{ ⋀ } —- talk about your favorite ship!
Favorite ship is hands-down the ship of Archelaos and Tarjei ( @tarjei-harjuk ). He’s not very active currently, but from Mists of Pandaria to about July of this year, Archelaos was who I did about 80% of my RP and stories on. He had a lot going for him, a lot had happened and he went through a lot of people. It was at the point that I didn’t think he would ever find someone to actually settle down with, so he was joke-married to @addressroleplays (and both of them will still insist that the joke was fucking funny. Nobody else thinks so).
When he and Tarjei met, Archelaos was actually in something of a relationship with Tarjei’s ex-husband, Dane. It wasn’t a healthy relationship, and so as soon as Archelaos found out that Tarjei was his ex, he immediately seduced him so Dane would have hate sex with him. In this grand ploy to satisfy his sex life, Archelaos wound up getting to know Tarjei and helping him with a big problem of his — Tarjei was cursed. His emotions were locked away leaving him a flat, emotionless husk of a man until he could find someone to fall in love with him (who he was in love with in return) and kiss him. It was no small feat for a man who wasn’t capable of love, and had no personality to fall in love with.
But with the use of magic, Archelaos was able to venture into Tarjei’s mind and meet who he truly was. And he was head over heels from the moment he first saw him. Archelaos met a confident, talented mage who knew exactly how he liked things and wouldn’t have it any other way. He was drawn to what he’d call Tarjei’s charisma (everyone else would call it Tarjei’s bad fucking attitude) and bonded with him over mutually shared struggles. It wasn’t long before Archelaos went out of his way to spend time with Tarjei, to go on dates with him, and he not-so-subtly favored Tarjei over Dane when it came to romance.
But things weren’t all sunshine and rainbows, especially for Tarjei. With everything that Archelaos had told him about himself, he doubted that Archelaos would ever love him like he needed to be loved. He doubted that Archelaos would ever give up his fantastical and exciting life of darkness and extreme sexual exploits to ever settle down with Tarjei. And Tarjei accepted that. Archelaos was allowed to roam free throughout most of their relationship, sleeping with whomever he wanted and forming relationships beyond those that were platonic with anyone he fancied, so long as he kept Tarjei in the loop with it all. Tarjei had to spend a few awkward nights at Archelaos’s home while his lover had other guests in his bed, so between that and the rivalry he had with Dane, Tarjei had a hard time accepting that Archelaos’s feelings were legitimate.
But it didn’t stop him from trying. Soon enough Tarjei’s curse was broken. And soon enough Tarjei followed Archelaos on his path of darkness, joining the cult that Archelaos had been working for and fighting for their respect. But it was while they were in this cult that Tarjei saw the true darkness that haunted Archelaos behind every turn. He held Archelaos when he broke down more than once over the work he was doing and the expectations this cult held of him. He saw very clearly that this man of his wasn’t the invulnerable inquisitor everyone had come to know, but an abused, shattered man who had only ever had one person truly believe in him — Archelaos’s father, Winston Redright. A name he would grow intimately familiar with in time.
Much to Tarjei’s own surprise, Archelaos proposed to him. And Tarjei agreed to marry him, but only under the condition that they be monogamous forever more. This was a condition Archelaos accepted. Soon enough Tarjei convinced Archelaos to start a different life with him, one that wouldn’t hurt him so and one that they could grow and heal together in. They left the cult before Tarjei could be properly initiated, but in the dawning hours of their time there, Tarjei had worked hard and earned the right to join the family. He was one of few people who turned that right down.
But the hardest trials lay ahead for Tarjei. They were going to be married, but they couldn’t before Tarjei met Winston. It was simply out of the question for Archelaos to marry anyone who his father didn’t approve of, and he knew (and thus warned his fiance) that the road to Winston’s approval would be a character-defining one. So they met, and just as Archelaos thought, Winston wasn’t impressed with Tarjei or anything that he had gone through. But when Tarjei asked Winston to make him worthy of taking on the name Redright, Winston happily obliged.
As he had done with Archelaos to make him strong, Winston trained Tarjei. He put Tarjei through the worst kinds of personal hell in order to weed out the weakness in him, and he stole from him the magic that Tarjei felt crucial to his very being. At the end of this training, Tarjei was given a choice: He could either marry Archelaos and become a Redright, or he could regain the addictive magic that Redright had stolen from him.
They were married a few months later. Winston was the only guest who was actually invited, but there were a few party crashers. In their vows, they vowed loyalty, strength, honesty, and if it came to it revenge for one another.
Since then, they have been living happily in Pandaria with three dogs and wonderful privacy from the darkness they left behind in their lives. Tarjei has become a talented rogue and fighter, and Archelaos has been focusing his efforts on healing his relationship with The Light and learning how to heal instead of destroy with his power. Together they are strengthened, and now-a-days it’s hard to imagine that they were ever apart to begin with.
