weighing on him and partly because he couldn't bear to sit in silence during this.
"What do you mean?" Juraji asked, thumb slowing slightly as it skimmed over one of Halek's forearm tattoos.
"The pacifism stuff. I know it's important to you. I don't want you to have to sacrifice all that work for the rebellion, or to protect me." He didn't want Juraji to be contaminated by his violent nature.
"Yeah?" said Juraji. "I'm not worried about that. I'm really good with my magic. I don't expect to need to actually hurt anyone, and I don't have any qualms about property damage." Xe paused. "And, if it comes down to it, in a self-defence situation, or if you were in danger, I would protect you however I could. I can protect you better than anybody else in the world, and probably even without really hurting anyone, but I would if I really had to."
"Okay."
Xe grinned. "I'm your 'secret weapon', remember?"
"Yeah," said Halek. His voice felt small. "I just- care about you a lot more now than when I asked you to be that."
"I know, love," said Juraji. "I like it, anyway. Makes me feel important."
"You're important anyway," said Halek. He didn't want Juraji to think he only valued xem for what xe could do.
"It's okay," said Juraji. "Really."
"Okay."
Two of xir fingers settled on a pair of little bumps on Halek's side. "This scar is an odd-"
"It'sfromataser," Halek said, all very fast. It wasn't an unknown. They weren't surgical marks he hadn't been aware of that could be an insertion point for a tracker. "Don't want to talk about it."
"Oh," said Juraji. Then, darker, angrier: "Oh. I see. Does the electricity from my magic bother you?"
"It's just pins and needles."
"Okay." Juraji's hands moved further down his back. "Are you sure about the rest of this?"
"I need proof that I'm wrong."
He lay face-down and cried for a bit after that. Juraji hadn't found anything. He was still scared, still half-convinced there had to be something, but xe hadn't found anything.
He'd asked for a minute alone, and Juraji had said xe'd wanted to talk to Tepaan-Bríné (or Úsírae or Réswn or Ínaenow) about xir recent diagnosis of narcissism anyway because it was reassuring to find middle-aged adults with the same diagnosis with their life fairly together, so Halek had the space to finally let everything out. The past… days, tendays, years, had been a lot.
The dying fire alarm wasn't real, which unfortunately meant Halek couldn't cover his ears to escape the beeping. He had to admit that that did make him cry harder because it just would not stop.
There was a knock on the door. Probably Juraji.
"Come in," he called, not lifting his face off the pillow. They needed to sort out the floor bed.
"Hey," Míúren said.
Halek jumped, trying to hide that he'd been crying.
"I just wanted to check on you," she said. "We haven't had a chance to talk in private since you got home."
"Oh." Halek sat up and hoped his eyes weren't too red.
"Do you want to talk? We've been able to talk to your siblings and Aedrii-Nú about what happened at Ykseis and how they're doing with everything going on right now, but not you yet."
He hugged himself. "I don't want to worry you."
"Halek." Míúren sighed. "I'm always worried about you. That's how it is when you're a parent, especially now."
Especially me, Halek thought. He was such a mess. He was trying so hard not to be, and he was still such a mess.
"But you might get sick again if you worry about me too much," he mumbled. Cancer feeds on stress, he'd heard his uncle Jirit say to Juni once when they hadn't known he was listening. With all this stuff with Halek, I'm worried for her health. The voice liked to repeat it back to him whenever he was going through something.
"Oh," Míúren said softly. "Have you been carrying that around for a long time?"
Halek nodded and crumpled back into tears.
"I'm-" He hiccuped- "I'm sorry…"
She moved from her wheelchair to sit next to him on the bed, rubbing his back. "Halek, Halek, it's okay. I'm okay. I won't tell you the cancer won't come back, because no one can promise that, and I won't tell you that I'm not afraid it might, but the chances are low. I've been cancer-free for years, and the surgery removed everything and then some, and the medications keep the chances of a resurgence down to almost nothing, and if it does come back it will not be your fault. I didn't get sick from worrying about you, I got sick from my genetics and sheer bad luck."
"I know," Halek sobbed. "In- In my brain, intellectually, I know. B-But I'm scared… in my feelings it's my fault and I'm going to make it come back if I upset you out too much… I made you sick just by being pregnant with me, I made you sick by stressing you out…"
"Listen." Míúren squeezed his shoulders. "You are not responsible for my health. You never have been, and you never will be. My health is up to me, it's up to my doctors, it's up to my genes and the environment, it's up to the Kether-"
"I don't believe in-"
"Chance, then," said Míúren. "But it's not up to you, okay? I'm responsible for looking after you, not the other way around, because I am your mother and you are a teenager."
"I'm basically an adult," Halek said. "I should be able to look after myself."
"Nevertheless." Míúren gave him a be serious look. "Have you ever met any adult who can actually look after themself entirely on their own? Because I haven't."
"I know," said Halek, suddenly full of an entirely different shame. "Sorry. I know."
"I want to look after you," said Míúren. "I want to help you look after yourself. Adult or not. I love you, and I want to see you succeed, whatever success means for you. I don't want you to feel like you can't talk to me when you're having trouble because it might worry me. Of course it will worry me, but I'm okay with that and I can manage the stress it might cause me." She smiled at him. "I've been managing my stress more than twice as long as you've been alive. I promise I can take it."
"Do you really want to know how I'm doing?" Halek asked, looking at his knees. "It's not good."
"I do."
"I watched Yainogh-aer die, and the others, and I thought I was going to die too, and I killed someone." He wiped his nose on his sleeve. "I don't remember all the details, but I remember how scared I was. I thought we all might die."
Míúren nodded. "Talí told me how brave you were. They also thought you might not make it out, but you took that risk so that they would."
"Maybe," Halek said. Maybe he'd been brave. Or maybe more people would have survived if he hadn't fought back, given in to his violence. He would never know. "Things were really bad for a while in Meelasugaado. I would've let myself die if Juraji hadn't been really vigilant about me eating and taking my insulin. It's not an emergency anymore, but things are still… bad. Even though Juraji checked with xir magic I'm still convinced that there's a bug- like, a tracking device, a listening device, a mind-reading device, something- in my room or in me, and every time I close my eyes I see Yainogh-aer lying there in a puddle of blood with a hole in his head, and I'm so scared that's going to happen to everyone else I love too because I can't protect them, and- and the beeping won't fucking stop!" He gasped in a deep breath. "And it's just so lonely to live like this, to have so many different things I can't tell so many different people, because it's not safe or because they won't understand, to not be able to relate to normal teenagers who go to school and don't have to keep it secret or they have normal jobs and who have fun and who don't wake up panicked in the middle of the night and who aren't psychotic or bipolar or traumatized or scared all the time and who don't have to worry about being locked away again and who get to just live…"
"I know," said Míúren. "I'm so sorry you didn't get to have a good adolescence. I wish we could have protected you better."
"I wish I'd protected Yainogh-aer."
"Why should they care?" Halek said. "All we're doing is standing. They don't care that we're displeased."
"No," said Juni. "They don't. It's a twenty-four-hour warning that all the people standing today will be turning them out of the city tomorrow if they don't leave on their own."
"They won't," Halek said.
"No," said Juni. "I don't think so. But on the chance they do withdraw, or even a few individual soldiers desert and run away, we think it's worth it, because although we outnumber them by orders of magnitude and I believe we will win tomorrow, they have a lot more guns and a lot of us are probably going to die in the process."
So many people had died at Ykseis and they'd been no threat at all. "I just-"
"Then don't come, Haleksari." Ze gave him a stern look. "Our work alone has not been enough to drive them away. We have been organizing this for most of the time you've been gone. Twenty-one of the twenty-three units in the city agreed to be present as the closest thing they will have to actual security and emergency medics, and you were not her to vote on it, but by all means, stay home. I will be taking Juraji regardless."
"Obviously I'm coming," Halek said irritably. It was unfair of hir to judge him for fleeing, as if he hadn't- (a desperate urge to hide flooded him). Juni had been on the run for years while Míúren had been growing up. Halek had been gone for what, half a cycle?
"I'm coming too," Talí said.
Halek flinched.
He hated that he couldn't hear people coming up behind him.
"You didn't even tell me this was happening," Talí said accusa, swearingtorily. "I thought you agreed to trust me."
"I wasn't here until yesterday," Halek said. "I didn't know. How would I have told you?"
And, no, he hadn't told them after Juni had told him, because he'd watched Yainogh-aer die, because he had nightmares about watching Talí die, because their deal had explicitly not involved Talí being in the field.
Juni sighed and pinched the bridge of hir nose.
"I would go anyway," Talí said. "Everyone is. I want to be there as one of you."
"It's-" Halek began. Too dangerous.
Juni shushed him. "Talí. Do you understand what that means? If you are dressed like us, there as one of us, people will be relying on you, and you will be more of a target, and your life might become very difficult if they identify you later, and if anyone asks you must deny it."
"Yes," said Talí. "I was there at Ykseis. I was responsible for Roo and Aedrii-Nú." They swallowed visibly. "I watched him die too."
"Okay," said Juni.
Halek must have looked sour, because Juni turned to him and said, "Halek, you were hardly sixteen when I invited you to join us. Talí is able to understand what they are committing to, just as you were."
Talí gaped at him. "It's been that long? You're such a fucking hypocrite!"
"It was different," said Halek. "I wasn't a kid anymore." He hadn't been a kid for a long time by then.
"Nonsense," said Juni. "Yes, you were. You are. You were a kid who needed a way to fight back, and Talí already knows far more than they should."
That was his fault. Talí shouldn't know anything about QD.
"They deserve the same chance you got."
It was hot to be dressed like this, all in black and as covered up as possible.
He didn't complain. Juni was annoyed with him already, and there were more important problems, and he didn't actually need to be wearing a scarf for this to work because he was wearing a mask already and his hair was long enough to cover the tattoo on his neck but he was wearing one anyway so it was kind of his fault.
"Where's the baby?" he asked Ailít.
"With eir grandmother," Ailít signed, probably meaning Maidallis, since Saafeera was here. They wouldn't use names.
"Doing well?"
She nodded. "Ey's still a harsh eater. I've started pumping instead. Ey's cooing and moving eir limbs around more now."
"And you?"
Ailít laughed. It was a good sound to hear. He hadn't heard her laugh in a long time.
"Tired," she signed. "I hardly know what day it is. I'd love to sleep through the night. Eir grandmothers have taken eir overnight a few times, but I'm too anxious then to sleep well."
"Are you doing things for yourself?" Halek signed.
"I've taken up Rāmiq paper-folding," signed Ailít. "There's no room in my brain for reading anymore, but the baby's asleep a lot, so we have a lot of little colourful paper birds now. I thought I might put them up on a string."
Beside him, Talí tapped his elbow. "She's here."
"Okay." He gave Juraji a nod, and xe dropped the cover.
Dozens of clusters of people now converged around the mayor. Little islands became a big crowd behind her, with Halek and the others along the edge and scattered strategically throughout. There were more real press here than Halek had expected, with big cameras and vests proclaiming their affiliations that he hoped they didn't think were certain to protect them.
She set down a small stepladder in front of the garrison's outer wall and climbed up with a megaphone in her hand.
"I WOULD LIKE TO ADDRESS THE GENERAL," she said.
More polite in her language than Halek would be, but that was the kind of language a politician used.
It was only when she said it again in Rāmiloq that he caught up to the fact that she was prioritizing Ðíúharlaesoghk. She was the first Ðíúharlaes mayor of Moghrlai Gurodstadit in Halek's lifetime, but in official public addresses Rāmiloq was always the first language used, because it had to be.
"AS, DESPITE OUR MEETING EARLIER THIS CYCLE, THERE HAS BEEN NO INDICATION OF THE RESTRICTIONS ON THIS CITY'S CITIZENS BEING LIFTED OR OF THE MILITARY PRESENCE BEING LESSENED-"
Juraji gasped.
"Hm?" said Halek.
"Nothing," xe said quickly. "Don't worry about it."
Halek craned his neck to try to get a better view. Unlike Juraji, he wasn't really tall enough to see much below her head from here, with all the people in front of him.
Ailít, a little closer than him since they'd spread out, found his gaze and tapped her chest, then signed "Laser."
"Does she know?" said Talí.
Halek began to respond when the speakers on the outer wall interrupted him.
"RSWAIT-DHÀ BÉNÍMÉÁ," the speakers blared. "PER SECTION THREE OF THE WARTIME POWERS ACT 4073, YOU ARE COMMITTING TREASON. CEASE AND TURN YOURSELF IN AT ONCE OR YOU WILL BE EXECUTED WITHOUT TRIAL. THIS CROWD HAS FIVE MINUTES TO DISPERSE BEFORE THE FULL FORCE OF THE LAW IS BROUGHT AGAINST YOU. CONSIDER THIS YOUR ONLY WARNING."
"She knows," said Juni.
Mayor Rwsait-dhà was undeterred. "YOU HAVE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS TO WITHDRAW FROM THE MUNICIPALITY OF GREATER MOGHRLAI GURODSTADIT. RETREAT WITH GRACE OR SUFFER THE HUMILIATION OF BEING KICKED OUT BY THOUSANDS OF CIVILIANS WHO HATE YOU AND WANT YOU GONE."
Halek laughed nervously at the abrupt drop in professionalism.
"They would," said Halek. He was trying to brace himself. If that happened, he didn't want to lose it. People would need him functional. "They'll do it later anyway, probably."
Juni raised hir eyebrows at Talí's words.
"You called her a corporate sellout last year for giving up on the noise pollution thing," they explained.
"In calmer times, you must critique everything your leaders do, whether you like them overall or not. In times of crisis, you take the allies you've got. Times have changed," said Juni, and no one could argue with that. "Béníméà knows the risk she is taking and that this will be the last act of her mayoralty and very possibly of her life. She has decided, as many before her have and many after her will, that some things are more important than her life. You accepted the risk in coming with us today, Talí; she has done the same, albeit with a more certain outcome."
"Oh," said Talí in a small voice.
Halek squeezed their shoulder.
"She knows how popular she is," said Juni. "If they make an example of her, they make her a martyr, and that will be a mistake, and she knows that."
For a woman who knew she was probably about to die, Mayor Rwsait-dhà looked very sure of herself. Warnings given and recieved, she did not move from her stepladder.
Halek looked at his watch and tried to focus on the tick of the second hand to the exclusion of his mounting panic. The five minutes were nearly up.
There was nothing he would be able to do to stop it. He would never get through the crowd in time, and he had to stay with the inexperienced Talí and Juraji, and if this was the fate Mayor Rwsait-dhà had chosen and accepted for herself then that was how it had to be.
"She's so brave," said Talí.
Halek was tired of everyone having to be so brave.
He wasn't brave. He didn't want to see it happen.
The shot rang out exactly at the five-minute mark.
Halek felt his racing heart skip a beat as he flinched. Having expected it, he just barely managed not to throw himself and Talí to the ground and into other people's feet.
There was screaming. Not his.
It was happening again.
He should have pushed back harder on Talí coming. Why hadn't they listened to him? He'd known this was a bad idea, that the army wouldn't withdraw, that they shouldn't have given warning.
Juni pulled him close with one hand and Talí with the other.
"Wait, wait," Juraji said. "I've got it. I wasn't-" A choked sound- "I wasn't fast enough, I'm always slow, but I've got it now. Halek, can you hear me? Do you see? I've got it."
"Oh," said Juni. "Oh, good work."
"Halek?" Juraji asked again.
Talí tucked themself against Halek's side, forcing their way into his field of vision. "Look up," they said.
He didn't want to. He didn't want to see. He was hardly hanging onto the edge of keeping it together, and if he saw he would go over that edge entirely. There were going to be more people who needed help, and he wouldn't be able to help them, and he would become another person who needed help and it would divert attention from other people who needed it more.
"You can't see her from here," Juni said. "Your partner has created some sort of barrier between us and the garrison. There will be no more casualties. Juraji, how long can you hold that for?"
"As long as you need me to."
Halek glanced up towards xem. Everyone else would believe xem. He was the only one who ever knew xem well enough to tell that xe wasn't sure.
They needed to move.
He said as much.
"Hm," said Juraji. "I think I need to stay here to keep this up. Like- right here. I can't move."
Xir extended hands were rigid, harsh blue tracery on xir dark skin matching the colour of the translucent barrier. It occurred to Halek that this was probably the most magic xe had ever done at one time, and that maybe xe had just about found the limit of xir supposedly unlimited power.
"Okay," said Juni. "Well, as long as that's up, we're safe, so everyone else can escape and we'll be fine until you can drop it."
That was when the gas hit.
Talí started coughing first, and most violently.
Halek's eyes stung as he dropped his cane and caught them.
"Juraji-" he began, then cut himself off as he realized that Juraji would not be able to both maintain the barrier- gas-permeable as it apparently was- and pull the gas out of Talí's lungs.
"I'm sorry," Juraji choked. "I was thinking about-" Xe coughed- "bullets and soldiers. Solid things."
Talí's hacking wracked their whole body.
"I've got you," Halek said. "I've got you, Talí-" cough- "it's going to be okay-" He was trying to convince himself as much as them.
"Your scarf." Juni pulled it off his neck and poured water on it.
"H-Halek-k-kchhhh." Talí gripped his wrist. "Oxygen."
Right. Right. He didn't have Juraji's scope, but his own magic wasn't useless here. He should have thought of that.
Juni wrapped Halek's damp scarf around Talí's face, over their mask, as Halek gathered his magic.
It was hard to focus. Usually he used his own breathing to help find it, channel it, but it felt like he too was suffocating.
Slowly, desperately, he managed to bring a cloud of his own violet magic over Talí's mouth and nose. Crowding out the tear gas with oxygen, pushing it into Talí's lungs.
He was getting really dizzy now. His eyes burned and his throat burned and his lungs burned and pushing more oxygen into Talí's vicinity was probably removing some from his own and he was quite possibly going to die but at least Talí might make it.
How many other people in the crowd had Long PNIV, or asthma, or some other lung problem? It was so common here. Pretty much everyone had been infected at some point in the past two decades of pandemic. The gas was going to kill people too.
Talí was still coughing, but not as incessantly, not as violently.
Halek tried to stand up with them and had to sit back down as he almost passed out.
He hoped someone was helping Juraji so xe could keep the barrier up. He'd lost track of Juni. Maybe they were together. He'd lost track of everyone but Talí.
"Hey." Someone tilted his face up and pulled down his mask.
He tried to tell them to stop, but he was coughing too hard and he couldn't see through the burning and watering of his eyes.
They put the metal rim of a water bottle against his lips. "Drink."
Their voice was muffled, like it was coming through several layers of fabric.
He drank. Lukewarm metallic water had never felt so good.
They pulled it away and pushed his mask back into place before he was ready. "Don't panic. I'm going to rinse your eyes."
This began to feel like a very familiar script.
Halek nodded and pulled off his glasses.
It stung even worse for a moment, but then, as he blinked the droplets out of his eyes and slid his glasses back on, he could just about see again.
"Thank you," he said hoarsely.
"Thank you," they said. "You taught me how to do that."
They tipped Talí's head up, either not noticing or not mentioning the purple of Halek's magic around their mouth. "Stay still, dear, I'm going to help you with your eyes."
Talí nodded.
"I did?" He squinted and tried to come up with a name for the masked person before him. They weren't with QD, or at least they weren't dressed like it.
"At a workshop last year," they said. "Don't worry, I'm just really good with faces. I remember, I thought, if someone as young as you could get involved, could teach others to get involved too, why couldn't I?"
Talí was still coughing.
"I need to take my sibling home," said Halek.
"No, stay," Talí croaked.
He ignored them. "Can you do something for me? There's a library a couple blocks away. They should have a first aid kit behind the desk with some proper respirators."
"It's been closed for a while," said his helper. "Ever since-"
"Break the window on the door," Halek said. "Cover your hand when you reach in- don't make yourself into another patient or leave more evidence than you have to."
They nodded and left.
Now that he could see again and the gas was settling, he was able to locate Juraji and Ailít together.
"I need to take them home!" he shouted.
Ailít gave him a thumbs up.
Juraji nodded, electricity arcing across xir skin, just as bright red blood began to pour out of one of xir nostrils.
Halek hesitated, torn between calling out Juraji's dangerously self-sacrificing attitude and getting Talí somewhere safer. In the end he picked Talí.
Once they were further away, in a place where the air was clear enough for Talí to take off the scarf and mask for a minute, they were able to use their rescue inhaler. The effect was even more immediate and noticeable than Halek's oxygen had been.
As their coughing calmed down, Talí burst into tears.
"You're safe now," Halek said. "It's okay."
"I'm so useless," Talí said angrily. "You were right. I shouldn't have come."
"No," Halek said awkwardly. He wished he could feel vindicated. "You're not useless, Talí. What you've been doing with Jue has been invaluable."
"All I did was make you leave instead of helping Juraji!" they cried.
Halek patted their back stiffly. "It's okay. Let's go home."
spoiler-free, takes place sometime in the first third of Empires Always Fall (sometime between getting home and the ball)
content notice for mention of suicide (Jue is not actively suicidal right now but considers it an inevitability), referenced forced marriage, very brief mention of romance and sex, and friendship.
“What’s it like for you?” Talí asked. “Being ar- being singular. For me I still want to try out romance, sex when I’m older, I still like having a few friends and I think I want to have partners when I’m older, but it’s not like that for you, right? Singular is a bit different from what I call aroace, aplatonic?”
“Yes,” said Jue, fighting the urge to close up. Ze wanted to be able to talk to Talí about this. Talí was hir friend. They could probably come closer to understanding than anyone else could. “I… I would not be aplatonic, I do not think. But I would be aroace. But it is a little bit different. I think. Abstract things are hard for me,” ze admitted. “Imagining what different but similar things mean and what they feel like.”
“I know you obviously don’t want to get married,” said Talí. “Would you, if things were different? If you could choose who it was?”
“No.” Jue was sure of that, at least. Ze would not be able to tolerate being married to even Fiitsãn. “If I could choose, I would marry no one at all, ever.”
“If things were different…” said Talí. “If there were no other things to consider, if no one else had any say, if you didn’t have any responsibilities or anything to worry about, what would you want?”
Nobody had ever asked hir that before. Ze had trouble with would, anyway, but… no one had ever asked that. Ze had never even asked hirself that.
“Why does it matter?” ze said, partly glumly and partly just matter-of-factly. “That is not how things are or ever will be.”
“Never say never,” said Talí.
That was nonsense. Jue’s future was clear and unavoidable: betrothals, marriages, misery, suicide.
“Really,” said Talí. “Let’s pretend for a minute. What kind of life would you want? What kind of relationships?”
“If I could trust people?” If they were going to pretend, they might as well pretend all the way. “And nobody would be disappointed or angry?”
“Yeah,” said Talí. “If you didn’t have to worry about anything else, just what you wanted for yourself.”
“I would not want any partners,” said Jue. “Not of any kind. I would want… I would want to have some friends like you and Fiitsãn but maybe-” It felt wrong to wish for, impossible even if it were okay- “Maybe a few more too. Maybe people like… like me, and who wanted to spend time with me like I wanted to spend time with them. I would still need people to help look after me… I wish I did not, though, I would want to live alone. I would want to just… be me and play music and not worry about what anyone else wants or thinks of me.”
secret fun fact: Daanah's service dog Reyal is named after Talí, whose full name is Aréaltalí (if you spell the "réal" part in a Dalac Norvian way, you get "reyal")
Hello! For the disability oc ask game, I'm curious about #13 and #19! How does your oc feel talking about their disability or symptoms to other characters? Do they keep to themself or are they open about it? For any of your characters! And what disabilities or mental conditions do you wish there was more representation of?
13. Wheel picked Jue so:
Jue does not like talking about any of hir disabilities. Hir whole life, ze has been made to feel ashamed of them, and ze tries really hard to fit into the abled norm and expectations of hir- generally unsuccessfully, because hir intellectual disability (and all hir disabilities, but especially this) is not something ze can pretend isn’t there, and it’s apparent to everyone before ze even speaks because Down Syndrome impacts the appearance of one’s face, and everyone in the empire knows and (it feels like) has a problem with it, and hir intellectual disability makes it harder to mask and/or manage hir other less-immediately-obvious disabilities. Ze has literally been shot at and the prospect of telling people what ze struggles with or can’t do (or of them finding out without hir telling them) is even more terrifying than that (which is, itself, a symptom of hir various mostly-trauma-induced mental illnesses). Ze gets really frustrated with hirself for the way ze is, and eventually starts getting rightly frustrated with other people for not accommodating hir in ways they *know* ze needs or would benefit from (and is also frustrated with hirself for being unable to ask for help, especially later on once it becomes genuinely safe for hir to ask for help and ze would definitely actually get that help if people knew ze needed it and ze still can’t do it because of how bad hir anxiety is). Fiitsãn and eventually Talí are the only people ze feels safe talking to about it, and even with them it is incredibly stressful and scary and hard and ze can’t always manage to do it and ze still keeps certain things to hirself out of shame and fear.
19. All of them tbh. There is so little actually *good* (mainstream) disability representation, especially as main characters. I think we just need so much more of everything. (Especially in fantasy and other speculative fiction, but that’s just because that’s my favourite genre and genre umbrella, and people like to claim it’s unrealistic to have disabled characters in fantasy and sci fi (for different reasons depending on the genre but always “unrealistic”).)
Genderqueer* characters in and around Aros Against Fate (mostly Empires Always Fall) because we need more genderqueer characters forever and ever
*used here as an umbrella term rather than as a specific identity, though some characters in this list do specifically identify as genderqueer as (part of) their gender identity
Halek (he/him, other pronouns if you’re close, does not favour she/her): A main character and a rebel. Vaguely-multigender genderqueer trans man (does not explicitly label the other genders).
Jue (ze/hir): A main character and the teenaged Younger Emperor of Rāmia. Jue is either a cis boy using neopronouns- which I would consider to fall broadly under the umbrella of genderqueer anyway- or ze is genderqueer-as-in-not-binary, or maybe ze’s not sure which. (As I write this I am coming to the end of this draft and starting to get into prep work for the next so lots of things have the opportunity to shift. I think I might go with hir not being sure and maybe identifying as genderqueer because of how broad it is, as was once the case for me.)
Sei (she/her to others, they/them to themself): A main character and a princess of Rāmia. Agender on the inside but they don’t want to live as zauzo (Feka third gender/gender category) and being a princess specifically is very important to them so they are okay with everyone else thinking of them as a woman even though they don’t think of themself as one (especially since most of the time they need to be explicitly reminded that other people see things differently than them at all, so they don’t really feel dysphoric about how other people see them; often it feels to them as if everyone knows they’re not really a girl but is playing along, or they forget that “princess” really is linked to “girl” for most people.) Functionally, their gender kind of is “Princess.” Sometimes they describe it as being a woman on the outside but no gender on the inside. It’s a little complicated to explain but Sei is an agender princess and both those words are entirely correct.
Kaelía (she/it): A main character and an Initiate at the Temple of Corysecli. Demigirl.
Zhe’ārani (she/her) for intimates/Ši Arroakhai Kjú (they/them) for everyone else: A main character and an Initiate at the Temple of Corysecli. She’s a girl in a transmasculine way.
Līs/Līsandyr/Līsyka (he/him -> they/he -> they/she -> they/he/she/xe/fae): Zhe’ārani’s friend and Kaelía’s best friend, and another Initiate at the Temple of Corysecli. Undertakes some exploration in the background throughout the course of the trilogy, and goes from identifying (using our terms) as a boy to a demiboy to a demigirl to multigender (demiboy + demigirl + genderless + libraxenic (spacegender; xe does explicitly connect xir gender to outer space even if xe doesn’t use that specific term and as the author I’m saying that xe’s a little bit spacegender)).
Qatriong (she/her to most people, then he/him to most people, always she/he to herself): Zhe’ārani’s best friend and another Initiate at the Temple of Corysecli. Bigender girlboy; initially keeps the boy part private (except for Zhe’ārani), and later when she has to go into hiding and switches how he presents keeps the girl part private, both times because she needs something just for himself and that is a secret that won’t get her killed.
Talí (they/any): Halek’s sibling. Agender kolgirl (“kolgirl” being a mix of/somewhere in between “girl” and the Beri third gender “kolman”).
Abhaonai (she/he): An Initiate at the Temple of Corysecli. Bigender manwoman.
Kjotar (he/they): An Initiate at the Temple of Corysecli. (Probably) A boy but very loosely so.
Miwaanii-Shémelús (gives he/him if asked but he's very apathetic about it): This is multiple people who share the same name and pronouns and all of them pretty much identify as “genderqueer quoiromantic male” (Se-Naskans consider gender to also include sex and orientation as not necessarily the same thing but inherently closely linked).
Ffeira (they/them): One of Ausse’s best friends & companions. Mixed-gender (one of the five Norve gender roles; in Ffeira’s case I think they truly are pretty much androgynous in identity.)
Kéchawaedrii-Orl (ze/hir): Head of Daanah’s religion. Holy-genderless (one of the five Norve gender roles).
Reymud (ze/hir): Divine Scribe. Holy-genderless.
Qeirana (ze/hir at work, he/him at home): A Norvic Senci Scholar who ends up working with Daanah. Holy-genderless in hir role as a scholar and a man in his personal life (in a way that both are true to who ze is in different ways).
Kwsnà (it/its): Halek’s therapist.
Logē (they/them): Divine Soldier at the Temple of Corysecli.
Onarys (they/he): Queng Consort of Rāmia annd Jue’s uncle’s spouse.
Attendant Ngeh (he/she): Door attendant at the palace. Bigender manwoman.
Ātia Jo (she/they): A Wend-Ki’an spy in the Rāmian government. Genderflux, genderqueer woman.
Eleyk (ey/em): Baby that Daanah and Rovian’s family is fostering for a neighbour. Norve children are assigned the gender of “child,” so Eleyk is not exactly any gender in eir own identity or expression (being, you know, a baby) but ey does not fit into the binary.
Fiya (ey/em): Ailít and Fiyavu Ozast’s (Daanah and Rovian’s sister’s) baby, born during Empires Always Fall. Same situation as Eleyk, with eir gender being explicitly and only “child.”
Juraji (xe/xem): Halek’s queerplatonic partner. Nonbinary with a strong sense of gender distinct from man/woman.
Veisau (ze/hir): Yna’s half-kester- Sei’s new kester-in-law- and a high commander in the Beri military. Kolman.
Representative Swkatsh (ae/aer): the elected representative of Ðíúharlaeslai in the imperial government.
Awlanír (they/them): Rovian’s manager.
Heishun (they/them): Sei’s sibling. Zauzo.
Jēn-Tajanē (they/he/she): Sei’s sibling. Genderqueer and loud about not being simply slotted into the zauzo “other” category but having both a more expansive and more specific gender than that.
Āvolú (they/them) for intimates or Toagh Rrušā Ndi (they/them) for everyone else: Zhe’ārani’s friend from home. Voidgender + neutrois + contigender + astrumgender.
Keha (they/them): Fiitsãn’s friend and possibly crush, whose story role for the upcoming draft I’m not quite sure of yet. May have accompanied Mkera from Kelos and become friends with Fiitsãn or might just be an old school friend.
Amidi (they/them): Halek’s neighbour and friend.
Ektanai (they/it): Halek’s good friend and former cellmate at the Moghrlai Gurodstadit Juvenile Confinement Centre and, by luck, also ends up being one of Rovian’s cellmates when she gets arrested late in (the next draft of) Empires Always Fall.
Lawmí (they/she): Ektanai’s current cellmate and becomes one of Rovian’s cellmates.
Åswså (ffe/ffer): Pilot Maaziariitna knows. Firegender.
The Historian (she/her to most, she/he to her wife): the official (and immortal) historian of the Rāmian empire. Her gender straddles the line between “masculine cis woman” and “transmasculine.”
Itheo (she/they): Halek’s friend, one of the other international students at his school in Meelasugaado.
Depa (it/its): Lieutenant of the Temple of Corysecli stationed in Moghrlai Gurodstadit, from Gētnyx’s cohort. Its gender is simply “Lieutenant of the Temple of Corysecli.” Where Kaelía first encountered it/its pronouns.
