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You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
January 30, 1998
There’s something wrong. He started wondering back in Chicago during his layover when Scully didn’t pick up her cell phone, but now he’s convinced of it. It’s well past Emily’s bedtime and the hotel suite is empty. The bed that Em and Scully share has not been disrupted. Mulder searches for a note, but finds nothing. He checks his voice mail again. Nothing. No blinking light on the hotel phone, no messages left for him at the front desk.
He finally dials Maggie Scully, who happens to be back at home on the east coast. It’s very late there and it’s obvious he wakes her.
“They’re at the hospital. Dana didn’t reach you?”
“I’ve been on a plane for six hours. There was no note at the hotel.”
Maggie’s voice is scratchy with sleep. “They went this morning. I’m sure Dana just didn’t want to worry you.”
She didn’t want to worry him? “What’s going on? Is Emily all right?”
“Another fever. I spoke to Dana a few hours ago. The doctors were talking about a transfusion.”
“Why didn’t-but how-“ he stutters.
“She’s in good hands. They’re at Community General.”
“There was no note,” he repeats.
“Just go to the hospital, Honey.”
***
Mulder flashes his badge at a cabbie, who shows his appreciation by reluctantly running a few red lights to arrive at the hospital in record time. Mulder overtips him and then is rude to the triage nurse who thinks her phone call is more important than directing Mulder.
“Emily Sim! Where is she? Emily Sim!”
The nurse lifts her index finger and smiles brightly at him, mouthing “okay.”
“Emily Sim! My wife brought her in this morning, where is she?”
He finally reaches over the desk and disconnects the phone call. The nurse’s congenial smile vanishes and Mulder gets that ‘two seconds from calling Security’ look that he knows all too well.
“Sir, you need to calm down.”
“I am calm!” he shouts. “I need to know what room Emily Sim is in!”
“Sir, we have no one by that name registered here. Perhaps you have the wrong hospital.”
“I don’t have the wrong hospital! Look again! Emily-“ He stops and runs shaky fingers through his disheveled hair, then repeats, with forced calmness. “Try Emily Scully. She’s three years old. Can you just…can you please look again?”
The nurse eyes him doubtfully, but runs her finger three-quarters of the way down a list. “She’s in Pediatric ICU, room 312. But visiting hours ended three hours ago, Sir. You can’t just-”
Mulder takes off at a jog.
“Sir! You can’t go up there at this hour!”
He’s already pressing the button to the elevator. “Thank you!”
A second nurse, who happens to be exiting room 312 just as he is heading in, decides to try his patience further. “Can I help you?”
“Is this Emily’s Scully’s room?”
“Yes, but access is restricted to family at this time, I’m sorry.”
Mulder strains his neck to try and see through the small rectangular window on the door, but it’s dark inside. “I’m her um, I’m uh…she’s my…Dana Scully is my wife.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Sir,” the nurse’s voice softens and she consults the chart. “Then you must be Mr. Mulder?”
“Yes. How is-how is Emily?”
“She’s stable. Her fever us still non-responsive, but she’s resting peacefully. You can go right in. Your wife is with her.”
He enters quietly, easing the door closed behind him. The lights in the room have been dimmed and various machines beep in syncopation. Emily is asleep on her side, curled like a shrimp, her golden hair fanned across the pillow, and Scully sits in a chair next to her. She looks up at him and he can see exhaustion, fear, and worry etched into her features.
“Scully,” he whispers, going to her and running his hand over her shoulder.
She watches him as he leans over Emily’s sleeping form and kisses her hot, clammy forehead. “She’s so warm,” he says, concerned.
“The fever has come down a little, but it’s still too high. She finally fell asleep a couple hours ago.”
He drapes his overcoat over the back of a chair and pulls it closer. “Scully, why…why didn’t you call me? When I got to the hotel, I was so worried.”
She answers him matter-of-factly while keeping her attention focused on Emily. “You were on a plane all day, Mulder. You couldn’t be reached. And besides, there was nothing you could have done.”
“There was no note. I had to call your mother to find out where you were.” He doesn’t mean to sound accusatory. Well, maybe a little. She managed to reach her mother, but not him.
She sighs, wearily. “It’s been a very long day. I guess I just lost track of time.”
He studies her for a long moment, then decides to let it go. He’s here now, which is what matters. “What do the doctors say?”
“That we need to watch and wait. They’ve got her on IV antibiotics and an immunosuppressant. We just have to hope that the fever starts to respond soon.”
“Why suppress her immune system if she’s already sick?”
She shakes her head, wearily. “They’re just trying it. Emily’s immune system is attacking her red blood cells, treating them as invaders. Immunosuppressants may slow this process.”
“Your mother mentioned something about a transfusion.”
She nods with her head tilted to the side, pushing damp hair from Emily’s flushed cheek. “Blood transfusions can temporarily replace red blood cells that have been lost. But it’s not a permanent solution. It just buys us some time.”
“When will we know if it’s necessary?”
“I don’t know. If her fever doesn’t respond within the next twenty-four hours, then probably.”
“Is it safe?”
She nods again. “For the most part, yes. We may not have a choice.”
They sit quietly for some time, just watching Emily sleep, her breathing rapid, but steady. Machines measure her vitals and the rhythmic beeping is actually calming after a while, becoming a form of white noise that lulls and pacifies. Scully has removed her shoes and is curled into a stiff vinyl chair with a thin blanket thrown over her. Mulder stretches his legs out and leans his head back, matching his respiration to the sounds in the room, allowing himself to be soothed. He dozes.
Somewhere around 4 am, he coaxes Scully out of her chair and over to a cot that the night nurse has unfolded in the corner. “I can’t sleep, Mulder,” she argues, ineffectively. “If she wakes up-“
“I’ll be right there next to her,” he assures, not bothering to point out that she’s already been sleeping, curled up like a hermit crab, for the past three hours. “I’ll stay awake, Scully, I promise.”
January 31, 1998
Mulder wants to talk to her about the records Marita has given him, wants to show them to her and have her put her glasses on and go over them with a fine-toothed comb and chew on her bottom lip and frown like she does when she’s in brilliant doctor mode. Except that she isn’t. She’s spent most of the day in worried mother mode, pacing and hovering and insisting on attendings instead of interns. They say doctors make the worst patients. They also make the most tyrannical parents. Mulder just apologizes with his eyes to nurses and candy stripers and to anyone who doesn’t have any answers, which is pretty much everyone.
Besides caffeine, there isn’t much that Mulder can manage to get into her. Half a bagel and an overly preserved oatmeal cookie he procures from a vending machine constitutes her caloric allotment for the day. Emily mostly sleeps and he can’t get Scully to leave her side.
At 8:00 that night, Doctor Callahan, a thirty-five-ish woman with a British accent who has been treating Emily since noon, announces that she would like to go ahead with a transfusion since there has been minimal improvement.
“We’ll start with a pint of O neg,” she announces crisply, presenting the paperwork for Scully to sign, which she does. “And keep our fingers crossed.” Mulder blanches a little. After being emasculated repeatedly by Phoebe Green, he’s suspicious of any brunette with an English accent. He watches Scully place her small, neat autograph to four sheets of paper. Dana K. Scully. And right beneath on the line that says ‘relationship to patient,’ she writes ‘mother.’
Scully’s a mom. She’s legally allowed-they’re both allowed- to make decisions for Emily. Together, they’re responsible for another person. The enormity of it seems to dwarf whatever responsibilities they’ve shared in the past, however significant.
“How long until we know if it’s working?” he asks.
Doctor Callahan gives him a sympathetic smile. “Hopefully we’ll know more by the morning.”
“And what do we do if it doesn’t?” he pushes.
“We’ll cross that bridge if and when we come to it.”
He hates that answer. It’s such a non-answer. Of course we’ll cross that bridge if we come to it. What the hell else are we going to do – say ‘fuck no, I’m going to go to Disneyland and call it a day?’
Why can’t anyone give a straight answer around here?
Emily gets her transfusion and doesn’t even wake up for it. He and Scully watch for signs of change until 1 a.m. when Scully eventually nods off again, this time spooned up behind her sick daughter in the hospital bed. Mulder takes the cot, which has a metal bar that pokes into his rib cage and his feet hang off, but he’s so exhausted he could have slept standing on one leg. The machines beep and swish, never sleeping.
February 1, 1998
A little before 6 a.m., while the outside sky is turning translucent with the first hues of dawn, Mulder opens his eyes and sees another pair of crisp blue ones staring back at him.
“Hi,” whispers Emily.
Mulder snaps to attention, pulling himself up to a seated position on the cot. “Hi, Em.” He smiles, so incredibly relieved to see her alert. “Hi,” he repeats, in amazement.
Emily surveys the room without moving her head. “Is it the morning?”
“Yes. Very early. You’re at the hospital.”
Scully rouses next to Emily. Her clothing is wrinkled and her hair is matted on one side. She has the look of a parent who’s spent a couple rough nights at a child’s bedside, without the benefit of adequate sleep or hygiene. But she’s still beautiful. “Emily?”
Mulder can see the adrenaline kicking in, her sleep-swollen eyes sharpening. She sits up and her hand immediately goes to Emily’s forehead, then her cheeks.
“I’m thirsty,” says Emily. “Can I watch TV?”
Scully nods and thrusts her nose into Emily’s hair, swallowing tears.
Two hours later, the attending physician has confirmed significant improvement. Emily’s fever is down and she is alert and responsive. There is discussion about moving her out of ICU and into a standard room. Emily’s biggest complaint is the IV. Although she is used to the feel of the shunt in her hand, it hinders her movement. The nurse removes her catheter and she is able to use the bathroom with Scully’s help, although the process with all the tubes and rolling devices leaves everyone exhausted.
After lunch, which consists of more bagels from the Brueggers next to the gift shop, Mulder convinces Scully that it will be okay for them to take turns going back to the hotel for a shower and a change of clothes. It actually takes very little persuasion since he’s guessing she probably feels about as fresh as he does. He looks forward to a religious experience with several tiny bars of hotel soap and his toothbrush.
He wanders down to the hospital library and brings back some books to read to Emily and a Chutes and Ladders game with a crumpled box that’s missing the spinner. They craft their own out of a plastic knife and a Styrofoam coffee cup, but it only seems to stop on 4 and 6. Mulder loses three games.
By evening, everyone has bathed, including Emily, and smells much better. They’ve been moved to a regular room now, which happens to be private and has one of those pull-out loveseats that masquerades as functional sleeping furniture. Heaven forbid that anyone should actually get comfortable.
Emily still isn’t eating much, which could have something to do with the fact that she’s still being pumped full of IV fluids. She picks at a grilled cheese sandwich with the crusts cut off and some chocolate pudding. She’s asleep a little after seven and Mulder leaves to go find real food for him and Scully. They end up sitting crossed-legged on the crappy pullout loveseat, pizza box balanced on their knees.
“This is marvelous,” she says, picking off the sausage and transferring it to his pieces. “I’m so hungry.”
“You should be. You’ve eaten just enough to sustain a hummingbird for two days.”
“I don’t eat when I’m upset,” she says, as if he didn’t already know that.
“What now?” He hands her a cold Coke. “With Emily.”
“We get released. Maybe tomorrow. More likely the next day.”
They munch companionably, neither concerned with doing it neatly or politely. She doesn’t even bother soaking up the extra grease with paper towels this time. He thinks about how many pizzas they’ve shared over five years. Maybe one a week, sometimes two. Times fifty-two. Times five. That’s a lot of cheese.
Cheese. She’s guiding a long string of it into her mouth, her tongue lapping at it indelicately and that’s pretty much all it takes. He starts thinking about things again. Their phone call. What she said. What he said.
“I moved some things into storage,” he says. “Hegel Place is pretty much empty now. The couch is still there.” He smiles impishly. “Just in case you get mad and kick me out for a night.”
Her cheeks pink. He hopes she’ll return his serve, banter with him a little, but instead she wipes her mouth on a napkin and gets up to throw away her paper plate.
“I uh, didn’t know about the fish,” he continues. “I had Frohike help me move them. The tank is in the corner of the living room, between the bookshelves. We can move it later if that’s not all right. Or get rid of them, if you want.” He offers another smile. “If you’re allergic to fish.”
That gets him a very subdued smile. “No, of course not. They’re fine. Emily will probably enjoy them.”
“Has she mentioned the orange cat to you again?”
Scully nods. “Bill has one. I think that’s where she got the idea.”
Good old, Bill. Remind him to thank his brother-in-law.
“Do we have a family pet policy in place yet?” he asks, amiably.
She shrugs. “You don’t like pets?”
Uh-oh, trick question. Tread carefully. He handled the Queequag debacle with about as much sensitivity as Attila the Hun.
“I’ve never really had any,” he answers, cautiously. “Except for a hamster in grade school that didn’t fare well and my fish. But um, we can think about it, I guess.”
Great, yeah. He’s getting a cat.
“Or we could always wait until we get a house,” he prompts. “I’ve been looking around a bit. Picked up some real estate magazines and drove around some neighborhoods.”
She looks surprised at this, but he can’t say exactly pleased. “Don’t you think we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves? We’re not even settled back in D.C.”
“You don’t want a house?”
“I didn’t say that. I just don’t see what the hurry is.”
“When is the lease up on your apartment?”
“July,” she replies.
“Well, that might be a good time. It takes a while to find something, though. And then there’s the financing and closing process, but we’re not selling something, so that gives us an advantage and I’ve got some cash saved for a down payment, so I think-“
“Mulder, can we maybe talk about this later?”
He pauses and gives her a quizzical look.
“I’m just a little overwhelmed right now. The visits from the social worker and the upcoming court date, and now Emily getting sick again…I just need some time… to process everything.”
“Okay,” he says, quietly.
She walks into the bathroom and shuts the door behind her, taking longer than usual. It’s very quiet on the other side of the door, he doesn’t even hear water running. He cleans up the pizza mess and just waits for her. Eventually she comes out.
He watches her fuss with Emily’s blankets, checking and double checking her IV to make sure she hasn’t rolled onto the cord again. The night nurse comes in, introduces herself as Cindy, and starts to take vitals. “Please wait and take her BP on the next rounds,” instructs Scully in her doctor tone. “She’s sleeping peacefully and the cuff disrupts her.” The nurse nods politely and records things in the chart. “Is Doctor Callahan on tonight?”
“No,” replies Cindy. “It’s Doctor Martinez. He’ll be in to check on her before midnight.”
Scully reads the chart over the nurse’s shoulder. “I’d like to see if we can take her off the saline drip for the night. Her catheter has been removed and her fluid levels look good. I’d rather not have to wake her to use the bathroom through the night.”
“You’ll have to ask Doctor Martinez about that.”
God, they must hate her.
“Are you okay?” he asks, after they’re alone again.
“I’m fine.”
Which, of course, tells him nothing.
“Do you want to go to sleep?”
She eyes the accommodations where they happen to be sitting. Cramped and uncomfortable, but they’ve managed before. He can’t speak for her, but it’s not the worst place he’s slept by a long shot. It has the advantage of being small enough that they can’t really avoid lying close to one other. At least, he sees it as an advantage. The look on her face says perhaps she feels differently.
“I don’t think so,” she responds, softly. “You can if you want.”
He decides to try a different tactic. “I’ve got some things for you to look at, if you’re up to it. The records Marita gave me. I’m hoping you might be able to make better sense of them than we could.”
She appears to bristle a little and he wonders if he should have just waited until they were out of the hospital and back at the hotel. The stress and lack of sleep has her on edge. But the reality is that time is of the essence, this recent setback of Emily’s making that fact all the more evident.
“What did you find?” she asks, her curiosity getting the better of her.
He produces the file from inside his jacket and she takes it from him with cautious interest. “The records we’ve seen don’t tell the whole story,” he reports. “Calderon needed to produce something public – those records were a smokescreen. The second set, the ones with the header Alexa 1194F are the real deal.”
Her eyes connect with his and he knows she’s already made sense of the numbers and gender notation. “What does Alexa mean?”
“I’m not sure,” he admits. “But I think…it might’ve been the name that the original scientists gave…to Emily. Before she was adopted.” He hesitates. “The name Alexa is Greek. It means ‘defender of mankind.’”
He watches Scully blink slowly, then take a deep breath as she reattaches her armor. The transformation from mother to scientist is nearly a visible one.
Her eyes scan the pages intently and her mouth forms soundless words. She is frowning and deep in thought, seeing for the first time the same data that he’s been trying ineffectively to dissect for days. “Mulder, these two sets of records are entirely different.”
“I know.”
“How…It’s like I’m looking at two different patients.”
“Yes, I know,” he repeats. “What I don’t know-what I need your medical expertise on – is to figure out how they’re different. It’s nothing but numbers and random data to me, Scully. But the answers are there, I’m certain of it.”
“Marita gave you this?”
“Yes.”
Scully narrows her eyes almost imperceptibly. “How do you know you can trust her, Mulder? How do you know we’re not being played here?”
“Because I do, Scully.”
“What the hell does that mean? She has no personal interest in this.” She looks up at him. “Does she?”
There is some kind of masked emotion there he can’t quite identify.
“I trust her, Scully. I can’t explain why, but I do. She’s helped me in the past and she’s never lied to me. Why would she start now?”
Scully’s frown deepens. “Why wouldn’t she? You mean to tell me she possibly risked her life to get these documents for you out of the goodness of her heart? Forgive me for being suspicious.”
“She isn’t a bad person, Scully. I think in many ways, she wants the same things we do. She’s just caught up in something she has no control over.”
“You know who she works for.”
“But her allegiances aren’t that simple.”
Scully appears to consider this, and him, for a long moment. “How well do you know her, Mulder?” Her voice is quiet, even.
“Well enough to trust her on this.”
“Trust no one. I thought that was what you always said.”
He sighs deeply. “Yeah well, sometimes we aren’t given a choice.” His eyes drift over to Emily, asleep in the bed. “I think this is one of those times.”
After a thoughtful pause in which both of them seem to be contemplating the direction of the conversation, he gestures to the stack of papers in her hands. “In Calderon’s notes, there’s something that shows up repeatedly – something called CCR5. I had Frohike dig around a little. He couldn’t come up with much, except that it’s related to the blood and it has something to do with retroviruses. Does it mean anything to you?”
She frowns, her eyes moving back and forth in thought. “Yeah,” she says, tentatively. “Yeah, it does. Chemokine receptor type 5. CCR5 is a protein on the surface of white blood cells that acts as a receptor. It’s likely that CCR5 plays a role in the body’s response to infection.”
She leafs through the papers and continues. “Some retroviruses use CCR5 to enter and infect host cells. It’s thought that HIV may work that way, attaching to and invading T-cells.”
Caught up in thought now, she settles herself on the pull-out with her feet curled underneath her and leans forward over the stack of documents, resting her elbows on her knees. “Can you hand me some paper and a pen, please?”
There isn’t much around, but he digs through some papers that were left by the nurse, and pulls out a purple sheet with rules and regulations for the pediatric ICU. He flips it over and hands it to her, along with a hospital pen. She starts jotting down words, numbers, and symbols that are meaningless to him. Plusses and minuses, greater than and less than signs, some kind of chemical equation that looks like an upside down tree.
“And I’ll take a coffee,” she adds, not looking up, papers shuffling. “This could take a while and I’m going to need the caffeine.”
***
He’s snoozing on his back on top of the pull-out when she wakes him by shaking his knee gently. “Mulder.”
She’s used his prone body as a desk and there are papers layered over his stomach that slide off when he sits up. “What time is it,” he mumbles, glancing at Emily, who is facing the other way, sound asleep.
“Late. After three.”
“Did you find something?”
“Sort of.” She slides over next to him, reordering some of the papers. “I think I can tell you why Emily might’ve survived when the others didn’t. Although, I’m not sure it gets us any closer to a cure.”
He rubs his eyes and looks down at her underlines, asterisks, and margin notes. There are tons of them. She’s been hard at work while he slept.
“These are Calderon’s notes,” she says, handing him several pages. “Remember how I told you that CCR5 is a protein on the surface of white blood cells? How it acts as a receptor, allowing some viruses to attach to it and infect host cells?”
“Retroviruses,” he says.
“Yes. Regular viruses work by invading the blood directly. Retroviruses are different. They don’t live in the blood stream; they enter and live in the cells, sometimes remaining dormant for periods of time.”
“The alien virus is a retrovirus.”
“My guess is yes.” She shifts papers. “But that’s not the interesting part. Do you see here?” Her finger scans the page to point at a series of symbols and numbers. “And here? Where it says Delta 32?”
He nods.
“It’s in several places in Calderon’s notes, the same reference.” She points to two more places.
“What is it?”
“It’s rather new research, actually. I’ve been following it in the medical journals. CCR5-Delta 32 is a genetic anomaly, a deletion mutation. It’s very rare in the human population, but preliminary studies have suggested that individuals who carry the Delta 32 mutation have some kind of resistance to certain retroviruses. The one that’s attracting so much research attention right now is, of course, HIV 1. Scientists believe that people with the Delta 32 mutation may have a genetic resistance to HIV. Also smallpox.”
He looks at her. “And maybe other retroviruses as well,” he says, things beginning to connect.
She nods. “According to Calderon’s notes, Emily has the Delta 32 mutation. It’s quite possible that it protected her from a full blown infection of the alien virus.”
“How would she get it – the Delta 32? Is it something they could have given to her?”
Scully shakes her head. “No. It’s entirely genetic, just a random thing. She would have had to have inherited it from one or both parents.”
“So…you could have it.”
“Yes, I suppose it’s possible. It isn’t in any blood work-ups I’ve had done. I would have noticed it if it was. Like I said, it’s rare. But I suppose, it couldn’t hurt to find out. I can have a blood sample taken and tested. I guess I’d like to know if I’m a carrier.”
“Can it help Emily? Could it help us find a cure?”
She sighs, her tired eyes sweeping low. “Unfortunately…I don’t think so. Emily’s records indicate that her anemia is intrinsic, meaning that it was also inherited. It’s unrelated to the Delta 32 mutation. But in any case, I’d like to send a sample of her blood to someone I know for a work-up. I’d like to see if it’s possible to isolate the gene or genes that are causing the hemolytic anemia.”
“Who? We can’t trust anyone at the FBI with this.”
“I know,” she replies. “I have a good friend, someone I went to med school with – he’s a brilliant geneticist. He conducts research out of Temple University Hospital. His name is Cooper Reed.”
“I don’t think I’ve heard you mention him before.” It shouldn’t surprise him that there happens to be people in Scully’s life she’s neglected to mention. After all, she managed to live a full twenty-seven years before knowing him. But it still does.
“We won’t find anyone more knowledgeable and current in the field of genetics, I can promise you that.”
He frowns in concern. “Are you sure that’s such a good idea, Scully? Having another professional analyze Emily’s DNA? You know what he’s going to find. All it would take would be one call to a medical journal, saying he’s discovered some kind of genetic anomaly and the press will be all over us. And Emily.”
She considers this. “He wouldn’t do that. Not behind my back.”
“Inhuman DNA, Scully. That’s what he’ll find. Are you sure about this?”
“I trust him.” The look she sends him says it’s not up for negotiation. He gives a fleeting thought to whether her reaction is in part because of how he defended Marita. As in, ‘you go ahead and trust your friends and I’ll trust mine.’
They need to be on the same team on this or they’ll get nowhere fast. He reaches over and brushes the back of his hand lightly against hers. “Okay. Make the call.”
February 4, 1998
Mulder is scheduled to fly back to DC two days after Emily gets released from the hospital. They spend that time at the hotel watching movies together and relaxing so that Emily can recover her strength. Mulder notices that it seems to take her a little longer to snap back than it did after her last hospital stay. She sleeps more, eats less, and doesn’t demonstrate quite the same level of enthusiasm that he’s used to from her. He takes her to the pool once, to splash around, and she tires after a short time, returning to the room and falling asleep for nearly three hours.
Scully leaves Emily’s side only to shower. She watches over her like a hawk, day and night. Mulder doesn’t think she’s even getting more than a perfunctory night’s sleep. Just enough to avoid keeling over.
Mrs. Hundley, the social worker visits for the third time. There is discussion of postponing it, but there’s a time table to maintain if they want to complete all the visitations before the custody hearing. Emily lies in Scully’s arms for the duration of the visit, watching TV with her thumb firmly implanted in her mouth. Scully’s hand never stops moving as she answers questions. Rubbing Emily’s back, brushing her hair from her face, caressing her slack hand and pale cheek.
“I should stay,” he says at one point, as they both sit watching Emily sleep on the couch after dinner. “You need me here more than the Bureau needs me pushing papers right now.”
“No, Mulder. Our custody hearing is in ten days. You need to go back and work, make sure everything’s ready at home.” She yawns and rests her head on the back of the chair. “We’ll be okay.”
He watches Emily breathe. Follows the steady, quickened rise and fall of her tiny chest. “Is she getting worse, Scully?” he whispers.
She doesn’t answer him; she just gets up and walks into the bedroom.
February 9, 1998
Mulder closes the door on several layers of dust, his beat leather couch, and some art work hanging on the cracked plaster walls that he doesn’t know what to do with. He forwards his mail to Scully’s apartment, and starts sleeping there, although he can’t quite bring himself to invade her bed. Some places one should be invited to, and he hasn’t been yet. He settles on her couch each night, which is quite a bit less broken in than his, but smells better.
It’s weird to be in Scully’s apartment without her for days, but he feels like it will be better if he’s already staying there when they bring Emily home. Less hassle. He watches her TV and uses her towels and puts his feet up on her coffee table while he reads.
He strategically and carefully makes space for his clothing and toiletries, doing his best not to disrupt her homeostasis too much. It takes him a half hour to figure out exactly where to put his shaving gear and deodorant in her medicine cabinet. The shaving cream is too tall for the top shelf, so it needs to be on the middle or bottom one. But if he moves her Tylenol and that little red jar with the face goop to the top shelf, she won’t be able to reach it. There’s space in the first drawer of the vanity, along with the feminine hygiene products, but Mulder isn’t sure how she will feel about him keeping his stuff next to her tampons, so best not to upset that apple cart. The hairdryer, curling iron, hairspray, and several bottles of very expensive-looking salon junk take up the entire bottom drawer, so that’s out.
Damn, girls need a lot of stuff. This isn’t news. He’s lived with one before. He’s just gotten ornery in his extended bachelorhood and started taking the existence of space for granted. When they buy a house, he’s going to be on the lookout for a monster-sized master bathroom with his and hers vanities, sinks, and medicine cabinets. Any man who has shared a bathroom with a woman understands that it’s a necessity, not an option.
He moves all the over-the-counter drugs to the top shelf and takes the middle shelf of the cabinet for his stuff. If she has a headache, he’ll reach what she needs.
Then there’s the matter of the bedroom. He’s able to usurp just enough closet space for his hanging suits, but that’s about it. Gratefully, he only has a couple pairs of favorite dress shoes because floor space is desperately limited. She has more shoes than a centipede.
He picks up a black pump by the high, thin-tipped heel and rotates it in his hand. There’s a scuff on the toe and he wonders which misadventure of theirs might’ve caused it. She’s always blaming him for her footwear casualties. If he extends his middle finger and thumb as far as they will go, he can fit her shoe in his hand, heel to toe. Size 7M. He commits it to memory. A man should know his wife’s sizes. In the event of rushed birthday gift purchases, shopping on Christmas Eve, a forgotten anniversary. Well, shoes aren’t going to cut it if he misses an anniversary - best to stick to jewelry. Even Mulder knows that one.
Placing the shoe back down neatly with the other nine pairs that look exactly the same, he sifts carefully through the silk blouses, dark skirts, dress slacks, matching jackets. Oooh, a couple of dresses hiding in the back – one blue, one silver-grey, both sleeveless. Note to self: come up with a reason for Scully to wear those very soon.
More sizes. He shamelessly looks. Small…extra small…4...6P…4P…more smalls…some with no tags that look like he could maybe fit his ankle in the sleeve.
He moves on to the dressers and considers his options. Two drawers for his stuff would be adequate – he can keep some things on the top shelf above her closet that is mostly empty because she can’t reach it without a stepstool and that pisses her off. She already has one drawer that is empty, except for an extra blanket that he relocates to the hall linen closet. He shoves three pairs of jeans, two pairs of sweatpants and half a dozen tee shirts in there. Begins hunting for a happy home for his underwear and socks. Don’t look in that top one, don’t look in that top one, don’t look in that top one.
He looks in the top one.
Scully panties. Folded neatly and stored with the matching bras, satin and lace cups tucked one inside the other. Who folds their underwear this nicely? And what is the deal with everything matching? He can barely manage to coordinate his tie with his shirt. No wonder department stores target all their advertising toward women. They actually care about this stuff, apparently.
There’s something midnight blue and shimmery peeking out from beneath a stack of undies and against his better judgment, he tugs it free. A cascade of slippery silk slides through his fingers and he finds himself looking at some kind of slinky, very short number with microscopic straps. He arches one brow while holding the item up in front of him. Why in the world would Scully have this and who might she have worn it for? Or is this just something every girl has lying around just in case? For sanity purposes, he decides not to think too hard about it. He files it away in the same mental folder with the tattoo and the psychopath.
It takes him a while to put everything back just as he found it. When he goes to push the drawer back in, something rattles around and clunks against the back of the dresser and he opens the drawer again. And hesitates. And peers a little closer. And then smiles.
Scully, Scully, Scully.
He shakes his head, smile stretching into a charmed grin. Not that he didn’t assume she had one. If he were a woman, he’d have ten. Hell, if he were a woman, he’d probably never leave his house. Or put clothes on. He’d be too busy standing in front of the mirror. The female body is a brilliant creation. He can’t imagine how women get anything accomplished with all that to admire and play with, right at their disposal.
A bright pink one too. How delightfully girly of her. If he has his way, she won’t be needing it as often from now on.
Feeling slightly guilty for inadvertently invading her privacy, he very carefully tucks everything away where it was and closes the drawer.
Over the course of several evenings, he whips Scully’s apartment into shape. Not that it was untidy to begin with. But without a dweller in almost two months, the place has gathered some dust and has taken on a stale feeling. He vacuums and mops and dusts and scrubs the bathroom. He does things to Scully’s apartment he’s never done to his own in almost nine years of living there. Scully has an obscene amount of cleaning products under her kitchen sink and he uses them all, just to be sure.
He makes two trips to Toys R Us and one to Bed, Bath & Beyond where he asks a very nice sales girl to show him everything a three-year-old girl would need for the coolest bedroom ever. He settles on a complete bed ensemble in pink and purple ladybugs, the scientific inaccuracy of which will drive Scully crazy. He piles the top of the double bed with a respectable number of stuffed animals and fills a bookshelf with children’s books. In the corner of the room goes a classic wooden toy chest packed full of new preschool toys. By the time he’s finished, the room has been entirely transformed.
Each evening, he reads to Emily on the phone and sometimes, an hour or so after tuck in, Scully calls him back. Emily’s strength improves with each day that passes and Scully reports that a follow-up doctor’s appointment confirmed improvement. Her red blood counts are better than they’ve been in weeks, no doubt from the recent transfusion. But Mulder knows, without having to ask, that there’s been no miracle. Unless they find a cure, it’s just a matter of time before a relapse is inevitable.
Lately, when they’ve talked, Scully has seemed different. More reserved and quiet. He’s tried to initiate the banter and flirting that is so familiar between them, but she either changes the subject or grows silent. With Scully, being able to read her mind is an art form and he’s still learning. She isn’t forthcoming with either her thoughts or her feelings, and it gives the profiler in him a real workout. She should play poker – she’d walk away with all the chips without breaking a sweat.
He tells himself that it’s just the stress. Emily’s illness, the upcoming custody hearing, moving back to DC – of course it’s all taking its toll on her. He wishes he were there to comfort her. To hold her. He wishes she’d let him.
He hopes for a day in the not-to-distant future when Emily will be cured. When she will be a completely whole, healthy and happy little girl. Their daughter. When Emily will go to school and learn to tie her shoes and ride a bike and whistle, like normal kids. A day when Scully will smile more and her biggest worry will be helping Emily through a case of strep throat or the stomach flu.
He never thought of himself as wanting anything normal. In fact, the idea of normal had always scared him a little. Like if he wasn’t chasing the next big thing, he’d be missing out. He’d hear about friends from college getting married and having babies, buying houses and getting job promotions, and he’d wonder how it was enough.
If there are things lurking in this world and beyond that defy explanation, things that threaten and devour, men who profit from evil, whose entire existences are based upon deceit. If you know, as he does, that these things exist, then how do you do it? How do you leave your office at five o’clock each day to go to your kid’s baseball game, then grill some burgers for dinner, walk the dog, make love to your wife and go to sleep?
In a thousand years, he never imagined that he might be attracted to such a life. And even now, he knows with plausible certainty that he can’t just abandon his quest – the quest to find Samantha, to expose the lies, to find the truth. Those things are as vital to him as drawing breath.
But in the past few weeks with Scully and Emily, he’s glimpsed an alternate reality. One in which a little bit of normal doesn’t seem half bad. A reality where he can actually imagine a balance in his life for the first time. Where there’s a reordering of priorities and the things he always thought were important to him still are, except that now they aren’t front and center anymore. They’re just one part of the picture. It’s like looking at something through a kaleidoscope and seeing the brilliance of the spectrum for the first time. It takes your breath away.
February 12, 1998
The evening before the custody hearing, Mulder finds himself breaking bread with Brother Bill. Scully waits until he has been back in California for a day and a half to carefully inform him that they are expected for dinner at Bill and Tara’s house. Since Emily will be spending the night there because the hearing is early the next morning, it would be impolite to decline the offer.
Mulder can’t come up with a good enough reason to send Scully and Emily without him, and the firm look on Scully’s face tells him he’d better not try. This must fall into the category of ‘things you just suck up and do when you’re married,’ along with making sure the dirty socks always land in the hamper, not drinking milk directly from the carton, and putting the toilet seat back down. That last one will take some getting used to.
It isn’t as painful as Mulder anticipated – shaking Bill’s hand and exchanging forced pleasantries. Almost, but not quite. After they get past the ‘you’re fucking my sister’ look that Bill gives him for the first half hour, it gets better. Mulder considers telling him that, in fact, he is not. But he isn’t sure which would be more awkward – letting Bill think they’re shagging like horny newlyweds or admitting that it’s over a month past the wedding and they’ve yet to consummate the marriage.
Scully’s sister-in-law is an exceptionally good cook. Either that, or repeated abuse by the Bureau cafeteria has completely befuddled his taste buds. The homemade chicken pot pie is the best he’s ever had and he tells her so.
“I make my own crust,” Tara replies, humbly. “My mother always insisted that it makes all the difference.”
Mulder helps himself to a second piece. “Well, I’d say your mother was right.”
“It’s delicious,” agrees Scully, cutting up pieces of carrot, potato, and chicken on Emily’s plate. Emily wrinkles her nose and pushes the cooked celery out of the way with her fork, picking at the rest.
Tara passes a napkin covered basket around the table. “Would you like another buttermilk biscuit, Fo-um, Mulder?” The poor woman seems thoroughly confused as to how to address him.
“Thank you.” He helps himself to a second biscuit.
“I want another too,” states Emily, shyly.
“May I please have another,” corrects Scully, gently. “And not until after you eat more chicken and vegetables, Sweetie.”
Bill pauses between bites to watch his sister, just a little mesmerized.
I know, agrees Mulder. I know.
Bill winks at Emily. “We’ve got chocolate cake for dessert.”
Scully reproaches him with her eyes, but the corners of her mouth are turning up. “You’re not helping.”
“Since when isn’t chocolate cake helpful?”
Mulder grins. “The man has a point, Scully.”
Bill glances his way and Mulder thinks that perhaps they might’ve just had a moment, but then Bill’s smile fades and he redirects his attention back down to his food and grumbles, “Are you really going to keep calling her that now that you’re married?”
“I like it,” Scully replies, firmly.
Mulder visually high-fives her.
The baby starts fussing and Tara breastfeeds at the table and Mulder refuses to look anywhere but at his plate.
***
It’s already past Emily’s bedtime when they finally prepare to leave and Mulder can tell that Scully is stalling. He can’t blame her. Only a week ago, Emily was lying in a hospital bed. Mulder’s almost as anxious as Scully is about leaving her. But the hearing is at 9 am and they have no one to watch Emily. Tara is wonderful with her and Emily has become used to visiting.
“We’ll be just fine,” Tara assures, taking Emily’s small overnight bag from Scully’s hand. “The guest room is right across the hall from us and we’ll keep both doors open.”
Scully nods and chew her bottom lip. “Call us if anything comes up. Please – anytime day or night. We can be here in fifteen minutes.”
“Stop worrying, Mama.” Tara smiles, comfortingly.
Emily, who is curled onto the couch, fully engrossed in The Fox and the Hound, pays them no attention. She has her yellow blanket pressed to her cheek and her thumb in her mouth. Mulder’s seen that look before plenty of times. In ten minutes, she’ll be out like a light.
He squeezes Scully’s shoulder. “Ready?”
She shakes her head. “Not really.”
“Thank you,” Mulder says to Tara. “We’ll be back as soon as we can in the morning.”
“With good news,” Tara adds, her face bright.
He hopes so. Because there is no way on earth he’ll be able to pry this little girl from her mother’s arms if the entire world comes crashing down on them tomorrow. If there is a Man Upstairs, like Scully insists there is, then He’d better be calling the shots.
***
There’s a biting chill to the air for February in southern California and she’s shivering by the time they unlock the door to the suite. “I think the cleaning lady must’ve turned the heat down,” he says, tipping open the door to the thermostat and adjusting the temperature.
He turns on a few lights while she stands fixated at the small kitchen table, staring at the dusty, cheap hanging chandelier. Her mind is off somewhere and he can pretty much guess where. He steps closer and gives a tiny, gentle tug to her sleeve. “Take your coat off,” he says, trying to keep his tone light. “Stay a while.”
She chuffs quietly, unbuttoning her jacket and draping it neatly over the back of a chair. “Thank you for going tonight. I know you didn’t want to.”
He shrugs. “It wasn’t so bad. I survived.”
“You did more than survive. I think my sister-in-law found you quite charming.”
“She’s very nice.”
“She’s a saint for putting up with my brother.”
“I wasn’t going to put it that way,” he says, “but yeah.”
“Tara gave up an art history fellowship at Boston University to marry Bill and move to California.”
His brows rise. “A displaced New Englander. I knew I liked her.”
“My brother married well.”
He tilts his head a little and takes a couple of slow, lazy steps toward her, a small smile forming. “Not as well as I did.”
She admonishes him with her eyes, but she’s blushing.
They stand in silence for a few moments and he can almost feel the tension emanating off her. She’s like a ball of worry, a coiled spring. He reaches for her shoulders and massages gently. “It’s going to be all right.” He hopes he sounds more convinced than he feels, although the rational side of him is arguing that it’s the truth. The judge wouldn’t have granted them provisional custody unless he had every intention of making it permanent, right? Tomorrow is just a formality.
“I’m fine,” she says, her voice a weak whisper.
“C’mere.” He coaxes her even closer until he can wrap both arms all the way around her. She rests her head on his chest and her body seems to shrink as he holds her, like someone let the air out of her. He shapes his body to hers, holding her tight. Her shoulders sink as she relaxes and lets go.
When she looks up at him, her expression is soft and open, unguarded. She looks tired and sad and he loves her more than he’s ever loved anything in his life. If only he could protect her, give her everything she wants. He cradles her face in one hand and his thumb caresses her cheek, then thoughtlessly drifts over her lower lip. She closes her eyes and presses her mouth to his thumb.
He kisses the top of her silky crown, then her forehead, then her temple where her eyes are just a touch damp. She sighs, but keeps her eyes shut. Her lips part and he can feel the warmth of her sweet breath on his Adams apple.
He isn’t thinking much at this point, just feeling her breathe with his palms to the back of her rib cage, a steady rise and fall. She tilts her face up just a touch and the softness of her cheek grazes his chin. He lowers his mouth to hers and pecks lightly at first, just tiny teasing brushes of his lips.
Then she stretches and he kisses her fully. Their mouths move nimbly together. His hands slide down to her waist and squeeze, thumbs pressing at her hip bones. Hers move to the back of his neck and the tips of her fingers sift through his hair. The kiss deepens ever so slightly and they’re both breathing harder now. He makes the smallest of sounds in the back of his throat – a hum of distinct pleasure.
The change is sudden, nearly like flipping a switch. Her muscles tighten against him and her eyes open. She pulls back, still breathing heavy, and presses the back of her fingers to her mouth. She looks surprised with herself, suddenly uncomfortable.
“Scully,” he rasps, in a heady, intoxicated voice. “What’s the matter?”
She shakes her head, taking another step back. “Nothing, I…” she swallows, looking ready to flee.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I-I’m fine.” She smooths her mussed hair, composing herself. “Tomorrow’s a big day and I’m tired. I’m going to get some sleep. Good night, Mulder.” And with that, she disappears into her bedroom, shutting the door, and he’s left standing there wondering exactly what the hell just happened.
February 13, 1998
It’s 9:03 and the judge has entered the court room. Helena Lynch warned them of Judge Henderson’s punctuality and therefore, he and Scully have been waiting at the court house since 8:20, which Mulder thinks is a bit extreme, but he isn’t going to say anything. Scully has been showered and dressed since 6:15, and he figures she has to do something or she’ll go crazy. He practically has to pry the coffee cup from her hands when they leave the hotel. He doesn’t ask how much she’s had, but they’re on the second pot and her eyes have taken on that familiar frantic look that he characterizes as her ‘3 am autopsy look.’ She has lemur eyes. Coke addict eyes. He wonders if she’s slept at all.
Getting a cab during morning rush hour proves to be another feat, but Mulder slips a twenty to Andre, their favorite hotel bellhop, and like magic, they’re whisked away in a yellow taxi, rubbernecking through traffic.
They flash their badges at court house security and are ushered through at the head of the line, but since Mulder is wearing his weapon, the clearance process takes a few extra minutes and he gets the impatient posture from Scully. Arms crossed over her fitted blazer, toe tapping.
By the time everything actually gets started, he can tell Scully is more wired than a Christmas tree. He sits close to her, their suited elbows touching, both of them staring straight ahead. “Breathe,” he whispers.
“I’m fine,” she says, tightly.
“Okay.”
“All rise. San Diego County court is now in session. Judge Thomas Henderson presiding.”
***
Mulder maneuvers their rental vehicle down the picturesque, tree-lined street, passing by houses with children playing in yards, dogs barking, elderly women gardening, a college kid waxing his Mustang, a girl with a ponytail pushing a stroller.
It’s middle class America. The American Dream. Picket fences and safe neighborhoods. Family barbecues and pot luck dinners. Camping trips and fireworks on the Fourth of July. Boy Scouts and Little League. It’s everything everybody wants. It’s what Scully wants. It’s what Mulder never really understood. Up about two months ago.
The Chevy coasts slowly up the blacktopped driveway and Mulder cuts the engine. They sit for a minute, staring at the little yellow house with white shutters, rose bushes, and trimmed hedges. “Are you okay?” he asks, softly.
“Yeah.”
She sits without moving.
Time passes.
“Do you want me to bring her out?”
Scully shakes her head. “No. Just give me a minute.”
He does.
Finally, she opens her car door and gets out. He follows her lead.
Before they can cross the length of the driveway, the front door of Bill’s house flies open and Emily comes skipping out. Tara is right behind her, trying to catch up. “Emily, wait a minute, Sweetie.”
Tara looks at Scully, a nervous question in her eyes. With a shuddery breath, Scully’s mouth lifts into a smile.
“Oh thank God!” Tara exclaims.
Kneeling down, Scully scoops Emily up into her arms and holds her. Emily wraps her legs around Scully’s waist and rests her head on her shoulder. “Can we go home?” Emily asks.
“Yes,” Scully whispers, her face buried in the silk of Emily’s hair, her shoulders shaking. “Yes, we can go home.”
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Eren wanted to eat… no. Eren was starving. His throat was painfully dry. Every swallow of saliva was torture. His stomach, clenched into a tight knot, threatened to eat itself. He felt his strength fading with every hour, and if he didn't get up now, he would never rise again.
Was that so bad?
It would be liberation. The end. Everything. He would no longer cause pain, no longer see death. He would live out his last days and die. It would be… just.
Suddenly, thousands of red-hot needles pierced his back and temples. The pain was so sharp and sudden that it tore a silent groan from his throat. It was her pain. The pain of the parasite under his skin that refused to let him die.
No
.
He grabbed the back of his head, digging his fingers into his skin as if trying to tear out the source of the agony. What escaped his throat wasn't a cry, but a pitiful, animalistic rasp. His fingers found moisture—he had scratched his skin until it bled, not feeling this pain over the other.
Slowly, with inhuman effort, he rose from the floor. His legs buckled, dark spots swam before his eyes. He stood, swaying, his chest heaving convulsively.
He took the first step, then the second. The movements were mechanical, as if he were being led by strings. He thought of the hieroglyphs. The idea of studying the language was very tempting; it would help him finally not lose his mind. ‘I’ll find food, and then…’ — just a false promise.
Unfortunately, he couldn't read those books earlier. Every hour of his was spent trying not to die or go insane.
He went outside. The night was cold, and his thin clothes offered no protection. He hid in every shadow, around every corner, checking for people. Sometimes he encountered them. Someone with antennas, someone with a tail, and someone… just a human.
He pondered. Was this really normal here? These… mutations. Were an everyday occurrence… could it be…
His gaze was pierced by a sign. It depicted various dishes he didn't recognize, but they looked very appetizing. This time, there was nothing on the counter… it was some kind of restaurant. But maybe…
No, Eren wouldn't eat garbage. He couldn't bring himself to do it. Instead, the boy looked around. There were quite a few restaurants nearby, but most were closed. He could try to sneak in, but all the windows and doors were locked tight, and he lacked the strength.
A sound resembling a suppressed moan escaped his chest. It was the sound of hopelessness. His strength was melting away before his eyes, the dark spots merging into a solid black veil. He pressed his forehead against the cold glass of the display window, feeling his own reflection blend with the images of inaccessible food.
He trudged on, peering into every corner. Suddenly, he noticed a small white box. Looking at it distrustfully, the boy slowly approached it. He smelled a sweetish scent. Eren opened it and saw a box with five pastries of different colors and strange shapes.
Was it poison? A trap? But his stomach clenched so hard that thinking became impossible… He swallowed heavily and ate one. It was delicious. Eren exhaled and with weak movements hid the box.
He walked on. He needed to find some kind of drink. At least a small sip. Thirst had become sharper than any of the feelings he was experiencing.
He searched, he truly searched. Checked every corner, every shadow. He even looked in the bins, but each time found bottles drained to the last drop. As if life itself was mocking him.
His clouded gaze fell on a drainpipe. He stared at it. Watched for a minute, and during that time, thoughts raced madly through his head. This was his only chance. No buts. He had checked everything.
He slowly approached the pipe and crouched down. Eren cupped his hands, collecting the murky droplets, and greedily pressed his lips to them. The bitter, rusty-tasting liquid burned his throat but brought relief. Eren drank, his whole body trembling, until the last drops disappeared into his parched mouth.
He sat down heavily on the ground, licking his lips. Even this pitiful semblance of water turned out to be sweeter than any wine.
He was swaying. But he had to go.
Eren got up and trudged back towards the library. His legs barely moved, his body ached, and his face burned with shame, anger, and hopelessness. This was worse than eating someone else's leftovers.
“Now, now, you had no choice, dear brother. There are hopeless situations. Although, if you had chosen my plan, none of this would have happened.”
“Shut up,” the boy barely rasped. Great. Now he was talking to himself. He was finally and irrevocably going insane.
Eren walked like this for about thirty minutes when he heard a scream. He stopped and listened.
From the alley ahead came voices in a very unpleasant, nasal tone. Eren frowned. His first impulse was to turn around and leave. Getting involved in other people's problems was a sure way to attract attention. He didn't want to get even more problems than he already had.
“Walk on by,” a cold, rational voice, similar to Levi’s, hissed in his head. Then several others chimed in. “This is not your war. You’ve already been burned enough by your ‘righteous’ anger.” But his legs carried him forward.
He hid behind a corner and peeked into the alley.
Three older guys with dull, cruel faces had surrounded someone smaller. Eren didn’t immediately make out the victim—a teenager or a girl. One of the attackers held them by the scruff of the neck, another was jabbing a finger in their face, shouting something. The third just laughed, leering obscenely.
The scene was terrifyingly banal. Crude force, self-assertion at the expense of the weak. No Titans, no apocalypses. Just the petty, ugly cruelty of the ordinary world.
And something in Eren snapped.
Not rage. Not noble anger. A deaf, white-hot hatred. For everything: for these freaks, for this world that allowed such things to happen, for himself, for his own weakness. All his accumulated pain, despair, fury at his own powerlessness—all of it found an outlet in that instant.
Eren didn’t shout. Didn’t warn.
He simply moved from his spot. Slowly, without hiding, he stepped out of the shadows. His gait was unsteady, but there was a kind of eerie, inhuman directness to it. His eyes, empty and burning at the same time, fixed on the back of the main aggressor.
The guys didn’t notice him at first. Then one of them, the one laughing, nudged his friend. “Hey, look, some bum stumbled in. Get lost, freak, mind your own business!”
Eren didn’t answer. He just looked at the bullies with his sharp green eyes.
“I told you…” the guy roared, turning to him and swinging his arm for a punch.
He never got to land it.
Eren kicked the bully in the shin, and he grabbed his leg. In the same motion, Eren grabbed his head and broke his nose with his knee. The attacker went limp in his grip and a second later was thrown against the wall.
His movements were fast and brutal, not giving the others even a moment to think.
The other two looked at him with uncertainty. Crystals began to form on one of their arms—a Quirk activating—but in that same second, Eren took him down with a force that shouldn’t have been possible for such an emaciated boy. He punched the guy in the face, and he fell unconscious.
The last one tried to grab him from behind, but the long-haired boy turned and struck him directly on the jaw. With a loud crack, the last attacker landed and stayed down.
Breathing heavily, Eren looked at the victim. The teenager was looking at him with a mix of fear and… awe. The boy started to approach, but Eren shied away.
“I… thank you so much!” he bowed.
Eren felt deeply uncomfortable. He understood the word “thank you,” but why did he bow? Why? It was strange.
When he nodded uncertainly, the boy ran off, leaving Eren standing there like a statue. Shaking himself, he examined the bullies. A familiar object had fallen out of one of their pockets. A wallet.
Eren quickly approached, grabbed it, and checked the amount of cash inside. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to buy water and some food. He looked at the other thugs and quickly searched them.
The others had a bit less money, but it was more than enough for him. For the first time, his lips twisted into something vaguely resembling a smile. Finally, after almost a week, he could buy proper food.
The long-haired boy quickly turned and ran into the alley. And he didn’t notice the figure watching him from above.
His posture spoke of professionalism, and his eyes, hidden behind glasses, narrowed in concern.
Eren, meanwhile, reached a tiny, neon-lit shop on the outskirts of the district just before dawn. He walked in silently and began examining the shelves, finding the one he thought held water. The boy opened it and felt the cold. He was perplexed. How was the cold preserved in there?
With a heavy sigh, he took three bottles and looked at the price tag. It was… not too expensive, it seemed. Then Eren went to the food shelves. There were bars, packs of noodles, and some packets with strange drawings. Checking the prices, he took two packs of noodles and several bars and went to the checkout.
Eren, with trembling hands, placed the products and the bills on the counter. The cashier looked at him suspiciously but relented and gave him the goods, first scanning them with some device. He put the items in a bag and left the store.
Outside, it was getting light. It was cool, peaceful and quiet.
Through the streets, ignoring all rules, strange vans with bright symbols raced with a deafening roar, and people, instead of sleeping or going to work, ran in crowds in one direction, their faces not showing fear, but excitement and anticipation.
The air crackled with the distorted voice from street loudspeakers: “…CITIZENS! REMAIN CALM! AN INCIDENT INVOLVING A DANGEROUS CRIMINAL IS BEING RESOLVED BY HEROES… PLEASE CLEAR THE AREA…”
The words “incident,” “criminal,” “resolved” pierced his brain like spikes. He turned sharply and saw a crowd gathering.
But the faces of the people around showed no horror. There was none of that petrified, chilling silence that fell before a battle. Instead—an excited buzz. Thrill. Anticipation.
Eren was caught in the general flow. He was pushed, jostled; he almost dropped his bag, instinctively pressing it to his chest. His legs, still weak from hunger, carried him forward against his will.
And then he saw them.
On the square ahead, amidst clouds of dust and smoke, two figures were fighting. One—huge, mutated, with claws instead of hands—was destroying everything around him. The Villain. The other—in a blue costume, with a powerful mask and… pipes in his legs? That was definitely a Hero.
And around them—a spectacle. The crowd roared, filming on their phones, someone was even selling snacks. For them, this was a show. Entertainment.
For Eren, it was a nightmare of déjà vu. Screams. Destruction. A battle for life and death. But here, there was no horror. Here, there were smiles.
The Hero dodged spectacularly, and the crowd roared with delight. The Villain in fury struck a building wall with his claw, tore out a chunk, and threw it at his opponent. The man dodged again and suddenly appeared next to the clawed villain. He struck him with full force, and he flew back.
Eren stood, pressed against a wall, unable to move. His consciousness refused to process it. He felt sick.
“Look, brother,” Zeke’s icy voice whispered in his head. “They haven’t just accepted it. They are enjoying the show. They’ve turned war into a sport. Did I tell you humanity couldn’t be redeemed? Here’s your proof.”
Eren didn’t hear him. He watched as the Hero delivered the final blow, and the crowd exploded in a jubilant roar. He saw a happy father lift his son onto his shoulders so he could get a better view of the defeated and mutilated man being taken away.
In his hands, he clutched the bag of food. He had money. He had survived. But at that moment, Eren Yeager had never felt more like a stranger in this world. He had saved one person from violence and was now watching thousands of others applaud it.
He turned and walked away, against the crowd that was still arriving. He needed to get back to his library. To his silence. Where the only voices were the ones in his head.
They, at least, made sense.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
It was pretty nice to have someone to text beyond just her brothers. They were mostly just part of the “Family Emergency Group Chat”, which was less for emergencies and more a place for Varth to share memes that Rhamun absolutely did not understand. Aele’nor would attempt to bridge the gap, but it’s widely agreed upon what explaining a joke does to its enjoyability.
The most exciting thing Sunday usually entailed was trying a new type of wine while listening to a 10pm wind-down podcast. Aele’nor managed to choke down half a glass of a soul-puckering dry red blend before deciding she’d pawn it off on Rhamun. Stuffy grownup wine was best suited to her stuffy grownup older brother.
She and Wyll had exchanged a few texts after yesterday’s incident, mostly him asking to make sure she was feeling alright the next day. The answer was a resounding yes, fortunately. The headache had gone away after a good night’s sleep, and the bruise was already starting to fade. Unfortunately not enough that she wouldn’t need to hide it under a layer of concealer for work tomorrow.
When her phone buzzed on the bedside table, Aele’nor was expecting Varth’s shitposting, or a promotional email from frumpy-bras-for-awkwardly-large-busts-dot-com.
[Wyll: I need your opinion on something.]
[Aele’nor: Alright, shoot.]
The next image was a not unfamiliar sight. Aele’nor had walked past the Minsc and Boo memorial statue on her commute every morning since she started working at Emerald Grove. After standing for centuries, the city council seemed to agree that a mending spell couldn’t keep up with the wear and tear of a piece that ancient.
Through some folly of poor planning or unbridled nepotism, the restoration job was botched to put it lightly. And the new, vacant, wall-eyed stare of The Gate’s favorite Ranger gazed back at her through pixels and jpeg artefacts.
[Aele’nor: Oh, it’s awful. Like he’s silently begging Kelemvor to put him out of his misery.]
[Wyll: RIGHT? Buddy of mine calls it “camp” and thinks it’s hilarious. I think they just fucked up a perfectly decent statue.]
[Aele’nor: This is Baldur’s Gate after all, do we ever know when to leave well enough alone?]
[Wyll: You don’t know how right you are lmao.]
When it did eventually come time to set her phone down for the night, she was smiling. And even as Aele’nor closed her eyes and waited for sleep to take her, she wondered how long it had been since a text message gave her something to smile about.
Monday was back to business as usual. She woke up at an ungodly hour, got dressed and fed, and idly contemplated if today might be the day she tried wearing lipstick to work. It was not. Still, she grabbed her bag and stepped out onto the drowsy street of a world just waking up.
Emerald Grove had once occupied a cozy historical building in an older part of the city, a fact they proudly proclaimed in all their fliers and pamphlets. In the 21st century its operations had expanded, absorbing the surrounding buildings to host the steadily growing student body.
Its hodge-podge nature was particularly good at keeping the older and younger kids out of each other’s way. Helpful when students ranged in age from young adults to barely not-a-toddler. Aele’nor could handle the shenanigans of a moody sixteen year old, but a tweens were demons in humanoid shape.
The High School classes were all located in the oldest building, its entrance a seamless marriage of historical architecture and contemporary comforts. The most notable of which being the reception desk, currently manned by one bored looking half-elf with a wildly impractical curtain of black hair.
Before Aele’nor could start her pleasantries with the black-clad receptionist, the whir of electrical drills echoed through the hall. The dark side of working in the oldest building. It was perpetually under construction, because everything was perpetually breaking.
“So what is it they’re fixing now?” She asked.
“Some ninth grader got caught ripping air dryers off the washroom walls.” Shadowheart looked up from the computer just long enough to deliver a ‘not paid enough for this shit’ scowl. “Now all the bathrooms on this floor are closed for maintenance.”
“First of all, how? Second of all, why?”
She shrugged. “Bragging rights? I don’t know. But I was talking to Rath in the lounge earlier, and he said Nettie told security about a missing Potion of Giant’s Strength.” One corner of her mouth lifted in a smirk, “awfully suspicious, that.”
“Pulling off a heist to swipe half a dozen hand dryers is a unique form of vandalism, I’ll give them that.” Aele’nor didn’t even have to ask to know the hapless teenager’s ultimate fate. Chewed out by Vice Principal Khaga within an inch of their life, and likely saved from expulsion by their rich parent footing the bill.
“I also heard you’re making inroads with the dreamboat little league coach.” Shadowheart remarked coyly, not even bothering to look up from whatever information she was clacking away on the reception desk keyboard.
Thoroughly caught off guard, Aele’nor scoffed. “What, were you there on Saturday?”
“Trickery domain cleric.” Shadowheart replied, conspiratorially tapping the side of her nose with a finger. “It has a number of benefits.”
Aele’nor perked a skeptical brow. “So your cult gives you insight into my social life?”
The receptionists eyes narrowed, and her typing paused. “Shar worship,” She spoke in hissing whisper, “is an underground occult folk-religion, wildly misconstrued by the government during the Abyssal Panic in the nineties.”
“Do they teach you that line on orientation day?”
Shadowheart rolled her eyes, but a smile still lingered on her mouth. “Go to hell.”
And hell, as it turned out, was full of desks, whiteboards, uncomfortable chairs, and motivational cat posters.
It was work as usual. Wait for students to file in until the bell rings, pick up homework, pass out calculators, begin the lesson, finish the lesson, pass out homework, bell rings, do it all again. There were a few
choice
pupils who interrupted that steady ballet of routine, but the benefit of teaching advanced physics was that most students actually wanted to learn.
Lunch came at noon, followed by a block of answering emails. After two more classes, and a staggeringly dry meeting, it was over.
Aele’nor checked and double checked to make sure the classroom was locked, before checking her phone. It was easier to keep it turned off during the day, both to save battery and avoid incurring Khaga’s wrath. The result was a wall of notifications to sort through at the end of the day.
It was the usual suspects, notifications from people she followed on PaperBird, pings from that mobile game she really ought to delete, and then a text.
[Wyll: Think we could grab coffee sometime? My treat.]
Aele’nor found herself staring at the little blue speech bubble for longer than a reasonable person should've. That wasn’t a weird thing for two adults to do, right? It certainly wasn’t inconceivable that Wyll still had some lingering guilt about a stranger getting hurt on his watch. Maybe this was why he wanted her number in the first place, to set things right before making like ships parting in the night.
Or he wanted to spend more time with her.
Her thoughtful trance was broken as a custodian gently nudged her foot with a broom. That seemed good a sign as any it was time to get going, and time to figure out a response. As Aele’nor began her walk home, she composed a reply.
[Aele’nor: Sure. There’s a good place called Moonbean not to far from my place :)]
She let out an audible exhale after hitting send. The smiley face seemed a touch juvenile, but there was to do fussing over an already-sent text message. Three little dots appeared at the bottom of the screen, indicating either her timing was amazing… Or he’d been waiting for her to respond.
[Wyll: Cool, meet you there in an hour?]
There was a part of her brain that desperately wanted to hit the breaks. She didn’t do spontaneity. For better or worse Aele’nor was a creature of routine, and routine was familiar and comfortable and gave her life structure. Change was scary, but without it she would be stuck doing the same thing forever.
Her thumbs pattered over the touch screen keyboard, brow furrowed and mouth set in a resolute line. Any outside observer would believe this woman was composing the most important text message of her entire life.
[Aele’nor: Sounds like a date.]
[Aele’nor: Date as in plan I mean. I’m smart.]
[Wyll: Smart AND funny ;)]
There were those damn butterflies again. Aele’nor shoved her phone back in her bag, took a breath, and became part of the ebb and flow of Baldurian sidewalk traffic. Maybe she had actually been right in that first message. It kind of sounded a little like a date.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
“There you are. Not in a rush to run off, are you?” The voice rapidly approached from behind. Zhongli stopped to let her, lest she start thinking he was actually trying to escape. There was no point trying to run when she’d already set her mind to speaking with him.
“Not necessarily, no. The breeze and view out here tempted me on a walk, is all.” He replied without turning around. “And General Musatas seemed to be getting into a heated discussion with Marchosius. I didn’t wish to be dragged into either side.”
Guizhong laughed beside him, keeping pace as they walked a little ways from today’s assembly. Today they’d agreed to meet on the highest peak in their territory, where the air thinned and the breeze was pleasantly cool.
He could feel her eyeing him beside him until they made it to the cliff face, where her focus turned to the vast view before them. Looking down, the two had a view of nearly the entirety of their people among the large crops the God of dust had painstakingly worked to cultivate.
“I know Indarias burned down part of Marchosius’ personal kitchen last time she tried to cook, but I don’t see the harm in letting her try again.” She chatted. More often than not she spoke enough for the both of them while Zhongli offered his ear to listen.
“Marchosius also spoke to me about cultivating those chillies in the north east. Said it’d be worth the investment.”
Most agricultural developments were left to her. He had his hands tied focusing on keeping their little nation safe that he hadn’t the time to hope to understand managing the finer details Guizhong fussed over. The most he ever offered in that regard was insight into the minerals in the soil where the crops were planted. His primary objectives usually boiled down to how to keep the war from reaching their little nation- and a current passing thought that he hoped this mountain would still be around after the war. It was truly a lovely spot to stand with the sun soaking into his skin.
“Oh? Are you considering it?” He asked beside her.
“Maybe. Managing the land we have now is a delicate balance. We have to have filling crops, but it also raises the spirits to have something different or flavorful.”
“You could allot a small plot of land to him at first.” Zhongli considered, “or you could make him grow them in his own kitchen, if he’s so inclined.” Guizhong considered his suggestions for a moment before she couldn’t contain the fit of laughter bubbling inside her.
“Hm?” Beside her Zhongli asked innocently, but a smile wormed its way onto his face anyways.
“It’s nothing, it’s nothing. Just- you’ve changed, you know? You never would’ve said something like that before.”
He was not partial to change- not even in the slightest, he would be adamantly clear about that. Yet the years spent with the adepti and yaksha had done its fair share of work in forcing his walls to crumble and for his shell to gain something of a personality outside of ‘war’.
“I haven’t the slightest inkling what you’re talking about.” Zhongli feigned ignorance as Guizhong elbowed him in the side. He looked from her back to the overarching expanse of the Guili plains.
“Heyyy, are you gonna stand there all day orrrr?” Guizhong, no, another voice snapped him out of his conversation with her. Was that right? That voice… didn’t belong, did it? He turned to look at who had greeted him then. Behind him stood none other than director Hu.
She was shifting on her feet, seeming more than a bit too eager for work today. She was outlined by the daylight outside. When he focused on her she let out an exasperated sigh, dragging her legs forward to meet him inside the funeral parlor before grabbing the fabric of his wrist.
“Come on now. We’ve got to get out and about while the sun’s still rising and travelers are ripe for the picking.” She tugged him along and he recomposed himself, following behind at her insistence. He glanced back over his shoulder. Who had he just been talking to? One of the employees, maybe.
“Director Hu, I must implore you not to bring up your ‘buy one get one half off’ sale this time…” he asked, and with a tug got her to relinquish his sleeve. He straightened and composed himself- at least one of the two of them needed to look professional.
“Why wouldn’t I tell people about the amazing savings they can get? It’s a once in a lifetime deal!” She just about cackled beside him. All she needed to do was rub her hands together and she would make a picture perfect villain.
“That… do not add that to your tag-line. It did not work last time.”
“Fresh faces, fresh eyes, fresh ears. What didn’t work last week might prove beneficial today-” .
There was no point in arguing. She fed on that like fuel to a fire. Hu Tao loved getting under her precious consultant’s skin. Outside the bright fluorescent pinks and blues illuminated above him swam dizzyingly, forcing his vision back to the road.
“Where are we headed first…?” He risked asking. Better to prepare beforehand.
“Wanmin.” Hu Tao chirped ahead of him.
“Wanm- please do not advertise at a restaurant, and your friends’ fathers’ no less.”
Hu Tao glanced back at him and burst into laughter at the desperate, already exasperated face of her employee. “Haha, that look on your face is priceless! I’m not going to advertise- this time- I’m picking us up breakfast.”
The sigh he released was palpable.
“Do not worry about me, I ate earlier.”
“When?” Hu Tao leveled a look over her shoulder. “I’m pretty sure you stayed up all night preparing the notes for our newest hire’s trip to Yulong Wharf.”
“I did, yes.” Zhongli replied. “I ate afterward at the-” the… assembly? What assembly? Why did the Guili assembly come to mind now, of all times? No, he ate at the Exalting Sanctum. Except that wasn’t right either. When
was
the last time he’d eaten? He should keep better track of these things if he wanted to blend in.
“Zhongli?” Hu Tao was tugging his hand again.
“Right, sorry. Pulling a near all-nighter threw me off. You’re right, I haven’t had breakfast.”
“Hmph, that’s what I thought! See, you just listen to me, old man.” The director patted his hand and graciously let go as they walked the rest of the way to Wanmin’s.
The sign above glowed golden, flickering with advertisements of memories and sweet dreams. There was the sound of a car horn off to the left.
“What are you getting?” Hu Tao ushered him over.
“I’m not sure. I’ll leave it up to you.” He answered halfheartedly. Without an appetite it made indulging in foods a little more difficult on a whim. And it certainly made craving anything more rare.
“Oh, so fish it is…” she stared at him with an evil smile for a moment before waving him off, “I’m kidding, I’m kidding!”
Trusting her not to order him something so abhorrent to start their workday, he turned and walked away to soak in more of the rising sun as it began to push the shadows away over the rooftops. The memory of the sun was distinct, but its physical presence empty. Today was nearly perfect- cloudless, ‘warm’, and with more bustle in the harbor than usual.
This meant Hu Tao’s business tricks might land her a few deals today. He was betting most would be adventurers, seeing as those traveling through the harbor might not have stopped to consider their own graves before, and she would be most eager to fill them in.
It would also mean he would take on the role of mediator today. There was no doubting her antics would disgruntle more than a handful of people. Someone wearing a suit and golden wristwatch excused themself past him.
Maybe he was in the mood for something particular to eat after all. A light snack would do the best job in keeping his spirits high.
“Actually director Hu, I think I’d rather-”
he stared across the street at an empty sidewalk. The fluorescent sign above him flickered to the next advertisement.
Golden Hour.
Right. The blinding lights and cacophony around him was not Liyue- could
never
be Liyue.
This was Penacony. Zhongli stared after the empty space across the street for a moment longer before regaining his composure and moving on. His memories had never been so disorienting before. He chalked it up to the overwhelming amount of sensory input here throwing him off. He hoped. Feeling anxiety begin to crawl up his spine he forced himself to move along.
He walked down the sidewalk following Main street. Several different vehicles hurtled past: some with wheels and some hovering, but all equally loud and dangerous. Starskiffs were one thing, but it was hard not to tense up when a machine sped by. Penacony was completely safe- this was the promise of the sweet dream- but he did not appreciate that this safety brought forth the risky nature in people.
Why had the Ten-Lords Commission considered him the optimal choice for this job? Surely even Huohuo would have liked the chance to see the dreamscape. Or Hanya. Or anyone, really. He’d never seen a car in person before today, and he was beginning to think he’d rather have kept it that way.
He stopped for another moment to collect himself. Here his safety was well assured. In reality, he lay on a bed hooked up to a machine and visor, which allowed him access to Penacony’s dreamscape from the Loufu. And despite there being several delves in Penacony, he was only expected to survey the eternal dawnbreak of Golden Hour (he was theorizing, however, that any other delve would have been preferable.)
There was still a lot of ground to cover. He wondered if he’d be better off finding a place with a view and settling down to observe. Perhaps a cafe, if he could find one.
A mere few feet after picking up his pace did an animated sign come waddling out on its own, fit with a face above the framing as it signaled cheerfully, soullessly. He skirted around it before it could flash whatever deal was plastered on its body.
He just desired a brief respite to adjust himself to the dreamscape, lest he lose himself to more dissociations.
Luckily for him, after a few bends down the street away from the road he found himself in a large courtyard- a concrete park that appeared to function as both an arcade and event space. He’d visited an arcade once on the Yaoqing so the large machines were not new to him, however their animated features were. Was everything on this planet-
dream
- personified? He could not claim to be a fan.
The children seemed to be enjoying the games just as much as the adults. So did the pepeshi, whose antennae bobbed excitedly, though they had trouble reaching the controls for most machines.
A man nearby leaned against a lamppost and heaved a rainbow from his stomach onto the pavement.
“I
told
you the sweet dream wouldn’t keep you from getting sick.” Kneeling beside him a woman held his hair back, sighing.
Penacony was rife with overindulgence. People consciously chose to live here? He understood someone had to for the sake of upkeep. Keeping an entire imaginary world functioning required a small army if its size were anything to go by. But to actively enjoy this level of capitalism- the economy seemed predatory at best. Every turn he’d made had been met with an animated sign blabbering about casinos, food, attractions… he had to remind himself this was the commercial district. It was not likely so
blatant
everywhere else. He hoped.
Zhongli’s eyes scanned the crowd- it seemed a lot of foot traffic came through here. Not all of the inhabitants he laid eyes on were perfectly ‘human’. There was a great deal of diversity here, at least.
He’d only spotted a few Xianshou natives so far. A few vidyadhara, several foxians, and one or two humans. Unfortunately the only way he could pinpoint the latter was through connections with
other
natives.
Striking up a conversation was not the hard part, not by any means. He was new here, and the tells for mara were not exactly hard to conceal as far as he was aware. Not to him, now that he’d felt it from several mara-stricken people over the past month. Not when he knew it firsthand through the abomination.
In the most subtle cases only leaves had manifested physically. Only she’d also been experiencing bouts of intense anxiety, bordering on panic attacks, and couldn’t remember her mother’s name.
In another, there were no physical clues, but the person was manic and aggressive, and had been arrested for assault before anyone even realized they were mara-stricken.
Zhongli did not imagine it would be easy to hide one’s mara in such an overcrowded place as this.
He caught sight of a foxian standing off to the side of the arcade, talking with an intellitron. How lucky for him that the Ten-Lords Commission did not require that he wear that blaringly obvious uniform for this mission. Thus began his next mark.
“...don’t see why you want to go to the theme park. It sounds like a glorified museum.” The foxian crossed their arms. “I’m much rather thinking of heading over to a Moment of Oasis.”
The intellitron clicked, considering. “I would rather not get sand between my plates, dreamstate or not.” Its unmoving face turned to notice Zhongli as he approached. It then tapped the foxian’s arm who looked over and perked up before tucking their phone away into their tail.
“Oh?” they turned to regard him.
“Hello,” Zhongli greeted, his hands clasped together, “I hope I’m not imposing.”
“Not at all.” The intellitron replied. “We were deciding where to go next.”
“And you seem just as lost as us.” The foxian chipped in after getting a good look at him. Their eyes flicked between his own and the crystal where his other would be before settling on his nose.
“Of sorts.” Zhongli agreed, a bit surprised by her astute observation. “I’ve only just arrived, I’m not used to the layout of a city this dense.”
“I know, right?” agreeing, the foxian let out an exasperated sigh. “Even Caelorum Venti doesn’t get so busy.”
“You’re from the Yaoqing?” He pivoted.
“Oh, you moved there?” They asked in return, their face brightening with a sense of familiarity. He almost forgot he could no longer blend in as a native- their own question threw him for a momentary loop. He shook his head.
“I lived there for a time, yes. Not anymore though.” Zhongli wasn’t certain he wanted to divulge living on the Loufu. With everything that had gone on recently, he imagined this foxian would be far more interested in a firsthand account than he was prepared to offer.
“Ah, shame. I get it though. Golden Hour probably ain’t the place for you if you weren’t a fan of the trends back home, though.” They had a point there. The Yaoqing was far more commercialized than the Loufu, with a much stronger relationship to the IPC.
“A fair point indeed, and one I’ll keep in mind.” He agreed. And, the more he talked with them the more apparent it became this foxian was not tainted with mara- it was a slim chance, but it was his responsibility to be sure. “Mostly I’m just looking to get out of the foot traffic for a moment.”
“It is a
bit
busy, huh?” They agreed. “Oh, y’know, we just came from that place over there-” they pointed over to an open… bar? “They sell more than just soulglad, promise. But there’s enough of these places all over that it wasn’t too crowded.”
Well, it couldn’t hurt to check it out then, could it? He thanked them and left, hearing their debate over where to go pick up again renewed. It was only on further inspection he realized the place they’d pointed to was an open area bar. It was decorated in tropical props and colors advertising the Moment of Oasis. It didn’t have tea (a pity) so he wound up ordering a soda he admittedly had no intention of drinking, just so he wasn’t loitering around.
Not that he was taking up space from any potential customers what with the whopping three other people sitting about.
Would this do?
He was not sure. He supposed the commission would have given him more specific instructions if so. His job was to watch for signs of mara-sickness in Xianshou tourists and inhabitants. That was a tall order for one person. One person who’d lived on the Xianshou as long as a teenage native would have. And someone who could not immediately tell between those who were native humans and not. Xianshou natives looked no different than other humans. Vidyadhara were at least easier with their scales and ears, but a lack of definition for those with entirely human traits made things a fair bit more complicated for him.
He watched the crowds mill about from the bar. All of the tables along the patio around the bar were marked with small signs printed in bold “RESERVED.” He certainly hoped one did not have to pay more just to sit a few feet from the bar… when there was hardly anyone sitting at the bar to begin with. It wasn’t something he was going to fuss with though, even if it would have been more comfortable.
His eyes flicked through person after person, pepeshi to intellitron to human. He spotted a few vidyadhara but kept most of his attention on the copious amounts of humans. He had to trust if one was mara-struck the symptoms would present themselves well enough for him to spot from a distance. Otherwise, he would have to strike up conversations with every person he came across. That… was simply unfeasible.
He should have been content he’d seen no signs of mara yet, but instead he began to worry if he was not completing the job they’d given him properly. The Ten-Lords Commission’s instructions were not always the most reliable. He did not wish to do his job incorrectly- primarily for the sake of everyone else who may be affected by a mara-sick tourist gone rogue, and secondarily because he did not ever wish to come back here.
The crowds before him shifted and moved like the streams of a river, parting into small currents toward work or game. Masses blurred together and for a moment he was staring at moving people in the midst of a celebration during Lantern Rite.
Someone sat beside him on a stool, snapping him from his stupor. His small movement was enough to cause the newcomer to huff.
“What, this spot taken?” The voice was gravelly and annoyed and thick with an accent Zhongli had never heard before.
“No, not at all. I was just lost in thought.” Zhongli had no desire to irk someone whose fuse was already burnt, even if he did wonder why this man had chosen to sit beside him when the entirety of the bar was available (minus the reserved seating, of course.)
“I should hope so.” Finally pulling his gaze away from the park to spare a proper look at the man, he first noticed he was almost entirely metal, but not in the same way an intellitron was. He was either made out of robotic parts or covered in thin plating, but he assumed the former. He ordered a drink in that same accent which was so alien to him he could barely parse what he actually said. The drink arrived with the acrid sweet smell of gasoline and the robot threw it back in one shot. It was not a shot glass…
“You one of them high n’ mighty family folk?” Just the words seemed to fill his mouth with poison more potent than what he’d just drank. After a glance over Zhongli’s attire he added, “or one of them IPC fellas?” His voice lightened after this in a friendlier tone, but it was cold. Like a threat. Zhongli eyed him from the side. What a peculiar man. Despite his metal body his face was flesh- though his pupils sparked with a dangerous red.
It took a moment for him to understand what he meant by family- the noble families of Penacony, those who upheld the man-made planet in the name of Harmony. And then… the IPC. He certainly hoped he didn’t look like an IPC employee.
“No, I’m afraid not. I have no relations to either the families
or
the IPC.” He replied after giving the man’s tone time to simmer, and made his own opinion on the latter known as his voice soured just enough to be noticeable at the end. Why this robot-
cyborg?
His mind provided- had decided to sit by and drill into him all of a sudden was beyond him, and he was distracting him from his work, but he could not deny that the sudden intrusion was most interesting.
This stranger reminded him of the firecracker he’d lit a month ago. Eager to explode.
A few moments passed. Just as Zhongli began to think this conversation was over, another statement came along. “Sounds like you ain’t so tight with the IPC either.” As expected, this person latched onto that to probe further. His metal hands twirled his glass of ice-cubes deftly and he readjusted his oddly shaped hat. He would not deny an interesting conversation. But how much would he share with a stranger sporting a gun at his waist and looking for all the world like he had just been contemplating shooting him?
“I would argue it’s more complicated than that,” Zhongli offered instead of details, “though I must admit I’m curious as to your own misgivings.”
The cyborg was equally not so open and seemed to reel himself back in. “I ain’t exactly tryin’ to be an open book ‘ere. A mutual dislike ‘s good ‘nough for me. ‘Cept…” the man leaned toward him. From his spot the light from the city hit his back, leaving his shadow cast out over Zhongli.
“I think I recognize ya from somewhere.”
Within a moment the barrel of a gun was levied against his side. He could still see at a glance the gun holstered to the stranger’s hip- from where had he pulled the other? It didn’t matter as it was pressed insistently against him. In this dreamscape he had no reason to be afraid, nor did this person have any reason to threaten him out of nowhere. It did not entirely stop the wellspring of anxiety trickling into his veins. He could at least say this was the first time a gun had been pulled on him. A lot of firsts, today was.
“From where, then?” Zhongli asked, his voice kept frighteningly calm as he stared ahead at the wall of alcohol in the bar.
His acquaintance was kind enough to slap a paper (interesting) down on the counter. A wanted poster. He’d seen these on the two-way mirrors back on the Luofu, except then they’d depicted a handful of ‘Stellaron Hunters’.
Now, he stared down at his own face.
On the poster he wore the robes designed by Menogias, a picture taken when he’d just left Teyvat. A picture taken when he was going through the IPC.
“‘Course, you look like you been in a tussle or two since then.” He clicked his tongue. “And now I don’t know if yer just playin’ dumb or if you didn’ know ‘bout this, but I’m
mighty
interested in what’s got the IPC so curious about you.”
Reading through it, this was a bounty put out by the IPC. So, did that make this man a bounty hunter?
“I thought you disliked the IPC.” Zhongli spoke again in the same measured tone as before. He was not going to make it obvious whether or not he knew of a bounty. And he was certainly not going to make it obvious how
little
he knew about this, lest this stranger take advantage of it. His own mind was racing to figure out
why
.
“I do.” Chuckling, the gun- which Zhongli could not see as he pulled away was his finger- folded back into the proper proportions of a human. “A lil’ dramatic flair. Wanted to know if there was a good reason the shirtbags might wantcha. Not that I’d turn you into ‘em either way.”
“You had to decide whether or not you might relinquish me to a third party.” Zhongli concluded, to which the man barked laughter. His demeanor had entirely changed. He was cheerful and perhaps even amiable with the way he slapped a (heavy) metal hand on his shoulder.
“See, y’got it. Name’s Boothill, by the by. N’ yer Zoh-n-glee, right?” It took him a moment to realize he was trying to say his name.
“Zhongli.”
“Right, ‘s what I said.”
He decided to let it lie. “So then, Mister Boothill,” that name was an alias no doubt, but he was not going to pry, “you’ve no clue why the IPC has put a bounty out on me?”
“Not a one. I thought it mighty peculiar though… Them Stellaron Hunters have crimes tacked on to let th’ whole wide universe know what they done; yours don’t, yet yer worth near ten billion fudgin’ credits. An’ hoo boy, wouldn’ that be a pretty credit in my pocket!” But it
wouldn’t
be, as he’d made himself mostly clear. “You got any idea?”
“I’ve only interacted with the IPC once when I boarded a ship leaving my planet. I barely spoke to anyone at the time.” Zhongli pondered aloud. Given the way this man wore his heart on his sleeve and having brought this to his attention in the first place, he decided he could afford to trust him some details as his mind swam with uncertainty. “This picture is from over a hundred years ago.”
“Huh. That so. This bounty’s pretty fresh, too.” If the IPC was truly after him, he wondered if the Ten-Lords Commission had unintentionally hidden him from prying eyes. There was no paper trail, nor a digital footprint leading back to him- not anymore, if there had been one of the latter.
“Left yer planet? For vacation? Maybe you smuggled some contraband back in y’shouldn’t have. Of the ten billion credit variety.” It was a playful jab, he… thought. It was hard to tell with this man.
“As a refugee.” Zhongli clarified. Before Bothill could either joke or prod further, he added, “the IPC still occupies my planet for its resources.”
Boothill’s face fell as soon as he heard ‘refugee’. He leaned back out of Zhongli’s personal bubble and tipped his hat down, focusing his attention to swirling the refill of his toxic concoction. “So it’s like that, huh.” He downed the second drink as quickly as he had his first.
“Did th’ same thing to my planet, too. Came in, drove us out, n’ now they’re minin’ her for all she’s worth. Shirtbags.”
Zhongli looked up from the wanted poster then, but Boothill’s hat was dragged too far down over his face.
“Teyvat had already been dead for some time beforehand,” He responded carefully, “but… I’m sorry to hear about your home.”
“Ain’t nothin’ to be sorry ‘bout.” The cyborg shook his head and ordered another absolute monstrosity of a concoction. “I’m gonna bring those mother fudgin’ sons of nice ladies down, and you jus’ gave me a lil’ more fuel for the fire.”
While his relationship to the IPC had started off more amiable, Zhongli found himself now feeling a bit vindicated by Boothill. The IPC seemed to act as if it were the prime force in the universe. Maybe they thought they were. But that sort of line of reasoning never lasted long, and eventually the people would grow weary, and the case for retribution would grow stronger.
“If yer in Penacony the next few days, you might even see a few of them shirtbags brought to justice. Not like I came into the dream lookin’ for you specifically.” Zhongli already knew this had just been a chance encounter, but of course Boothill thought he was on vacation or perhaps even lived here.
“As lovely as your offer is, this is my only day visiting Penacony.” He shook his head.
“Oh, shoot! Issat so?” Boothill seemed to brighten somewhat. “Well color me shocked. You seem a might bit made for this kinda scene, partner. Fella like me shouldn’ be cuttin’ straight to conclusions.” Which he had done this entire conversation, but Zhongli didn’t hold it against him.
“Do I now…” He grimaced. He decided to chalk up Boothill’s assumption to his somewhat formal clothing.
“Now, about that-” Boothill’s phone disrupted him. He fished it out and checked the voice message, holding it up to his ear. Then he lowered it with a gruff sigh followed by a shark-toothed grin. “Darn, looks like I gotta book it. Target’s in town! I’ll see ya ‘round sometime, yeah?” He tipped his hat and hopped off the seat, guzzling his third drink and slamming the glass on the counter before turning to leave.
Zhongli began to remind him he had no way of contacting him, but he was given no time. Seeing him vanish into the crowd he turned his attention back to the wanted poster left behind. He held it up, one hand on his chin as he tried to figure out
why
the IPC had put up this bounty.
There were a few reasons that immediately sprang to mind.
Everyone in the cosmos who knew the IPC knew they worshipped Qlipoth. He desperately hoped this had no connection to Fu Xuan’s divinations. They had no way of getting said divination, not in a way in which he would not have heard of it. And he trusted the master diviner not to divulge such things.
More likely, the IPC wanted him for reasons related to Teyvat. Perhaps the ore deposits they had been mining. Or in relation to the ley lines- they had begun to heal proper in Liyue by the time he’d left. Maybe knowing he was the only remaining native, they wanted his expertise… but- no, that would not excuse the bounty on his head. It did not explain going to such lengths to endanger him. Had they managed to connect him to his past as Morax and now sought to… what, punish him for the crimes of a war they had no part in?
For now he tucked the bounty away in his pocket. Not that he would be able to take it with him- but he doubted he’d have trouble finding the IPC’s list of their most wanted. Aeons, how was he one of their
most
wanted? He would need to do some digging, and he’d have no choice but to bring this to Jing Yuan and the Commissions’ attention.
Part of him felt a growing unease at the way he imagined the Ten-Lords Commission supporting him out of convenience rather than for his genuine sake. He knew those higher up, higher than Hanya and Xueyi, saw potential in him and worried it was the same misguided belief that led the master diviner to her initial conclusion.
Zhongli checked the time. Still a few hours before he was due to disconnect and report back. Still a job to fulfill. He was safe in Golden Hour, and his physical body was still on the Luofu. Everyone seemed none the wiser about his bounty, so it was either very fresh or kept from the general public’s eye… for now.
For now, he managed to focus on the task at hand. But he had a worrying suspicion this would shape up to be a far worse problem than he was anticipating.
---
Art by
tldr_0
on Artfight!!!! AAAA
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
TikTok video explaining the Caitlyn/Vi relationship timing, showing screenshots from the show mixed in with candids from the past couple of years of their time together, and pointing out key differences between how the characters interact vs how the actresses do, and the progression of standoffish, almost glares to the close body language of whispering into each other’s ears and almost holding hands.
> I have read enough fake dating to believe this, they had to act lovey on screen and got in too deep and couldn’t separate acting from reality.
> there’s no way that happens irl tho
> So is this proof there’s a sex scene or
> You mean six straight hours of yearning doesn’t count?
> Ain’t nothing straight about those hours.
Twitter post linking to a YouTube video conspiracy video theory that insists Caitlyn had been replaced by a new actress and that’s why she and Vi had suddenly hooked up.
Text: lmao i dunno if i believe this but it’s hilarious.
> “Caitlyn says some stereotypical British things” this isn’t proof, I once binged GBBO and couldn’t stop saying “chuffed” for a week and I don’t even know what the f*cking word means.
> I know this is fake because no one else in the world can fake Caitlyn’s ass, that booty was built in a LAB.
Twitter post showcasing a photo of Caitlyn and Vi, from the start of the year; the two of them just both sitting at the restaurant table as Vi seemed to be listening to something Caitlyn was saying.
Text: I WANT WHAT THEY HAVE
> You want someone to sit beside you in a restaurant?
> someone who looks at me like that yes.
> You don’t understand, like sex is great but the small simple moments, the domesticity, that’s the good shit.
> ^ this right here, a relationship isn’t about getting railed into the mattress it’s about all the boring, every day things and someone to do them with that makes them better.
> Yes! All we want is quiet, boring, and uneventful day to day companions. Eating dinner, walking the dog, watching a movie, picking out a paint colour, it’s all ultimately about the quiet moments that make you happy in the day.
> and then getting railed into the mattress.
>
photo meme of Jeff Goldblum saying “well, there it is”
The first beams of light were just peeking over the horizon to filter through the blinds onto the dark hardwood of the grey bedroom, pink and gold hues of the sunrise to shine on a new day, when the loud sound of a harp playing through the scales cut through the peaceful quiet.
Groggily, Caitlyn blinked awake at the sound of her alarm going off. Shifting onto her side, she pulled an arm out from under the covers and pressed the little button on her sunrise lamp to turn the musical beeping noise to silent.
As the alarm was cut, she grabbed her phone from beside it on the table and idly scrolled to the weather app and a daily positive affirmation notification, before rolling onto her back to glance at the empty spot of rustled sheets in the bedding beside her. She stared at the space for a long pause, let out a small sigh and turned back to her phone to check at her email with a quick frown. Placing the phone back into her nightstand, Caitlyn sat up in bed and stretched.
Tucking the bedsheets back up to make the bed, smoothening out the blankets, Caitlyn stepped into her slippers and made her way to the kitchen.
A gurgling, hissing noise informed her that her coffee maker had already been turned on, her favourite mug already waiting beside the machine. A little paper note was tucked under it and Caitlyn pulled out to give it a read.
Had to give J a drive, see you at work. -Vi.
Caitlyn held the note in her hands, a small frown to her expression as she tried to decide how she felt about the whole thing. She let out a small sigh, glanced again at the coffee mug and placed the note back on the counter to make herself a cup.
“You look like shit.”
“I feel like shit.” Vi replied as she grabbed a donut off of the refreshments table and took too large a bite. She was dressed in a loose red hoodie and black jeans, a cap over her messy hair, along with dark circles under her eyes, and slumped against the table, but a small smile was teasing at the corner of her mouth. Jayce watched her chewing as he crossed his arms, taking a sip of his own coffee with a chuckle.
“Another late night conquest?”
Vi grimaced, chewing the pastry like it pained her. “Not… not exactly.” She swallowed roughly, looking at the donut as if debating continuing speaking or taking another bite. “I just… dunno, slept weird last night.”
“You’re shooting today, aren’t you?” Jayce asked, nodding his head toward the stage room. “That what kept you up all night? Performance anxiety?”
Vi opted to take another oversized bite of donut and flip Jayce off as a response. He chuckled, head shaking as his eyebrows raised. Mouth full, Vi replied anyway.
“That why you’re in today? Hoping to catch a peek, pretty boy?” She elbowed him and winked, receiving an eyeroll from Jayce before she continued. “Sorry, approved personal only. You’ll have to just imagine the goods.” She waved a hand over her body, wagging her eyebrows up and down.
Jayce didn’t reply at first, only giving an exasperated sigh as he drank his coffee. “I’m here to do a reading while you’re busy. Came early because I’m addicted to whatever garbage filler is in the coffee creamer. And you know, I had to do this last season, so if I could be nice and offer support if you’re nervous.”
“I’m not nervous,” Vi muttered into her donut and Jayce snickered.
“Think you’d be used to it by now, after all the rehearsal I heard you did in the studio. Is it cause this time you’ll be on camera?”
Vi choked on her pastry, bending to cough. Jayce slapped her on the back with concern, worry on his face, until she waved him off. Thumping at her chest a couple of times, she straightened up and cleared her throat, glancing over at Jayce, who’s expression was back to smug teasing, before down to the donut still in her hand and sighed.
“Ekko told you didn’t he?”
Jayce snorted and chuckled. “I owed him three hundred bucks, of course Ekko told me.”
Vi muttered something like sounded like an affectionate ‘little fucking rat’ under her breath and sighed with a sag of her shoulders. “Alright. You know. That’s cool.”
“Yeah, super cool,” Jayce echoed, a tinge of angry sarcasm to his voice. “Super cool that you used my best friend to loophole a contract and hurt her feelings.”
“Oh don’t give me that,” Vi grumbled, “she started it.”
Jayce actually laughed aloud at that. “Yeah,
Caitlyn Kiramman
started casually hooking up. That makes a ton of sense.”
“Hey, I’m serious!” Vi protested. “We were just hanging out and she-“ hand holding the donut punching the air for emphasis, Vi then took another bite and shrugged. “I was just there for the ride.”
“Wait, really?” Jayce looked surprised, coffee cup paused halfway to his mouth. “That… doesn’t sound like her.”
“She wanted to try being like me, that’s why.”
Jayce made a noncommittal noise in response to that, as if not sure exactly what to say. Vi tapped the toe of her shoe against the floor, snorting slightly through her nose.
“But we’re not,” she fiddled with the pastry in her hand, looking down on it pensively like she had lost her appetite. “We’re not doing it anymore. She called it off, I respected it and we’re…” she sighed and tossed the rest of the donut into the trash bin. “We’re just gonna try and redo the friendship thing. Take it slow.”
“Take it slow how?”
Vi scratched at the back of her neck with a bit of a laugh. “Not hook up?” Jayce laughed and Vi shrugged. “We stayed up half the night just talking about it and we’re gonna go back to before it all happened. Just…” she raised a hand as if trying to find a gesture to best communicate what she was trying to say, before giving up and sticking her hand back in her sweatshirt pocket. “I thought we were just having fun but it turned out when you’re already friends and you try to mix other stuff in it gets…”
“Messy,” Jayce offered and Vi nodded.
“Fucking messy,” she sighed. “I thought it was just about the sex, but I didn’t know how to cut that off without cutting
her
off. I thought we were okay, and then we both got fucked up missing each other. Like, not the sex,” Vi frowned. “I mean yeah, I missed the sex. She’s fucking incredible, she does this thing where-“
“Tell that to
anyone
but me,” Jayce quickly interrupted. Vi laughed.
“Right, what I mean is, y’know, I missed
her
. You know what that’s like? Missing someone?”
Jayce made a soft, amused noise. “Yes Vi, I know, I’ve been in love before.”
“
Woah
,” Vi shifted away from him, looking suddenly much more awake. “I didn’t say- that’s not what- I’m not-
friends
. We’re just going for friends here.”
“Hmm,” Jayce swirled around what remained of his coffee in the cup. “Well, Cait’s a good person, and a good friend. You could do worse for… someone to miss.” He chuckled, low and amused. “So she started out trying to be like you and turned you more like her, is that it?”
Vi laughed a bit awkwardly and was about to reply when the intercom over the hallway crackled.
“
Vi to makeup and costume for scene 142.”
“Alright,” Vi sighed and pushed herself up to begin to walk down the hallway to the stage room. “Thanks for the pep talk.”
“Anytime,” Jayce smiled warmly, tossing his cup into the garbage. “As long as I never get details.”
“Really?” Vi turned on her heel to face him again and grinned. “You don’t want to know about how she really likes it when I—“
“
No
.” Jayce pointed firmly at her and Vi gave a deep laugh, spinning back around to walk to her dressing room.
The silver handle to the stage door, the dark grey-blue paint around it slightly chipped from years of use, stood there silently, under the shadow of the hand hovering above it.
Caitlyn stood in front of the door to the stage room and took a deep breath. She reached forward, about to open it when the handle jiggled and turned. She stepped back as the door opened to a stagehand who froze briefly at the sight of another person on the other side, before quickly clearing his throat and opening the door wider. Stepping past each other, Caitlyn walked quickly into the room and over to the set where Vi, Sky and Chandra were already standing.
“Caitlyn, there you are, perfect we’re all set,” Chandra beamed as Caitlyn settled beside Vi with a glance. Vi nudged her with an elbow, smile and a soft “Hey,” which Caitlyn returned quietly. Chandra was waving her hands, explaining the set up for the day.
“Sky’s going to be filling in for Heimerdinger, just to help you feel a bit more comfortable-“
“I’ll try to keep the take count down,” Sky interrupted, smiling nervously and they all laughed before Chandra continued.
“We’re going to do a linear progression, scene wise. That seems to be the most comfortable, in general, if there isn’t anything you want to get out of the way?” When both actresses shook their heads she nodded and looked toward Sky. “Alright, we’re practiced and good to go. Whenever you ladies are ready.” Waving her hand as she tended to, the coordinator turned and began toward the set.
“You’re not usually late, you okay?” Vi asked quietly to Caitlyn as they walked toward the set. “I’m sure we can pause for a bit if you wanted to talk or whatever before this starts up.”
“Let’s just get this done until lunch,” Caitlyn reached over to squeeze Vi’s arm reassuringly, “traffic gave me trouble, that’s all.”
Vi didn’t look convinced, but nodded and went to take her mark to get the scene to start.
The morning passed with a slow start as Sky paused the opening kiss scene multiple times with notes Heimerdinger had given her, doing her best to perfectly interpret them. After multiple takes of having to kiss and Caitlyn pushing Vi backwards, before Vi pushed Caitlyn onto the bed, it was nearly lunch. Sky called a break, and the staff milled about to separate, heading down to the cafeteria or to grab boxed lunches from backpacks.
“Hey, so sorry for dipping early this morning,” Vi walked up to Caitlyn as she relaxed back in one of the foldout chairs with her lunch box, Vi slumping into the chair beside her with a bag of chips. “Jinx
has
to visit this coffee shop Tuesday mornings because there’s this barista there she talks to on the phone literally every day and still has to see in person at work-”
“It’s alright,” Caitlyn smiled at her, though a small one that didn’t reach her eyes. “You fell asleep partway through our talk so I figured you were fairly tired. And then you woke up and left. I didn’t expect you to stay.”
Vi didn’t reply, choosing to eat instead for the next minute. She looked thoughtful, a bit concerned. “Should we… am I still changing the line?”
Caitlyn shook her head. “No, I think we can just barrel through it. We managed to work out the… issue I think.” Tucking a bit of hair behind her ear, she simply shook her head again and smiled over to Vi. “I’m fine, at least. It’ll be fine.”
“So did you want,” Vi swallowed, crumpling up the empty chip bag in her fist and changing the subject, “after all this, go grab dinner or something? Hang and watch a movie?”
“You’d want to?”
“I mean,” Vi uncapped her water bottle with a sly grin, “you still haven’t seen all the Fast and Furious movies yet.”
Rolling her eyes despite her smile, Caitlyn avoided replying to that statement. Vi simply looked over to her and grinned, and Caitlyn pushed at Vi’s knee slightly with the heel of her boot, grinning back.
Lunch was over soon enough, and they got ready for the next sequence of undressing. Vi pulled off her shirt, winked at Caitlyn which Sky chided her for, and they retook the scene a couple more times.
Under Chandra’s guidance and notes from the previous day, when they got to the scene with the line, and Vi murmured it just loud enough for the mic to hear, Caitlyn only let out an inaudible hiss of breath and squeezed Vi’s arm.
Then they continued on through the scenes as if there was no issue at all.
By the end of the day as they were filming the final parts of the sequence, when Caitlyn was gripping to Vi’s hair and arm as she gasped out, the scene was cut short with Sky’s voice.
“Cut, we’re going to cut there! I want to adjust the angle and lighting a second, Caitlyn’s in too much shadow,” Sky tapped her pen against her clipboard, and both actresses relaxed but stayed in position as the crew worked.
“What was that face?” Vi asked in a low whisper as the cameras and lighting were adjusted around them. Caitlyn looked back at her in half-insulted confusion, cheeks flushing.
“That was my, you know…” She whispered, eyes glancing over to Sky and Chandra talking over by the camera. “My face.”
“Your ‘face’?” Vi chuckled. “You mean your ‘O face’? Cause that,” she leaned a little further in, their noses brushing only just barely. “Was not your O-face.”
Caitlyn scoffed, shifting slightly under Vi’s body with her bottom lip in her teeth, expression teetering between embarrassed and annoyed. “Well it’s not like I pay much attention to what my face is doing,” she said with her voice so low now it was almost a hiss.
“Maybe we should have rehearsed this part then,” Vi murmured with amusement, still leaning almost too close for the conversation, for the room with people around them, “so I could tell you exactly how it looks when y—“
“You girls can sit up,” Chandra’s voice suddenly cut through their conversation, Vi’s head snapping back and Caitlyn’s thumping down against the prop bed from where she’d had it slightly raised. Chandra wasn’t looking at them, instead distractedly down at her tablet, waving a hand around as she spoke. “We’re gonna reshoot that again from a higher angle, and it should be the last take, okay?”
“Uh, Caitlyn?” Sky poked her head out from around Chandra before the actresses could respond to the coordinator’s instructions. “We were wondering if you could bring a bit more of your signature emotion to the scene, really sell this as something more…” she puffed her cheeks and circled a finger in the air, thinking, “meaningful, I guess, instead of just a physical thing.”
Caitlyn nodded and Sky shot her a thumbs up. “Great,” she continued, “Heimerdinger’s notes are really insistent on the ‘you’re ridiculously in love and even now too afraid to say it’ motivation, so if we can hit it we won’t get revisions on the dailies. You know how he is,” she grinned weakly and apologetically before taking a step back with another thumbs up. “Okay, that’s all from me, you guys go ahead.”
Clearing her throat, Vi repositioned herself with an arm resting back. Caitlyn returned her hands to Vi’s shoulder and hair. They both tried to steady their breathing as Sky called for the scene to start.
“You gotta put a bit more emotion into it,” Vi said in a low teasing voice and Caitlyn only swallowed.
“Say the line,” she whispered. Vi blinked, slightly confused for a second, before realizing what she was asking.
Tilting her head slightly so the camera wouldn’t catch her mouth moving, Vi leaned in and murmured by Caitlyn’s ear, so quietly it was almost barely audible even so close.
“It’s just you and me, Caitlyn.”
Vi pulled back to look back into Caitlyn’s eyes, the actresses breathing heavier again, staring at each other with a completely caught of guard expression. Caitlyn’s hand in Vi’s hair tightened it’s grip before she pulled herself to kiss Vi deeply, hand sliding down from her hair to Vi’s cheek, before Caitlyn separated from the kiss and took deep breaths that moved her entire chest, pressing their foreheads together, letting out almost exaggerated gasps as her eyes screwed shut, bottom lip in her teeth, hand on Vi’s shoulder griping tighter to pull Vi closer as Caitlyn—
“And cut, perfect!” Sky clapped loudly, and Caitlyn released Vi almost like she was burned, dropping back with a heavy exhale that puffed her cheeks, before she managed to steady herself.
“That one was great!” Chandra smiled, Sky nodding beside her. With a wave, Chandra indicated the actresses could separate and get up; Vi pushed herself while swinging her leg to roll completely off of Caitlyn, who sat up with a wince to massage her neck.
“Is that all?” She asked, glancing at Vi sitting beside her with her cheeks flushed, and then back to the women directing them.
Tapping a couple of words out onto her tablet, the coordinator glanced at Sky and then between the two actresses both with a tired but beaming expression and waved a hand at the door.
“I think we got it, ladies,” she tucked the device under her arm, “you’re free. Go relax, decompress, have some fun like in the instruction pamphlets, okay? The hard part’s over.”
Looking at each other, Caitlyn and Vi managed to contain their smiles. Eyeing the crew packing and cleaning up for the end of the day, Caitlyn leaned over and whispered. “Did I get the face right this time?”
Vi just shot her a raised eyebrow and a lopsided grin.
Caitlyn collapsed onto her pillow beside Vi with a loud gasp, blanket pulled up over her chest as she caught her breath. “Oh my god,” she managed out with a wide grin, pushing some of the hair that had fallen in front of her face aside. “Oh wow.”
“Yeah,” Vi agreed beside her, laughing breathlessly. “There,
that
is what your face looks like.”
Hand still in her hair, Caitlyn slapped distractedly at Vi’s blanketed chest before she let out a laugh that nearly devolved into giggles. “So much for slow.”
“We made it…” Vi groped blindly at the nightstand beside her to grab her phone, successfully taking it up to look at the time. “Like almost thirteen hours. That’s pretty slow. For me.”
Caitlyn laughed again brightly and still a bit breathlessly, giving Vi’s shoulder a shove.
“I gotta say,” Vi playfully shoved back, before rolling over onto her side to face Caitlyn, “there might something to this having sex over and over with the same person. Knowing just what tricks work that’s pretty fun.”
With a snort, Caitlyn rolled her eyes. “I’m glad I could help you see the benefits of—
oh
!”
Vi had rolled over and kissed her just under the ear, nipping at the skin slightly, causing Caitlyn to gasp and shiver slightly. She tried to elbow the other woman off of her, which Vi resisted easily, and Caitlyn let out an annoyed shout that was completely ineffective with how she was also laughing.
“I was speaking!“
“And I was shutting you up,” Vi replied with another kiss to Caitlyn’s neck and down to her shoulder. “Before you got all smug about it. With a trick I learned.”
Caitlyn scoffed and tried to push Vi off again and this time Vi let her. Caitlyn rolled with her as she shoved, Vi now on her back with the dark haired actress positioned above her, weight resting on her arms.
“I don’t know why I—“ Caitlyn began saying, then cut herself off as her laughter quieted down. Her expression softened into something less amused, and she lay herself down to rest on Vi’s chest and glance over to the sun lamp clock she had on her nightstand, the yellow numbers bright in the dark room.
“It’s almost ten,” she said quietly, turning back to brush some of Vi’s hair out of her face. “You should head home.”
Vi considered it, a slight quirk to her mouth as she glanced over at the clock herself, then back to Caitlyn.
“I can stay until you fall asleep,” she offered, hand coming up to stroke at a bit of the soft dark hair. Caitlyn’s expression went a bit melancholy, but she gave a soft smile and a shrug, rolling off of Vi to lay on her side facing her instead.
“It’s alright, you can go. I actually prefer it when I get to watch you leave.” Caitlyn half murmured into the pillow.
Vi’s cocky grin froze, and she blinked slightly. “Oh, yeah, no worries.”
She rolled off the bed, stretching out her shoulders and arms. Caitlyn watched as the muscles flexed under Vi’s tattoos, Vi scratching at the back of her neck as she located her clothes where they were scattered around the room. Caitlyn didn’t say anything as Vi collected and got dressed, lying in bed among the tousled duvet and blankets, half holding onto the pillow as she rested.
Tugging the hem of her shirt down, back still to Caitlyn, Vi cleared her throat but even then had a slightly hoarse tone to it when she spoke. “I’ll see you at work?”
“See you tomorrow,” Caitlyn nodded.
Vi hesitated, and then turned and stepped forward to tuck her hand into Caitlyn’s hair and kiss her softly. “Okay,” she whispered against Caitlyn’s lips, “see ya.”
She left the bedroom without another word or look, leaving Caitlyn there slightly stunned. After a moment the sound of the front door clicking shut echoed in the dark apartment and Caitlyn lay in bed for a moment, quietly breathing in as she stared at the empty spot beside her. Then she hugged the pillow tight, burying her face into it and she let out a loud, long, frustrated groan.
A light quick knocking to the came to the door of Vi’s dressing room, where she was lounging on the couch with a comic, feet hanging off the arm rest. Swapping the cross of her ankles, she barely looked up as she called out. “Yeah! Open!”
The door clicked and opened in a slow precise manner, the tap of heels announcing the person on the other side. Vi folded her comic to look properly, at Cassandra entering her dressing room.
“Good morning, Violet,” Cassandra said, pausing to stand beside where Vi’s feet hung off the couch arm.
Vi blinked, reaching up to drop the book on the table beside the couch, just above her head, and tried to give a casual expression toward Caitlyn’s mother. “Hey, what’s up? Did you need something?”
Cassandra didn’t look nearly as casual. “I think we both know why I’m here.”
There was a heavy pause between the two women, neither moving or blinking, until Vi broke the silence with a loud groan and swinging her legs to sit up on the couch. “Oh fuck, what did Jinx post?”
“Jinx didn’t post anything, or hasn’t
yet
,” Cassandra assured Vi, “but she does speak rather loudly when gossiping on the phone, while leaving her dressing room door open.”
Vi let out another loud groan, burying her head in her hands.
“I haven’t spoken to Caitlyn yet,” Cassandra continued, “as I’m sure she’d deny it immediately, but I expect you to be honest with me.”
“It’s not,” Vi released her head from her hands, not looking up to the producer. “We did, yeah, but we stopped. We’re not… it was just a short thing and over by the time you talked to me last time.”
“I assumed,”
“And Caitlyn’s an adult,” Vi continued, “she made all the choices on her own I didn’t convince her to do something. She’s the one who wanted it all.”
“
Only
Caitlyn?”
“Well, I-“ Vi coughed, face red, “I didn’t say ‘no’ if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I’m asking why it stopped.”
Vi gaped a little, confused. “Why it… why?”
Cassandra let out a long sigh, sounding more the exhaustive patience of a parent than an employer.
“I thought the issue before was with you… influencing or harming Caitlyn due to your reputation,” she said, slowly and carefully. “But that wasn’t the case, was it?”
Vi’s expression was pensive, and she didn’t answer. Cassandra waited a beat before realizing Vi wasn’t going to reply, and continued.
“Heimerdinger wants you both there for the dailies,” she said, a bit distantly. “Do try to attend. I think it’s important you see it for yourself.”
“Oh,” Vi relaxed slightly, looking a bit confused but nodding. “Okay?”
Cassandra only gave her a brief nod and turned to leave, saying nothing else. As she stepped out, Jinx walked into the room, giving the producer a beaming smile that shifted to a wide eyed grimace she shot to Vi once the producer was out of sight.
“What was that about?” Jinx asked, sitting herself down in Vi’s makeup chair with a tangled flourish of limbs.
“Oh nothing,” snorted Vi, sitting back with her arms crossed. “Just apparently you spilling the beans on the phone so loud the whole damn building heard?”
Jinx looked entirely unbothered by the accusation. “About what, that you’re in love with Caitlyn?”
Vi’s annoyed expression snapped into a shocked one, blinking before she managed out a denial.
“I’m not— no?!”
“Sure,” Jinx said with exaggerated disbelief and expression, “that’s definitely not why you guys hooked up again last night, right?”
“We… what? How did-“
“You went over to her place to ‘watch Fast and Furious’,” Jinx emphasized the film title with air quotes. “Yeah, definitely not a euphemism. Super subtle.”
“We did watch it!”
“Uh huh. Did you watch it or did it play in the background?”
Vi opened her mouth to reply, but shut it again silently while Jinx gave her a triumphant look. One that quickly changed into distracted puzzlement.
“Where did that saying come from anyway?”
Blinking, Vi matched Jinx’s confused expression. “What saying?”
“Spilling the beans. It’s weird right? Who coined it?” Jinx tapped on her chin thoughtfully as Vi let out a disbelieving chuckle.
“That’s what you’re focusing on right now?”
“Yep, I’m distracted and invested, your love life is boring now,” Jinx pulled her phone out of her pocket and began typing. “Looking it up.”
“Okay weirdo, I gotta get ready, time to go,” Vi stood and began to usher her sister out the room, who politely followed while still reading from her phone.
“‘Origin: This is likely drawn from the ancient Greek process of voting…’” Jinx read out from her phone screen as Vi directed her to the door, half laughing and half exasperated.
“Cool, lemme know what else you learn,”
“‘…where votes were cast by placing one of two different colored beans in a vase’ They used
beans
for this? What the hell did they not have rocks in Greece?”
“Okay, love you, I have work to do,” Vi pushed the still reading girl into the hall, closing the door behind her. Jinx let out an audible giggle that could be heard through the door and Vi turned with a laugh she herself couldn’t contain.
“Hey,” Vi said, sliding up beside Caitlyn in the small room. The taller actress smiled down tightly to her, shifting a bit to make sure Vi had enough space.
The screen they were huddled around flickered back to life from the dark sleep mode, filling the room with dark, purple-ish lighting from the set sequence.
“I have to say,” Heimerdinger said, sitting up front closer to the screen as he turned to smile and nod at the actresses, Sky and a couple other tech/interns in the room. “Going over these yesterday were inspiring. I know we’re not making a
romance
story persay, but the way you girls have elevated this subplot to really emphasize the main story has been excellent.”
Caitlyn glanced a shy smile over to Vi, who didn’t seem to notice, so Caitlyn nudged her a bit with her arm and Vi immediately shot her a grin. They stood quietly beside each other as they, slightly awkwardly, watched themselves undress and fake intimacy onscreen over repeated takes and angles. Caitlyn’s fingers drummed at her side and Vi absently brushed her knuckles against them.
“Now if I may, this is why I’m always so pleased when actors forge and maintain friendships off camera!” Heimerdinger spoke, sounding more like a proud grandfather extolling tradition than a film director watching a fabricated scene. “There are many emotions easy to fake without attachment - anger, fear, distrust, the brutality of our nature. But this-!”
He waved at the screen, both Vi and Caitlyn behind him watching themselves, as they had for hundreds of times before, but without the costumes, hair mussed from it’s normal character styles, camera angle close as the two women kissed and pulled back and paused. The takes were all silent for lack of sound equipment, so the room was silent other than the director speaking.
Vi watched the clips quietly, eyes slightly wide, while on screen Caitlyn stared into on screen Vi’s eyes, Caitlyn’s bright blue ones darting to take in her face, smiling ever so slightly.
“This is the emotion you can only get,” Heimerdinger was still saying, “with a real connection!”
The clip changed over again and this time it was Vi murmuring something, her nose brushing Caitlyn’s as the woman beneath her laughed back; not a planned shot, but a moment they were teasing while waiting for the filming to start up again. An extra clip caught by a camera.
“My girls, I cannot thank you enough for making the effort to improve your relationship off set,” the director said with a hand to his heart as he watched, “this is meant to be an emotional scene and you nailed it on the takes. Well done!”
On screen Caitlyn kissed Vi with both hands on her cheeks before resting their foreheads together, seemingly breathing heavily before Caitlyn burst into a laugh. Vi grinned as the woman under her threw her head back in an exasperated sigh and then bring her head back up to bump their noses just before realizing the scene had stopped and instead rest back, hands on Vi’s shoulders, both of them just smiling quietly to each other, unaware the camera was still filming.
“Genuine, believable, absolutely incredible acting.”
In the small, dark editing room, almost forgetting that others were standing there with her, Vi watched herself laughing, eyes shining, nearly kissing Caitlyn again before catching herself. Seeing herself on screen in the unguarded, candid moment of what they thought was a finished take, Vi’s expression was half surprise and half smile, a small awkward grin, mouthing a realization silently to herself in the dark room,
Oh
.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
In Iruka’s absence, Kakashi moves forward with unsealing his family’s hidden archives. The room is dark and littered with both time and dust, and Kakashi knows he’s in for quite the undertaking. Anything to ignore how hard it’sbeen not having spoken to Iruka since the day he left.
It’s clear that the man didn’t believe him—couldn’t.
Kakashi removes the delicate blinds in order to clean them thoroughly, sunlight streaming in for the first time in decades. The mask covering the lower half of his face is much appreciated as he reaches for a broom and dustpan. He isn’t accustomed to feeling lonely, never mind the fact that he has always been on his own for the most part. It’s the longest he’s gone without seeing the Headmaster, and a part of him wonders when it was he first began to keep track. In their early working relationship, Kakashi bribed his way into good favor with Iruka, keen on having him take on the role of vice-principal.
‘
What an
ordeal
that
was
,’
he recalls with a huff.
Kakashi needed allies back then, and the only person he could think of
was
Iruka. In a way, it also served as an apology for some of his past behavior, but his reasons were ultimately selfish and self-serving. If he noticed, Iruka was polite enough not to speak of it. After a while, Kakashi began to seek out Iruka on his own. He enjoyed pestering him greatly.
When it began to evolve into something more than that, he isn’t sure. He knows, for certain, Iruka became something intangible to him at least four years prior. Suddenly, his days were fuller than they ever were before. He suffered through dreaded meetings with snotty dignitaries who lacked common sense in order to bother Iruka with dinner afterwards. He suffered in order to be rewarded, and Iruka understood this all too well.
Kakashi grimaces, channeling his thoughts in another direction. There’s an unpleasant weight settling in his chest, a
pang
he can’t quite stifle. He’s miserable, and worse, he knows it. Iruka afforded to him certain experiences and sensations he’d denied ever wanting to experience in the first place. Iruka showed him an overflowing amount of patience and kindness over the years, and he cared for Kakashi when no one knew there was anything to care about.
Kakashi favors Iruka. He’s denied it in the past, but it’s overwhelmingly proving to be true. He’s torn. A part of him wants to seek Iruka out, to be able to work this out together. But he knows Iruka.
The man needed space, and so Kakashi continues cleaning up the remains of his own sordid history.
It’s two weeks before Iruka steps foot inside the forest of Kakashi’s ancestors. He senses it immediately. His entire body becomes alert, his instincts billowing up inside him like a raging inferno of over-keen senses. With bated breath, he steadies himself. Bidding his time.
He isn’t sure what to expect.
He’s outside on the front step, cooling off with a drink. The days are longer than not now, and the heat creeps in and suffocates everything within reach of it. Kakashi included. Sleeveless and surely sunburned, he waits for Iruka to come to him. At last.
When Iruka appears in sight, any reservations Kakashi might have had dissipates immediately. In truth, he’s simply happy to see the other man whole and intact. Whatever that might bring.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you out here today,” he says, and that’s true. It’s Sunday, after all.
“You missed dinner,” Iruka replies. “Again.”
“Maa, lost track of time out here,” he says, attempting to gauge how Iruka wants to play this. “It’s easy to do out in the wilderness. No real way to tell time out here.”
“You’re never out here on Sundays.”
“There’s a lot left to do.”
Iruka lets out an aggravated sigh, throwing a beautifully decorated bento at Kakashi with much more force than necessary. Kakashi panics for a second as he catches it, wondering if he’s played it too coy, but then Iruka takes a seat on the step in front of him. He’s not looking at him, and his arms are crossed, but it’s the closest he’s been to the other man since that day.
“I don’t want to do this.”
“Do what?” Kakashi asks.
“Argue.”
“Well, that’s good,” he says. “Because I don’t want to argue either.”
Iruka nods, but his arms are still wrapped around himself in a self-soothing manner. For such an emotional man, Iruka didn’t have many tells. It took years for Kakashi to decipher them, but he did it.
Because it’s Iruka, and he cares about Iruka.
A lot.
Apparently.
“Are you ready to listen?”
“I am.”
“I’ll try and answer any question I can, Iruka,” he promises, and that’s when the man unfurls himself from his crumpled position.
Kakashi isn’t sure what he’s expecting, but Iruka embracing him isn’t it. It stuns him, but only for a second, his arms instinctively wrap themselves around the other man’s torso. It lasts only a brief moment, but the relief it brings Kakashi is worth a lifetime.
Iruka is too important to him to lose so pointlessly.
“Sorry.”
“No need to apologize,” Kakashi replies kindly, clinging to the other’s scent. “I’m glad you came to me.”
“Kakashi, I need to know what’s happening to me,” Iruka says, and the tears that fill his eyes bring only heartache to the Hokage.
Kakashi knows exactly what it is he means. “You’ve been thinking about drowning yourself, haven’t you?” he asks, without judgment, but with the deepest concern.
Iruka’s lips trembles, and he nods once. The tears spill over then, and Kakashi can’t bear the sight of them. He wipes them away before they can tarnish the man’s face.
“It’s okay,” he says, holding the man’s face in between his hands. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Iruka. I promise.”
“What
i
s
happening to me?” he asks, his voice quivering, and it tears at Kakashi’s very soul to watch him suffer so helplessly because that’s
not
Iruka.
“I want to explain everything to you, but first, we need to get you settled,” he explains, guiding Iruka inside his home.
Kakashi’s worked hard to get his family’s library back into a usable fashion, but it’s not the only part of his home that he’s worked on in the past two weeks. No, he made sure to refashion the master bedroom to his liking. The indoor terrace is to be his ultimate paradise, a place of comfort and reflection. Iruka will feel safe there, he’s made sure of it. He made it partly with him in mind.
A vermilion chenille loveseat sits in one corner, and this is where he directs Iruka to rest while he fetches the man something soothing to drink. The kitchen is mostly done with only a few touch-ups remaining. After that’s completed, painting and decorating will be all that remains. Slowly, everything is coming together, but the pressure to finish it fills him with dread. In this place, only
they
could come and go as they pleased.
He wants Iruka to feel safe here.
He wants him to feel at home.
“Here, drink this,” he says, handing Iruka his favorite tea from the Land of Waves.
“Thank you.”
Iruka sips slowly, mindlessly, as the two sit in silence. It’s clear the Headmaster is struggling with an array of internal conflicts, and worse, he has no word for it. He’s no clue what’s happening to him, or why.
He’s completely in the dark.
“You’re not trying to harm yourself, Iruka,” he says, at last. “You’re being drawn to the water against your will. It’s a compulsion, not a reflection of yourself. I need you to understand that first and foremost.”
“If it’s not me, then what is it?” Iruka asks, his hands trembling as Kakashi graciously removes the teacup from the equation for him. “What is this?”
Kakashi isn’t sure what to say at first, but then he thinks on it, reaching for the necklace that sits around Iruka’s neck. The dragon claw with the earth held in its mighty hand, a relic from who knows when. The sapphire jewel that represents their planet glows light blue in the center, otherworldly and mystical in its making.
“Iruka, your father was a Tatsu,” Kakashi reveals, watching the other’s face intently. “You’re being drawn to the water because it’s your ancestral home, just like this mountain is to me.”
Iruka wipes his eyes with the backs of his hands, his trembling down to a faint tremor. It’s still not great, but it’s an improvement. “I don’t understand why he never said anything,” he murmurs, his throat constricting with every word and swallow. “I always believed my parent’s had been honest with me, but they hadn’t. There
were
secrets.”
“I know he must have meant to,” Kakashi reassures him, considering his own experience with
his
father. “He probably wanted to wait until his seal released before telling you. It’s hard to pass on that knowledge without example first.”
“I don’t understand. I don’t understand why he would have had it sealed for so long,” Iruka says. “He more than proved himself as a loyal Konoha shinobi. He never betrayed anyone’s confidence. My father was well respected and well loved by his colleagues and superiors. Even after my parent’s died, all I heard were good things about them. They
were
good.”
“Your father fell victim to Draconian laws.”
Iruka shakes his head, and Kakashi can sense his simmering rage. “Did Sandaime know about this?” he asks.
“Sarutobi
was
a yokai, Iruka,” he says, choosing not to dilute the truth.
One way or another, he was going to learn about the Sarugami, and he would make the connection. Sarutobi held a lot of secrets before he died, but he never planned on revealing them to Iruka. A foolish man attempting to mitigate his own guilt, he never understood the depths water yokai contained. Iruka’s intuition, his ability to fit another like a second skin. His water chakra swirling in concentrated waves inside him, held back like the tide before the fall.
The results were devastating, a ripple effect through both time and loss.
“Why didn’t he tell me?” Iruka asks, shaking his head. “Why would he hide that from me?”
“I can’t speak for him,” Kakashi says, his heart weighing heavily inside his chest. “But if I had to guess, I’d suspect it was guilt that made him keep it secret.”
“Guilt over what?”
“Having to enforce such a law even though he, himself, was also a yokai,” he elaborates.
There’s little to gain in being angry at a dead man.
He isn’t going to tarnish his image to Iruka. He decided that long ago.
“Why am I being drawn back to the water?” Iruka asks, pressing onward.
The man knows how to compartmentalize better than most, and Kakashi supposes that’s why he’s mostly still sane after this long. There is no time to spare for Sarutobi in Iruka’s mind, and he’s right. Iruka is a highly focused man, he can remain working for hours at a time, and it’s something Kakashi both admires and fears in equal measure. Iruka contained an incredible amount of willpower, but Kakashi thrived in being the one to trip him up on occasion. Capturing his devoted attention for himself, loathed to let it go.
“Because that’s where your ancestor’s come from,” Kakashi simplifies, unwilling to complicate things until Iruka can fully grasp them. “Your father’s people started out in the deepest parts of the ocean.”
“Tatsu live under the ocean? Then how did they end up on earth?” Iruka asks, facing a thousand different explanations all at once. Grasping at the truth with feeble hands. “Why would they choose to remain here when there was nothing but war and hardship for them?”
“Curiosity, mostly,” Kakashi answers. “Dragons are highly in tuned with the world around them, near and far. They can sense the devastating pain of the world above, and so sought out the cause. Tatsu were gods, Iruka. They brought rain during droughts, and people worshiped them for their generosity, but Tatsu can also be more severe when they experienced the cruelty humans were capable of.”
“Would I die if I were to fully submerge myself in water longer than a few minutes?” he asks, making eye contact with Kakashi for the first time since returning. “What would happen to me?”
“Nothing would happen to you, Iruka. Unlike me, you can stay under water for however long you like. You’re a water yokai.”
“What would you be classified as?” he asks, and Kakashi has to think on it for a moment.
In terms of their elemental powers, the mountain more than symbolized their domain.
“Earth,” he answers. “Lightning can be considered an added component, I suppose.”
“Do you ever change?” Iruka asks, and the genuine curiosity in his voice alights something in Kakashi he can’t quite put his finger on. He has Iruka’s undivided attention, and his question feels more like a caress than a conversation. The focus on Kakashi’s person is intimate and somewhat unnerving, but Kakashi refuses to act on the inherent urge to deflect.
“I can, yes,” he answers, and it’s not something he’s ever felt comfortable saying out loud to another who was not his father before. “I’m more prone to changing during certain times of the year.”
To his own ears, he sounded like a beast.
A primal creature.
But no, that’s just his inner shame talking.
The untruths he internalized well into adulthood.
“The seasons?” Iruka asks, and Kakashi can only muster to nod once.
“I only know so much about water yokai,” he says, shifting his thoughts in a more productive manner, “and even less about Dragons. The Mizukage would know much more than me, and she’s extended an invitation for you to learn directly from her.”
“The Mizukage—”
“She’s also a yokai, and she knows all about your family name and its history,” he affirms, stifling Iruka’s confusion. “She can help us.”
“Us?”
“You didn’t think I’d let you face this alone, did you?”
“Kakashi, you’ve helped me enough as it is,” Iruka tries to explain, but it’s to no avail. He can sense when Kakashi is about to interject.
“This is not some nicety, Iruka,” Kakashi explains, irritated by Iruka’s inability to let sleeping dogs lie. “I’m going to ensure that no harm comes to you, and I’m the only one who comes close to understanding what it is you are. You don’t understand how rare your kind is.”
“Kakashi, who would look after the village in your absence?”
“I have it covered.”
“I don’t expect you to hold my hand through this.”
“I
want
to hold your hand through this.”
“What do I tell Naruto?”
“You tell him whatever you’re comfortable with,” Kakashi says, and he’s more than thought on the matter. No one is as important to Iruka than Naruto is. That’s just a fact. “He’s probably the only person who comes close to understanding what it is you’re going through without his actually being a yokai.”
Iruka looks more than a little worn out, and Kakashi can’t find it in himself to take it much further. It’s enough for one day. He’ll need to get in touch with the Mizukage first thing tomorrow, but he’s not going anywhere tonight. Iruka is still uneasy, his heart still tender and bruised. Confused and torn as to what direction in which to go.
“Iruka, let’s stay here tonight,” he says, and oh, how many times has he tried to work up the nerve to utter those words to him? “You’re still dealing with the call of the world’s oceans, and dipping your feet in the river might ease some of the heartache you’re experiencing because of it.”
Iruka cannot resist, he’s too exhausted and weary to do so. He appreciates Kakashi’s kindness, and it fills the Inu with a pleasant warmth. Kakashi longs to be kind in some way, and Iruka made for excellent practice.
It’s only fair that he try and pay the man back, after all.
The sun is on its path to set when Iruka removes his shoes and rolls up his pant-sleeves, dipping his feet into the pleasantly cool water beneath. Unlike last time, however, Kakashi decides to join in on the fun. Iruka kicks his feet to and fro, creating a whirlpool that wraps around his ankles. The grass and soil is soft where the spider-lilies grow, and the cicadas aren’t nearly as loud out here.
“Do you want to go for a swim?” he asks, peering over at the other man who appears lost in thought.
Iruka thinks on it for a minute before boasting a beautiful smile full of opportunistic joy. “I’d like that,” he says, removing his clothes without ostentation. Iruka might be reserved, but he certainly
isn’t
shy.
Kakashi is not a strong swimmer, but he can keep his head above water, and that’s all the matters. The way in which Iruka swims is mesmerizing, the complete control he maintains over his body even under water is unlike anything Kakashi’s ever seen before. Iruka is as still as a stone under fast moving water, his limbs contained and well-contorted as though he’s deep in thought or meditation. When he surfaces for air, it is without any sound, as though the water parted for him. The pair swim for a little over two hours before the sun begins to set in earnest.
There’s nothing for them to dry off with, and so they trek back to Kakashi’s homestead with only their shoes on. The hearth is still much appreciated as they use its fire and warmth to dry off. It’s worth it not to see Iruka looking lost and heartbroken.
With his objective achieved, Kakashi props Iruka up on the loveseat to rest with the softest throw he can find. It’s much more comfortable than the old futon he’s been using over the past two nights, and he makes it a point to say so. Iruka only laughs at his petulant silliness, offering to share his already limited space.
Kakashi wishes to be so bold, but now is not the time.
“I’ll reach out to the Mizukage first thing in the morning,” he says, smoothing out the wrinkles bunching up his pillow.
“Are you sure you don’t want the loveseat?” Iruka asks, but Kakashi understands him to mean something else. It’s much closer to asking if he’s sure he wants to accompany him.
Kakashi will not accept any alternative, and Iruka knows better, but his ceaseless fretting often made him insecure for no real reason at all. He’s questioning his place in all of this, and he’s likely questioning his place in Kakashi’s life. Which, to Kakashi, is insulting, but only because he’s actively aware of how much space Iruka actually holds in his life.
He’s never been bold or courageous enough in order to tell him that.
Maybe one day.
“Iruka, I want you to have the loveseat,” he assures him, “and I also want you to know that you’re not getting out of bringing me along for the ride. I’m as much interested in your culture as you are, and your safety is also important to me for personal reasons. So, goodnight.”
It takes three full minutes before Iruka utters back a meek, “Goodnight.”
“I see, thank you,” Kakashi says, ending his call wit the Mizukage just as Tsunade enters what is now his office instead of hers.
“You sure this is a good idea?” she asks, studying the results of her latest manicure with a critical eye, the color of her nails the same painted color as her lips.
“The Mizukage assured us that extra security will be provided for us every trek of the way,” Kakashi answers, having worked diligently to cover all his bases. “Besides, she isn’t publicizing any of this. It’s purely meant as an opportunity for Iruka to meet one of his last remaining ancestor’s before he’s truly the last one.”
Tsunade nods, her shoulders relaxing. For whatever the reason, all three Hokage’s during Iruka’s lifetime were greatly fond of him. Sarutobi, Tsunade, and now—him.
“I imagine Naruto will be tagging along for the ride?”
“Of course,” Kakashi says. “In fact, I’m expecting him and Yamato any minute now to go over our itinerary one last time.”
Tsunade nods once, leaning back against the door frame. “I guess two weeks isn’t that long in the grand scheme of things,” she reasons. “Iruka’s lucky I’m inclined to help him. Especially now that I’m supposed to be retired.”
“I’ll be sure to bring you back a variety of the finest alcohol the Land of Water has to offer,” he promises, grateful and indebted to her.
“You damn well better, brat.”
In truth, Tsunade is relieved that Kakashi has found another like him. Her grandfather spoke often about yokai, and their importance for all other life on this planet. Kakashi never learned how to embrace that aspect of himself, but he’s now in the process of learning in order to help Iruka’s own understanding.
It’s quite something.
“Do you think I’m being cautious enough?” he asks, and he wants her honest opinion.
He wants to know if he’s left himself vulnerable.
“I think you’re being as cautious as you can be given the circumstances,” she says, taking a seat. She hadn’t planned on staying, but with Naruto and Yamato due soon, she decides to wait around and learn more. “Besides, Mei and I have worked closely together. I consider her a friend, and she’s still polite enough to call me “Lady Hokage” in that accent of hers.”
“Interesting the relationships you’re able to form when you’re not actively trying to kill one another, no?” Kakashi muses, and Tsunade chuckles.
“I’ll drink to that one, kid.”
Yamato and Naruto arrive on time together. Kakashi expects that caliber of professionalism from Yamato, but it’s quite unexpected from his former pupil. Kakashi knows Iruka planned on discussing his recent issues and revelations with Naruto, and he must have done so given the level of care he’s taking.
“We’ll meet outside the village gates at oh-three-hundred hours,” Kakashi says, giving his final command before they’re scheduled to take off. “We’ll be gone for close to three and a half weeks. It’ll take us six days both ways if we maintain a steady pace between the Land of Fire and the Land of Water. The Mizukage will provide us with further travel details and plans once we arrive.”
“Iruka-sensei is staying the night with us,” Naruto says, studying the map that outlines just a few of the many islands located in the Land of Water one last time. “We’ll meet up with you guys first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Good idea,” Kakashi mentions. “I know the children are going to miss you both while we’re gone.”
“Yeah, Boruto’s having a hard time understanding why Iruka has to leave, too, this time.”
“It’s not easy being a child,” Yamato concurs.
“Be sure to send Hinata my regards,” Kakashi says, watching Naruto push his seat back in. A direct reflection of the good manners instilled in him by none other than Iruka himself, “and please make sure Iruka tries and gets some rest tonight.”
It’s not easy, the notion of taking a father from his children—no matter how willing.
“I think between the three of you, Iruka will be in good hands,” Tsunade reassures the two left behind. “You can only plan ahead so far. Besides, this is meant to be a homecoming for Iruka. It’s not meant for him to be stepping into enemy territory. Please remember that.”
“I have no plans of being hostile,” Kakashi argues. Wanting to keep Iruka safe is its own priority.
“Not intentionally, no,” Tsunade says, “but it’s hard to forget the past, even when you’re certain you already have.”
“This has nothing to do with Rin,” Kakashi responds with no inflection in his voice, but still, it sounds more like a warning. “Her death has no part in this.”
“I question that with the level of anger you’re unable to keep out of your tone,” Tsunade continues. “We all have biases, Kakashi. You’re not doing anyone any favors by dismissing them. If you’re not careful, you might just end up hurting the person you swore to help.”
“I would never let anything from
my
past interfere with Iruka or the task at hand.”
“I just want to make sure you’re emotionally ready for anything that might stir up old memories,” she says, softer and kinder than she’s ever been before. “It’s easy to do, and I say that from experience.”
It’s a blistering trigger.
A pointed jab at his deepest pain.
It’s taken a long time for him to be able to grow around the void her death left in its wake.
“Duly noted.”
Kakashi wasn’t worried about it until he is. He forces himself to brush it aside. Tsunade doesn't know what she's talking about, he's sure.
Either way, it’s a restless night, and all Kakashi wants to do is talk to Iruka until he grows too tired to do so.
Every time he dare close his eyes, however, he recalls in vivid detail the light brown cinnamon-swirl of her eyes, and the rich purple that adorned her childlike features as it's exposed in the rain and the blood and the chaos by the light of his chidori.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Hob has no fucking clue how he’s going to get his foot in the door of the Burgess Estate.
Roderick Burgess has been dead some sixty-odd years. Hob doesn’t even remember when he found out the old man had bit the bullet; the knowledge hadn’t even been a blip on his radar, in one ear and out the other. He knew, distantly, that Burgess had had a son who inherited the Estate—the kid was nothing like his father, if the sudden halt to all the parties and grandeur way back when had been any indication. Little bastard must be pushing towards his nineties now, Hob thinks.
Death hadn’t had much more information about the Burgess family, last night. She knew humanity, she’d said, but not in the same way her brother did, whatever that meant. The most she could say was that Roderick Burgess—or, rather, his ghost—hadn’t spoken to her at all when she’d arrived to take his soul away, and that she hadn’t guided his son from the living, yet. Which meant that Burgess Junior was still alive, as far as Death knew, and he was the one keeping Hob’s Stranger locked up in the basement.
Christ, Hob thinks as he climbs out of his car in front of the first petrol station he finds in Wych Cross, he really hopes the basement part is an exaggeration.
Part of Hob wishes Death was still with him, which was a thought he’s never imagined he would have. The woman—the Endless, that’s what she is, Hob reminds himself—had left the pub not long after Hob’s realization, with an apologetic smile and an acknowledging tilt of her head
. “Only one of me,”
she’d said, and in those few words Hob could hear the weight of a routine so ageless it was beyond his comprehension. He had wondered, in that moment, how she did it all, but the answer probably would have melted his brain.
“I’ll try to visit you when I can,”
Death had told him, with the lightness of a promise she wasn’t sure she could keep.
“With the magic around the place, I won’t be of any help inside, but maybe you’ll find something we can figure out together.”
Hob finds some irony in a literally endless being using the phrase ‘figure out,’ but that’s neither here nor there.
The petrol station is far too cold when he steps inside, with dim lights and a young looking cashier burying her nose in a gossip magazine. She hardly glances up at Hob when the bell above the door rings at his entry, and the annoyance that flashes across her face when he steps right up to the counter is a little comical.
“Have you got a map?” Hob starts with, letting his tone lift with confusion. It’s a little too easy these days, faking things—centuries of experience will do that. He’s just glad he doesn’t have use for it often.
The cashier’s eyebrow twitches, like this is a question she hears on the regular and is incredibly sick of. “Listen, mate,” she starts, and Hob winces on the inside at how sickly sweet she’s trying and failing to make her voice. “You’ll wanna turn back where you came from, yeah, and follow that road up for near two kilometers, then—”
“Oh, no, no,” Hob interrupts. He offers a bashful smile and rubs the back of his neck when the cashier squints at him.
Laying it on thick today, Gadling.
“I’m not lost, just looking for someone. It’s been some years since I’ve been out here, is all.”
“Who’s the someone?” the cashier asks. The fake sweetness from her tone has withered away, replaced by a poor attempt at indifference. She’s curious; Hob’s got her attention. “Might know the name.”
“Family name’s Burgess,” Hob answers. He doesn’t know Junior’s first name; no one really had. All old man Roderick had blathered about had been his eldest, Randall, and even Hob knows the poor kid bit the bullet back before this cashier’s parents were probably born.
The young woman’s eyes widen, just a fraction, and Hob briefly worries that he’s just implicated himself in something he doesn’t want a part of, before she says, “Fawny Rig’s fuckin’ cursed, mate.”
Yeah,
Hob almost wants to say,
But probably not the way you’re thinking.
Instead, he laughs and offers a grin and a, “Is it really?”
“No, like,” says the cashier, finally putting down her magazine. She leans forward across the counter, dropping her voice into a conspiratorial whisper. “Old man Burgess
hates
people. Ain’t nobody gone up there in ages ‘cept the ones working for him. And
they
never say what they’re doing there, just some crap about security and bitching about staying up all night. You might as well turn around right now; it ain’t worth shit, what I hear.”
Hob blinks, thinks for approximately half a moment, then says, “Well, that’s why I’m going up there.”
“What?” frowns the cashier.
“To work,” smiles Hob.
The cashier looks at him like he’s just lost his marbles all over her countertop.
“You’re insane, I think,” she tells him, bold as brass, and gives him directions to Fawny Rig.
—
Pulling up the road leading to the mansion, Hob expects…
something.
Some grandeur. Security guards lining the front of the place; giant wrought iron gates with intimidating spikes at the top; dead trees and dramatically timed flashes of lightning and maybe a wolf or two lurking at the tree-line, waiting for their moment to strike. Something to justify the way his grip on the steering wheel makes the leather creak and how every bit of him is buzzing with tension.
There’s nothing.
The gravel crunches beneath his car’s wheels. The fountain out front is off, the stone of it dirty and weathered. The windows are dark, the lawns empty, not a living, moving thing in sight. As Hob parks beside the fountain and climbs out of the car, a raven cries somewhere he can’t see.
It looks well and truly abandoned, Hob thinks, and doesn’t know how he feels about that, for about as long as it takes for him to shut his car door and the mansion’s door to swing open.
“Can I help you?” calls a man from the doorway. He’s dressed smartly—more than Hob would expect for such a desolate looking place—and looks a bit younger than Hob in appearance, although nowadays that doesn’t mean really anything at all. The look on his face is blatant distrust and suspicion. “Are you lost?”
“No, actually!” Hob answers brightly. He lifts his hands up a bit in a gesture of peace, and the man’s expression twists a little in distaste, too. It deepens when Hob starts making his way toward the door, gravel shifting beneath his boots. “I just heard you lot were hiring. Something about security work? Now, I’ve got some under my belt—”
“We’re not hiring,” says the man darkly. It looks like he’s fighting back a fierce scowl as Hob steps up to the door properly. “You can leave, now.”
“Damn, really?” Hob makes a show of frowning and scratching at the stubble on his cheek. “Know of anyplace that is, then? None of my work’s really been on the books, if you catch my drift, mate. And I heard good things about this place!”
The man stares at Hob with narrowed eyes, opens his mouth, and is interrupted by, “Andrew? Is that someone at the door? Goodness, let him in, don’t leave him standing out there!”
The voice, old and warm, comes from further in the house, and Hob offers his most blinding grin as Andrew’s face twitches and he steps aside to let Hob through.
Stepping across the threshold of the place doesn’t make him feel any different than he had outside, and Hob tries not to be disappointed by that.
The inside isn’t much at all what he was expecting. Going down the hall, Andrew at his heels, Hob tries not to stare at the glass cases on either side of him, shelves filled with odds and ends that look like they’d be best in a museum. He spies roughened pages with script he can’t read; gems that shine without light to catch them; stone tablets with fossil prints he doesn’t recognize. It makes Hob uneasy, and he wishes he could attribute the feeling to whatever magic was keeping Death out of the house decades ago, but inside he knows it boils down only to basic human instinct.
Something in him wants out of here, so he keeps going down the hall.
It opens up into a sitting room, one with wide windows and welcoming couches. Light pours in through the open curtains, and an older looking man sat on one of the couches looks up from his book as Hob enters, Andrew quick after him.
“Oh!” says the old man, beaming. He closes his book and sets it on the table in front of him, then stands, reaching out to shake Hob’s hand. “Welcome, welcome! We never get visitors, anymore. My name is Paul, it’s lovely to meet you.”
“And you, sir,” Hob answers dutifully, smiling. It grates him, sometimes, looking at someone centuries younger than him and saying
sir,
but he bites his tongue. “Robert Goldman.”
“What a strong name,” grins Paul. He steps back and returns to his place on the couch, gesturing for Hob to sit in one of the armchairs on the other side of the table. “Please, make yourself comfortable. Andrew, could you fetch us some tea, please? Or would you like coffee, Robert?”
“Tea is fine,” Hob agrees. He twists a little to look back at Andrew, flashing his first genuine grin. “Two sugars, please, Andy.”
Andrew looks like he’s going to start blowing steam out of his ears as he marches away. Hob tries not to take too much pleasure in it.
“So, Robert,” Paul says, “What brings you all the way to Fawny Rig? I adore having guests, of course, but we haven’t had one in a good while.”
Hob leans back in the armchair, trying for casual and confident. He reaches it, he knows he does, he’s had centuries of practice—but the unease biting at the inside of his mind is making him far more tense than he’d like to be when he’s playing con to an old man keeping his friend locked up somewhere.
Unless, a traitorous part of Hob’s mind whispers, they’ve moved his Stranger someplace else.
Let’s not think about that,
Hob tells it. It’s bad enough he’s here flying by the seat of his fucking pants. There’s something about his Stranger that sweeps the floor out beneath his feet, he thinks mildly, and it’ll probably make this more difficult sometime soon.
“Well,” Hob starts easily, “I’ve done some off the books work over the years, and that’s not real good for
on
the books work, yeah? Last job finished up and I heard you lot were hiring, and that you were good for your word.”
“Ah,” says Paul, with all the enthusiasm of a flat tire. “I see.”
Well that’s not good,
Hob thinks. “Are you, then?” Hob asks, laying his tone smooth and light like he isn’t hanging on to the question by his fingernails. “Hiring, I mean?”
Paul glances behind Hob and grimaces, just barely, as a new voice croaks, “We are.”
Hob turns in the armchair. His gaze lands on another old man, standing in the doorway Andrew had disappeared through. The newcomer is leaning on a cane, his free hand shoved into the pocket of his slacks, a sourness to his expression that Hob suspects is permanent. He glowers as Hob stands, and doesn’t take Hob’s extended handshake.
“Alex, darling,” says Paul quietly, “Are we?”
Darling.
Hob blinks. Oh.
Oh.
So the rumors were true, huh, back in the 20s. Old man’s Burgess Junior was into lads. Only respectable thing about him, Hob thinks, only a little meanly.
Alex’s gaze cuts past Hob and to Paul, narrowed and sharp. Far clearer than the stare of any other man Hob has seen reach his nineties. Has Alex gotten so old because Death can’t reach him, Hob wonders? He’ll have to ask her the next time he sees her—although a nasty little part of him suspects it may be over Alex’s body.
Hob steps aside; partially to allow the two men a proper view of each other, mostly to give himself a view of them both. His eyes alight on the wall, and for the first time he notices a stuffed raven sat on a wide dresser, its white breast puffed out with pride. Looking at it, for some reason, makes Hob’s stomach churn.
“We are,” Alex repeats gruffly. He starts to hobble further into the room, and Hob watches Paul step forward to help him. “Fired two of the bastards this morning.”
“What?”
Paul wheezes, panic clear across his face. He puts a hand on Alex’s shoulder and leans down to meet their gazes. “Alex, love, we’ve talked about this. You know it’s difficult replacing people—”
“We’ve got their replacement right here,” says Alex, lifting his cane to point at Hob. Hob just barely leans back in enough time to avoid getting jabbed in the stomach with it. “They started asking questions. Too many. You won’t do that, will you, boy?”
Hob feels his eye twitch, just barely. “No, sir,” he forces out.
“Good,” Alex huffs.
“Darling,”
Paul implores, “Who was it you let go?”
Alex waves his free hand dismissively as Paul lowers him to the armchair Hob had been occupying. “Last night’s,” he says unhelpfully, “Whatever their bloody names were.”
“Alex.” Paul looks like he’s going to sit down right on the couch and cry. Hob can’t really blame him; even if Hob didn’t suspect the man’s keeping his Stranger locked up somewhere, Alex seems like one hell of a man to deal with. “We’ve only got two rotations of guards left. That was one of them. They’re supposed to come back
tonight.
We can’t replace two people with just one, especially on such short notice.”
Hob can’t help the way his eyebrows start creeping toward his hairline.
“If I may?” he interrupts, trying to keep his tone light. The men’s gazes turn to him, one pleading and the other spiteful. “Not sure what it is you’re guarding, gentleman, but I know plenty of self defense, and how to keep my mouth shut.”
Both of these things are true. Hob’s plenty capable of defending himself, and he’s avoided a number of gruesome deaths by knowing when to keep quiet about something he wasn’t supposed to see. It
took
a number of gruesome deaths for him to figure it out, but he digresses.
Something like a smug little glint shines in Alex’s eyes. “Take him to see it,” he tells Paul, who draws in a long breath like he’s asking Mother Mary for patience. “If he can do it, he’s hired.”
“You won’t be coming, love?” asks Paul, with all the grace of a man who has asked before and knows the answer.
“Sooner die,” spits Alex.
—
Hob has a suspicion when Paul makes him wait outside the room he’s lead to, so he doesn’t see how the bookshelf opens to reveal the elevator behind it. The suspicion gets worse when the only direction the elevator goes is
down.
“I feel I should… warn you,” Paul says, quietly, as the elevator descends, utterly silent. “It can be jarring, the first time.”
“What
is
it?” Hob asks, keeping his voice very carefully even.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Paul laughs. It’s not a happy laugh, or even a light one. Hob can recognize the bitterness of it, the weight of something almost like guilt but not quite like responsibility. “Not until you’ve seen him.”
Him.
Hob’s blood is pounding in his ears. He wipes his sweaty palms on his jeans.
The elevator creaks, just ever so slightly, as it hits the end of its drop. The sound is blaringly loud against the stone hallway Hob sees as it opens. Paul steps out, loafers echoing, and gestures for Hob to follow.
It’s dark; darker than any man should be comfortable with, being around for longer than necessary. People need sunlight, Hob has learned over his centuries. Sunlight, and fresh air—the air down here is stagnant and wet, and Hob feels suffocated by it. Everything is black and gray stone, throwing their sounds back at them, the rustle of their clothes and the sound of their footsteps and the huffs of their own breaths. The back of Hob’s neck is burning, like something in him knows he shouldn’t be here.
Paul leads him up to an iron gate. Hob can’t see straight through it, stopped beside the wall as he is, but he can see the two guards sat smoking at a table, and the way one of them leisurely rises to his feet at the sight of Paul.
“Afternoon, sir,” the guard greets. He stabs out his cigarette in the little glass ashtray on the table and steps up to the gate, the sound of keys jangling sharply.
“Good afternoon, Michael,” Paul greets back, “How’s he been?”
“Oh, same as always,” says Michael. The gate’s lock clicks and he opens one of its doors, stepping aside for Paul to enter. Hob makes to follow. “Not moved at all, not sure he’s even blinked really.”
Hob freezes in the doorway.
“Heard Mister Burgess canned Tom and Eric earlier,” says the other guard, still at the table. “This one of the replacements?”
“This is Robert,” Paul introduces gently. “We’re working that out now, actually. Would you mind, gentlemen?”
“Ah,” says Michael. He gestures at his coworker, who puts out his cigarette and stands as well. “Sure thing, sir. Holler if you need.”
The two men skirt past Hob, turning sideways to get through. The second guard even has the balls to give him a solid pat on the shoulder. Hob can’t bring himself to swing around and punch him, even though he so desperately wants to—he’s not certain he can even bring himself to breathe.
“Take your time,” Paul whispers, barely a breath, and
oh,
how Hob wants to punch him, too. Wants to knock his lights out against one of the giant stone pillars holding up the room.
A cage. A
cage.
A devil in the basement. Hob’s ears start ringing.
It can be jarring, the first time.
A glass cage, in the dark, surrounded by water, like a castle amidst a moat, tall and untouchable. Alone. Naked. So skinny, down to the bones, and hasn’t he always been that small, thin-boned like a bird, but Christ above, not like this—
Hob’s Stranger sits in the center of a glass ball, back straight, legs crossed, wrists resting on his knees like a king on his throne, and Hob is good. He’s good at reading his Stranger.
Hob watches his Stranger open his eyes, lift his head, and sees the moment recognition dawns.
Hob watches the twitch forward, the barest lurch to stand, though he stays seated. He watches the wide eyes, the parted lips, the subtlest curl of fingers into fists. He watches the way his Stranger’s gaze flickers over Hob’s own face, up and down over his body, taking him in with utter bafflement, and knows that Paul sees
none
of it, because it took Hob five hundred years to.
It feels like parting the ocean, stepping into the room. It feels like Hob is walking through his six hundred years of life all at once, dredging through the pain and the grief of it like the mud of a trench. It feels like he’s finally stepped down into the fires of Hell, and he
burns.
Hob Gadling
burns
with the fury of it.
It isn’t until Paul puts an arm out to stop him, not unkindly, that Hob realizes he’d damn near been about to run straight up to that fucking glass ball and throw his fist against it.
“Robert,” Paul says gently, putting his opposite hand on Hob’s shoulder, “Listen, I know it’s a shock, but he isn’t human, okay? It’s not—it isn’t like—”
He can’t seem to get the rest of the sentence out, but Hob hears it anyway.
It’s not like the war. It’s not like the camps.
Hob almost wants to laugh at the absurdity of it.
Paul thinks Hob wants to break the glass because of what stained the world, barely forty five years ago now. That hadn’t even occurred to Hob in his anger, though now it’s all he can see—his best friend, his truest friend, the one he would wait six centuries again and more for until the end of time and all creation, trapped and hidden from the world like something subhuman.
He isn’t human.
Oh, but Hob’s Stranger is so very more human than even the man himself wants to admit.
Hob can feel himself shaking. Paul slowly removes his arm, though doesn’t take his hand from Hob’s shoulder. Hob doesn’t miss the way his Stranger’s eyes land on the contact and stay there.
“He doesn’t speak,” Paul says quietly. From his peripheral, Hob can see the other man watching his Stranger, something like sadness coloring his expression. “Not to anyone.”
“I think you’re lonely.”
“He doesn’t move, even. Doesn’t act anything like a man.”
“You dare suggest one such as I might need your companionship.”
“It’s… It’s something terrible, I know,” Paul whispers. “Nothing any creature should endure. But Alex is convinced he’ll kill us all if he’s freed. He’s something that doesn’t belong with this world, Robert.”
He belongs with me,
Hob thinks, fiercely, and can’t even find it in himself to smother the idea like he has so many other times for so many centuries now.
He won’t have to kill any of you—I’ll do it for him.
“Listen,” Paul murmurs, “I understand if you can’t do the job.”
Hob’s Stranger’s eyes flash back to him. They’d been shining, that night in 1889. Hob remembers being surprised—he hadn’t thought such an otherworldly being ever capable of something so human as tears. Those eyes are shining now, in the dim light of this fucking basement, locked on him through that fucking glass, though his Stranger’s face is also as stony cold as before, too.
Paul continues, “We’ll still give you a courtesy payment, of course, for your silence—”
“No,” Hob croaks. His voice isn’t strong. It shakes and bows like a tree in a storm, and he swallows thickly, blinking harshly against the still air weighing down on him, sitting between him and his Stranger like a wall. “No, I’ll-I’ll take the job. You said tonight?”
His Stranger’s head tilts upwards, just ever so slightly.
From his peripheral, Hob sees Paul look between the two of them. He sees the old man’s frown; the way it shifts from sympathetic to thoughtful. He sees the way Paul glances downwards, brows furrowed. Hob follows the gaze, tearing his eyes away from his Stranger with something like physical effort, and finds a circle of runes painted yellow on the bricks beneath the cage.
“Alright,” Paul says, quietly. He squeezes Hob’s shoulder, and when Hob lifts his eyes to meet the old man’s, he sees understanding there.
It’s enough to make his heart stop, just for as long as it takes Paul to smile, small and sad and knowing, and agree, “Good, then.”
Hob exhales—barely a breath, thin and shaking and heavy with six centuries—and looks back to the cage.
“
Let’s get back upstairs and discuss the details, shall we?” says Paul.
Tonight,
Hob thinks to his Stranger like a prayer, and can only hope he hears it.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Viktor finally caught up with Five, leaning against a shop window, studying something in his hands under the neon lights above him. "You just going to run out on me again? Here, when we're finally free? No more Academy, no more powers, just you, me, and the world?"
Five sighed, but didn't look up. "Thought we were supposed to be making our own separate ways?" He folded whatever he'd been looking at and put it in his pocket.
"How far do you think you're gonna get in that body without a legal guardian to—" Viktor's breath caught. "You grew up."
He'd been taller than Viktor already, but the form straightening up now had lost the gangly quality it had had just hours before. The same too-old eyes turned to him in a much more chiseled face, framed in soft wavy hair grown out of the slicked schoolboy cut. But in the same exasperated voice as usual, he said, "Like I've been trying to tell you, Viktor, I'm 58, and I don't need you babying me."
"No, I mean, you
physically grew up
. In the past ten minutes. Luther came out looking fully human again, Diego got his fingers back, and you—" he waved helplessly at the now unnervingly handsome man in front of him.
"Grew my arm back, yeah."
"No! I mean you DID, but that's not all." He suddenly felt flushed, tongue-tied, thirteen again. "You look like a-a-an adult."
Five frowned down at himself, as if he could see the change from that angle. "I guess that explains the…" he muttered to himself, pulling the something out of his pocket again. A wallet.
"What?"
"You check your pockets? Like I said, I don't need your help. I apparently already have a place to live waiting for me, and I'm guessing you do, too." He held a card out to Viktor.
It was a driver's license, and that was clearly a picture of Five, as he looked now: 29 and a half, just like the
10/01/1989
beside it would corroborate. But the name and address?
Murphy, Finn V. 153 W. Elm St, apt.4—
"Who—?"
Five snatched the card back. "We've got places carved out for us in this universe. Identities to fall into, as if we've always been here."
Viktor patted his own pockets and found a wallet in his inner jacket. And there it was,
Petrokov, Viktor—
His heart leaped. "It's already updated! It says Viktor!"
"Your voice is lower, too. I have a feeling you've been Viktor a little longer in this universe."
"I guess without any powers to suppress, I wouldn't have spent most of my life sedated out of my mind. I might have figured things out soon—errrr, what was the address on yours again?"
"Something Elm Street, why?"
"153 West Elm Street? Apartment 4?"
"Ye…ahhh?"
Viktor flipped his own license around. "We live together."
"Huh." Five compared the IDs, then handed Viktor's back. "All right, you win. I guess we
are
sticking together. You still don't get to baby me, though." He was smiling, Viktor was relieved to see.
"I wasn't planning to! I think it would be better for
both
of us to have somebody familiar to lean on, that's all."
Five grinned outright now. "Let's go find Elm Street, then."
They set off in the general direction Viktor remembered Elm Street having been before, in a past universe. The streets themselves seemed to be the same in the rebooted City, but the buildings were slicker, more modern, taller. And somewhere, on every block, they caught the name on the signs:
Part of the Hargreeves Consortium of Local Business. This facility protected by Hargreeves Security. Another Life Enhancement from Hargreeves Enterprises! Har-Mart!
"Har-Mart?"
"Har-Mart!"
They looked at each other and burst out laughing.
Viktor tempered the laugh into a groan. "God, he's everywhere. Makes me feel paranoid. Big Dad Is Watching Us."
"If it makes you feel any better, I don't think we were even
adopted
here, seeing that I still have Efa Murphy's last name."
Viktor smiled softly. "She your birth mother?"
"Yeah. Butcher just outside Dublin. Seemed pretty spunky. Don't know why she'd ever give me up." There was a forced lightness in his tone that made Viktor step closer, protectively. Not touching. But closer.
"I didn't get to read Klaus's book. Harlan found it first, and then— I was a little preoccupied. Did you read about my mother?"
"Yours? Yeah. She was really young. A swimmer. It was the Soviet era, she was probably being stringently trained to represent The Motherland at the Olympics. They probably wouldn't have
let
her keep you."
"Well, apparently she
did
, in this universe. Or someone not Dad."
"And yet we both still ended up in America. In the same City. In the same apartment." His brows furrowed, and he stared straight ahead, lost in thought. It was such a familiar expression on this new— and yes, really
quite attractive
— 30-year-old face. Viktor caught himself staring. He cleared his throat and forced himself to look away.
"Do you think the others live there, too?"
"With us? In an
apartment?
I sure hope not."
"Then where are they? And why are
we
together? Not that I mind— you'd be my first choice to bunk with, anyway." Had that come out too quickly? He toughened his voice. "Which is why I came after you in the first place, loser."
Five made a noise that sounded almost like a chuckle. "Honestly? I'm happy about this turn of events, too. We've barely spent any time together since I've been back. I've missed you, V."
That warmed Viktor in a more comfortable way. He'd been waiting for Five to say that for weeks. He smiled wryly. "You have? Sometimes I wasn't sure."
"Well I might've had time to show you, if
someone
hadn't kept causing apocalypses for me to stop…"
"I—!"
"Kidding. It wasn't your fault. I'm sure I've tried to explain all the extenuating factors involved in any one temporal event before."
"Yeah. Well, I
am
sorry I brushed you off the night you came back."
"
I'm
sorry I was so preoccupied I didn't even notice the predicament
you
were in that week."
"I'm sorry I gave you so much trouble about leaving Sissy and Harlan in the '60s."
"I'm sorry I lied to you about your part in the apocalypses."
"Well, I'm still
not
sorry I didn't tell you about Harlan and our mothers."
"Good. I'm still not sorry I threatened to kill you over it."
Viktor stopped walking to glare at Five. Five was smugly smiling back. Viktor rammed him in the side with his shoulder. He really had missed that asshole. A lot.
They stared up at 153 West Elm in hesitant admiration. It wasn't a large apartment building, but it was clean, and well-maintained, a converted three-story house with an outer staircase leading straight to Apt. 4. "Nicer than I was expecting. Nicer than my last place at least."
"Guess we're not doing too badly for a couple of emotionally damaged bachelors. You have a key?"
Viktor checked his pockets again and pulled out a key ring with several keys, a couple of which looked familiar. He singled out one of the unfamiliar ones. "I think so? Do you have one, too?"
"Here." Five pulled out another set of keys and found one identical to Viktor's. "Do you want to do the honors?"
"Sure." Viktor unlocked the door and pushed it open.
Almost immediately they were greeted by a stubby little dog, barking cheerfully and hopping between them. Viktor fumbled for the light switch while Five caught the dog and the door and shut the one before the other could run out of it.
The dog seemed interested only in greeting Five, though. "Calm down, boy! Yes, we're here, we're not going anywhere else for the time being, chill out." The dog licked at Five as he rumpled it around the ears.
Viktor watched in bemusement. "How do you know he's a boy?"
"I just know, right Mr. Pennycrumb? Because he's Mr. Pennycrumb, aren't you?"
"I had no idea you were an animal person."
"I wasn't. But this guy obviously loves me, and who am I to turn down someone with such good taste, right? He
is
one cute puppy."
Viktor could barely decide whether to keep watching this disturbingly adorable interaction or actually take a look around their new home.
Practicality won out. They'd entered toward the dining end of a wide rectangular living/dining room, with a warm beige carpet and lots of shelves around the walls. A round table stood between them and a narrow kitchen, separated from the main room by a counter topped with open shelving. A low, long bookcase and an easy chair loosely divided the dining and living areas. Viktor crouched in front of the bookcase and smiled. He'd spotted many of his favorite books. Not just by title, but the actual copies he'd owned in their home universe, worn in the exact same places.
"Now, which of these doors leads to the bathroom?" Five opened the door nearest the bookcase and nodded. "Lucky guess."
"One in three chance." Besides the front door and the bathroom, there were just two other doors leading off the big room. Viktor opened the one next to the bathroom. A storage closet, just deep enough to maybe be considered a walk-in, but barely, full of linens and boxes and a couple of winter coats.
His
winter coat, he noted.
The last door opened directly into a bedroom. It was a fairly large bedroom, but still just one, with just one bed. Viktor spotted another door in the wall beside him— maybe that led to another bedroom?
No, just another closet, filled with sharp suits that clearly belonged to Five, but also a bunch of familiar casual button-downs and the worn concert tuxedo he'd been wearing for years (
not
, he was relieved to see, supernaturally bleached white). So they shared the closet, and apparently they also shared the bed.
Were they…
together?
The thought confused him. It wasn't an
unpleasant
confusion, and that confused him even more. He glanced over the rest of the room and got distracted— and comforted— by the sight of a music stand by the windows, a familiar violin case at its feet.
He knelt in front of it and flipped the clasps. Yes,
his
violin. The only true gift Reginald Hargreeves had ever given him, in all its original splendor. Brown and whole. No blood stains, no explosive damage.
He lifted it to his shoulder and ran through a quick G-major arpeggio. Sounded the same, too. Barely even needed tuning.
His stomach rumbled, so he bent to put the violin away, but inside the case he caught sight of an engraved brass plate that definitely hadn't been there before.
To Vanya: I expect you not to squander this gift. You
will
dedicate
your time to mastering this instrument, and bring forth music worthy of its storied history. --A.H.
A.H.? Allison? No, that sounded nothing like Allison. Besides, her initials wouldn't be A.H. anymore, would they? Unless
she
had still been adopted.
His stomach rumbled again. He latched the case and stood. "I'm going to see if there's any food in the kitchen," he called to Five as he crossed the living area.
He caught a muffled "fine" in response. Five was still in the bathroom.
The kitchen cupboards looked not all that different, on the inside, from the ones in his old apartment. If anything, they were slightly fuller, and contained a lot more beans, marshmallows, and sugary cereal. The refrigerator held not only fresh ingredients, but a half-used jug of milk and some containers clearly full of leftovers. One held what appeared to be his own specialty tuna casserole.
It was starting to sink in. This really was
home
.
He glanced at the marshmallows beside the bread and peanut butter in the cupboard. Nah. Their first meal in a new universe ought to be a little healthier. He made two lunchmeat sandwiches stuffed tall with veggies and cheese and carried them to the table. "Supper!" Then, "Five?"
What was Five doing, anyway? He still hadn't left the bathroom, even though the dog had pushed open the door and followed him inside. It circled his feet as he stood in front of the sink, frowning into the mirror.
Viktor slipped in behind him. "You okay?"
Five shook his head, almost imperceptibly, and didn't look away from his reflection. "I don't know this guy. When I was his age I had a full beard, bad teeth…scars. That pubescent body was inconvenient at best, but at least I
recognized
him."
God. How many times had Viktor stared into a mirror thinking
I don't know this person
? And yet the fix had been so relatively easy. Even a simple haircut had helped him feel more like himself, and now the reset had put him even closer. But what could he say to Five?
Too bad this universe doesn't think you've spent the past seventeen years in a post-apocalyptic wasteland?
Tentatively, he placed a hand on top of Five's, squeezed. "I— I understand."
"Hair could be worse. At least he doesn't have a buzz cut."
That did him in. Viktor let out a sob. "Oh Five. I can't…I can't begin to know everything you've been through, and I know I've messed up before, but I
am
here
for you now, and I promise I won't brush you off ever again." He wrapped his arms around Five's torso and squeezed.
Five stumbled, stiffly shifted in Viktor's grip. "And emphysema. I'm not saying this isn't an upgrade. It's just going to take getting used to, is all." He lifted Viktor's chin, looking straight into his eyes. "You going to make it, kid? I'm really not worth crying over."
For a split second Viktor froze, before he managed to blink and look down. "You are
SO
, but, yeah, I'm fine, sorry."
"Sorry for what?"
"Getting emotional."
"You deserve to. You have to make up for years of emotional repression. Just don't want you to think you have to on
my
account." He wiped a tear from Viktor's cheek with his thumb.
Why?
Five probably thought he was being a good big brother. The casual way he called him "kid" reminded Viktor that he was still 29 years older than he looked even now. But it had been so much easier to think of him as a brother when he looked thirteen. Now, it was confusing. Again. The same way it had been confusing back when Viktor had been thirteen, too.
He backed away, into the main room. "So do you want to see the rest—"
"What were you saying about— yeah."
"Um, there's only one bedroom." Best to get that out of the way first thing. "With one bed. Um, a queen-sized, but, you know."
Five peered into the bedroom, expression as unreadable as ever. "We did use to sleep in a twin-sized together once."
Viktor laughed. It was such an innocent memory that he felt better. "We were a lot smaller then!" The two tiniest of the little Hargreeves children, sneaking into each other's rooms at night, just to make up for the day spent apart.
Five was watching him with a soft smile. After a moment he said, "You can have the bed. I can sleep anywhere." He strode back toward the dining area. The dog and Viktor followed.
"Don't use it as an excuse to sleep poorly! You need to get out of the habit of going until you pass out. No apocalypses to thwart here."
"What habit?"
"No, seriously, when was the last time you had a good night's sleep? Drunken blackouts and heavy blood loss don't count."
"I have—recently. Sometime!"
"How about a balanced meal?" He grabbed the sandwiches he'd prepared earlier.
"Luther's wedding. HAH! Less than 24 hours ago, happy?"
"Typically people have two to three balanced meals in that time frame—"
"Didn't I tell you not to baby me?"
"Tough luck, I made you a sandwich. Yes, the kitchen is fully stocked! With stuff we like!"
"I'm withholding judgment until I see the coffee for myself— oh. Yeah. Looks like I picked the coffee." He set to filling up the percolator on the counter.
Viktor grinned, watching him. "Don't forget your actual nutrients, too." He set one plate directly in front of the coffee machine, then carried his own to the main room to continue exploring.
"Thanks, Mom!" Five called after him, then added, "That wasn't misgendering! It's just obvious you're emulating one of our parental figures and it sure as hell ain't the King of Har-Mart!"
"I figured!" Viktor set his plate on the desk in the corner. There was a big computer on top, like the kind at the library. Must be something Five used for his equations in this universe. Viktor couldn't imagine what
he
might ever need a computer for.
He took a bite of his sandwich and looked under the desk. "There's a briefcase here?" he called to the kitchen. "I guess it probably isn't a time machine? But I'm gonna let you handle it anyway, okay?" He moved on to the drawers. General office supplies in the middle. The left hand drawers were stuffed with papers scrawled all over with some kind of complicated calculus. "Uh, I'm going to let you handle these drawers, too? They're obviously yours."
"Wherever could you have gotten that idea?" Five set his mug of coffee on the corner of the desk and sat on the floor beside the open drawer, holding his sandwich out of reach of the dog, who danced back and forth at his knees. "You gonna help me check if physics is properly multiversal, Mr. Pennycrumb? I'll give you some ham if you help me proof these, hmm? Oh, you're right, you can't work on an empty stomach." He pulled a strip of lunchmeat out of his sandwich and dangled it in front of the dog, who slurped it up and yipped for another, tail wagging madly. Viktor grinned nearly as madly just watching them. "What?" Five snapped after a couple of seconds.
"Oh, nothing." Viktor shook his head and turned back to the desk. The
right
hand drawers were lined with tidy hanging folders, all neatly labeled in his own familiar handwriting. "This is better." He pulled out the first folder, marked "Vet," and flipped it open. "You're right. He
is
Mr. Pennycrumb."
"And you doubted me why?"
"Also, you sign everything 'F.V. Murphy.' F.V. Think I know how you got your nickname in this universe."
"My
name
, thank you."
"Your
nickname
, Finn." He dodged the ball of paper Five threw at him, and changed folders. "Look, pay stubs. Of course we'd have jobs here. Better to know about them now than when some boss we've never met before calls to chew us out for skipping. Looks like you're getting paid by the University. Wait, this one has my name on it. We're
both
working for the University."
"Probably not in the same department."
Viktor glanced at the equations spread out around Five and said, "God I hope not. Oh, holy shit. I'm still with the Icarus, too! I wonder if the rehearsal schedule is the same. I found my violin in the bedroom."
"I heard. I'm glad."
"Thanks. It would suck if it turned out I'm suddenly supposed to be a pro-level French horn player or something."
"These lives do seem to be sticking pretty closely to what we know. As if they've been made for us to step right into."
The equations must be working out, then, because Viktor couldn't see anything else about this life that resembled anything Five might be familiar with. "I guess that was nice of Dad then. Or Allison. Probably Allison." He flipped past some tax returns and cable contracts to a folder labeled "Documentation," and pulled it out onto the desk.
"Jackpot! Naturalization papers. Both of ours. They're from the same date, July 1994." The formal certificates were each paper-clipped to a stack of carbon-copy forms chock full of interesting details. "Our birth parents are still listed as our parents, but an '
Abigail Hargreeves'
has signed off on these." Was this the mysterious
A.H.
?
"Abigail? Did he get married? Or did she learn something about herself in this universe?"
The thought made Viktor cringe. "If Dad wanted to be Abigail, he
could
have written that in from the start. I'd have been
Viktor
all along, if I was the one programming the universe— but I wasn't, and I'd be kinda pissed if Dad decided HE (or, she) could start fresh but then knowingly left little Ivanna Petrokova to figure it out the hard way." He smiled sadly at the wide-eyed photo on his naturalization certificate. "Sooner than I did but still. Anyway but no, here he is, too." He pointed to another signature on the accompanying forms as he handed them to Five.
"So he
brought
us here, but didn't adopt us. Huh." Five studied the forms. "There's something about 'Education' listed under reasons for immigrating, but then over on this page it says 'Scientific Study.' What's that about?"
Viktor had stopped listening. He'd spotted the words "Certificate of Marri—" among the rest of the pages in the "Documentation" folder, and his heart jumped into his throat. He slid the paper out.
This is to certify that Finn Vernon Murphy and Viktor Ivan Petrokov were united in marriage on this 10th day of November, 2017, according to the laws of the State of New York
….
He read it over again. And another time after that.
"Five. Look at this." His hands shook as he held out the document.
Five took it, at first curious, then his eyes widened. "Oh!" He quickly schooled his face into something Viktor couldn't quite read. "Well! Sorry I missed it."
At that Viktor couldn't hold back a hysterical giggle. Five's somber face cracked, too, as he continued lightly, "I heard the groom looked quite stunning."
Viktor cackled. "Which one?"
"You weren't supposed to ask the follow-up!"
Viktor shoved him. Five swatted him away, outright chuckling now.
"But how— why—" Viktor shuffled for the tax return he'd cast aside earlier "—why would Dad have put that into the reset?" There it was, "married filing jointly." It wasn't a joke certificate, at least.
Five shrugged. "Or Allison. But why would
she
have? Some weird payback for the grief we used to give her and Luther?"
"I never gave them any grief!"
"I did. And it was entirely hypocritical."
Viktor snarfled. "Wait, what?"
Five ignored him. "But maybe it's not their doing at all. Maybe the part that was reset happened much earlier. The whole— Dad bringing us to America but not adopting us piece was set in place, and this is just…the natural progression of F.V. Murphy and Viktor Petrokov from that point."
"So you're saying that,
naturally,
we would have—" Viktor's face burned. He hoped it wasn't too obvious. "I mean, I guess I can see that. I, uh… you were my first crush, actually."
And if I'd seen you grow up the way you have now
…
Five nodded but didn't meet his eyes. "Likewise."
"Wait, are you serious?"
"Why wouldn't I be serious?"
"Just— Idaknow! I was such a— I was so
ordinary
, and you—"
"Watch it. That's that Rumor talking. You really need to learn to catch that thing, remind it you know the truth now."
"You sound like my old therapist. Like you're in any position to give anyone therapy."
"I have 29 more years life experience than you do."
"Most of that with no other humans whatsoever and the rest with homicidal sociopaths."
"It doesn't matter! I'd been alive less than a decade when I could already tell that you were extraordinary. That's all the experience I needed."
"So you really…?" Viktor shook his head. "You liked me too, all along? I had no clue!"
"And maybe if you hadn't been so hung up on being too ordinary for me, something might have happened between us. Double that if we hadn't been adopted by dad. And if I'd never jumped…"
"But that's so many maybes!"
"And those are the maybes Murphy and Petrokov were working with!
"You keep talking about them like they weren't us."
"Because they weren’t! They grew up together and, and they
dated
, and went through the whole marriage process like normal people. They didn't stumble into a whole new universe to find out they're married to the childhood crush they've been trying to think of as a sibling for decades!"
Trying?
"So…what do you want to do about it?"
Five shrugged. "What we've been doing. Figure out what's up with this universe and then live our lives in it.” He sighed. “It's a piece of paper. A legally-binding document, but still, what does it change? We already decided to live together, and to be perfectly honest, I'm just relieved it means we're equals instead of you being my legal guardian."
It…made sense, he guessed. What did it change, besides explaining the only-one-bed-room. It didn’t dictate their actions, beyond-- "But what if…one of us finds someone we want to marry for real?"
"Well, then I'll let you go."
His heart thudded. It was so hard to tell what Five meant sometimes, but it really
seemed
like— as if he— was he saying—? Viktor slid to the floor beside him and leaned in. "Five. Do you
want
to be married to me? For real?"
"Well I—" Five stammered. "I'm not saying it's not ridiculous, but I don't…
mind
…" He straightened up. "Look, I was married to half a mannequin for thirty-some years, I may have a slightly different understanding of marriage than the average person."
Viktor frowned. "Did you just s—?"
"Yes, I said what I said. Delores is complicated, okay? There are facts, and there are truths. Facts are I created her out of the rubble of a department store and my own desperation. I
know
this, I do! But the
truth
is she loved me. She kept me alive, she lifted me when I would have given up, she fixed my mistakes but forgave me for them, she made me laugh and even laughed back at me.
That's
what marriage is to me. A partner through the twists and turns of life! It has nothing to do with desire and passion and sex. But
you
…" he grew quiet— "you want more, and I don't want to hold you back."
Viktor pondered this. Five always had had a somewhat asexual streak. And yet…"You…said you had a crush on me, though. When we were kids."
"Yeah?"
"So, you're not, like, completely NOT …attracted to me, right? I mean I know I'm not the
gender
you thought I was back then, but if there's any—I mean?"
Five shifted, and frowned steadily, but he wouldn't look at Viktor, and he was…he
was
definitely blushing. "What are you getting at?"
It made him oddly braver. "What if what I want…IS you. What if I DO want to be married to you, for real. For— everything that entails."
Five seemed to stop breathing, then slowly sighed. "I…wouldn't mind
that
, either. Eventually."
"Eventually?"
"It's still…a lot to get used to. And— who knows. Here we are, alone together in a strange new world, your body's all hopped up on more testosterone than you're used to, what if whatever you think you're feeling is just…nerves? Clinging to the one familiar person you've got here?"
"Fi-ive…."
"You…you still have time to change your mind, is all I'm saying. We'll…take things slowly. Ease back into each other's company. See if we can really stand each other when we're living together again. It worked for these two, so—" he tossed the marriage certificate aside "—but
I'm not him!
Like I keep saying. I'm— I'm broken, I'm heartless, I…I threatened to kill you just two days ago!"
"I took that as a very stern warning, not an imminent threat to my life."
"I hope you're right."
"Five, I trust you.”
"You trusted that Jenkins, too, and look where that got you."
"You are nothing like—!"
"I know, I'm worse."
"You— the worst, the
only
time you have ever hurt me was, A, an accident, and B, a thousand times worse for yourself, oh, and not to mention C, actually all
my
doing as it turned out anyway!"
"I
told
you, the extenuating—"
"Five, stop! I
know
." He grasped his arms and squeezed. "And like I keep trying to tell
you
, you're
not alone anymore
. I'm here for you, I’m on your side, and I'm willing to help you work out whatever you need to, at whatever speed you like. And for the record, I’ve also done terrible things. But this is a new life, and
we're partners
in it. I don't even need that piece of paper to tell me so."
Five swallowed, and nodded. “Okay.”
Viktor pulled him into a hug, and this time he sank into it, breathing deeply. They sat, holding each other tight, for at least a minute or two, until Five pulled away and said in a suspiciously husky voice, "Thank you."
"Of course. I mean, we're married, aren't we?"
Five cracked a smile. Then he said, slowly, "I don't want to make things awkward…
more
awkward. But— that big bed— I think— I
would
like to stay close to you tonight. Just— to be there. Not…not alone."
"Like when we were kids."
"Exactly."
"Let's go to bed then. It's been a
really
long day."
Viktor knew he was dreaming, but it was more memory than dream: the first time he'd ever snuck into Five's bed in the middle of the night, when they were four or five. "I'm scared," he admitted. "Sir Reginald yells too much. It's scary." Why was he calling Dad 'Sir Reginald'?
"Don't be scared, Vanya. You just have to yell back, is all."
"No, Five! That's the other thing I'm scared of!
You
keep making him
mad
. What if he gets so mad he sends you back?"
"Then I won't go."
"I don't want you to go."
"I'm not going! I will never leave your side. I'm your knight in shining armor who protects you, Princess Vanya!"
Viktor frowned. He didn't want to be a princess. "Can't I be a knight, too? We can protect each other. Knights need someone to take care of them, too, don't they?"
Five looked thoughtful. "I guess so." He nodded. "Okay. You take care of me and I take care of you. We're partner-knights! And I promise, I will never let my partner get sad."
"I won't, either. I promise I will take care of you forever and ever."
"Yeah. Forever and ever."
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
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You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
In the summer before his fifth year at Hogwarts, Harry found himself staring at a door that Hermione had said wouldn’t open for anyone.
After the Dementor fiasco, Harry arrived at Grimmauld Place, and Hermione and Ron filled Harry in on their summer. Harry hadn’t been happy with either of them; he’d much rather have been cleaning doxies and dark artifacts with his friends than weeding the Dursleys’ garden or washing the Dursleys’ floors for the third time in one week.
Even more irritating was the fact that their lack of communication with him had apparently been by Dumbledore’s orders. Dumbledore, who hadn’t even bothered to look him in the eye during his trial, had effectively commanded his friends to abandon him. Even more hurtful, they’d listened.
He’d made a half-assed attempt at hiding his irritation before his trial. After the trial, however, Dumbledore’s completely apathetic attitude towards Harry made him not bother holding it in any longer.
And on top of everything else, Ron and Hermione had been chosen for prefects of Gryffindor, while Harry, who had actually come face-to-face with Voldemort only months earlier, had nothing to show for it except a series of articles in the
Prophet
that portrayed him as ‘The Boy Who Is Touched In the Head.’
All of this had led him to be rather sour with Ron and Hermione. He knew he took his anger out on the wrong people, but it made Harry feel better. After that, it seemed, they’d taken to avoiding him.
Harry was oddly okay with this. The more they avoided him the less his scar prickled.
So he’d formed a new hobby of wandering around Grimmauld Place, staring at the oddities and peering at old portraits until he came across the door that Hermione must’ve been talking about. He knew she said it was on the top floor, at the end of a dimly lit hall.
There was something strange about the door. Harry couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was, but he found himself feeling drawn to it. To be honest, he wasn’t even sure why he went to the top floor in the first place; his feet just seemed to have taken him up the stairs. He knew that should probably have alarmed him considering he was in a house chock full of dark artifacts, but the door didn’t feel threatening.
He reached out and tried the knob, and the door opened.
Harry blinked, then wondered if it was something like a pickle jar in a Muggle sitcom; everyone trying the door earlier in the summer had loosened something so it could open for Harry.
As he poked his head in the door to peer in, a few torches around the perimeter of the room flared to life, and he saw walls lined floor to ceiling with books. A few chairs and a desk resided in the middle.
Harry’s first instinct was to get Hermione. After all, it was clearly a library, probably full of books Hermione had never heard of. But then he remembered that he was still irritated with his friends, and he stepped inside to explore without them. He could tell them later.
The torches seemed to brighten as he neared one of the shelves. He ran his finger along the spines of a few books; they were clearly old, but they seemed to be in good condition, although many didn’t have a title or author printed on the spine. He pulled one off of the shelf at random and flipped it open, and the text almost seemed to leap out at him.
Shadow Walking is a branch of shadow magic that can be immensely useful in a variety of applications. It is one of the first magics a shadow mage will learn and is a staple of the mage’s arsenal, as one must master shadow walking prior to commanding shadows to shift.
Obviously, to begin learning shadow walking, and therefore to begin learning shadow magic, one must have already completed the declaration rites of being a dark witch or wizard. It is recommended that the next step -
Harry stopped reading, startled. He flipped the book to the front cover, and a title appeared.
Introduction to Specialized Arts of the Dark Path
, it read. He turned the book over to glance at the spine of the book and then looked back up at the shelves, realizing that he could now read all of the titles, as if it just took time for his eyes to adjust.
As he took in the titles -
Infusing Flame and Darkness, Mind Arts and Dark Magic,
and
Nearly
Undetectable Curses and Hexes
, to name a few - he abruptly realized that the entire library was dedicated to the dark arts.
He knew that should terrify him, but it didn’t.
Harry chalked up his lack of alarm to knowing what the house was. Sirius had told him that his family had been Voldemort sympathizers, at the least, and Hermione and Ron had said that they’d been disposing of dark artifacts all summer. He knew he should go get someone and let them know what he’d found, but something made him hesitate.
There might be something useful buried in here,
Harry thought. After what happened in the graveyard at the end of last year, Harry didn’t want to risk losing something he could potentially use against Voldemort. In the back of his mind, Harry knew that was a strange thought for him to have, but chalked it up to wanting to use anything and everything at his disposal after seeing Voldemort resurrected. He supposed that Dumbledore’s complete lack of information likely wasn’t helping, either. Harry felt like if he found himself alone as he had in the graveyard, he wanted to be able to do more than a mere ‘expelliarmus.’
Voldemort killed Harry’s parents, after all. Cedric died because of him. Harry didn’t want to lose anyone else, and if there was something that could help him save even one person...
Harry pulled
Undetectable Curses
from the shelves and the book he already had in his hands fell to the ground and opened to a different chapter. He was just reaching down to retrieve it when something in the text caught his eye.
Dark healers tend to be much more proficient in healing damage caused by dark curses; in fact, only dark healers have managed to fully cure curse scars, which are scars left by extremely dark magic, whether on purpose or as unintended side effects. If they are unable to cure a curse scar, dark healers are far more willing than a standard healer or medi-wizard to remove the affected part of the victim’s body -
Harry found himself slowly sinking to the floor. He set the book on curses aside and kept reading, wondering if the book would cover exactly what curse scars were. He’d been told his own scar was a curse scar more times than he could count, but no one had ever bothered to explain exactly what that meant.
***
A few hours passed before Sirius found him.
Harry sat cross-legged on the floor and had completely surrounded himself with books by that point, having used bibliographies to track down other books mentioned in the ones he’d already skimmed. He’d gone from reading about curse scars to dark protections to wards that could be set to activate depending on the attacker's intent, and gone right on to flip through various volumes, trying to find more references to something called 'soul magicks.'
Above all else, it seemed like the dark arts were just a different branch of magic, and just like the magic he’d learned at Hogwarts, it could be used for right or wrong purposes. Sure, there were some fairly awful rituals mentioned, but many - like some of the dark healing spells he’d found in
Specialized Arts of the Dark Path
- seemed even more helpful than some of the spells he’d learned at school.
Harry knew that he was likely reading biased material but he kept wondering how dark arts could really be so evil and bad like he’d been told since he’d been introduced to the wizarding world. Wasn’t something like ‘dark healing’ an oxymoron?
“Harry?”
Harry looked up at Sirius, startled to see his godfather standing in the doorway. “Sirius! I was just -”
“The door opened for you?”
There was an expression on Sirius’s face that Harry couldn’t interpret. Harry shrugged. “Yeah. I mean, everyone else trying earlier probably just… loosened something.”
Sirius still had that strange look on his face. “Right.”
Harry felt like he was being judged, and he instantly became defensive. “I was just… I mean… I found something about curse scars, and nobody ever explained to me about mine, and I…” He trailed off, feeling awkward, and mentally prepared himself for a lecture from Sirius.
Sirius just stared at him for a few long moments, and Harry felt even more awkward. Harry grew uncomfortable, and he had to drop his eyes to the floor.
It made sense that Sirius would be disappointed to find Harry surrounded by books on dark arts; after all, Sirius left his family because of their immersion in the dark arts... hadn’t he?
Sirius finally broke the silence. “Is that ‘
Nearly Undetectable Curses and Hexes’
over there?” He let out a laugh, and Harry looked up again. “I absolutely loved that book when I was in Hogwarts! Reg had to get me my own copy because I kept stealing his.” Sirius finally entered the room and sat down on the floor in front of Harry, picking up the book in question. He leaned over into a half-lying position, propping himself up on one elbow, and he flipped through the book while Harry watched, dumbfounded. Sirius came to a certain page he’d apparently been looking for and let out another laugh, more jovial than the last. “This one -
carinitus
- I used that one on your father more than a few times in the Gryffindor common room. It’s basically a pantsing hex. He never caught me at it, but I had a feeling he knew it was me.” Sirius grinned at Harry. “I can teach it to you, if you’d like, just as long as you promise to never cast it on a girl.”
Harry felt stunned. “Sirius, isn’t it…”
“Dark arts?” Sirius thankfully finished Harry’s question for him. “Technically. Barely.” He rolled his eyes. “Yes.” He sighed. “I mean, it’s one of the least harmful spells in this book.” He flipped through another few pages and pointed out a different spell. “This is actually one James asked me to teach him. Flips people up in the air and upside down. He liked using it on Snivellus, until it came out that Death Eaters had been using it on Muggles -”
“Wait,” Harry said. “Are you saying my dad used dark arts?”
Sirius shook his head. “James didn’t know it was dark until I told him. I know I probably should have told him, but I didn’t know how anti-dark arts he was until after I taught him, and by then he’d been using the hex for over a year…” He sighed. “That was the second biggest argument we ever had.”
For the first time since stepping into the library, Harry felt guilty. He knew his father likely hadn’t been a fan of the dark arts, but if he had gotten mad at his best friend over something so small, he probably wouldn’t be a fan of Harry surrounding himself with books on the dark arts.
Harry was also confused. “But… didn’t you leave your family because of their practicing dark arts?” he asked. “The way you were talking about this house… and them…”
“No,” Sirius replied. “I left because they supported Voldemort.” He sighed again. “There’s also dark arts, and then there are black arts that can eat away at your soul or start affecting your mind. My mother was really into that kind of magic, and she kept trying to drag Reg into it…”
“So… someone that practices dark arts isn’t necessarily a dark wizard?” Harry asked.
“Uh, that’s…” Sirius coughed. “Well, dark witches and wizards aren’t necessarily evil, and ‘dark wizard’ also doesn’t mean a follower of the so-called ‘Dark Lord.’ Dark just means dark, Harry.” He glanced up at the set of shelves behind Harry. “Actually, there’s a book here…” He stood up and started scouring the titles, obviously looking for something specific. “I was probably around eight years old when I read it, but seeing as how you’re just now looking into this… ah-ha!” He pulled a thinner book from the shelves and passed it to Harry. “If you’re really interested in all this, you should probably start here. I am many things, but a professor is not one of them.”
Harry slid his thumb under the title:
An Introduction to the Dark Arts: The Power, Prejudice, and Politics
. Harry grinned and he immediately flipped the book open to skim the table of contents. He felt like he could suddenly understand Hermione’s excitement over books.
“Harry.” He looked up to see Sirius still watching him. “Do me a favor. Please don’t tell anyone about this room. I may hate this house - and I mean, I
really hate
this house - but there’s a lot of knowledge here that can’t be found anywhere else. The Black Library is one of the best family libraries in all of Britain.” He sighed. “But some people won’t care about that, and they’d just want to destroy everything in here.”
Harry quickly agreed; after all, in addition to the possibility that he could find something useful in the library, he found that he quite enjoyed the few hours he spent there. If he had to admit it, he felt more at peace in that room than he’d felt all summer.
“You don’t have to read that now, though,” Sirius said, grinning. “There’s something else cool about this library. If you’re okay with learning them, how about I teach you a few of those undetectable hexes?”
***
As it turned out, the library had what Sirius called an ‘isolation ward,’ which Harry thought sounded like something from a hospital, but actually meant that Harry was able to use magic in it without setting off the Ministry trace. Due to what had happened with the Dementors only a week prior, Harry asked Sirius at least ten times if he was sure that the ward still worked, and Sirius told him to cast a simple ‘lumos’ and to wait.
He cast one, they waited, and no owls appeared.
Sirius may not have been a professor, but he was brilliant at practical teaching. He showed Harry a few of the more fun and creative spells from
Nearly Undetectable Hexes and Curses,
and to the astonishment of Sirius, Harry could cast them successfully after only a few attempts. He was already planning on trying them out on Malfoy once school started. They practiced together until dinner, and he was unable to stop grinning.
Mrs. Weasley was the only one who dared to comment on Harry’s improvement in his mood. “You’ve been in a right state since you got here, Harry,” she said. “It’s nice to see a smile on your face.”
Harry returned to the library the following day, and he started and finished the dark arts introduction book. Mrs. Weasley scolded him for disappearing when it was time to help with cleaning Grimmauld Place, but he didn’t care. The book was fascinating and enlightening.
From what Harry gathered from the book, until recently, dark wizards and witches had been considered more like a Muggle religion, or maybe even similar to a Muggle political party, than how they were currently viewed - dark cloaks skulking in the shadows, laughing maniacally, and plotting world domination. The Dark Lord Grindelwald’s actions had sullied the reputation of dark witches and wizards across all of Europe and Asia.
Although the book had clearly been written before Voldemort’s rise, he supposed that Voldemort hadn’t helped their reputation, either.
Harry also learned that using ‘dark’ magic was simply pulling on a different type of magic than the spells that he learned in school. Dark magic and light magic were the two biggest magic ‘families,’ but there were other types that weren’t studied as much, such as earth magic or wild magic.
Something else Harry found interesting was that it turned out to be true that the majority of dark wizards resided in Slytherin House at Hogwarts. Although it wasn’t all of them - there were a fair number in Ravenclaw, as well - the sullied reputation of dark witches and wizards was enough to have earned Slytherin the identical reputation as the ‘evil’ and ‘bad’ house. As Hogwarts began banning the use of all dark arts - including the more helpful arts - the split became even more prominent.
And as for dark wizards themselves, Harry discovered that a wizard wasn’t truly considered ‘dark’ simply because they practiced dark arts. They actually performed ceremonies before they could declare themselves dark, like some kind of rite of passage. After a dark wizard officially declared, they would have easier access to the dark arts and they could potentially become more powerful, depending on the witch or wizard. However, sometimes wizards could become temperamental, as dark magic was rather volatile. It was apparently important that a dark wizard work with the dark magic, rather than try to control it - or worse - allowing the magic to control them.
This didn’t dissuade Harry, and he also began trying more of the spells from the
Undetectable Curses
book. He learned a curse that made a victim unable to sleep, as well as a curse that would result in the victim becoming a magnet for a creature of the caster’s choice, such as spiders.
Ron would keel over,
Harry thought absently.
He wasn't actually able to test the success of those curses, so he tried some of the hexes. He perfected something called an ‘elemental mine’ in one afternoon - laying down an invisible glyph on the ground, and when someone walked over it, it could freeze or electrocute or burn the victim, depending on what spellwork was worked in with the glyph.
At some point, Harry realized that he was throwing himself headfirst into learning about the dark arts. He chalked it up to just wanting to learn any and every way he could defend himself against Voldemort, but there was something about it all that just felt right to him. He wanted to learn everything he can.
Harry was scouring the shelves to see if he could find any dark defensive spells when Sirius came into the library.
“Harry,” Sirius said, both his tone and face rather grim. “McGonagall is here to see you.”
“What?” Harry asked. “Why?”
***
“Simply put, Potter, you’ve been expelled,” McGonagall said.
A bolt of pain flashed through his scar. “What the
fuck
-” Harry started to say, but McGonagall cut him off.
“As we are not currently in school I will allow that comment to slide, Potter, but really -”
“Well, since I’ve been bloody expelled it’s not like you can take points, is it?” Harry said rather nastily. Sirius let out a bark of a laugh from the corner of the dining room.
“Mr. Potter!” McGonagall snapped. “If you would allow me to finish what I’m saying, you could fully understand the situation you’re in.
Then
you may make your smart comments. Please have a seat.”
Harry supposed that was McGonagall’s way of saying ‘sit down and shut up.’ He sat at the table, and McGonagall pulled out the chair across from him.
“In short, you were expelled after receiving the underage magic notice from the Ministry of Magic,” she said. “It was an error. It should never have happened, and the decision has obviously been reversed.”
“Then… why are you here?” Harry asked hesitantly.
“Because when the magic of the school detected that you had been expelled, you were removed from the school’s registry. When the decision was reversed, you were re-enrolled as a new student.”
“And that means what for me? I have to take all of my old tests again?”
“I should hope not. The thought of having to grade your second year Transfiguration work is a nightmare I’d rather not relive,” McGonagall said, giving Harry a slight smile. “No, it means that as of right now, you are no longer in Gryffindor.”
“So… put me back in Gryffindor?”
“We are confident that will indeed be the result. However, until the sorting hat officially places you back in Gryffindor, the magic of the school will not tie the award or loss of points to your house.”
Harry tensed up at the thought of the sorting hat looking into his head for a third time. He tried not to let his trepidation show, so he shrugged instead. “So what? Me not losing points anymore would probably
help
Gryffindor, so…”
“This includes any points earned from Quidditch.”
“Oh.”
“So we will need to have you officially placed back in your house at the sorting ceremony. We have decided that you will be treated as a transfer student, so you will be sorted after the first years.”
Her words finally started really sinking in with Harry. He was going to be sorted again. “Um, Professor?” he asked. “What happens if the hat puts me… somewhere other than Gryffindor?”
“As I mentioned earlier, we think it’s highly unlikely that you will be placed elsewhere,” she said. “However, if it does, you will simply join your new house.”
Harry wasn’t nearly as confident that he was going straight back to Gryffindor, but he didn’t say so.
“Do you have any questions, Potter?”
Harry’s mind raced, and he kept finding his thoughts returning to the sorting hat’s words to him in both his first and second years. The blasted hat wanted him in Slytherin then, and Harry didn’t think anything had happened to change its mind.
Especially since Harry had this shiny, new fascination with the dark arts, and that new determination to ‘use any means’ to defeat Voldemort… hadn’t the sorting hat said exactly that about Slytherins? And hadn’t he learned in his reading that Slytherins were indeed more invested in the dark arts than any other Hogwarts house?
Crap
, Harry thought.
I’m definitely going to Slytherin this time.
“Harry?” Sirius said quietly from the back of the room. Harry had honestly forgotten he was there. He realized that McGonagall is still waiting for his response.
“I don’t really have any questions, Professor,” he said. “At least not now. Except… can I at least sit with Gryffindor until my… re-sorting? I’d like to explain to them what’s happening. Just in case.”
“Understandable,” McGonagall replied. “And yes, you may.”
“Harry, there’s nothing to worry about,” Sirius said. “Both of your parents were Gryffindors, and you’re as Gryffindor as they come. There’s no way you’re going anywhere else.”
***
Hermione and Ron seemed to be just as confident as Sirius that Harry would go straight back to Gryffindor. Fred and George treated it as a joke, saying that Harry could potentially get them business for Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes in houses they didn’t have access to. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley agreed with the others, pointing out that both of his parents had been in Gryffindor. Harry began to doubt his certainty of winding up in Slytherin.
Even so, he turned back to the Black Library and started looking up ways to ward his bed and belongings.
Just in case.
Despite everyone else’s confidence that Harry would go back to Gryffindor, he could potentially wind up sleeping in the same room as the children of Death Eaters, after all.
He supposed there was a slight chance of Ravenclaw, what with how much he’d been studying, but he didn’t think Ravenclaws would approve of him only being especially studious in only one subject.
All the while something else wriggled around in the back of Harry’s mind - something he wasn’t yet entirely prepared to face head-on. Even so, his mind kept circling back to it: his newfound fascination with the dark arts.
Harry had accepted that he was too interested and invested in the dark arts to stop his new path of research. He absolutely knew it should alarm him, and that he should ask Sirius about how far could be too far. But Harry didn’t want to run the risk of Sirius telling him to stop when all he wanted was to learn
more.
Unlike the subjects he studied at school, which mostly felt like a chore, he wanted to soak up all of the dark arts knowledge he possibly could.
All that led Harry to his current dilemma.
It wasn’t just that Harry was worried that his new interest would make him a shoo-in for Slytherin; he was also worried about how he could continue learning about the dark arts while he was in Gryffindor. He would have to hide his interest in Gryffindor, whereas Slytherin might actually encourage him in his new studies.
Slytherin
, of all houses, could actually wind up being
useful
to him, and that was making Harry not completely dread the fact that he could wind up among the snakes. He could
learn
from them.
That was the thought that scared Harry the most; he should have completely and absolutely dreaded the mere thought of going to Slytherin. He should certainly not have been almost intrigued by the idea.
But despite himself, it was intriguing him. Even though he had nothing to confirm that any of the Slytherins like Malfoy or Parkinson were into dark arts, he had enough circumstantial evidence to support his theory. And although he despised those Slytherins, he couldn’t help but wonder if they could pass him knowledge about the dark arts that he couldn’t gain from the Black Library.
The timing of everything seemed almost auspicious. He’d started learning about the dark arts almost by accident mere days before McGonagall told him of his need to be sorted again.
Harry’s entire life - everything he’d built since coming to the wizarding world - would change if he went to Slytherin. He’d likely lose his friends, and would probably have to watch his own back even more than he had in prior years because he wouldn’t be among people he trusted. Even Sirius, who seemed to be accepting and even a little encouraging of Harry’s new field of study, had expressed his dislike of Slytherin more than once.
He loved Gryffindor. Despite his recent irritation, he loved his friends. He loved what the house stood for. He didn’t want to lose any of the ragtag family he’d gained since entering the wizarding world.
The hat lets you choose
, Harry desperately reminded himself.
It takes your desire into account. I just have to want Gryffindor enough
.
***
Aside from Sirius making an unannounced trip with them to the station, the train ride to Hogwarts was, thankfully, relatively uneventful, although awkward. Ron and Hermione quickly abandoned him for the prefect meeting, and he found himself in a car with Ginny, Neville, and an odd Ravenclaw named Luna Lovegood.
Ginny was the only other person in the train car that knew of Harry’s imminent sorting, and she didn’t mention it. Harry silently thanked her. Harry distracted himself with Luna’s strange magazine called ‘The Quibbler,’ and he was amused to see the article on Sirius.
It was relatively peaceful until Ron and Hermione joined them after their prefects meeting. Of course, Draco Malfoy appeared soon after, and everything about Harry’s re-sorting came rushing back to him.
I can’t possibly wind up in the same house as him,
Harry thought, staring at Malfoy in barely-concealed horror.
“What are you looking at, Potter?” Draco demanded, snapping him out of his stupor.
“Nothing pleasant,” Harry muttered, wishing he could sink into his seat.
“Manners, Potter,” Malfoy said with a smirk. “Or I’ll have to give you detention -”
“Good
lord
, Malfoy,” Harry said. “I am so not in the mood for this right now.
Please
go away.”
Malfoy, as he expected, smirked even wider. “Did I touch a nerve? Not used to being second-best to -”
Hermione stood up. “Just get out!” she shouted. To Harry’s amazement, Draco departed, and Hermione slammed the door after him.
“Did you really just say ‘please’ to Malfoy, Harry?” Ron said, his mouth full of a chocolate frog.
Harry faced the window and rolled his eyes. The now-familiar prickling in his scar had returned, and he desperately wished he could just be alone for the rest of the ride.
***
“Where’s your uniform, Harry?” Dean asked as soon as Harry sat down. Harry’s black cloak wasn’t adorned with the Gryffindor crest like the others.
“Um.” Harry had specifically asked to sit with the Gryffindors prior to his sorting so he could explain what was going on, but now that he was here he had absolutely no idea what to say or how to even bring it up.
“Will they just reset it… after?” Hermione asked, and Harry feels a wave of gratefulness towards her. He knew she could tell how uncomfortable he was, and she was trying to give him a window to ease into the conversation.
“After what?” Dean asked.
“After I get… sorted,” Harry said. “Again.” Harry, with interjections from Hermione, explained to the other fifth years why and how he had to be sorted after the first years.
“But you’ll come right back here,” Ron said, somewhat unhelpfully.
“Hopefully,” Harry said. “I mean, it’s not like it’s guaranteed.”
“Where else would you go, Harry?” Dean asked. “Slytherin?” He started laughing, and Ron and a few others joined him. Harry didn’t, and he noticed that Seamus didn’t, either.
The sorting of the first years seemed to go by faster than it ever had before, and then Dumbledore stood up.
“We had a series of unusual circumstances occur over this past summer, which has resulted in one of our older students needing to be sorted again,” Dumbledore said. “We expect this is likely just a formality, but nevertheless, it needs to be done.” He paused for just a moment. “Harry Potter?”
Harry braced himself and stood up, and then he heard Pansy Parkinson shriek with laughter from the Slytherin table. “Did Potter flunk himself all the way back to first year?”
Perfect,
Harry thought.
Keep up that heckling; that way I won’t even be remotely tempted into wanting to be in the same house as you.
The hat seemed to loom even larger than it had when he was a small first year, but when he sat down and McGonagall placed the hat on his head, the rim of the hat no longer slipped over his eyes. That left him able to clearly see every person in the Great Hall watching him with interest, so Harry closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see them looking at him.
“Mr. Potter,”
a familiar voice said in his ear.
“It is so rare that I get to speak with a student twice, much less three times, and it’s even rarer that I actually get to sort a student more than once. You
are
a tricky one.”
Gryffindor, please,
Harry thought as hard as he could.
“Now, then, Mr. Potter,”
the hat said.
“It is my job to place students where they will thrive and be happy - which is why I will listen to a student’s desire. However, I would like
you
to listen to
me
before I place you anywhere.”
Harry swallowed.
“Despite your insistence on Gryffindor, you don’t have nearly as much aversion to Slytherin as you did in your first year. I still stand by the fact that you would do extremely well in Slytherin.”
But there are the children of Death Eaters there,
Harry thought.
I would be in danger.
“Only as much danger as you put yourself in every year,”
the hat replied.
“The students themselves pose no danger. And I think the Slytherins will be able to teach you, whereas you have already learned everything Gyffindor has to offer you.”
Harry tried as hard as he could to not think about learning dark arts from the Slytherins, but the hat seemed to pick up on it anyway.
“It’s not just dark arts and magic generally unknown to Gryffindors,”
the hat said.
“You need to learn how to
think
like a Slytherin: how to use every tool at your disposal, and how to survive what’s thrown at you.”
I don’t want to think like a Slytherin,
Harry thought desperately.
They’ve been nothing but cruel to me and my friends.
“Those are not the defining traits of a Slytherin, though,
” the hat said in reply.
“And the Slytherins of recent years have been cruel more as a reaction to outside forces, rather than as an inherent part of their Slytherin traits.”
That comment just confused Harry, so he decided to try a different tactic.
I’d lose all of my friends if I went to Slytherin.
“That would be entirely up to you and them,”
the hat said.
“You can be friends with those outside of your own house, after all. And who's to say you wouldn't make friends in a new house?”
The hat paused.
“But I fear we’re getting off track.
“Slytherin has more to offer you than Gryffindor - that much is a fact. Let me put it this way, Mr. Potter - what do you want to get out of your last few years here at Hogwarts?”
Harry paused.
I want to defeat Voldemort,
he thought.
I want to be able to defend the people he’s attacking. I don’t want anyone else to die.
“Unfortunately, I think people dying in the upcoming war will be inevitable,”
the hat said.
“But with one track you may be able to lessen the blow, and you may be able to save more.”
Then that’s the one I want,
Harry said.
Gryffindors defend others. They’re brave and will stand up to anything. That's where I belong.
The hat chuckled softly.
“But just imagine what a Slytherin with the heart of a Gryffindor could accomplish?”
The hat fell silent for a moment, and Harry realized that he could hear a growing crowd of whispers in the Great Hall. People wondered what could possibly be taking so long. Harry opened his eyes and to see that everyone still stared at him, and he shifted uncomfortably on the stool.
“Let them stare,”
the hat said.
“They will always stare, no matter where you wind up. You must answer me now - will you allow me to place you where you can accomplish what you wish to accomplish?”
Ever since McGonagall had come and spoken to him, Harry had imagined a thousand different conversations he could have had with the sorting hat, and none of them had gone the way this one had. He’d been determined to think of nothing but how much he wanted to go to Gryffindor, and instead the blasted hat made him doubt everything.
He’d started looking into dark arts because he wanted to defeat Voldemort. He wanted to stay with Gryffindor in order to save others. Even though the end goal was essentially the same, the two were clearly not compatible with one another, but Harry didn’t think he’d be willing to give up one for the other. Gryffindor wouldn’t allow him to continue researching the dark arts, and his continued study would surely get him in trouble in his old house.
“Mr. Potter, you are close to becoming a hatstall. Will you allow me to place you or not?”
Harry finally realized exactly what the hat was asking him, and he realized that he couldn’t delay any longer. He closed his eyes again.
Put me where you think I belong,
he thought in resignation.
Harry swore he could actually hear the hat smile in satisfaction, and a sudden wave of regret swept through him. A split-second decision made under pressure was going to determine his last few years at Hogwarts; what if it was the wrong one?
No,
he thought.
Wait -
"Too late, Mr. Potter,”
the hat said.
“Despite your hesitation, it’s clear that you know exactly where you belong, and it’s been clear to me from day one that you belong in...
SLYTHERIN!”
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
There was something to be said for Grimmauld Place.
That something wasn’t very nice.
But still, it was
something
.
Harry scrunched his nose as he looked up at the decapitated house elf heads on the wall. Really he couldn’t understand why anyone would find that attractive. It just made something in his gut squirm uncomfortably. It was such a huge sign of barbaric cruelty, of being proud of it. With his dad’s training he’d become all the more sensitive to magic, enhancing a skill he already had and making it stronger.
He didn’t like how the Order Headquarters felt. Especially compared to the strength and warmth of Asgard or the clean, almost sweet feeling of Avengers Tower. Thankfully he only came here once a week for a meeting that normally didn’t last longer than an hour. This week’s meeting was going to start soon; Sirius, Remus, and his dad were already in the meeting room, probably saving him a seat.
Harry was on his way back from the room that he and Ron had spent the last summer in. He’d forgotten a bag of sugar quills in one of the drawers and he’d wanted to see if they were still good. He ignored the terrible feeling in the air and took the steps down two at a time.
“Oi! Potter.” Tonks said. “What are you doing over there? Meeting’s this way.”
“Hullo Tonks.” Harry said grinning at the woman. He held up the bag of sweets that was still fresh. “I found my candy stash from last summer. It’s still good.”
“I see.” She said. “Congrats on that.”
“I’ve got some great news.” Harry said waking over to the woman whose hair that was currently a bright purple. “My dad’s been teaching me Asgardian magic. Wanna see?”
“Sure.” She said. “Come on, show me what you’ve got!”
Harry grinned and then closed his eyes. He focused just as he’d been practicing and felt the tingle in his scalp that let him know he’d succeeded. He opened his eyes to see Tonk’s mouth had dropped open in shock.
“I know right? Asgardian shape shifting!” Harry reached up and grabbed at the now longer and straighter red hair that had replaced his normal messy black. From experience he knew it was now about shoulder length, and he’d given himself bangs that actually covered his forehead too. That had been an important addition to have if he wanted to move around without being noticed. He smiled at the bright red lock, knowing it was the same kind of hair his mum had had.
“That’s brilliant! I knew your dad was a shapeshifter we talked about it at your party but I had no idea you were one too! Welcome to the club!” Tonks said slapping him on the back. “What else can you do?”
“Not much yet. I made myself smaller today so I could fit in my old robes.” Harry said blushing only a little. They were going to go robe shopping to get things that actually fit today, his dad had promised. But for now, shrinking himself down was easier than wearing robes that only went to his mid-calf. And magically enlarging his clothing just made them itch abomindably. “Dad says it takes lot of practice since I wasn’t born doing it like you and him.”
“Makes sense. Still! It’s an awesome skill to have.” She said giving him a wink. “Any reason you picked red hair? Trying to match Ron and the Twins, are you?”
“I…no it’s my mum.” Harry said. “She had hair just this same color.”
“Oh.” Tonks said, looking a bit awkward at the mention of Lily Potter. A woman she had never known, who had died when she had been a child. “I had no idea. It’s a good look on you.”
“Thanks.” Harry told her. “Anyway, I’m going to put this candy with my bag. I’ll see you in the meeting?”
“Don’t be late!”
Harry rolled his eyes and walked towards the exit of Grimmauld Place. The meeting was only supposed to last an hour or more. They were having it early in the day, far before the time most people had breakfast. The plan was to have the meeting, go out to eat some breakfast, then meet up with Hermione and Ron to do school shopping. His dad had brought Hermione and her parents to London with them and they stayed in one of Tony’s apartments he had in the city.
Harry didn’t ask why the billionaire had property in most major European cities.
It was setting up to be a good day, Harry thought. He got to the creepy coat rack and found his bag. Rather it was one of Steve’s bags, a messenger bag he’d had stuffed away from a SHIELD mission where he’d been undercover. Steve had been happy to let him borrow it to practice enchanting on.
That was going…sort of well. The bag didn’t try to bite anyone other than him who tried to open it anymore at least!
Harry carefully opened the bag and put the smaller bag of candy inside. He’d share this with Ron and Hermione once they all got to Diagon Alley. He stood up and readjusted his school robes. His dad had helped him with the shrinking that morning when Harry had realized that none of his school uniforms fit him anymore. He didn’t feel too terribly constricted but he’d gotten used to having longer limbs by that point and having them be abruptly a bit shorter had made him act a bit clumsy.
Behind him the door swung open, Harry turned around to see who it was and saw that Snape was standing there. Snape was staring at him with wide eyes, frozen stock still.
“Hello Professor.” Harry said trying to be polite as he could. He and Snape hadn’t actually been alone together since Harry had left Hogwarts at the beginning of the summer. His dad had ensured that much.
“Potter.” The man’s voice was a bit strangled and Harry couldn’t understand why. Harry didn’t know if it was appropriate to ask, or if he even cared.
Who was he kidding? Of course, he
cared
. He still couldn’t decide if getting revenge against Dumbledore was the right thing to do. Figuring out how he felt about Snape of all people was practically impossible.
“You alright?” Harry asked leaning forward a little. “I know you had that meeting with Tom last night. If you need…”
Apparently even that much concern was too much. The man snarled and strode past him, robes swirling around his legs as he practically ran down the hallway.
Huh. Weird.
Harry readjusted his robe again and then followed Snape towards the meeting room. He didn’t even know what he’d done that time. Snape was already sitting on the far side of the large room, glowering at Harry’s dad, which was normal. What wasn’t normal was the flinch when Harry sat down next to his dad and gave his dad a smile.
“You changed your hair.” His dad noted.
“Wanted to show Tonks.”
“Ah. A noble cause. Did you find your candy?”
“Yeah.” Harry said. “Surprised it didn’t get cursed from staying in this place for so long.”
“I’ll teach you how to filter out the energy in this place so you can concentrate better soon enough.” His dad promised, looking a little concerned. He reached out and ran a hand through Harry’s hair as if to check for a headache that hadn’t yet appeared. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Snape frown and look hard at the floor. What was up with him?
“Thanks.” Harry said. “It feels terrible here.”
“Let me know if you need a break, you can leave the meeting whenever you want. I’ll let you know what you miss.”
“I’m fine. It’s only for an hour.”
“Just keep it in mind Starlight.”
Harry had mostly gotten used to his dad’s fussing. It was a huge change from how awkwardly standoffish the man had been in the beginning, when neither of them really knew how to talk to the other. More and more Order members were filtering into the room, taking seats around the long oval table and greeting people. Harry waved brightly at Fred and George who complimented him on his Weasley-ish good looks.
“Always knew you were our long lost brother.”
“It’s the eyes that gave it away. Every Weasley’s got emerald eyes!”
“Oh Harry.” Mrs. Weasley said, walking over to her two sons, ready to pull them into their seats before trouble could start. Mrs. Weasley looked a bit teary as she looked at him which Harry thought was a bit of a strange overreaction to a hair color change. “It looks lovely on you dear.”
“Thanks. Your hair looks nice too.”
Hermione and Ron didn’t come to these meetings. The Grangers didn’t want their daughter in the war room and Mrs. Weasley had put her foot down on allowing Ron there as well. It didn’t matter much since Harry told them everything anyway, but it made the adults feel a bit more comfortable.
“You’re so sweet.” She said sniffing. “I do hope your father is feeding you enough.”
“He is.”
“I am.” Loki said at the same time. “I promise you, he gets the five square meals a day a growing demi-god needs.”
“Well that is good to hear.” She said. “But Harry you let me know if you get hungry okay? I’m sure I can mix something up in the kitchen for you.”
“I will Mrs. Weasley.” Harry said with a smile.
“Molly.” Arthur said. “Come sit down, the meeting is starting. Oh Hello, Harry, you’re looking quite
sharp
today.”
“Thanks?”
“The likeness is remarkable.” Arthur said. “I can’t hardly tell a difference now.”
“Likeness?” Harry asked. “I just changed my hair color…”
“Oh well. You see I remember Lily used to have that same hair style when she was your age.” Arthur said. “I remember seeing her with that hair when I was a student and so was she. We were a fair few years apart of course but…”
The man trailed off and Harry’s eyes flicked over to where Snape was sitting. The realization of what Harry had inadvertently done settled in and he swallowed and looked away before Snape could catch him staring.
“I’ve only seen pictures of my mum with really long hair.” Harry said, for lack of anything better to say.
“She started growing it out when she turned 15.” His dad said. “But when she was younger she had it quite short.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t worry.” His dad said. “Even if you started dressing exactly like her, I wouldn’t mind. You’re allowed to do with your body what you want and seeing her in you doesn’t hurt me.”
His dad had gained the ability to somehow know exactly what to say to him over the summer.
“Thanks dad.”
The room quieted and Harry looked up to see that Dumbledore had entered. Arthur and Molly both whispered their goodbyes and rushed to take their seats. Sirius and Remus stopped their game of gobstones by hiding the board beneath the table and leaning back in their chairs to pretend that they hadn’t been playing a children’s game. Harry snickered a little at Sirius’ innocent humming.
“Welcome.” Dumbledore said. “I see that we are all here so there’s no reason not to begin immediately. Remus, how is your mission with the werewolves?”
Remus sat up completely and cleared his throat.
“I just got back from another visit with some of the outer packs. Most of them aren’t interested in either side of the conflict which is honestly the best we could hope for. There’s only two packs that I found that are siding with Greyback.” Remus said. “I’m working on some agreements with five packs that would result in non-aggression for us, but it’s slow going. I honestly think the only way we’re going to make any headway at all is if we offer them Wolfsbane.”
“Wolfsbane is incredibly complicated to brew. Brewing enough for an entire pack isn’t feasible.”
“I know that.” Remus said looking over at Snape. “And I’d never ask Severus to take on that burden himself. But it’s the only thing that would interest the packs. It’s not like I can promise them government help, not with the way the new Minister is going.”
“I understand.” Dumbledore said. “But we must still try to ensure that no more groups join Tom’s army. Already a majority of European vampires have joined him. Not to mention the trolls he’s captured and the giants he is courting. Hagrid is still attempting to work out some sort of deal with the Giants and he has not yet returned from that mission.”
“I’ll keep working on it.” Remus promised. “But right now, no news is good news as far as I’m concerned.”
“Very well. Let’s move on. Arthur?”
Harry listened as each Order member talked about what they had been attempting to do and what they’d learnt. Mr. Weasley was trying to determine who in his part of the Ministry was a Voldemort supporter, who was neutral, and who was on their side. It was difficult work but he was making good progress. Tonks and Shaklebolt were trying to do the same within the auror corps while also keeping an ear to the ground for potential Death Eater targets and raids.
Eventually they got to Snape, who had been strangely silent throughout the whole meeting. Harry looked expectantly at the man who seemed incredibly discomfited by that fact.
“You-Know-Who is still unaware of Potter’s identity as well as Loki’s reasons for involvement.” Snape said. “He is incredibly displeased by Loki’s current trajectory of interacting with Order Members and the Hogwarts staff. I implied to him that the Headmaster was trying to woo the god and his team of muggles to our side.”
“How did you explain away my fighting him in New York?”
“You are protecting New York with the muggles, any attack against that city would be one you would respond to.” Snape said, looking at Loki with a glare in his eyes. “It was nothing personal. Your working with the muggles is for your own benefit as well, you have no real vested interest in being a hero, but it serves you to fake it to stay out of jail.”
“Hmm.” Loki said. “And have you mentioned my new appointment as the Defense Instructor?”
“I have.” Snape growled. “The Dark Lord has ordered me to sway you to his side of the conflict. He is also sending out every child he can within Hogwarts to attempt to do the same.”
“As we expected then.” His dad said. “Albus, how goes the revamping of the wards around the school? I trust the Asgardian warding systems aren’t being too troublesome?”
“We are almost complete with that as well. It should all be done two weeks before the students arrive.”
“Good.” Loki said. “I don’t wish to prolong this conflict any longer than it already has been, if something goes wrong then I want that school as protected against invasion as possible.”
“Of course.” Dumbledore agreed. “Now, James. How are preparations in the States?”
“I feel the Avengers are about as well trained to fight against Death Eaters as they can be at this point. My brother is especially prepared.” Loki said. “I’ve finished charming the teleportation devices that will allow them to travel to areas of concern in the event of an attack. We will now be able to near instantly mobilize to 12 major cities in Europe, Hogwarts, a few choice magical government buildings, as well as multiple places within the United States. If an attack is sounded, we will be alerted, and able to move as needed.”
“I just don’t know how I feel about muggles fighting with us.” Moody grumbled.
“You haven’t seen them fight. I promise you, Mad-Eye, they can handle it.” Sirius said. “We’ve put them through their paces.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
And probably not even then.
“And you Mr. Potter?” Dumbledore asked.
“The Americans are doing well.” Harry said. “I had another meeting with them two days ago. They’re mobilizing defensive forces for all of their major magical centers across the continent. They’ve been working with the Avengers on designing warning systems and that’s how we’re going to be able to help them. They’re combining muggle surveillance with magical forms of it to catch Death Eaters before they blow anything up.”
Harry shifted, feeling only slightly disconcerted with everyone staring at him. His dad’s hand, the one hidden beneath the table, reached out and took Harry’s. Harry took comfort from the light squeeze he was given and continued.
“They’re willing to offer us a few platoons, or well me a few platoons.” Harry continued. “In the event of an attack that I’m fighting at in Europe, they’ll send up to 120 soldiers to help assist, depending on the severity of the situation. Of course, I have to be the one to request it and there are also concerns about how the IWC will feel about Americans just coming into a country uninvited so it’s not totally worked out but it’s getting there.”
“Only 120?” Shaklebolt demanded. “That’s hardly anything.”
“A lot of their forces are focused on defending their people.” Harry explained. “And it’s kind of hard to offer more when we don’t even have an actual battleground to go to. If there were front lines I could point out to them, they’d be more willing to send an entire army at the problem.”
Shaklebolt and a few others didn’t look too pleased with that explanation but Harry wondered if they could have done better than he had arguing with 50 presidents who seemed to like to listen to their own voices more than anything else.
“One of the big initiatives right now is rooting out all Death Eaters in the country.” Harry continued. “I don’t know how much of Tom’s forces over there have been taken down but they’ve done four raids in the last week alone.”
“The Dark Lord is not pleased by the American’s actions.” Snape said. “I’m not given much information on that portion of the war effort, but I believe the Dark Lord has plans on ordering most of his American forces to go into hiding until a new invasion plan can be started.
“Well I think it’s going well over there.” Harry said.
“Is there not anyway you could convince the Americans to agree to help if you are not present?”
“No.” Harry told Dumbledore. “They don’t want to work with anyone but me. They don’t even like talking to my dad much. I have to be involved or they won’t be.”
“That’s going to be difficult once you start attending school in a month’s time.”
“Hopefully Tom’ll focus back on me once I’m close by again.” Harry said. “If he’s focused on me then he probably won’t attack anywhere else. If he does and we need their forces then…”
“That is a decision we’ll make when we come to it.” His dad interrupted. “I believe that due to the prophecy Tom’s efforts will be focused on Hogwarts once the school year begins again. He can do nothing else until that is fulfilled.”
“Which is why the wards around Hogwarts are so important.” Sirius said. “Seriously, I was able to sneak past those,
multiple
times
.”
“We’re aware.” Remus drawled.
“I’m interested in what other protections Asgard is willing to offer.” Dumbledore said ignoring Sirius and Remus as they started to whisper to each other.
“Well. Last time I was there, I talked to my grandfather.” Harry said just a little awkwardly. “We agreed that Asgard should help whenever they can. If anyone attacks Hogwarts then I have a way to contact Asgard for help. The Bifrost’ll transport a whole army to wherever we need it.”
“Of course. Harry’s relation to Asgard needs to be hidden for as long as it can be. We’ve already determined to portray a strained relationship to the public between us.” His dad said. “I’ll treat him as any other student, although one I might find a bit annoying, and he’ll treat me with suspicion due to my history. The longer we can go without revealing Harry as a demi-god to Tom Riddle the better.”
It wasn’t going to be easy to pretend to not like his dad but Harry knew he had to do it. He’d agreed with the idea when his dad had brought it up and he’d have Ron and Hermione’s help in pulling off the ruse.
“Why the secrecy?” Arthur asked.
“Tom Riddle used my son’s blood for his resurrection ritual.” Loki said. “We have no idea how much more strength he’s gained from that than he would have from using a truly mortal source. As long as Tom doesn’t know the blood is half divine he can’t experiment with it to gain more power. His ignorance protects us.”
“We’re not going to manage to keep it secret for long.” Snape said. “Potter’s mind is still quite undefended from The Dark Lord’s influence.”
“Undefended?” His dad asked dangerously.
“The boy is a failure at Occulmency and…”
“Really? Because I found him to be an exemplary student.” His dad cut Snape off. “Perhaps instead of focusing on his perceived failings you should look at your own.”
“My failings? The boy is disrespectful and arrogant.” Snape said. “He couldn’t learn a magic more difficult than a levitation spell without having his father hold his hand through the process. The boy is only as good as you claim because you spoil him, he’s got no clue how to truly-”
His dad slammed his hands onto the table and stood up, magic gathering around him in a fearsome swell.
“Listen here Sni-”
“Dad.” Harry interrupted, placing a hand on his dad’s arm. He pulled on his dad and his dad followed the suggestion, falling back into his seat. Good, now his dad wasn’t going to commit murder. Grimmauld Place did not need any more negative energy to it.
“Of course.” Snape sneered. “Of course the great James Potter would back down from a fight so easily. Isn’t that what you did when you ran back to Asgard, Potter?”
“That’s enough.” Harry said standing up then. He turned his full gaze onto Snape, his eyes full of disgust and frustration. “He is backing down because this is a stupid, pointless argument and we have better things to be doing than playing around with
your
ego.”
Snape was frozen again, like a deer standing in front of a speeding car’s headlights. Harry continued his tirade.
“Look me in the eye and tell me you taught me Occulmency. Tell me that you actually taught it to me correctly.” Harry said. “
Look at me.
”
Snape looked away. Harry narrowed his eyes and then sighed.
“That’s what I thought.”
The meeting continued on without much interruption after that.
When thing finally came to a close and everyone had been updated, his dad got up ready to leave this place with Sirius and Remus and start their day properly. Harry only had eyes for Snape though. The man was sitting quietly, silently glaring at the floor and ignoring everyone else who tried to speak with him.
“Go ahead and catch up with the others.” Harry said softly. “I’ll meet up with you by the front door in a few minutes.”
“Harry?”
“Dad.”
“If he tries anything I’ll be here in an instant.”
“It’s going to be okay.” Harry said seriously. “I’m just gonna talk to him.”
His dad didn’t look pleased by that but nodded anyway. Harry appreciated the sign of trust. He was surprised when Snape didn’t try to leave, the man looked like he’d rather stab himself than talk to Harry, especially when Harry was looking like that. Harry got up from his chair and made his way slowly over to the Potions Master.
“What do you want Potter.”
“You know.” Harry said, using the same tone that someone would use to remark on the weather. “I think I might hate you.”
Snape looked up and glared at him. He opened his mouth probably to say that he didn’t much care what an arrogant boy like him thought, Harry didn’t let him.
“You had all that time with my mum, you had years of being her friend. Years that I’m never going to have.” Harry said, his voice tinged with something that could have been called kindness or cruelty. “And I think I hate you a little for that. You got so long with her, you were gifted with knowing her and this is what you did with that.”
“Do not speak of her.” Snape warned.
“What? You’re telling me I can’t talk about my own mother?” Harry demanded, his voice incredulous. “You’re the one who bullies children. We both know how mum felt about bullies.”
And that shut Snape up too.
“I mean really.” Harry continued. “The first time we ever met, I was taking notes! Writing down what you were saying in potions because I was so excited to learn from you. And you attacked me for it, for having the same interests as my mum.”
And suddenly, with Snape’s tiny flinch, it all clicked into place.
“All this time. All this time, you’ve been punishing me for being like her, haven’t you? I reminded you of her and you couldn’t handle it.” Harry said. “Every time you told me I was just like my dad you were trying to forget how much like her I was.”
“Potter…”
“And you wanted me to hate you, didn’t you? You wanted me to act just like my dad so you wouldn’t have to think about what you did and who you lost.” Harry continued. “And if I hated you, if I acted out then it was okay, you could take things out on me because I’m just like
my dad
.”
Harry couldn’t believe it. All this time and it was that simple? The hours of painful occulmency lessons, the humiliation in potions class, the unnecessary detentions, the cruel words. All of it was because of
that
? Years of suffering and it boiled down to Snape not wanting to face that he’d messed up? That he’d betrayed his mother, become a Death Eater, and lost her friendship forever? Snape had spent the last five years making Harry’s life miserable at every turn just because he couldn’t deal with his own shit?
Snape should have known better his heart screamed. Snape had known Aunt Petunia. He’d known probably better than anyone what kind of woman she was, and how she saw magic users. And yet in his own cowardice he’d ignored all evidence to the contrary to protect himself. Harry had come to him half starved and eager to learn and Snape had slapped him down telling himself lie after lie to justify his cruelty.
Harry suddenly felt very tired. A bone deep weariness invaded his soul as he considered the man in front of him. He’d spent weeks agonizing about how he was meant to deal with Snape. The man had tortured him, invaded his mind over and over again, and then blamed him when he couldn’t defend himself. He had driven Harry to believing he couldn’t trust any adult in his life. He had pushed Harry to the Ministry that night, almost killing Sirius and his friends in the process.
He had felt so incredibly angry and conflicted about Snape ever since his dad had told him how he hadn’t failed at learning Occulmency, how it had been Snape who should have been better. The relief mingled with disbelief those words had given him still popped up when he saw Sirius sometimes. He’d wondered what he should say to Snape, this monstrous man who’d made his time at Hogwarts more difficult, more painful than it had to be. Who took out his hurts and regrets on children who had nothing to do with them.
How many indulgent fantasies had he had over the past month alone about yelling at Snape, about taking the jerk down a notch or two before letting his dad have whatever was left? And now Harry was standing here, able to lay down a sentence, totally justified in doing so and he just felt…
tired
. This wasn’t like Dumbledore who could and would harm others. This was just a bully who never learnt to grow up and face his mistakes.
He pitied Snape.
Yes, that’s what he felt. Pity. Harry didn’t think he’d ever felt pity for someone before. Sympathy? Yes. Empathy? Hermione would argue a bit too much. Compassion? His dad said it was something he and his mum had had in common.
But pity?
That was new.
Where was the satisfaction at yelling and ranting at someone who was so pitiful? Who was a coward and a bully and was only that way because he didn’t know any other way to be? Snape was glaring at him, his eyes filled with hurt and malice in equal measure and Harry just felt tired. What was the point of all of this? Of letting Snape take up so much space in his heart and mind when this is what the man truly was?
“You don’t want me to act like my mum?” Harry asked. “Fine. I won’t. I’ll do something she
never
did.”
Snape straightened up, Harry saw him tense ready to draw his wand. The man expected an attack, proof that Harry was always what Snape had wanted him to be. Harry drew himself up, straightened his shoulders and looked the man directly in his dark eyes.
“I forgive you.”
“Wha-”
“You heard me.” Harry said. “I forgive you. For everything you’ve done to me. Even the stuff I don’t know about. And if you do something to me in the future, then I’ll forgive you for that too.”
And there was true horror in Snape’s eyes. It wasn’t the startled relief Harry had seen in Odin’s, or the affection he’d gotten from Mrs. Weasley. No Snape was looking at him like a man who knew he didn’t deserve it, who didn’t even
want
it, and was being given it anyway. There was pain there too, new laid on top of old. Harry nodded to himself, he felt better having let go of all that frustration. All that was left was the pity he felt for the man.
He didn’t love Snape. He didn’t like him. A part of him would always hate him just a little for being the kind of man he was. It wasn’t like with Odin where Harry saw something in him that he wanted to nurture. No. This was Harry cutting ties, this was Harry setting himself free of the awful chains Snape had put on him from the moment he’d had his first potions class.
“I forgive you Professor Snape.” He repeated again seeing more pain and more horror form in the man’s face. This was something Snape had never known. Forgiveness, freely given. Not even his mother had ever had the courage to do it.
“If you think this means I’ll-”
“I don’t want anything from you Professor.” Harry said seriously. “I’m just giving you my forgiveness, that’s it. You’ll always have it no matter what. So. There.”
Harry turned and left the man where he was sitting, now emotionally gutted. Snape would probably hate Harry for this, for giving him something like that. Snape certainly didn’t deserve it, probably never would knowing the man. But Harry
didn’t
care
. There was so much power in what he’d just done. Harry had decided to end the fighting with Snape, end the pain on his terms and no one else’s. Not even Snape had a say in how Harry ended it. If Snape had had his way, then Harry would’ve been dragged down to his level of cruelty and petty insults.
What did it matter what a man like that thought of Harry? It didn’t! What mattered was how Harry felt in that moment.
And Harry found that even the dark oppressive atmosphere of Grimmauld Place that he felt
free
.
“Hey dad.” Harry said walking up to the group of Marauders. “What do you say we get waffles for breakfast?”
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
The Swordfish II took off with a whir of the engine, leaving Jet and the newly named Ash on board the Bebop.
“You said you wanted me to fix the Hammerhead too, didn’t you?”
Ash’s voice echoes off the empty walls of Jet’s room. She hasn’t really even seen it yet and only found Jet from hearing him swear under his breath as he cut off too much of a branch. Her eyes scan across the trees as she waits for an answer. Then her mind wanders as she thinks of why he has so many anyways…
“Yes, there’s a noise coming from the engine when I start it. I haven’t had much time to look at it myself.” Some of his words are accompanied by the quiet snip of the sheers.
Ash leans against the doorframe, crossing her legs below. “I will admit, I don’t think I’ve worked on a model like that. I can give it a shot though, shouldn’t be too different from any other ship, right?”
“Hm, I suppose I could give you a lesson on how it works…” Jet says with a huff as he rises to his feet. Ash moves to the side to allow him out, a smile painting her face as she thinks about how she’s hanging out with one of the members of the Bebop. This could be a moment to start a bond. She did want to get along with everyone on board, after all.
The two walk through the bridge to the hangar in near silence. That is, until Ash spoke up.
“So you were really the only one fixing the ships before I came?”
Jet exhales before answering, “Mhm. When it comes to fixing the ships, Spike only does it if he has to and if the repair is small. Faye never does anything herself, says girls are ‘delicate and meant to be pampered’ or some junk like that.”
Ash scoffs as she hears Faye’s take. “I haven’t really talked to her much, but she definitely seems like the type to say that.”
“We all hate it,” Jet says with a chuckle, “especially Spike.”
The hangar door opens with a whoosh, the chilled air from the inside catching Ash off guard. Jet steps in with Ash following behind.
As they descend the stairs, Ash gets her first good look at the Hammerhead since being on the Bebop. Her eyes scan the starship, practically lighting up as she takes in every little detail. Jet smirks as he notices her excitement.
“Never really seen one like this, have you?”
“Definitely not back home…” she answers as she tugs a ladder closer and climbs on top of a wing. Jet grabs Ash’s tool bag for her and follows suit.
“So, as you can probably guess, the hatch for the engine is here,” Jet’s metal hand points down at a rectangular panel on the front. Ash nods and removes a wrench from her bag to open it up.
As time passes and repairs get done, Jet’s quick to notice how willing Ash is to help. No complaints, no smart comments; just someone doing what she’s told. He smiles to himself.
“You know…” He speaks up after a moment of silence. Ash’s head perks up from her work.
“I-
We
could really use your help with the bounty hunting. You seem like you wouldn’t blindly chase bounty heads, like some other people I know…” He bats his eyes away as if looking at the subjects of his criticism.
“Bounty hunting?” the mechanic repeats, as if she proposed the idea to herself. “I’ve never considered it, I mean I can’t even fight.”
“We could teach you. I might have to convince Spike to help, but I wouldn’t mind when I get the time. Though, you’d probably end up with Spike more. He’s got more time than me.”
Ash shifts to a light scowl as she thinks about the aforementioned bounty hunter. That cocky attitude, that dumb smirk when he’s right or being obnoxious. Just him overall.
“You think he would take it seriously?” she questions in a half joke.
“Probably not, if he even started it. So hardheaded…”
Then that devil returns as he’s spoken of. The Swordfish II lands on the deck, its engine rumbling the floor before it’s cut off. Spike climbs out and steps closer while clutching a bag in his right hand and something Ash can’t see in his left. She prays he doesn’t say some smart ass comment once again until she sees his expression. He looks rather deep in thought compared to his usual empty stare.
“Surprised he can even form thoughts…”
She thinks to herself.
“Hey Jet,” he calls out, thankfully ignoring Ash, “how much would the seeds for a Gray Ash plant be?”
Ash continues to work since she isn’t being addressed, but she listens. A sudden interest in Gray Ash? Jet blinks for a moment as the question hits him.
“Huh? What’s your question? The price of seeds for Gray Ash plants?”
“I’m just asking…” Spike shoots back with a light shrug of his shoulders.
“Well just don’t. Those things are like gems, you’re lucky if you ever see one.”
“Oh, really…” Spike mutters as he opens his hand and glances at the contents.
Ash’s head raises from her work just to comment, “what an odd sudden interest for a cowboy…”
Spike glances at her before Jet speaks again.
“Well, it probably would be hard to find a buyer. But if you did, I’d say about eight million each….Why, did you get some?”
“No,” Spike answers like a child who did something they shouldn’t have.
“Thought so.”
Spike turns his attention back up from his hand, pocketing whatever was in it. “How about Piccaro?”
“Oh, just a little more. Don’t screw up on your end.” Jet turned his head back to Ash and her repairing. Spike took it as him having nothing left to say, shrugged, and hopped back into the Swordfish II.
“What were we saying?” Jet says after looking over the work done as he was talking to Spike.
“Something about wanting to train me for bounty hunting?”
“Yes, that’s it. I suppose just…Let me know if you’re interested? I get it’s a big shift from being a mechanic. Plus, it’s not exactly an easy job to take up. But my offer stands.”
Ash finishes tightening a nut, her eyes now meeting his as if his gaze will help her form a decision. And maybe it does. Jet’s stare almost seems pleading, hopeful. She smiles a little.
“I’ll think about it.”
_________________________________________________________________________
The rest of the day was spent repairing the Hammerhead. When that was done, Jet went to cook up some food for everyone while Ash went out for a smoke on the deck.
With a soft snap, a flame flickered to life against the end of the cigarette. Ash took a drag and zoned out on the stars above. Her thoughts were a back and forth.
Could I even do good at bounty hunting? Jet seemed to have so much faith, what if I let him down? I can’t be much worse than Faye or Spike, considering their record…
She didn’t even notice the sound of the door sliding open.
“Boo.” A familiar raspy voice said simply.
That was all it took for Ash to flinch and yelp, her cigarette slipping from her lips and falling to the ground far below.
“For fuck’s sake Spike!”
Ash dusts herself off as if she had fallen instead of the cigarette. “The hell was that for?”
“Fun, plain and simple.” He coos, his hands fishing in his pockets for his own cigarettes. “No need to get all feisty.”
Ash crosses her arms and glares at the cowboy. “You owe me one of those.”
“Nah.” He answers with that stupid grin as he lights his own and leans against the railing.
She gives Spike a skeptical glance. “What are you even doing here? You always smoke inside.”
“Jet made me come up to tell you food’s ready. The cigarette is just a reward for coming up.” He says while stepping around her before heading towards the door again.
“It’ll get cold if you take too long.”
Whoosh.
Once again, Ash is left on her own.
“God, I can’t stand him,”
she thinks to herself as she stuffs her hands in her pockets. But they aren’t empty as expected. She grabs the object inside and lifts it into view.
When her hand opens, she’s met with a single cigarette. Fresh from the pack.
Ash raises her gaze towards the door.
“Did he really slip that in my pocket without me noticing-?”
A soft snap, another flame, another ember, another drag, another exhale full of smoke…
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Paul stepped out into the hallway. It was dark, as usual, except for the light fixtures on the wall. His guards were not around. It was strange, so strange.
Everything was quiet and Paul felt that he should have his knife with him - but when he checked his belt, it wasn’t there.
He walked; he wasn’t sure where to. He could hear his own footsteps, echoing.
But he did not hear nor see the figure that came from the dark, could not recognise who it was; felt only pain as the sharp blade of a knife was pushed into his back, through his ribs, into his stomach.
He could see nothing more - but he could hear; the feral panting of his aggressor, snarling over his face.
“The Kwisatz Haderach must die.”
Paul awoke with a jolt. His heart was racing, and he felt almost dizzy, so he pulled himself up to sitting, fought to slow down his breathing. It was just a dream. Just a dream.
He looked over, at the still sleeping form of his husband on the bed next to him. Paul took a deep breath, worried that the thrum of his wild heartbeats would wake him.
He leant his head back on the headrest, closed his eyes. Breathed. In, out.
Almost subconsciously, his hand slid down to his abdomen, held there. It was warm, it was safe.
Untouched.
It was just a dream.
“What’s wrong.” Feyd was awake.
When Paul looked over, his eyes shone, black, unblinking - as if he’d been awake the whole time.
“Nothing. Just - a bad dream.” He hated how his voice cracked, how upset he still was about it. He hated that he knew why: his dreams could turn out to be premonitions.
No. No. He was safe. He was safe.
“Come over here.”
Paul moved to lie back down, next to his husband - Feyd leaning on his side, looking down at him.
“Bad dream?”
Paul shook his head. “It was nothing.”
Feyd’s eyes held his, and Paul let himself be examined. He didn’t feel like talking, but if Feyd wanted to read into his eyes, then he could. Feyd’s arm wrapped around him, his hand in Paul’s curls.
The kiss started slow; Paul closed his eyes, breathed, tried to focus his mind on this, and this only.
“I missed this,” Feyd growled on his mouth, and Paul arched his back, sobbed at the pinch of his fingers pushing inside him. “I missed your body.”
“You missed laying with me,” Paul whispered back. “Am I better than anyone else you’ve ever been with.”
He needed some levity, he needed the distraction - and Feyd laughed on his mouth, devious and teasing as always. His fingers stroked inside, and Paul made a show of arching his back again, wanting to purr.
“My beautiful, vain wife,” Feyd teased. “You grow more beautiful and more vain every day.”
Another finger inside his body, and Paul grit his teeth, grabbed Feyd’s face into his hands roughly, wanting to growl from the bottom of his throat. “I hate you.”
Feyd laughed again. “Such a scary little wolf cub.” He pushed his face down into Paul’s neck. “Quiet, now.”
And fine, Paul could be quiet - but he sank his fingernails into Feyd’s shoulders, knowing he was leaving marks and loving it. He grit his teeth but breathed, loud, crying out against Feyd’s neck at every violent thrust into his body. He closed his eyes, wishing for their mating to fill his mind completely and free it from any memory of his bad dreams.
That morning, Paul woke up with the faint light from outside timidly entering through the window in his room. The smell of his coffee drink caressed his nose, and he opened one eye, spying his servant getting their breakfast ready, as he had asked- and his skin tingled with the knowledge that the girl could see them naked and tangled in each other. Good. That’s what he wanted.
As Paul thought of getting up, Feyd’s strong arm sneaked around his waist, holding him back against himself.
“Feyd,” Paul tried to protest. “It’s late.”
He felt lips against the nape of his neck.
“Mmmh. You smell so good.”
“Please,” he insisted. “Please. I want you to meet my mother.”
Feyd grumbled. So Paul turned around on the bed, cupped his cheek, and kissed his mouth, his husband’s eyes still closed.
“Please,” he asked again. And knew that he’d won when Feyd sighed, but did not protest any further.
He felt Feyd’s eyes on himself, intense, when they met Jessica in the hall, and she kissed Paul on the cheek.
She turned her gaze on Feyd, and Paul could see the curiosity there, even though the blue in it stayed steely, her expression unreadable.
Feyd tilted his head, smiled his twisted smile. “I hope you found Giedi Prime welcoming.”
“Oh, very.” Jessica said. “The weather is at least more clement than on Arrakis.”
Feyd nodded, almost to himself. “You will see that we are better than Arrakis in so many ways, My Lady.”
The aides were starting to arrive, the council about to begin. Jessica looked at Paul, then back to Feyd - her eyes observing.
Feyd gave a little bow. “If you’ll excuse me now.” He reached over, cupping Paul’s face, kissed his mouth for a long moment. And then left.
“The Reverend Mother tells me you’ve done a good job with Feyd,” Jessica said later, once the council was over, and they were alone. “You’ve worked hard. He’s not easy to mould.”
Paul bit the side of his mouth. “I didn’t - mould him.”
“Well, whatever you’ve done, it’s worked. From what I knew, and what she told me, Feyd is wild. Violent. Dangerous. A Harkonnen through and through.”
“And what makes you think he isn’t still all of those things.” Paul looked down, refusing to meet her gaze.
“I’m sure he still is. But it seems you can handle him.”
Paul looked up. He wasn’t sure it was wise, to let her read him, right now, but he allowed for their eyes to meet. He wanted his mother to be proud of him, to know he’d done a good job - but something in his chest contracted at the idea of her thinking he’d done all just for control. For power.
“It’s what you planned to do,” Jessica reminded. Having read right into his mind. “It’s what WE planned to do, darling, from the beginning.” Her voice was a gentle warning.
“I know.” Paul sighed. Thought of the baby inside him. “But it’s not that simple.”
“Paul.” The warning was now clear in Jessica’s voice.
“I’m pregnant, Mother.” Paul’s voice echoed in the silence of the room. “Is it so bad that I want my baby to be - someone’s child, first, before being someone’s master plan?”
Jessica was quiet. Their eyes locked into each other. Her expression was unreadable, still, but Paul held his ground. He knew what he was doing.
“You called me here to be your aide,” Jessica said, her voice now softer. “To advise you. Well. Now I’m advising you. Don’t be naive enough that you think love is the motive for everyone, even when you want to tell yourself so.”
Paul held her eyes for a long moment; then, he squeezed his own shut. Looked down. “I know.”
“Good.” Jessica stepped closer, and kissed his forehead.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
The next morning, Steve was woken by a knock on the door. Opening his eyes was painful, so he closed them again, assuming one of his parents would get it. After a few minutes, the knock came again.
Okay, apparently his parents weren’t getting it. He dragged himself out of bed, head pounding. He had fallen asleep in his clothes from the previous night, but had at least managed to kick off his shoes at some point. He ran a hand through his hair, but assumed it was a lost cause.
He made his way through the house to the front door, which he opened to find Eddie Munson.
“Rise and shine, Harrington,” Eddie said, grinning.
“Eddie?” Steve squinted at him. “What time is it?”
Eddie checked his watch. “11:45. I thought you might want to join the land of the living. Want to get breakfast?”
That explained why Steve’s parents didn’t answer the door. They weren’t home. They had already gone to work. It didn’t explain why Eddie was here, though.
“Breakfast?”
“Yeah, it’s the meal you eat when you first wake up? Is that ringing a bell?”
“Why are you here?”
Eddie spread his arms wide. “Hey, you said you wanted to hang out more. And what better cure for a hangover than breakfast with your good friend Eddie?”
Eddie looked so earnest. Steve couldn’t say no.
“Alright,” he said after some consideration. “Give me five minutes.”
It was more like ten, by the time Steve had changed, brushed his teeth, washed his face, and done his hair. He really wanted a shower, but he didn’t want to make Eddie wait any longer.
“Alright,” Steve said. “Let’s go.”
They got into Eddie’s car and pulled out of the driveway.
“How’s your head?” Eddie asked.
Steve mentally workshopped a joke response, but he was too hungover to get all the way there. “Not great,” he admitted.
“There’s aspirin in the glove box.”
Steve opened the glove compartment, half expecting to find a full pharmacy of illicit drugs, but there was just one innocent little bottle of aspirin. He took two and swallowed them dry.
“How’s…the rest?” Eddie asked when he was done.
“The rest of what?”
“You seemed pretty upset last night. Just wanted to know if you’re okay.”
Was that why Eddie had turned up on his doorstep? To check on him? That was…really nice, actually.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Steve said. “Don’t worry about me.” He
was
fine, right at this moment, because he wasn’t thinking about it. Steve had gotten really good at compartmentalizing. Or repressing, if he
really
didn’t want to think about it. It was a fine technique, probably. It worked for him, pretty much.
Eddie glanced over at him, seemingly unconvinced. “Alright,” he said.
They pulled up to a diner then, an old-fashioned place that Steve had been a handful of times before. The conversation paused as they were seated, consulted menus, and ordered. Despite the fact that it was now a little after noon, they both ordered breakfast.
“So,” Eddie said while they waited for their food. “Let’s talk about this Nancy situation.”
“It’s not a Nancy situation,” Steve said. “There’s no Nancy situation.”
“It really seemed like there was a Nancy situation, especially over spring break.”
“Yeah, you mentioned that at the time.” Steve had definitely felt something then, and maybe Nancy had too. It was like an echo of their relationship. Nancy was missing Jonathan, and Steve was having no success in finding a girl he could really connect with. He had been longing for that connection, and Nancy was the closest thing he could find at the time. But it wasn’t real.
“I honestly thought you two would be getting back together. The
chemistry
–”
“Well, obviously we’re not,” Steve snapped.
“Whoa, okay.” Eddie put his hands up. “I’m sorry, that’s clearly a sore spot.”
“No,” Steve said. “It’s fine. It’s not like that. I care about her. Love her, even. But not the way I used to.” The thought of getting back together with Nancy didn’t feel right. They weren’t kids anymore. They had been through so much, and they had changed enough that they didn’t work together in that way anymore. And Steve knew that Nancy blamed them being together for Barb’s death. That would never stop hanging over either of their heads.
Eddie nodded slowly. “So…what was all that during Spring Break? All the…glances and stuff.”
Steve sighed. “We were just- We were both lonely, and remembering what we used to have. But we were different people back then. It’s not there anymore.”
Eddie nodded. “So you don’t think the people you are now would be good together?”
“No.” Steve hadn’t thought about it this deeply until Eddie had brought it up, but now he was sure. “Definitely not. Why do you want us to get together so badly? She has a boyfriend.”
Their food arrived then, and the conversation paused as they began eating.
“Alright, Harrington,” Eddie said with a shrug. “I believe you. I’ll stop pushing it.”
Finally. They could talk about something else. “So, are you dating anyone?” Steve found himself saying.
Eddie cocked his head and gave Steve a look—eyebrows raised, lips pursed.
“What? Why is that such a crazy thing to ask?”
“There’s not really anyone who’s my type here in Hawkins. Or at least not anyone who would also consider me to be their type.”
“If there’s no one, what’s all the bandana stuff for?”
“Well, it’s not for
dating.
”
Steve wasn’t stupid. He had gotten the rundown on the hanky code from Robin. He had read the back of the box for
Cruising,
though he couldn’t get up the nerve to actually rent it. He knew that Eddie was talking about casual sex, probably with guys he had just met. But that didn’t mean there was no chance he could make a connection with someone.
“You could meet someone,” Steve said.
“It’s really not like that, Steve.”
“Okay.” Steve put up his hands, just like Eddie had a moment ago. “No relationship talk about either of us, then.”
Neither of them said anything for a minute. Steve ran through Eddie’s interests in his mind. D&D, fantasy novels, music that Steve had never heard of. Except, actually-
“I heard a song by that band you were talking about. Black Sabbath?”
Eddie’s face lit up. “Yeah? Which one?”
“Uh,” Steve began. He had to think about that for a second. Because he hadn’t really just heard a song. He had bought the tape. He had seen the tape at the store, recognized the name of the band, and bought it. He didn’t know why, and had almost backed out when the music store employee gave him a weird look. Apparently Steve, in his polo shirt and Members Only jacket, didn’t look like the kind of guy who listened to Black Sabbath. “Heaven and Hell,” he finally said.
“Oh,” Eddie said. “Ozzy’s not on that one. The guy who did the bat thing?”
Well, now Steve felt stupid. That had been the whole reason he bought the tape, because Eddie had compared him to that guy. Or, no- there was no reason actually, because that would be a really weird reason. He just bought it on a whim. It was fine.
“That’s from when Ronnie James Dio was in the band,” Eddie continued, clearly oblivious to Steve’s internal monologue, which Steve was glad about. “And—“ Eddie twisted in his seat, indicating a large patch on the back of his vest—the vest that Steve had borrowed. It said “DIO” in large gothic letters. “I’m a big fan of his current band. If you liked Heaven and Hell, you should listen to some Dio. And some classic Sabbath, get the Ozzy experience.”
Steve wasn’t sure yet if he had liked it. It was a lot. It was very different from what Steve usually listened to, and it had made his dad yell at him, which was more of a point in its favor than anything. But there was something about it he liked. Maybe that it reminded him of Eddie. Or maybe not, because there was something uncomfortable about that thought.
“Yeah, maybe,” Steve said.
“You could come over sometime,” Eddie said. “I could play them for you.”
“Okay.” Steve nodded. “Sure.”
The conversation moved on and kept going, from the music Steve listened to (whatever was on the radio, mostly,) to the books they read (Eddie: Tolkien, Zelazny, Moorcock, and a bunch of other authors Steve had never heard of and wouldn’t remember the names of. Steve: not much since high school English class,) to the kids they had both somehow taken under their wing. That was a topic where they had a lot in common. They both cared about those kids a lot, and they both were especially close with Dustin. Steve was glad he wasn’t the only one who had found himself becoming a babysitter. Despite the fact that they didn’t have much in common on the surface, they kept finding things to talk about.
So that was how they ended up making plans for later in the week. Steve went over to Eddie’s place, listened to metal music, actually enjoyed some of it, and was also surprised by how homoerotic some of it was. Steve wasn’t great at knowing when something was gay, but even he could tell that the cover of Accept’s album
Balls to the Wall
was pretty gay. Steve wondered if all metal music was kinda gay, or just the stuff Eddie listened to.
Steve and Eddie kept hanging out. It was a little weird, maybe. Their other friends definitely thought it was weird at first. But it was nice. Sure, Steve had a stray maybe-sorta-gay thought every once in a while, or found himself staring at Eddie’s lips for a little too long, but he ignored that. He was just happy that they were friends.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
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CHAPTER:
Yellow Brick Road [MHEA Art!] - Chapter 9 - KatyTheInspiredWorkaholic, victoriaandalbert - The Magicians (TV) [Archive of Our Own]
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Chapter Index
1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10
11. Chapter 11
12. 5 year anniversary
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Rating:
Mature
Archive Warning
:
No Archive Warnings Apply
Category:
M/M
Fandom:
The Magicians (TV)
Relationships:
Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Rupert Chatwin/Eliot Waugh
Kady Orloff-Diaz/Julia Wicker
Margo Hanson/Alice Quinn
Characters:
Eliot Waugh
Quentin Coldwater
Alice Quinn
Julia Wicker
Kady Orloff-Diaz
Margo Hanson
Rupert Chatwin
Martin Chatwin
William "Penny" Adiyodi
Ted Coldwater
Josh Hoberman
Additional Tags:
Alternate Universe - Sweet Home Alabama Fusion
Graphic Art
Gifsets
Film Adaptation
Fanart
Language:
English
Series:
← Previous Work
Part 2 of
MHEA 2020 Yellow Brick Road
Collections:
Magicians Happy Ever After
Stats:
Published:
2020-09-16
Completed:
2025-09-10
Words:
171
Chapters:
12/12
Comments:
13
Kudos:
85
Bookmarks:
3
Hits:
2,342
Yellow Brick Road [MHEA Art!]
KatyTheInspiredWorkaholic
,
victoriaandalbert
Chapter 9
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You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Steph was the first one who saw it, purely by luck. She subscribed to the channel, and happened to be online avoiding an essay when it dropped.
She made it an entire three minutes into the episode before pausing and sending the link to Harper with a series of exclamation marks. She was full-on
cackling
by the time she reached the end.
She had a series of texts from Harper, ranging from exclamation marks, OMGs and then finally just a short video of Cullen falling off the couch, clutching his sides from laughter.
Don’t share with anyone else
, Steph sent.
Stephanie knew deep in her heart that this was an opportunity that she couldn’t squander. How was she going to play this? She knew she had to act fast, before anyone else caught wind of the video…
Wait.
She knew who she needed to recruit.
*
“You have to call the emergency meeting,” Steph said. “If I do it, I’ll have to argue it’s validity for an hour. But if the all-knowing, almighty Oracle does…”
“What exactly is this meeting about?” Barbara sighed.
Steph gleefully held out her phone. The episode started playing. She had hustled over to Barbara’s apartment the second she’d realized the gift she had been given.
“What is this?” Babs asked, squinting at the screen. Her eyes widened when she saw the title of the video, but Stephanie quickly assured her, “Just watch. I promise you won’t regret it.”
Babs looked skeptical, but she watched. And a few minutes later...
“Is that a picture of Bruce? Oh my god,” Babs said with equal parts horror and delight.
“I have to see his face when he watches this, Babs. I deserve this. We
all
deserve this.” Steph gave her best puppy dog eyes. “You can bring us this joy.”
“Yeah, I can do that.” Babs said after a moment. “The Cave?”
“I’m thinking of a viewing party on the Bat-computer.”
*
Within an hour, it was arranged. The entirety of the Bat-family was gathered in the cave, ready to hear about some vague threat that Oracle had uncovered: Bruce, Dick, Jason, Cass, Tim, Damian, Alfred, Duke. They all clustered near the computer, uncertain about the purpose behind this meeting.
Batman's chair slowly turned around, revealing Stephanie, fingers steepled in front of her. Alfred the cat purred on her lap, completing the picture.
“I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve gathered you all here today,” she said, wishing she had a moustache to twirl.
“Oracle called this meeting,” Bruce said. He was standing near the Batmobile, clearly prepared for an actual emergency. The rest of the family were nearby, looking more intrigued then stressed now upon Stephanie’s reveal.
“At my behest,” Stephanie said. “Something of great consequence has come to my attention.”
“Was it your passion for b-villain dialogue?” Jason said. Stephanie, in a show of true maturity, ignored him instead of sticking her tongue out like she wanted. There were bigger fish to fry.
“We don’t have time for this,” Bruce said. He was practically inching towards the Batmobile.
“I agree with Stephanie,” Barbara announced. “I think we should enjoy her presentation.”
“There’s a presentation? I’m not sitting through a
presentation
,” Damian said. “Brown has nothing to teach me.”
“Oh, but how wrong you are, young grasshopper,” Stephanie said. Alfred the cat jumped off her lap, and she did a dramatic twirl before rising and standing before the group, hands on her hips. “Gather round, chickadees.”
There was some muttering, and Dick kept glancing at Bruce, as if waiting for him to bolt, but instead Bruce sighed and joined the rest, pushing back his cowl.
“As I’m sure you know,” Stephanie began, “some of us here could be considered public figures. And as such, there’s a certain amount of scrutiny... infamy, if you will, that comes with that.”
“Can you get to the point?” Bruce said. He looked like he had a feeling that this was heading in an unfortunate direction.
“Ugh, fine, but you’re missing out,” Steph said. She pulled up the video on the biggest screen of the computer, pausing it on the title card.
Buzzfeed Unsolved: Capes: The Startling Secret Identity of the Batman
“What is this?” Bruce demanded.
“Oh god, are these those puppet motherfuckers?” Jason said. “What now?”
Barbara hid a grin behind her coffee mug. Cass looked suspiciously between her and Steph and said, “You two have already seen it.”
“Yep,” Steph said. “Hold on to your capes, kiddos, we’re in for a ride.”
She pressed play.
*
Given how stoic he typically was, watching Bruce go through an actual face journey as the video progressed was like watching a work of art being created.
Stephanie, having watched the video twice already, stayed in Bruce’s chair with her back to the screen, shamelessly watching everyone’s expression. Bruce’s dismay at the topic at hand, followed by indignation at some of the suspects, followed by outright horror when Ryan and Shane started in the theory that Bruce Wayne was, in fact, Batman.
It was a thing to behold. Stephanie hadn’t giggled this much in
ages
.
Jason’s expression of pure glee was unwavering. Dick kept glancing around, like he was both concerned about how certain family members were going to take the video, but also was dying to find out how they were taking the video. She saw him texting surreptitiously, and assumed that all his superhero friends had just been blessed with the link.
Tim’s shoulders began to shake halfway through and never stopped, though he kept an admirable poker face.
Cass cheerfully ate the popcorn that Babs was sharing with her and Dick, and kept a sunny grin the entire time. Duke likewise looked like Christmas had come early, though he nobly attempted to keep his smile hidden behind one hand.
Damian’s hand kept straying towards his sword.
Steph beamed at Babs, who clearly had zero regrets about gathering everyone for the meeting.
When the video was over, silence reigned in the Cave.
One by one, they all turned to stare at Bruce, who had an unreadable expression on his face.
“Well?” Steph asked. “Comments? Concerns? Quibbles?”
Bruce shook his head slightly. He still didn’t say anything.
“Oh no, it broke him. The internet was the thing that finally broke Batman,” Duke muttered.
“I’m not broken.” Bruce shot Duke a look.
“Do you have a plan?” Cass asked.
“No plan needed,” Bruce said, for possibly the first time in his life.
Jason blinked at Bruce. “What the fuck?”
Dick put his hands quickly over Damian’s ears. “Little ears!”
“Cease your nonsense,” Damian said, batting away Dick’s hands. “We need to find these so-called journalists and set them to rights.”
“Anything we say will just add fuel to the fire.”
“For the record, I take back what I said about them being motherfuckers,” Jason said. “They’ve fully redeemed themselves in my eyes.”
“Wait, why did you hate them in the first place?” Duke asked.
“They did an episode about his death,” Steph said. “Using puppets. It was
not
tasteful.”
A pause.
“Not all heroes wear capes,” Tim said sagely.
“I will fucking
end
you,” Jason snapped.
“No, really, what the hell did we just watch?” Duke said. “Should… I mean… should something be done?”
“Like what? Anything we did would just prove that they got close,” Barbara said. “Ignoring it is the best way to prove that it’s laughable.”
“I think my favorite part was when they figured out Batman’s true identity, but thought it was too hilarious to be true,” Dick said thoughtfully. “Steph, can you get me a screenshot of them talking about what a moron Bruce Wayne is?”
“Oh, I came prepared,” Steph said, and began to unleash unholy mayhem on the group chat. So many screenshots and gifs of the moments that had made her lose it. Bruce looked like he was contemplating buying the internet and destroying it. Steph briefly wondered if this was it, if this was Batman’s villain origin story.
“Hey, Alfie,” Jason said after a minute. “Would you describe Bruce’s momma as
hot-to-trot
?”
“I will not dignify that with a response,” Alfred said, patting Bruce on the shoulder.
“That wasn’t a no,” Jason muttered. Duke snickered, and immediately looked like he felt bad about it.
No, Steph thought,
this
moment would be Batman’s villain origin story.
“We will never speak of this again,” Bruce said firmly. “No more viewings of this… tripe.”
*
There were
so
many more viewings of the video.
It quickly became one of the most-viewed videos on Buzzfeed Unsolved: Capes’ channel. There was a slight uptick in the other videos they’d made about the caped community:
The Fantastic Super-Speed Life of the Flash; The Temporary Super-Death of Superman; The Bodacious Background of Black Canary; The Somewhat Confusing Formation of the Justice League.
The previous most-viewed video was
The Tragedy and Triumphs of Spandex
, an exploration of the most unfortunate costumes of all times, both villain and hero. Everyone involved became immediately nervous that they were going to attract the wrong sort of attention.
(They did; the world was forced to watch as Polka Dot Man and Crazy Quilt took over broadcast tv to defend their aesthetic.)
*
@therock
- 5m
da waynes
[image of Dwayne Johnson with an arm thrown over Bruce Wayne’s shoulder. Bruce is looking up at Dwayne, smiling, while Dwayne is scruffling his hand through the hair of Damian Wayne, who is barely in frame. Only Damian’s eyes and forehead are visible, but he is clearly annoyed.]
*
An (incomplete) list of memes sent to Batman during patrol by the various traitors who claim to be his family:
[gif of young boy wearing a nylon Batman cape swishing cape and posing dramatically in front of a mirror with the text
practicing cape swishes in front of a mirror
]
[image of a man sitting in a hot tub surrounded by platters of sushi. An MS paint cowl has been crudely drawn over his face. Caption:
fuck you bruce wayne, batman can HAVE IT ALL
]
[shaky-cam footage of Wayne Manor with a moon bounce and slip-n-slide set up in the front lawn while giggling voices identifiable as Tim, Steph and Duke sing
wayne’s world, party time, excellent
. The moon bounce is shaking dangerously from side to side, clearly beyond capacity, and Cass is midway down the slip-n-slide, fully clothed]
[a viral video showing two teens in ski masks attempting to dress the Mothman statue in a cape and cowl. “Batman
does so
have junk in the trunk,” one could be heard saying indignantly. “He’s just more modest than Nightwing!”]
[galaxy brain meme with each Batman identity theory in ascending order of ridiculousness, with the ultimate galaxy brain being
Batman is a rotating role and Shane and Ryan connected ALL the dots
]
*
Tim looked up from his tablet as Alfred entered the study with a duster. Tim looked back down at the image on his screen, then back at Alfred, then held the screen up, squinting at him.
“Master Timothy, are you quite alright?” Alfred asked.
“Uh,” Tim said. “Alfred, you know that theory from the video?”
“I am not Bruce’s biological father, Timothy, that was codswallop,” Alfred said, a mite testily. Tim hoped that Jason and Steph hadn’t actually gone through with sending him an
Congratulations, it’s a boy!
card. Or maybe that’s why he was so prickly about the topic.
“No, not that one,” Tim said. “The one about the possible Batman. D.B. Cooper?”
Alfred looked at him steadily.
“I just… I mean, that’s ridiculous,” Tim said. He stole another glance at the police sketch of D.B. Cooper. “Right? You wouldn’t…”
He blinked a few times, thinking about how very likely it was that Alfred would have the requisite know-how to pull off the infamous heist.
“Wouldn’t what, Master Timothy?” Alfred said in that mild voice that had always terrified Tim..
“Nothing!” Tim said, closing out the image immediately. “Nothing at all!”
Alfred nodded, apparently satisfied, and continued to dust.
*
There was no stopping the spread of the episode. The Justice League held a private viewing on the Watchtower. Batman was not invited.
Superman allegedly choked on a popcorn kernel from laughing too hard at a reference to Bruce Wayne’s
himbofication
, and Diana had to hit him on the back soundly until it dislodged.
Dinah -- who had organized the watch party, thanks to a heads-up from Oracle -- filmed the reactions secretly to show the Birds of Prey. She maintained her dignity, but only just. She did better than Hal, anway, who spent the entire viewing with an expression of unsurpassed glee.
“Bruce has… seen this? We’re sure? Did his head explode?” Barry wondered. He couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from the screen. “We’re all seeing this, right?”
“Bruce has undoubtedly found the humor in it,” Diana said.
The rest of the League turned to her and stared incredulously.
Diana raised an eyebrow.
J’onn said, “This
is
objectively humorous.”
“Yeah, but Spooky isn’t gonna laugh at himself like this,” Hal said. “Which is fine, because I’m never gonna stop laughing at this.”
Clark said mildly, “Maybe we shouldn’t--”
“Oh, we absolutely should,” Ollie said.
Dinah spoke up. “Barbara didn’t seem troubled by it. I’ve heard that the kids are having a field day with it.”
“See?” Ollie looked smug.
The video came to an end, and for a long moment silence reigned on the Watchtower.
“Someone find a street address for these two geniuses,” Hal announced. “I’m sending these beautiful bastards an edible arrangement.”
Barry paused a second. “I bet if we pool our money and buy a fancy enough one, we could make them think it was from Bruce.”
“Done,” said Ollie.
*
@officialgreenlantern
- 15m
This is the greatest day of my life
@officialgreenarrow
-1m
For the record I’m not Queen, though he is a debonair looking mother-trucker
|
@officialgreenarrow
- 1s
(Supes says we’re not allowed to drop bombs on Twitter, f or otherwise)
*
No one could meet Batman’s eye at the next Justice League meeting. Diana gave him a supportive pat on the arm, which he brushed off with an, “It’s fine.”
Diana raised her eyebrow triumphantly at the rest of the League.
Batman found that the awkwardness wasn’t the worst thing in the world, even with Hal singing a
hot dog, hot dog, hot diggity dog
song quietly during every break.
He narrowed his eyes at him, but Hal was too busy singing to notice.
*
@shanemadej
- 2h
A thousand-dollar edible arrangement just showed up at my house????? That’s something that exists apparently??
|
@ryansbergara
- 2h
Uh… mine too??? What the fuck?? I mean, very kind of someone out there but... what the hell?
|
@shanemadej
- 2h
I want to say i’m scared to eat it but it is fuckin’ delicious.
|
@shanemadej
- 2h
was*
|
@ryansbergara
- 1h
shane that was not a human amount of food. Please tell me you didn’t eat all that. Are you dead? I’m gonna try to contact your ghost so hard if you’re dead. You better fuckin’ make an appearance. You’re contractually obligated.
*
The next day on patrol, Steph cornered him. “Did you hear about the edible arrangements?”
Bruce had, in fact, heard about the edible arrangements. He’d been accused of buying them by several people. Bruce was insulted that people thought that an
edible arrangement
was the pinnacle of his gift-giving prowess. “Yes.”
“So you realize we gotta step up the appreciation game, then. Give ‘em something that doesn’t suck.”
“No.”
“I honestly just feel like such brilliance needs to be rewarded,” Steph said thoughtfully. “Like, they need to know that their work is appreciated. They need to feel seen.”
Bruce steadfastly ignored her.
Steph, totally used to that, continued unabated. “B-man, would you, just the once, say
Hey rogues, it’s me, ya boi
when you dramatically descend onto criminals? Preferably some high-profile ones and while being caught on camera for the internet to see?”
“Absolutely not.” Bruce didn’t even look at her, but disapproval radiated off of him.
“Just once! I’ll be your best friend,” Steph said, swaying back and forth while clasping her hands in front of her, like she was back in second grade.
“Nope.”
“No to the request or no to best friendship?”
“Both.”
“Harsh,” Steph said. “I’ll remember that, come birthday time.”
“Please do.” Bruce actually looked her way this time. “I don’t want a repeat of last year.”
Steph rolled her eyes. “That was the best birthday present anyone’s given you in years and you know it.”
Bruce made a
hnn
sound that didn’t sound as dismissive as he probably had intended, so Steph took it as a win.
*
Dick proved easier to bribe.
One plate of Lucky Charms treats was all it took. The next time Dick went out in the Batsuit, after a minor Arkham breakout while Bruce was, ironically, stuck in a Wayne Enterprises shareholder meeting about public image that Lucius Fox threatened his access to R&D over, he made sure that Tim was waiting in the rafters recording.
Scarecrow and Mad Hatter were clustered with a small group of henchmen when Batman burst in through the skylight, yelling, “Hey rogues, it’s me, ya boi!”
Tim managed to capture their expressions as it happened, somewhere between cartoonishly shocked and deeply confused. It was more luck than training that kept the camera steady; his tiny breathless giggles could easily be heard in the video.
An untraceable, anonymous account uploaded the video to a minor social media site that evening.
Everyone in Gotham had seen it by lunch the next day.
*
@shanemadej
- 15m
you guys the goddamn batman quoted me while kicking supervillain ass. My work is complete. Thanks internet it’s been great but you gotta retire on top of the game.
|
@ryansbergara
- 14m
but have you considered the fact that this means batman, conceivably, could have seen our video about him
|
@shanemadej
- 14m
shit. fuck. fuckadoodle-doo.
|
@ryansbergara
- 11m
when batman breaks all your teeth, i’ll bring you applesauce
*
“You’re grounded.”
“You can’t ground me,” Dick pointed out calmly. “I’m in my twenties.”
“Watch me.”
*
Damian stopped on the front steps of Wayne Manor, staring at the offending item. There was a gift bag sitting in front of the front door. A yellow gift bag decorated with little bats.
“What’s this?” Bruce asked, coming up behind him. He’d just picked Damian up early from school after a terse meeting with Damian’s principal, who refused to accept
defending the family honor
as a valid excuse for up-ending his lunch over the lunchroom monitor’s head, even though the utter knave had quoted
the video
in front of everyone.
“Perhaps it’s booby-trapped,” Damian said hopefully, as that would distract his father from the punishment he’d threatened on the way home.
“The security system didn’t…Oh,” Bruce said, looking at his display. “A speedster came by.”
He reached out, turned the tag on the bag over.
To the Clown Baby
.
Damian peered inside. Inside were several cans of beans, a string of garlic cloves, an
I want to believe
mug, an action figure of The Rock, a little plastic parachute toy and a set of chattering teeth. A note on top declared,
sorry about the grounding!
.
Bruce sighed. “Take this to your brother and tell him to keep his damn friends off my lawn.”
Damian grabbed the bag and ran, thankful that his father had seemingly forgotten his punishment.
*
“It’s undignified and insulting and we should remove every trace of it from the internet,” Damian said resolutely. Steph and Tim exchanged glances. They had gathered in the Manor to have ice cream with Dick, who was pretending he was choosing to hang out at the Manor instead of acknowledging that he, a grown man, was grounded.
“He’s cranky because they spent five minutes talking about Dick and four seconds talking about him,” Tim stage-whispered to no one in particular.
“I am not
jealous
,” Damian hissed.
“Didn’t say you were,” Tim replied.
“Don’t fret, Dami-cakes,” Steph said, reaching out and patting his head lightly, like one would pat a cactus prone to attacking. “They just had the flashy circus story to talk about with Dick. If they’d known you were an assassin ninja baby, you would have gotten way more attention.”
“Hrmph,” Damian said, but actually seemed mollified. “Perhaps…”
“We are
not
publicly revealing your ties to the League just so you can get Buzzfeed clout,” Dick said quickly.
“Can we bring it up to Bruce, though?” Tim said thoughtfully. “I bet we can get his eye to start twitching.”
“I wanna roll the conversation back first though,” Steph said thoughtfully. “Damian do you think you can just scrub a viral video from the internet because it doesn’t talk you up enough?”
“Of course,” Damian said. A pause. “Can’t we?”
They exchanged looks. “Probably Babs?” Dick ventured.
“We are not removing the best thing that’s happened to me this week from the internet,” Steph said firmly.
Tim grinned at her. “You just say that because you weren’t in it.”
“If and when they talk about me in any of my identities, I will feel the exact same,” Steph said.
“No matter what they said?”
“Tim, do
not
cyber-bully those dudes into talking shit about me.”
“Just trying to make it fair,” Tim said.
Steph stared at him. “They said literally nothing about you. Not even to mock you for having on the world’s ugliest shirt in that yearbook photo they unearthed.”
Tim said quietly, “I thought all evidence of that picture was gone.”
“Oh my god,” Steph said. “You already tried to scrub embarrassing things from the internet! You’re unbelievable. I’m gonna find every dumb picture of you that I have, and I’m going to sell them to stock photo companies.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Watch me.”
*
Check out this new listicle!
Top 10 Embarrassing Photos of Timothy Drake-Wayne That His High School Sweetheart (A True Queen) Sold To A Stock Photography Site
[image of teenage boy with unfortunate hair falling off skateboard] [image of teenage boy picking food off his shirt with the clear intention of eating it] [image of teenage boy wearing a nickelback t-shirt]
*
“Bought you a present,” Jason said, throwing a wadded-up plastic bag at Bruce.
Bruce blinked, squishing the bag delicately, as if he were testing for weapons or explosives. “You… got me a present.”
“Yeah. Late Father’s Day present, or whatever, pick a holiday, it’s not like I’ve gotten you anything in… well. You know. Since I’ve been back.”
“Jason,” Bruce said, looking touched. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Jason said. “Go on, open it.”
Bruce carefully opened the bag and pulled out the object inside. “You bought me a tank top?” Confusion was written clearly on his features.
“Turn it around,” Jason said.
Bruce turned it around slowly. The black tank top had
all glitz and tits
written in glittery calligraphy across the chest. “This is…”
“The best present you’ve ever received? I know,” Jason said. He bit his lip, clearly trying to keep laughter in. “It’s a reference. To that video,” he added unhelpfully.
“I’m aware.”
“When they compared you to Dolly,” Jason said.
“I saw the video.” Bruce sounded like he wanted to add an
unfortunately
but refrained, nobly.
“Well? Are you going to see if it fits?”
“I--” Bruce stared at the shirt, then at Jason. “You… want me to try it on.”
“I mean, if you hate your Father’s Day present, that’s fine,” Jason said. “You can give it back. Sorry, dad.”
“No,” Bruce said, holding the tank top possessively. “I… I can try it on.”
This was a mistake.
Jason, without an ounce of shame, lifted his phone and snapped a picture of Bruce standing in his foyer in front of the ridiculously elaborate staircase, tank top on.
The picture was online within an hour.
(Jason spent a good thirty minutes ranting to whichever former Robin was closest about the fact that a good forty percent of the comments on the picture were to the effect of
those are some tits alright.
Stephanie asked what, precisely, he
thought
the internet would say, and Jason just grumbled.)
*
“You know I’m stealing that shirt, right?” Selina said, digging through Bruce’s closet. “Where’d you put it?”
“I’m glad we’ve progressed to you announcing your thefts ahead of time,” Bruce said, refusing to give up the location of the tank top. “Besides, it’s not even in the closet, you’re wasting your time.”
Selina narrowed her eyes at him.
Bruce looked at her innocently.
“Did you seriously?” Selina asked, then took off for the Cave. “Bruce, it is
not
a crime fighting trophy!”
“It was Batman-related and you know it!” he said as he chased after her. He’d spent ten minutes arranging the shirt
just so
in its new display, he wasn’t going to let her steamroll through and take it.
*
@thebrucewayne
- 1h
you can’t not wear a father’s day present 🤷
|
@legitdickgrayson
- 1h
that’s not what you said about the romper i got you last year 😔 I thought we were gonna be twinsies 😢
|
@therearesomewhocallmetim
- 48m
Guess we know who the favorite is
|
@casswayne
- 42m
😇
*
“Cass you can’t just claim credit like that,” Jason complained into the comms.
“Why?” Cass said from where she was patrolling the docks. Steph giggled into her shoulder.
“Because-- Because I was the favorite! I got him to wear a glittery tank top!” Jason sputtered.
“You let me post it,” Cass said.
“Because I’m legally deceased!” Jason protested. “You’re supposed to respect the dead!”
“You’re not dead,” Cass said smugly. “Don’t have to respect you.”
“Suck it, Todd,” Steph chirped into the comm.
“A pox upon both your houses,” he said, before remembering that Cass’s house was his own, and muttering, “Shit, I rescind my curse.”
The girls’ laughter rang through the comms.
*
Dick beamed at Bruce. They were sitting at a frozen yogurt shop, each with cups of frozen yogurt in front of them. Bruce’s was dark chocolate and Dick had snuck sprinkles on it. Dick’s was a monstrosity of every available topping, nearly overflowing the cup.
Dick was having possibly the best day of his life.
Bruce was not.
“I know Alfred made you do this,” Dick said cheerfully, “but I don’t even care.” He snapped another selfie of the two of them, his smile blinding.
Bruce sighed. “I thought I had destroyed this.” He plucked at his outfit, a violently floral romper.
“You did; I got you another one,” Dick said. He was wearing a matching romper.
“Can we leave now?” Bruce said.
“Not til we finish our dessert,” Dick said. “If Jason gets a Father’s Day, then so do I.”
“It’s not even Father’s Day,” Bruce protested, but took another bite of his dessert.
Dick grinned and said, “Try mine!” while shoving a spoonful at Bruce’s face. Bruce tried to avoid it, but he still ended up with whipped cream on his nose.
Just then, the front door of the shop blew in, confetti flying everywhere.
Bruce tensed, but before he could do anything, the Joker came strolling in, sing-songing, “I heard an interesting rumor about you, Brucie-boy. Or should I say, Batsy?”
Then the Joker took in the scene: Bruce, the whipped cream, the neon flowers on the romper, and Dick caught mid-selfie.
He blinked.
“No,” he said. “I refuse to-- those internet idiots had me convinced that... “ He looked at Bruce again. Squinted, held up a child’s Batman mask in a way that he could see what Bruce would look like in it, and shook his head again. “Fuckin’ kids, wrong on the internet.”
He turned on his heel and left.
Dick and Bruce stared at each other. “Should we… do something?” Dick wondered aloud.
Bruce took another measured bite of his froyo. “Let’s let the GCPD handle this one.”
*
BRUCE WAYNE FOILS JOKER PLOT
By Lois Lane
[image of Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson in matching floral one-piece rompers in a confetti-strewn yogurt shop]
The Latest Out Of Gotham
: The Joker was arrested Monday after exiting a frozen yogurt establishment located just outside Wayne Enterprises in Gotham City, New Jersey. The focal point of Joker’s aborted criminal attentions, local business mogul and philanthropist Bruce Wayne, was having a midday treat with his son when the Joker burst onto the scene. “He seemed to have fallen victim to believing online conspiracies,” Wayne said when questioned by authorities. “Seemed like the gullible type, honestly. Not much going on there.”
“Yeah, he definitely fell victim to one of the classic blunders: never go up against Gothamites when froyo is on the line,” Grayson added. “I’m just glad that the GCPD worked so quickly to bring him in.” The Joker was apprehended within minutes, after social media -- which had been following the outing by Wayne and his son closely, given their recent infamy thanks to the video that inspired the attack -- alerted the GCPD to the attack.
When asked about their apparently casual reaction to being attacked by a mass murderer, both Wayne and Grayson rolled their eyes. “That schtick got old a half-dozen kidnappings ago,” Wayne muttered. Grayson took the opportunity to launch into an informative lecture about clown culture and the damage The Joker and those of his ilk are doing to it. (See: Op-Ed; p16
You, Sir, Are No Clown: A Look Into The Noble History of Clowns; or, Kindly Eff Off With Your Nonsense You Imposter by R.Grayson
)
*
“Clark, tell your wife to answer her damn phone.”
“Bruce, you know that she’s gonna do what she wants,” Clark said carefully.
“She knows what she did.”
“That picture was editorially mandated…” Clark tried.
Silence.
“Unavoidable, really,” Clark said.
“Clark?”
“Yes?”
“Did you and Lois submit that article as a
prank
on me?”
“No?”
“I am
calling your mother
.”
*
After a week, most of the furor over the video had died down.
Dick came into the Cave and was surprised to see Bruce sitting there, watching the video. He glanced around; Bruce appeared to be alone in the Cave. The only sign of life was a half-eaten apple pie sitting beside him.
“Can’t get enough, huh?” he asked, perching on the side of the desk beside Bruce. He picked up a fork and took a bite of the pie. Heavenly.
Bruce’s gave him a wry sort of tiny smile. “Now that I’ve seen the fallout, it’s… interesting. To see myself through the eyes of an outsider.”
“You think it’s funny,” Dick said, staring. All week, he’d been sure that Bruce was one wrong joke away from snapping. “You’ve… You thought this was
funny
.”
“I mean,” Bruce said. “It’s not often you get a chance to…” He trailed off, clearly understanding that he wasn’t going to bullshit his way out of this one. Dick knew him too well. “I mean. A little?”
“Here I was, walking on eggshells because I thought that you were brooding and angsting over this, and the whole time, you were
laughing
.” Dick wasn’t sure whether he wanted to laugh or not.
“You literally dressed up like me and became a meme,” Bruce said dryly. “How is that walking on eggshells?”
“Bruce, you know exactly how many jokes I’ve wanted to make,” Dick said. “You
know
that it was a real challenge to keep it at one.”
“I do appreciate that,” Bruce said. “And it was kind of nice, actually. To hear someone talk about Bruce Wayne as Batman in the public. As a joke, even.”
Dick looked up at the screen, and then back at Bruce. “You just liked having someone acknowledge that it was fucking hilarious when you whacked Luthor in the nuts.”
“It was my finest golfing moment.”
“And getting to publicly roast the Joker?”
A tiny smile crossed Bruce’s face. “I’d have preferred more dignified attire.”
“You loved every second of that day.” Dick bumped his shoulder against Bruce’s.
They watched the end of the video in companionable silence, then Dick said, “Wait, does this mean I’m ungrounded?”
Before Bruce could answer, he noticed that a new video had been uploaded to the
Capes
account.
He and Dick stared at the title for a long, long moment.
Buzzfeed Unsolved: Capes: Ranking the Rotating Cast of Robins
“I’ll call everyone,” Dick said. “No way are we letting Steph beat us to this one.”
“We are not--” Bruce started to protest, then sighed. “I am
absolutely not
going to provide my own rankings of Robins!”
“We’ll see about that!” Dick replied.
Everyone was in the Cave within twenty minutes. Dick hit play, and the intro began, followed by,
Since we weren’t viciously murdered or forced to gargle our own teeth after the last Bat-themed video, we thought why not go for broke and offer a definitive ranking of the Robins, as determined by our totally subjective sliding scale of badassery, corniness, and overall je ne sais quois.
There was only minor bloodshed by the end.
[end]
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Azul sighed. “As I was saying, I'm a competent magician. I always prepare for all eventualities before I act. Isn't that right, Floyd?”
Floyd grinned. “I think you let your guard down a little too soon there, Sea Snake.” He spoke, voice deeper and much more gravely than normal.
Grim nearly fell off of Ed’s shoulder in shock. “
MRAH!
What's with your voice?!”
Even Ed looked shocked. “That’s…new?”
Al frowned. “You sound like you shoveled gravel in your mouth.”
Ling snapped his fingers. “Or like a movie narrator!”
Floyd grinned in turn. “Thanks shrimpy! I signed a contract with Azul and got this
rad
deep voice for it. Whaddaya think? Do I sound all
cool
and grizzled now? In return, I offered Azul my signature spell, Bind the Heart.”
Azul smirked. “And if you don't know what that spell does, your face is going to crack when you hear this: It jams an opponent's magic and diverts it elsewhere.”
“Oh I remember that!” Ling chuckled. “Yeah, a useful thing, but it doesn't matter much in a physical fight.”
“Correct you are Ling,” Azul nodded. “And after swiping it from Floyd—ah, correction. After taking it as
collateral,
I used it to evade Jamil's mind control spell. Then I
pretended
to be his thrall and got Jamil to spill his true intentions as he gloated.”
Ed snorted. “I suppose being a second rate con has its benefits.”
Azul frowned. “I prefer to be called an
intellectual
. At any rate, I quickly deduced that Jamil was the only person Kalim would care about enough to fight back against Jade's signature spell. And that was the underpinning of my whole plan.”
Ed scowled. “Oh would you quit taking credit? We
told
you
that was what was going on. You didn’t deduce
shit!
”
****
Ed scowl softened slightly when she heard an absolutely
devastated
voice from behind her. “
Ja...mil
? What is this? What's going on?” Kalim asked with an expression of sheer heartbreak.
Ed smiled sadly at Kalim. “I’m so sorry Kalim.”
“I quite agree.” Bastard spoke up. “Care to explain yourself Mr.Viper?”
Jamil paled to the point Ed thought he might pass out. “K-Kalim… Vice Headmaster Mustang…”
Ed grinned. “Right on time Bastard.”
“Y-you were controlling me? That
can't
be true, right? I've been having occasional blackouts lately where hours have passed the next time I come to… But those were just dizzy spells or me nodding off, right? I tend to doze off anywhere as it is. You've
always
gotten on my case for it. So
please
, say it isn't so. Tell me I was just nodding off.” Kalim begged.
“I’m afraid he can’t Kalim,” Bastard answered. “Because the answer is clear. Jamil planned this all along.”
Kalim looked to be on the verge of tears. “N-no,
no
. You
must
be mistaken. Mind-controlling me, plotting to expel me... You would
never
do any of that. Jamil, you're... You're the
last
person that would ever betray me, right? After all, we're best friends,
right?!”
‘Shits about to go down.’
‘I can tell, and this is gonna be UGLY.’
Jamil's face froze and Ed saw something
snap
in his eyes. His face stretched into a grin. Then, he started chuckling. It slowly grew
louder
and
louder
until it became roaring laughter. The laughter became so loud and deranged, that it made it look like Jamil wasn’t even
breathing
.
In unison, Truth and Ed spoke in unison. “
Oh shit.
”
Kalim tried walking to the deranged Jamil, but Ed held out her hand to stop her approach. “H-hey... What's wrong?”
Jamil abruptly stopped laughing to snap his head to Kalim. “Oh, I'll tell you, Kalim. I'll tell you
EXACTLY
what's wrong.”
Kalim stepped back slightly. “Huh?”
****
Ling preemptively winced at what he knew to be what was most likely going to be probably the worst thing Kalim would
ever
hear in his life.
Jamil scowled at Kalim. “You've been the same for as long as I can remember. Oblivious, gullible, foolish...
AND I HATED IT!
You trot along merrily in ignorant bliss, utterly blind to my suffering! Every time I see you smile, it makes my skin crawl! I'm sick of it! There's no point in maintaining my facade now. You have no idea how many days I've spent wishing that you would just go away. But that ends today! Myself, my family... I don't care about ANY of it anymore!”
Leona__2 ✔️
uh oh
Vil_Schoenheit ✔️
Oh dear.
AceUpYourSleave
Oh for fucks sake
Ed stepped back, instinctively bringing Kalim with her. “Oh for fucks sake- could at least
one
of these people be open to reasoning?”
“They're having mental breakdowns Brother. It seems unlikely.” Al pointed out.
Kalim, despite being dragged back by Ed, called out to Jamil. “W-wait! Jamil!”
Jamil snapped his head up. “The one you behold is your master...When I ask you a question, you will answer. When I give you a command, you will assent!
Snake Charmer!
”
The
entire dorm
went down in pain, clutching their heads.
Mustang looked around in confusion. “Eden, what’s happening?!”
“Jamil’s trying to mind control a
whole fucking dorm!”
Ed screeched.
“And his stone isn’t looking too hot either!” Al added on.
Jamil thrust his arm out as if commanding. “All of you, eject Kalim, Ramshackle and the Octavinelle guests from the premises!”
In unison, the entire dorm stated “Yes master.”
****
“
Well things could be going better, but at least we get to blow off some steam.”
Truthed grinned.
Azul barely dodged out of the way of a spell, before murmuring. “
Incredible.
He's controlling all these targets at the same time AND making them do separate things! Mediocre, nothing. He's easily one of the top magicians in the entire school, to say nothing of Scarabia!”
“Focus Azul!” Everyone yelled.
Azul sheepishly smiled. “Right, sorry.”
Truthed seemed to be having a ball of a time, as even when they threw someone into a wall the poor person got
right back up.
Ling chuckled to himself. “At least she’s having fun.”
“Alphonse, please describe what's happening.” Mustang asked.
“The affected students keep getting back up, regardless of how injured they are,” Al explained. “If this keeps up- they’ll be dead men walking!”
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Apparently, Granger and Weasley had established a routine of putting Potter to bed every night. Sometimes, they quickly left; sometimes, they stayed and talked. If it weren’t for Draco’s well-reasoned paranoia, he would have put up silencing charms. As it was, he gritted his teeth and listened as the Golden Trio chattered about their boring day, filled with schoolwork, Quidditch and war charities.
It seemed, however, putting Potter to bed stopped Potter from his normal midnight wanderings around Hogwarts. And in every one of those nights, Potter’s subconscious had decided to walk into Draco’s bed instead.
Draco dragged himself awake
again
as Potter sleep-crawled onto his bed. Faintly, he realised that Potter was getting better at that—he got his entire body on, and if Draco left it, Potter would probably figure out to sleep-snuggle under the covers. It felt almost routine to sweep Potter’s blankets back, levitate Potter into his rightful bed, and tuck him in. For as long as it took for Potter to stop screaming, Draco let his hand run through Potter’s hair.
Draco itched to give Potter the modified Dreamless Sleep Draco made for Mother, but when he searched Potter’s bedside table and found empty, old, vials of sleeping draughts, Draco knew he couldn’t, at the risk of Potter getting an addiction; making something weaker wouldn’t help. Though, it explained why Potter hadn’t sleep-walked into Draco’s bed earlier.
And Draco could hardly give Potter his moonstone, or teach him how to use Occlumency to ward away dreams.
Blearily, Draco fell back into own bed.
*
“Malfoy!”
Draco did not turn around and refused to pick up his pace. He did, however, curl his fingers around the wand in his pocket. He could hear the footsteps of maybe a dozen students behind.
Upstart Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws
.
“Think you’re too good for us? You should be in Azkaban!” One of the older boys yelled out. The sound bounced off the walls, leaving behind an echoing
aaazkaban-ban-ban
.
Draco’s mind cooled.
Yes, and it was
your
Potter who kept me out
. Attending Hogwarts as an Eighth Year had been one of the terms of his probation. He supposed that it was the Wizengamot’s idea of micro-aggression when they had been blocked from throwing Draco into a cell on a rock in the middle of the sea, handing over the law enforcement to school children who, by virtue of being on the ‘Light’ side, couldn’t be at fault—
A spell whistled past his ear, clipping the edge of his shield.
Anger bubbled up. Draco twisted around, whipping his wand out just as the rest of the group decided to cast. He narrowed his eyes, and with a sharp slash, sent the hexes crashing into the castle walls.
Fucking kids think they can fucking get me. They fucking never had the fucking Dark Lord living in
their
homes
—
Draco barely caught himself, a curse on the tip of his mind. One bloody scratch on any of them and he’d be shunted back to Azkaban, and he bet these kids knew that. With an inward snarl, he clamped the anger down.
The best he could do was cast the strongest shield he could and walk away as though spells weren’t being aimed as his back. He did not give them the pleasure of flinching when a hex barrelled through and struck him in a star burst of pain, shattering his shield. He concentrated on forming another shield. Soon enough, they stopped, as Draco rounded the corner.
He allowed himself a wince, then, and slipped into the nearest empty classroom. Shrugging off his robes, he probed the area around his lower back—thankfully a place he could reach. After healing himself, he found no energy to put on his robes and exit the classroom. But he had too, and he emerged from the classroom when he was sure the corridor was empty.
Draco slipped into the Eighth Year dorm behind Lovegood. The common room was filled with students in the space before dinner; mostly, they ignored Draco, as he ignored them. Potter was on one of the chairs by the fire, apparently holding court with his fellow fans. He looked like the righteous git he was, unlike that strangely innocent person in sleep. Which reminded Draco of his own lack of sleep.
As such, tiredness decided for Draco to skip dinner, and he went straight to bed.
*
For the first time in a while, Draco had an unbroken sleep. He woke from his green grass-blue skies dream without the sound of alarms in his ears. The room was quiet.
He checked his detection wards. Granger and Weasley hadn’t visited; Potter himself had only been in the room briefly late in the night. Potter had evidently returned to his night time wandering.
Finally
.
Draco stretched and got up, feeling his magic becoming more settled and calm already.
*
Mother’s owl found him in the kitchens early Sunday morning. Draco had long stopped thinking about how the owls managed to get in or how they found him there. The Sunday
Quibbler
and
Daily Prophet
were already neatly folded beside his open books.
He retrieved the letter and package from the eagle owl, Teithiwr. She permitted Draco’s absent stroke before flying over to the treats dish the house elves had put down at the table.
The package was opened first: a small box of chocolates, their scent and the box infused with Mother’s magic. He didn’t eat one, though, and closed the box, turning to the letter.
For a moment, Draco traced the
Darling Draco
at the header of the parchment. It was just over a month before the first Hogsmeade weekend, when Draco could visit Mother.
And Father
, he supposed.
Darling Draco,
How are you, darling? It would please me greatly if you could find time to write to me more often, else I can only assume that your classes are proceeding well. I am afraid to say I cannot imagine the conduct of the other students and professors; I only hope that you have treated them with courtesy, and they in return.
Oh, how I worry about how you are faring! Can you sleep well? Are the moonstones working?
In regards to your room assignment with Mister Potter, I feel the need to remind you to keep your interactions pleasant and polite. I know you may feel anger, dislike, or discomfort in regards to Mister Potter, but you should see this as a chance. Regardless of whether or not Mister Potter understands the concept of debt, we do. It is best if you can fulfil those debts now, in case in the future, Mister Potter may forcefully call upon them.
Provide Mister Potter assistance, if necessary. It may be beneficial if you become closer than just acquaintances, if not friends. Darling, do not deny that you had, at least once, wished to be his friend. I cannot say I fully know your wishes now, but if that desire still exists, I wish for you to be able to fulfil that desire and gain a measure of contentment out of it.
Enough of that. Your Father and I have completed the renovations of the West Wing and are starting on the East Wing. Your Father’s house arrest, not surprisingly, has not been a hindrance. We send the house elves to retrieve any necessary items. Be careful if you do decide to visit Hogsmeade or any other wizarding areas, Draco. There are many who forget that we have been tried and acquitted.
I have extended my hand to my sister, your Aunt Andromeda. Our meetings are warming; Teddy Lupin is an adorable baby, and you will definitely meet him over the Christmas holidays, if not during your visit next month. Teddy is a Metamorphmagus, a trait from his mother, your late cousin Nymphadora Lupin née Tonks. As yet, he shows no signs of inherited lycanthropy.
Your Father is recovering, and I am sure that he will send you a letter soon. He sincerely wishes to heal the rift between you and himself. If nothing else, do it for me, Draco.
Stay well, Draco. Keep your head up.
Love,
Mother.
Draco slowly folded the letter up and tucked it away. The box of chocolates sat invitingly in front of him, but Pansy and Blaise and Greg (
and Vincent
) weren’t there for him to share or deny them of the chocolates.
Stop being maudlin, Draco
, he berated himself. Teithiwr seemed to hoot in affirmation. Draco gave the bird a wry look and tried not to feel lonely in the smell of the chocolates and his mother’s perfume.
*
It was moving onto the seventh day that Draco had an unbroken sleep. He woke from a calm-sea warm-beach dream without the sound of alarms in his ears. The room was quiet.
Draco was uneasy.
He checked his detection wards. Potter had only been in the room briefly during the night.
With no one to hear, Draco let out a frustrated sigh. Potter had to ruin
everything
. The Boy-Who-Lived ruined Draco’s sleep with his stupid sleepwalking and screaming and now made Draco fucking
worried
for the git. Draco didn’t put it past Potter’s subconscious to have some nefarious plan to slowly torture him.
Potter had started to wander the night again, and he looked even more shit this time round. From afar, even Draco could see Potter’s glazed eyes, his slouching gait, rumpled clothes, and messier-than-ever hair. It looked like Potter was catching snatches of sleep in uncomfortable places. He did not look as bad as during the War, Draco had to concede, but worse than a wizard on the Light side had the right to be.
*
The next night, when Potter sleep-walked into Draco’s bed, Draco was relieved. Staring at Potter, curled up at the side of Draco’s bed, vulnerable—
Merlin, if only Potter knew that he was at the mercy of an Death Eater
—Draco lost the resolve to send Potter back to his own bed. Maybe Potter’s subconscious realised the superiority of Draco’s bed, which, after all, boasted Egyptian cotton and silk and offered the comforting view of the night sky.
Maybe the world was offering Draco a way to pay his life debts.
Decided, Draco retrieved and draped Potter’s blanket over him and shuffled to the other side of the bed so that he wouldn’t touch Potter accidently. He altered his wards, making Potter an exception, so that they’d stop alerting Draco. A sense of satisfaction settled over Draco, and he went back to sleep.
*
Draco was puzzled. The landscape—dark, cold, pale blue—was not the image he had in mind when he fell asleep. He turned slowly. The air was frigid, even through the robes—
robes?
—he wore. The ground was little more than mucked up dirt, and the skeletons of trees broke the horizon.
It looked like the War.
The dream shifted suddenly to pitch darkness, confined space. Draco knew then that it
wasn’t
his dream and realised he was rather lucid. Crying, wretched sobs and sniffling made his stomach coil, and he saw—despite the darkness—a young boy hunched up on the mattress. Draco knelt down, and then he could see the scar on the boy’s forehead.
The boy was Potter, and he was crying. It was Potter’s dream.
For a moment, panic gripped Draco as he could think of nothing.
Mother—what would she do?
The tiny corner of his mind ran through his memories, and the panic faded—
six years old, after a nightmare, Mother sang
.
Draco closed his eyes. It didn’t do much—darkness and darkness—but it helped him recall the music, the words. He began gently, trying to channel his Mother, and a distant part of him felt and remembered. It was a lullaby his Mother made just for him, and by Black tradition, it was a song about the stars.
In the dream, Draco’s voice worked perfectly.
It was a long song, but it took to the second repeat before little Potter stopped crying, and on the third verse, as Draco settled against the wall of the room more comfortably, that little Potter climbed into his lap, burying his face in Draco’s chest.
As the last chorus faded on the third repeat, so did the dream.
*
Draco woke up, and his eyes blinked lazily. Somehow, during the night, Potter had shifted closer and captured Draco’s hand. The dream was Potter’s, and Draco knew enough of the feeling of dreams to know that it was at least
partly
true. Potter had dreamt of a room so small Draco could not stand straight in it, a mattress left on the ground, and a little Potter in the darkness.
Draco put Potter back into his own bed before he could wake up and accuse Draco of something ridiculous; Draco cast a warming charm and tucked him in.
Potter’s face turned towards him, relaxed in sleep.
Normal. Friendly even. Not the boy who rejected Draco’s hand in First Year. Not the boy to whom Draco owed life debts. Not the boy who now barely ever looked at Draco.
Draco’s stomach twisted, and he scowled and turned away.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
The stone road to Solitude was long and windy, mostly flat with small inclines. The walls and gate of the city soon came into view up a steep massive hill, past a guard tower, windmill, docks, and stables.
Link stared in silent awe from atop Epona. He had never seen a place like this before. From where he was, there was a natural arch formation that spanned the river to the other side, there were buildings on this arc, ending with some sort of castle-like structure.
The Hylian nudged his horse’s sides and she started to walk up the path. The two soon reached the stables and Link stopped Epona, then got down and led her over to the stable master, who was a man with full brown facial hair.
“Name’s Geimund. What can I do for you?” The man stepped away from a white horse and eyed Link.
“I’d like to have my horse stay here for a while, though I’m not sure for how long.”
Geimund eyed the boy before him and seemed to study Link. After gazing at the Hylian for a while, the man nodded. “Right. How about this then. You pay me for one night, and at the end of your stay, however long that is, you pay me for the rest. Sound good?”
“That sounds fair.” Link agreed as he gave Epona a look over.
“I’ll take your horse then. Should be a short walk up to the gate. There’s more guards than usual up there. Wonder why...” Geimund held out a hand for Epona’s reins.
Link gave the reins to Geimund and the Nord visually examined the mare. “Good horse... she got a name?”
“Epona.”
“Epona...” Geimund mused. “A good name. She’s strong and no doubt fast... could be a good war horse...” His gaze moved to Link. “Stormcloak armor?” He questioned.
The Hylian gazed at Geimund, inwardly cursing himself. He had forgotten to get new armor after leaving Windhelm. “I...” He paused. “I don’t know if you heard... A dragon fell on Windhelm a few days ago.”
To Link’s surprise, the man grinned. “So, that was you? I heard about it alright, the entire province knows about it!”
“Right...Um... My old armor was destroyed in the fall... So Ulfric gave me this armor...”
Geimund inspected Link again. “Armor looks just a tad too big on you, just my perspective, though. Now, I have to warn you that Solitude doesn’t take too kindly to Stormcloaks. Even those that wear the armor, but aren’t part of the faction.”
Link nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
The Hylian left the stables and continued to walk up the long winding path. The cobblestone road was steep, but manageable. Link passed the large windmill on his left; on up he passed a two storied guard tower, and soon he approached the massive wooden and metal twin gates.
Two guards were standing before the gates and one of them held up a gloved hand as Link approached. “Halt. State your business.”
“I’m just here to look around Solitude.”
The left guard examined Link. “What’s with the armor? You a Stormcloak sympathizer looking to cause trouble?”
Link shook his head. “No. I was the one involved in the dragon falling on Windhelm. My old armor was destroyed in the fall, so Ulfric gave these to me to wear until I could find better armor.”
The two guards looked at each other, then the right one spoke up. “Alright. You pass. I suggest going to the blacksmith and getting new armor. Or at least new clothes while you’re here, the clothes shop is Radiant Raiment. There’s also an execution taking place to the right as soon as you get past the gates behind me, some idiot gate guard I think... might have already happened.”
“Thanks for warning me.” Link stepped back as the two guards moved to open the gates.
“You’re welcome. Just don’t cause any trouble, and we’ll get along just fine.” Remarked the left one.
The two guards stepped aside for Link to pass after opening the gates, and so he entered Solitude.
The thing that got Link’s attention wasn’t the massive buildings, nor the large square, nor the many different paths that led away from the square. No, what got his attention was a rather large crowd to his right. Being as short as he was, he couldn’t see what was going on, but he could still hear it.
The Hylian wandered over to the back of the crowd and tried to look in between people to see what was happening up front, but soon gave up and hovered at the edge of the gathered mass.
The desperate tone of a young girl rang out. “They can't hurt uncle Roggvir. Tell them he didn't do it."
A rough sounding voice spoke a single word. “Positions.” Perhaps some sort of high ranking official?
A man spoke next, he sounded drained. “Svari, you need to go home. Go home and stay there until your mother comes."
Another order. “Lock the city gates.”
A woman’s voice sounded next, one that sounded haughty. “You should tell her that her uncle is scum that betrayed his High King. Best she know now, Addvar."
The man snapped back. “You're all heart, Vivienne."
The rough voice from before spoke again. “Roggvir. You helped Ulfric Stormcloak escape this city after he murdered High King Torygg. By opening that gate for Ulfric you betrayed the people of Solitude."
A different male voice yelled “Traitor!”, while a another yelled “He doesn’t deserve to speak!”
Then Link heard a voice that was possibly only a few years older than him. The man sounded resolute. “There was no murder! Ulfric challenged Torygg. He beat the High King in fair combat."
Another voice. “Liar!”
The man, who had to be Roggvir, spoke again. “Such as our way! Such as the ancient custom of Skyrim, and all Nords!"
Several people booed at the man’s words, it was impossible to tell who.
“Guards, prepare the prisoner.” Spoke the rough voice again.
Roggvir responded. “I don’t need your help.” There were sounds as if someone was kneeling.
“Very well, Roggvir. Bow your head." Footsteps.
“On this day... I go to Sovngarde."
Link caught a glimpse of something metal as it rose over the crowd, then it vanished. There was a thud, then mixed cheers and cries of horror.
The metal thing appeared above the crowd again, except this time, it was dripping blood, some of it running down the wooden handle of the weapon. It was a large bladed sharp axe with a long and sturdy wooden handle. For a second, he was back in Helgen, seeing the same axe rise above him, glinting in the midday sun -
A voice got Link’s attention and he looked around, then noticed Hadvar standing nearby. As the Hylian walked over to the Nord, the crowd began to disperse, and Link saw the aftermath of what he hadn’t been able to see - a bloodied woven basket was before a makeshift wooden table of sorts, with a headrest. Inside the basket was a head.
Hadvar caught Link staring and stepped in front of him to block the sight from view. “It’s good to see you again… Is that what I think it is?”
Hadvar talking to him seemed to bring Link back to reality and he shook his head, then looked down at the golden sword pommel. “The sword?” Link asked Hadvar.
“Yes. Is it Dawnbreaker?”
Link drew the blade and showed it to Hadvar, who nodded. “Just as I thought. So Meridia chose you?”
“Seems like it.”
Hadvar looked Link up and down for a second as he returned the glowing sword to a scabbard that didn’t match it at all. “You look really out of place here. Radiant Raiments sells clothes, let’s see if we can find some for you there.”
As the two started walking away from the crowd, Link kept looking back at the grisly scene up on the stand until he finally tore his gaze away to eye the various buildings passing overhead and tried to forget about it. “What happened to him?”
Hadvar sighed. “Roggvir let Ulfric in and out of the gates the day High King Torygg died, as Captain Aldis said.”
Link side eyed the Nord. “I’ve heard people talk about what Ulfric did, what really happened? If I overheard things right, the Jarls…. what…. they meet every few years to elect a main ruler?”
Hadvar nodded. “Yes. The Moot is a council made up of the Jarls of each hold in Skyrim that is convened upon the death of the High King of Skyrim to formally choose the successor to the throne from any qualifying members of the royal family. In the absence of a legitimate heir, the Moot instead chooses a successor from among the Jarls. The Moot can reconvene during a living High King's reign if he breaks some taboo which makes the Jarl’s lose confidence in him, such as refusing a challenge made in the old traditions. Ulfric challenged Torygg to a duel, which is honorable, but then Torygg was killed when Ulfric used the Voice against him.” Hadvar was about to say more but then noticed where he was. “Here we are. Radiant Raiments.”
As soon as the two stepped inside the building, they were greeted by two women standing behind a counter. They appeared to be elves of some sort with strange skin colors. “Oh look, Endarie, it’s… what was his name… Hadvar, I think.” Said the one in black robes.
The greenish-skinned woman gave a tight smile to Hadvar, who nodded back before her gaze turned to Link. “And who might you be? That armor you’re wearing doesn’t fit you. How can you even hold weapons, you look scrawny enough as is.” Her tone was matter of fact as she stepped out from behind the counter and walked up to Link, who found that he had to look up at her due to their height difference.
“I’m here to get some clothing.”
Endarie gave Link a look over. “Clothing? Are you scared of the possibility that wearing that armor here could get you killed? Because it’s a very high chance.”
“Pretty much.”
The woman shook her head. “Acting brave won’t get you far in most places.” She walked back around the counter and returned with some sort of measuring tool. “Stand still while I measure you.” She ordered.
It took several minutes, with pauses due to Endarie writing down various measurements, but eventually she stepped back. “Hmmm… I
think
we have clothing in your size, it’s not out here though, possibly in the back. Go ahead and look around while I go and check.” The woman then walked to another room.
The other woman behind the counter smiled. “Hello. I’m Taarie. My sister… she doesn’t like most people, I’m surprised she was that friendly with you.”
“It’s fine.” Link noticed something on a nearby shelf and stepped over to it. It was a dark green sleeveless tunic with a belt around the waist. Next to it was a pair of tan pants, neatly folded.
The Hylian turned around when he heard Endarie’s voice. “I couldn’t find anything in the back - Oh, did you find something?” She was standing by the counter, gazing at him.
Link nodded and he half turned, picked up the two clothing items and showed them to the woman. “How much for these?”
Endarie put a hand to her chin in thought. “Hmm… Strange, you’re the first person I believe to ask about those. We didn’t put a price on them… Let me see… Ten Septims each?”
Before Link could respond, Taarie took something off the shelf behind her and stepped out from behind the counter, then walked up to Link while holding a pair of boots. “Here. You’ll need these if you’re staying here for long. They’re fur-lined boots. For the cold. Five Septims for these.”
Link took the pair of boots from the woman and set them on the ground beside him, then shifted the clothes he intended to buy to one arm as he reached into his knapsack. “Do I pay either of you?”
Taarie nodded. “Yes”.
Link took out the twenty five Septims and made sure they were all there. “...Twenty three…. twenty four… twenty five.” He handed the coins to Taarie, who smiled at him, then pointed to a side room.
“Thank you. You can use that side room to try on the clothes.”
Link nodded, picked up the pair of boots, then walked into the other room.
He returned a few minutes later wearing the new clothing. The Hylian had neatly folded the Stormcloak armor and had set it in his knapsack for later. Hadvar smiled when he saw Link and the two women nodded in approval.
Endarie gave a small smile. “The clothes suit you well. Might even serve as armor if you’re good at dodging. Maybe. That’s a high maybe. You can wear armor over those clothes, so I suppose what I said is true.”
Taarie turned to her sister. “Endarie, I think Roggvir had an Amulet of Talos, do you think his sister would want it back?”
Endarie eyed her. “Yes, but how do you know about this?”
“She told me when she stepped in the other day to buy gloves.”
Link spoke up. “I could possibly get it.”
Both women turned to face him. Endarie raised an eyebrow. “Do you really think it’s wise to loot a fresh corpse?”
“No. But it’s just an amulet, if I’m returning it to a relative, it shouldn’t matter, should it?”
“No.” Hadvar intervened. “And if the Captain starts anything, I’ll talk to him.”
“Great.” Link then paused and turned to the women behind the counter. “Who should the amulet be given to?”
Taarie answered him. “Greta. Tall, long blonde hair, wears farm clothes. Roggvir was her brother.”
“Thanks.” Link motioned for Hadvar to follow him, then left the building.
Walking up the steps and over to a decapitated body to retrieve an amulet hadn’t been in Link’s plans for that day, but there he was, doing just that. Hadvar was standing below the stand, watching for any signs of trouble.
The body was lying on its front, flies already swarming the visible bone and muscle of the cleanly cut neck. It hadn’t begun to bloat yet, which was good.
The Hylian looked around, then knelt next to the body and began to rifle through Roggvir’s pockets.
‘Didn’t expect to be doing this.’
His left hand hit something cold and he grabbed it and pulled it out, then examined what he had found. It was a beaded necklace, with a small hook to hold the necklace together. The centerpiece was a combined arrow and axe.
‘This has to be it.’
Link stood from where he had been kneeling and jumped down from the stage, then walked over to Hadvar. “I think I got it.” He showed the necklace to the Nord.
Hadvar inspected it. “Yes. Thankfully, no one noticed you up there. Let’s go find Greta.”
Link nodded and looked down at the amulet as it reflected the sun overhead. He thought he saw some sort of inhuman golden eye looking back at him, then he blinked and it was gone.
‘What was that?
’ He decided to not tell Hadvar and stayed silent as the two walked the streets of Solitude.
A few minutes later, the two came across a sad looking woman that fit Endarie’s description of Greta. She noticed them and then the amulet. “Where did you get that?” She asked in a weary, saddened voice.
Link stepped forward and showed the amulet to Greta. “Was Roggvir your brother?”
The woman nodded and continued to eye the amulet.
“I think he would have wanted you to have this.” The Hylian offered the amulet to Greta, who reached out and took it, looked at it, then smiled with eyes that shone with gratitude. “Talos bless you, child.” She whispered. “You risked your life to bring this to me, did you know that?”
Link shook his head. “No.”
Greta looked around her carefully. “Listen carefully. Talos was outlawed to be worshipped or even spoken of by the Imperials and their White-Gold Concordat.” Her voice was quiet. “If they catch you talking about him, you get a warning, if you get caught worshipping him… it’s being tossed in a dungeon, or worse.”
“They kill people for worshipping someone? That doesn’t make any sense!” Link spoke a bit louder than usual due to his sudden outrage.
“Keep your voice down!” Greta hissed, looking frantically around her and then froze for a second as she saw a guard looking in her direction with suspicion. She then began muttering “you fool” as the guard began to walk over to the three.
“What’s going on here?” Ordered the guard as he got close enough to speak.
Greta turned around and Link felt something cold be pressed into his hands as the woman began to talk with the guard. “Nothing at all, this young man is new to the area, I was just telling him that worship of Talos is outlawed.”
The guard eyed Link from where he was standing. “Hmmmm…. Very well.” He stepped back from Greta. “I’m keeping an eye on you. You may have saved Whiterun and Windhelm from dragons, but you still have plenty of opportunities to get into trouble.” The guard then turned and walked back to his post.
Greta watched the guard leave, then turned to face Link, who was now holding the amulet. “Keep it.”
Link gazed at the woman with confusion. “What?”
“You keep the amulet. I realize now that I can’t have it, It’ll give me away as a Talos worshipper.” Greta smiled sadly. “Oh, don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. I just have to find another way to worship the Ninth Divine. Besides, you look like you need his protection more than I do. And remember, try not to wear the amulet in Imperial controlled territories or near the Thalmor.”
Link looked at the amulet in his hands. “Maybe you’re right.” He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked back. It was Hadvar.
“We should get going.” Said the Nord.
Link nodded, then moved his gaze to Greta. “Thank you.”
The woman smiled at him. “Not at all child. May Talos bless you and guide you on your journey.” She then walked away, leaving the two in the street.
As Link watched Greta walk away, he found himself gazing at the amulet. For a second, that golden eye from earlier was visible, then it was gone. He then noticed the amulet had a faint blue glow to it, and barely visible in the middle of the small metal axe was a faded carved dragon skull. The Hylian felt something... otherworldly about the object he was holding, some sort of divinity to it. It sort of felt like his Triforce piece.
Hadvar eyed Link. “You never told me what you’re doing here in Solitude.”
Link looked up from the amulet as he lifted it over his head and let it fall over his neck, hidden beneath his new clothes. The metal felt cold against his skin. “Um... I’m just here to see the scenery....?”
The Nord shook his head and smiled. “You and your love of nature. Tell you what, Tulluis is looking for recruits right now, you’re not old enough, sure, but maybe you could become a recruit in training.”
Link gazed at Hadvar, unsure of how to respond due to Ulfric accepting him as a Stormcloak. Thankfully, he was saved from answering by his knapsack shaking. He grabbed at it. “Listen, can we talk later? I went through some ruins earlier and haven’t had a chance to rest since then.”
Hadvar nodded. “Sure. There’s a inn called the Winking Skeever. Beds there are cheap, food is good, lots of books to read and people to talk to. In fact I’ll head there myself, see you around, Link.” With that, the Nord walked off.
As Hadvar walked away from Link, there seemed to be some sort of commotion out front. He was too far away to hear what was being said, nor was he able to see exactly who was talking. When Link got closer, he saw a man with brown hair standing on the steps, looking up at the Blue Palace. He then saw Link. “Greetings. I am Viarmo, current headmaster of the long established Bard’s College. I am afraid that if you want to become a bard, that is not possible at this time.”
Link eyed the man, suddenly fascinated that that was even an option here. “Are you sure? What’s the reason for?”
Viarmo gazed at the Hylian for a second. His face then grew serious. “The Queen has ordered that the festival be canceled.”
Link blinked. “Cancelled?” He repeated. “Why?” He didn’t know what festival it was, but he knew something serious had happened.
The Altmer sighed. “Due to the recent murder of High King Torygg, the mourning widow and current Jarl, Elisif the Fair, has put a stop to the festival. She reasons that burning a king in effigy is in poor taste, which, I suppose now that I think about it, might be true. I’m looking for someone who can somehow help me restore the festival.”
Link nodded. “Do you have some sort of plan?”
Viarmo smiled brightly. “Yes. Yes I do, it would be better to discuss that inside though.” The man went inside the building and Link followed him.
Inside the Bard’s College were bards of various races and both genders. They had a lot of instruments, some were sitting in windowsills or on chairs, talking or practicing songs, while others were eying Link.
Viarmo was standing in the middle of the room, hands clasped behind his back as he waited. As Link approached, the Altmer relaxed and eyed him. “I suppose you want to help? Very well. Elisif has forbidden the Burning of King Olaf, a Festival put on by the Bards College. We need to change her mind. To convince her, I want to read King Olaf's Verse. A part of the Poetic Edda, the living history of Skyrim. Unfortunately the verse was lost long ago."
“It was lost?”
“Yes. According to Giraud, our histories keeper, the portion of the Edda dealing with King Olaf might still exist in Dead Man's Respite. I need you to retrieve the poem."
“Do you know why Elisif forbade the festival?”
“As you may be aware, Elisif's husband High King Torygg was recently killed. Elisif mourns her husband deeply and she feels that a festival that burns a King in effigy is... distasteful. I've tried to convince her the festival is many centuries old and celebrates Solitude but I need proof. I believe King Olaf's verse will provide that proof."
“What is the Poetic Edda?”
“I think Giraud here would give you the best explanation of both it and the history of King Olaf's Verse. You should speak to him about it." Viarmo smiled at Link. “I wish you luck in finding the verse."
Link was directed to a man in brown robes with a strange hat, who turned to greet him. “Greetings, you must be the one Viarmo was talking to?”
Link nodded as the man grinned. “He's sending you after King Olaf's Verse then? That's good, we shouldn't leave it lying around now that I've figured out where it is. My name is Giraud. The Verse was Svaknir's contribution to the Poetic Edda, the living history of Skyrim. Each bard adds to the Edda in his or her time."
“What was the verse about?” Link asked in curiosity.
“The verse criticized the reigning King Olaf. He was so incensed the bard was put to death and all the copies burned. At least, that's what we thought until I translated some ancient texts a year or so ago. We now believe King Olaf buried the truth with the bard. If I'm right Svaknir and King Olaf's Verse lie in Dead Men's Respite, along with the burial chamber of King Olaf himself."
“Sounds fascinating.”
So I go to this place, get the book, then leave. Should be easy enough.‘
Giraud nodded. “It is. Now then, I’ll send you on your way so we can hopefully reinstate the festival.”
Two bards blocked his path as Link started to walk away from Giraud.
“So sorry to bother you, but I heard you were going to Dead Man’s Respite?” Asked an elderly woman in a green set of robes.
“Yes….?”
“It’s just that I and two of my fellow teachers have had our instruments stolen by bandits. Over a year ago, thieves broke into the college and made off with a lot of valuable things. Mostly gold and silver. But they also stole Finn's Lute. We just learned where the bandits fled to, and I very much want that lute back.”
The woman gestured to a woman with blonde hair with golden robes and a fur shoulder cover. “Pantea has had her flute stolen by a student and given to a Necromancer, believing my friend’s story that the flute could raise the dead.”
The elderly woman then started to speak, but Giraud stopped her. “Thank you for speaking to him, Inge. The bandits were scattered a few months ago, those two items were taken to Dead Man’s Respite, as well as a drum that would be very important to retrieve.”
“What drum would that be?”
“Rjorn's drum! Nobody knows where he died, and therefore where his drum might be. Halldir was the missing link. Rjorn entered Halldir's Cairn in secret, and presumably died there. Now all I need to do is find someone to get it. And that someone is you, since you’re going to Dead Man’s Respite.”
“Sure.” Link paused. “Where is Dead Man’s Respite?”
Giraud pointed to the Hylian’s knapsack. “Take out your map and I’ll show you.”
Link rummaged in his pack for a few seconds, then took out a folded map and set it on a nearby table, then unfolded it and stepped back a bit.
Giraud stepped up to the map and grabbed a nearby quill. “See here? The ruins near Morthal?” The man tapped at the location on the map and Link nodded.
“I think I’ve seen something there.”
“Yes. That’s Dead Man’s Respite.” Giraud marked the location on the map with an ‘x’ and the location's name, then stepped back. “There you go.”
Link took the map from the table, then inspected it before he returned it to his knapsack. “Thanks.”
Giraud smiled. “Good luck, you’re going to need it.”
The Hylian nodded and then left the College.
Dust particles rained down as Link got the door open and walked inside. It had been a quiet, pleasant journey from Solitude to where he was now, but that ended here.
Once his vision settled due to the low light, he saw a ruby carved claw resting on a small raised pedestal that was on a table. As Link went to pick up the claw, he noticed a ghost standing on the other side of the table. It beckoned to him, then vanished, as if the ghost wanted Link to follow it.
The Hylian gazed after the ghost for a second, then looked down at the ruby dragon claw and picked it up from the pedestal, then stepped back. As soon as he picked up the claw, four Draugr rose from the ground and began to lumber and stumble towards Link, who reached to his side and drew Dawnbreaker, the holy sword’s glow lighting up the room.
As one of the creatures lunged towards him, Link swung the sword and it connected with the Draugr’s shoulder. To Link’s surprise, the creature caught on fire and began to flail around, knocking into the other three in its frantic movements. They too, caught on fire, one lunged towards him with a sword and nicked his right arm, and then all four turned to ash. When they did, a ring of fire erupted from the ash piles and sent things flying all around the room as a nearby gate rose and hit the ceiling. Link had to quickly duck to avoid being hit with a clay urn, which shattered upon impact with a nearby wall. The Hylian gazed at the sword he was holding for a second, grateful he had chosen to put back on his Stormcloak armor after leaving the college and Solitude proper, then grinned mischievously. If the sword could catch things on fire, then make them explode… what else could it do? He decided to find out.
Link decided to look around the room he was in. There were two burial urns nearby that held ten Septims each when opened, in the southwest corner was a coin purse that had thirty Septims. To the northwest was an iron door. The door opened into a small, seemingly empty room, holding only an iron sword and a minor potion of healing. Link took the sword to sell later, the potion, and coins in the main room and walked through the open gate.
He followed the passage, noticing a pressure plate that, when activated by a thrown rock, triggered a spear trap just before the intersection. Link carefully walked around the spear trap and turned left, heading north. As the passage descended, he saw two empty soul gems on a sideboard and picked them up. Eventually, Link reached the end of the passage and activated a pull chain that activated several rotating doors in a row.
The Hylian got past the rotating doors after waiting for a chance to walk through them, and when he did so, he walked into more catacombs, with more rotating doors. After he passed several of these, he began to notice spider webs. Link reached the end of the corridor and turned in a western direction to be confronted by two frostbitten spiders, which glared at him as they skittered across the room in his direction.
Link waited until the spiders were close, then took out the Fire Rod, primed it, then fired. The spiders were covered in flames and ran around for a while before two daggers flew through the air and put the two creatures out of their misery. Link retrieved Dusk and Dawn from where he had thrown them, then passed an alcove on the right that held an Orcish Warhammer. Link took the Warhammer and continued on his way.
At the end of the corridor was an urn that was empty when checked, and after Link sliced through some webbing, he found a locked chest that held fifty Septims when unlocked.
Link returned to the room he had been in previously and found thick webbing blocking his way. He cut through it and entered the next room. There was another pull chain and he pulled it to activate more rotating doors. Two Draugr were waiting for Link as he approached the rotating doors and he picked up his bow from where it was hanging on his shield, notched an arrow, then fired. It hit one of the creature’s in the chest, killing it. The other continued to stumble towards him as he hooked his bow to his shield and drew Dawnbreaker, then swung it towards the Draugr, who burst into flames upon contact, then turned to ash.
Link then noticed some sort of trap on the floor and half picked up the remaining Draugr corpse, then tossed it onto the pressure plate. It caused a wooden battering ram to swing into the opposite wall with a dust raining
boom.
The Hero of Twilight gazed at the wooden object for a few seconds before he darted around it to see what was in the small room past it. On a table was a book by the name of
The Buying Game
, that detailed in persuading shopkeepers to barter with you for prices. Link took the book to read for later, as well as taking a coin purse with twenty Septims, a Major Potion of Magicka, and an empty soul gem.
Link walked through the passage to the north, encountering one more draugr slumbering in an alcove in front. He snuck past it and continued onwards. At the top of the following stairs was an urn and a burial urn in the northeast corner. At the bottom of the first set of stairs was a pressure plate that, when activated by a piece of broken wall that he picked up and threw on the plate, activated a flamethrower trap. Link bypassed this by carefully stepping around said trap and then slowly walking away from it, then returned to his normal walking speed once he had reached a safe distance. There was a doorway blocked by light spider webs and the Hylian used Fireball to burn the webbing away, then stepped into the next room.
Two frostbite spiders dropped from overhead. They were dispatched by the use of Fireball, due to Link learning that Spiders caught fire easily.
There were two bookcases with a Major Potion of Magicka and an empty soul gem on the shelves. To the right of the bookcases was a pair of Elven boots. At the rear of the room was a sideboard in the northwestern corner with a pair of iron gauntlets on top, along with some sort of drum. An Orcish greatsword and another pair of steel boots was to the right. Opposite in the northeastern corner was another sideboard with an urn that was empty when checked, and a leather strip on top. Link took all of these items and continued onwards, bypassing the three Draugr corpses as he walked over the trapdoor grates and activated a nearby pull chain, which opened a nearby trapdoor in the floor to reveal a well filled with water. Link walked over to the well, seeing no other option but to jump into it.
There was nothing of interest at the bottom of the well, and the way forward was to the east. Link emerged from the water into a partially flooded passage, and then into a larger cavern. A skeever was nosing about in the shallows, and a Draugr was standing on a ledge, straight ahead overlooking the room, beside a visible soul gem. Another Draugr emerged from the sarcophagus below the ledge, and more - two of them - ambushed Link from the left. All of them were killed with a combination of the Fire Rod and Dawnbreaker.
Link collected a small coin purse that held ten Septims and four loose gold coins from under the bottom of the wooden spiral ramp winding around the pillar to the right, then ascended the ramp. A trapped iron gate barred the way across a stone bridge. Link looked for a disarming mechanism, and found one in the bottom right hand corner. He managed to disarm the obvious trap, then unlocked the door and walked across the bridge, noting the various blades resting in the walls. There was a chain at the far side of the bridge, which had been to disable the trap if it had been set off. Link walked past it and continued onwards.
Link followed the next wooden ramp up and passed through a set of iron doors at the top. In an alcove to the right in the following corridor after passing an urn along the wall was an arcane enchanter built into a table, with a steel helmet to the left. A Major Potion of Healing was on a sideboard to the left. Opposite the enchanter, to the west, along a short corridor was a magically sealed door and a sideboard with a stone bowl containing three canis roots. A passage to the right headed down some steps.
Link took all of the items, then felt himself be drawn to the enchanter.
As he leaned forward a bit and placed his hands on the cold surface, he didn’t feel like he needed to enchant anything… The Talos Amulet had some sort of divine effect, the locket and rings were enchanted... wait.
The forged necklace from the shackle.
Link took it from his neck and set it on the enchanter’s surface, then gazed down at it. He noticed an Elven helmet on the table that was slightly glowing green. When he checked it, it had an enchantment called “Poison Resist.” It seemed useful; as he gazed at the helmet, it seemed to melt away and he saw green runes floating in the air. He then felt the knowledge of the new enchantment enter his mind, then the runes faded. He then took a petty soul gem from his pack and set it next to the necklace, then thought about adding poison resist to the necklace. The petty soul gem exploded and the necklace began to glow a faint green. Link picked up the necklace and let it fall against his neck, stepped back from the arcane enchanter, and then he walked down the stairs.
He was greeted by more draugr to deal with, four of them. They were quickly dispatched by his new combination of the Fire Rod and Dawnbreaker, which were proving to be quite deadly.
At the intersection, Link first went to the left, passing a burial urn on a shelf to the left that was empty when checked. The Hylian didn’t notice the pressure plate in the nearby doorway until it was too late, and activated the trap, which shot cold icy air in his direction. He found that removing a nearby soul gem from an alcove deactivated the trap. He took another soul gem from the opposite alcove, stepped over a dead draugr that was lying on the floor, then picked up the Major Potion of Stamina and Elven greatsword that were next to the creature. A scroll of Circle of Protection was just inside the doorway on a plinth and he took that as well.
Link then backtracked to the other side of the junction, heading north, to find a locked door, behind which was a locked chest with open hundred and ten Septims, a black metal ingot, a Ruby, and a steel horned helmet.
The Hylian left the room and proceeded down the stairs on his left. As he entered the circular room, the iron portcullis closed behind him, and the other gates in the room opened, expelling five Draugr.
Once again, the combination of the Fire Rod and Dawnbreaker dispatched them all quickly.
The first gate on the south wall, where two of the draugr came from, had an unlocked empty chest with a locked trap that triggered a poison dart trap. It was easy enough to avoid the spray of darts from the ceiling by opening the chest and then jumping backwards quickly, allowing Link to escape unharmed.
The other two gateways in the room held nothing of interest, although an urn was found in the northeast corner of the room that was empty when checked. Link activated the chain to open the trap door in the center of the room, and he followed the wooden spiral stairs down.
At the bottom, the handle opened a section of the wall, revealing Svaknir's body and an ancient looking worn book in the skeleton’s hand. The ghost was sitting nearby the body in a corner, silently smiling at Link.
“Svaknir?” The ghost nodded as Link spoke his name and watched on as the Hylian knelt down before his body and carefully removed the book from the bard’s hand. The ghost vanished and Link heard the sounds of multiple doors opening. He stood and turned to leave, then saw a flute lying next to the bard’s body. He picked it up and left the small room.
He made his way back up the spiral stairs to see Svaknir waiting for him. The ghost of the bard motioned for him to follow, and led him to a door with symbols. Link briefly remembered Bleak Falls Barrow, where he and Ralof and Hadvar had encountered a door like this.
The puzzle required the correct combination of symbols as well as the Ruby Dragon Claw, which he had found in the first room, to operate. When Link inspected the claw, the object revealed the correct order of the symbols: Wolf—Hawk—Wolf.
Link spent a few moments turning the symbol locks into their right orientation, then stepped back as the three locks rotated and moved into place. The door then rose into the ceiling, dust raining down as the next room was slowly revealed. It was a burial chamber, Svaknir seemed to be standing in a small pond in the middle of the room.
It was very large, with twenty one Draugr sitting in chairs, eight on each side of the room, in the middle of the room was a table with a few items on it. At the back was a lone sarcophagus, up a set of stairs past a ledge with four Draugr seated in chairs. As Link walked down the steps towards the middle of the room, he heard the ghost speak.
“Olaf! It is time!” The spirit’s voice made the entire room tremble, in response, eleven Draugr got up from their seats and began to stumble towards him, to which the spirit drew a sword and ran towards the creatures.
Link drew Dawnbreaker and started to walk forwards, five of the undead choosing to attack him while the other six attacked the spirit.
As the first one reached Link, he swung the holy blade upwards, catching the Draugr in the chest. It crumpled to the ground, and the others advanced.
The ghostly bard ducked and weaved as he dodged the six Draugr. He uppercut one with his sword, then ran another one through a second later.
Link spun around with Dawnbreaker held out before him, slicing through a Draugr that had tried to get behind him. He then rolled backward as one with a steel war axe tried to bring it down on him.
Svaknir impaled two creatures at once, then swung his sword into another undead, the two impaled skeletons knocking the other to the ground.
The Hylian got up from the roll and dodged a swing from the war axe, then bashed at the Draugr with his shield, making it be off balance. It fell to the ground and Link raised the sword, then stabbed downwards.
The bard kicked the two Draugr off of his sword, then knocked another to the ground with a shove and decapitated it. Svaknir then stabbed the remaining creature in the chest.
Link eyed the two remaining Draugr, then summoned the Fireball spell and held out his hand, a wave of fire engulfing the two creatures as Svaknir faced the sarcophagus and called out “Arise, Olaf! My vengeance is at hand!”
This caused the four Draugr on the ledge to get up from their seats and jump down, drawing various weapons as they approached.
Link swung Dawnbreaker as one neared him, it was blocked by an ancient axe, the owner glaring at him with glowing eyes from behind its weapon.
The Hylian glared back, then shoved the Draugr as he swung Dawnbreaker again. This time, the blade sunk into the creature’s neck, decapitating it.
Link felt a presence behind him and he spun around to catch a war axe with his sword as it bared down on him, the Draugr making an angry growl as sparks flew from the two weapons colliding.
The Hylian rolled to the side, then came back up and raked Dawnbreaker up the Draugr’s back, burning the bones and melting away the faded old clothing as the creature soon turned to ash.
Link took a moment to breathe, then looked around. Svaknir seemed to be handling himself just fine. The bard dealt with the two remaining Draugr, glanced at Link for a second, then faced the sarcophagus again. “Olaf!”
The lid to the grave flew up and shattered against the nearby wall as something screamed out “Insolent bard!” A rotting corpse climbed out of the sarcophagus and glared at Svaknir with blue glowing eyes.
“Die!”
It screamed as it rushed the bard.
The Draugr overlord wore battle armor, had a long horned helmet, and an axe in one hand. It was King Olaf.
Link eyed the corpse as it stopped halfway between its sarcophagus and Svaknir, then slowly turned to face the Hylian, who raised Dawnbreaker in response. Olaf ran towards Link, swinging the axe when the creature got close. Link ducked and then swung the holy blade in an upwards arc, catching Olaf in the chest, burning the chest armor as the creature screeched and stumbled backwards.
The Hylian rose to a standing position and felt a coldness pass through him as Svaknir ran through the human and towards the dead king. The two locked weapons and began to fight soon after.
Link couldn’t help but try to suppress a shiver as he willed the coldness to fade, watching on as the bard and dead king dueled. But Link was unaware that Olaf didn’t need to fight him directly. The dead king Shouted.
“Fus Ro Dah!”
A visible shockwave flew towards Link and he was sent across the room due to the Unrelenting Force Shout. When he got his bearings, he was up against the stairs opposite the sarcophagus, Dawnbreaker was lying on the floor before Olaf, who was gazing down at it with a tilted head in curiosity.
Then the dead king tried to pick up the sword, only to be set on fire from the holy blade. Olaf roared in anguish as the creature turned to glare at Link, who slowly got up from the stairs and glared back, then ran forwards down the steps, across the room, picked up Dawnbreaker from the floor and ran the dead king through the chest.
Olaf looked down for a second, then grabbed the sword and tore it from his chest, then tossed it away, lunging towards Link and knocked him to the floor of the chamber. Olaf then brought his axe down upon Link, only to miss his mark as the Hylian had rolled to the left and had gotten up.
The dead king was kicked by Svaknir, who sliced at Olaf with his sword relentlessly as Link retrieved his sword from where Olaf had thrown it.
Olaf reared up and took Svaknir by the throat, attempting to strangle him. The bard said nothing as he stabbed Olaf in the throat.
This caused the creature to drop Svaknir and then turn around in an attempt to run away, but ended up facing Link, who eyed Olaf, then pushed back the dead king with
“Fus!”
Link then leapt into the air and swung his sword in a downward sideways arc, decapitating Olaf.
Svaknir turned to face Link and bowed as a lute appeared in the spirit’s hands. The bard then walked away from the Hylian and vanished in a ray of light, having been freed by the death of Olaf, who had dropped a glass war axe and a key.
Link took the key and war axe, then picked up the soul gem and the Major Potion of Healing that were on the stone table in the middle of the room. As he examined the key, something got his attention at the very back.
Chanting.
He walked across the room and up the steps, past the empty sarcophagus as he gazed at the glowing carved words before him.
The stone dragon head seemed to glare down at Link as he approached, reaching out to lightly run his hand across the various carved words as blue glowing tendrils surrounded him, his vision blurring as he fell to one knee before the word wall, knowledge forcing its way into his mind.
Nah.
Link wasn’t sure what Shout the word was part of, yet he got the feeling that it was part of one that he knew. Unfortunately, the dragons he had slain thus far had no knowledge of the word, so he was unable to unlock its full potential at this time. The Hylian’s vision slowly returned to normal as the chanting faded, and he soon stood and turned away from the now silent stone.
To the right of the word wall was a medium coin purse in an alcove that held one hundred Septims. King Olaf's key opened the locked door to the left, revealing an unlocked treasure chest, a major potion of strength, and an iron greatsword. Opposite the chest, in an unlit brazier, was a large coin purse that held three hundred Septims. To the right of the chest was a lever which opened the wall, providing a shortcut back to the small room by the entrance to the barrow. Link went to walk down this small natural corridor, then stopped when he noticed a lute lying on a table. He picked it up and examined it, then noticed there was a strap, designed to be worn over the shoulder. Link slung the lute over his shoulder and walked down the path, ending up near the front of the barrow. He looked around, then made his way out of the barrow entirely.
The sounds of a lute, drum, and flute playing in harmony echoed throughout the Bard’s College as their owners sang a rousing rendition of “Ragnar the Red.”
“There once was a hero named Ragnar the Red, who came riding to Whiterun from ole Rorikstead!
And the braggart did swagger and brandish his blade, as he told of bold battles and gold he had made!
But then he went quiet, did Ragnar the Red, when he met the shieldmaiden Matilda who said...
"Oh, you talk and you lie and you drink all our mead! Now I think it's high time that you lie down and bleed!"
And so then came the clashing and slashing of steel, as the brave lass Matilda charged in full of zeal!
And the braggart named Ragnar was boastful no moooooree... when his ugly red head rolled around on the floor!”
There were cheers from all around the room. More songs were called out by students and teachers alike.
Link was sitting at a nearby table, half paying attention as Viarmo talked to him about what he had found. He had returned to wearing just clothing, having removed the Stormcloak armor before entering Solitude.
“I have to admit I didn't think it would actually be there. Now let's take a look at this…” The Altmer examined the book that was lying on the table, the book opened to a random page. His face fell as he visually read the page’s contents.
“Oh. Oh-no. This won't do at all. The copy is incomplete, it's aged to the point that parts are unreadable. And the parts that are readable... well... bardic verse has come a long way since ancient times." Viarmo shook his head as Link leaned forward a bit to gaze at the page. It was true, entire sections were completely unreadable due to age, and the sections that were readable didn’t make much sense.
“This doesn’t make any sense.” The Hylian sat back against the chair and gazed across the table at Viarmo, who nodded in agreement. “So… what does that mean?”
"It means I can't read it to the court. Without the verse, I won't be able to convince Elisif of the importance of The Burning of King Olaf Festival. If she isn't convinced of the festival's importance, then she won't reverse her decision to stop the effigy burning. It means that the Burning of King Olaf, which the Bards College has held for time immemorial, won't be happening." The Altmer sounded a bit panicked as he looked down at the page again.
“I have a suggestion.” Link paused until he had the bard’s attention. “We can try making up new sections.”
Viarmo frowned. “Make it up? That doesn't seem appropriate... I suppose I could copy his style based on what you brought me but I have no idea what happened in between these verses. Perhaps you can come up with sections?”
“I can try.”
“Excellent... let’s see here…” The bard cleared his throat and seemed to silently read the page, then spoke aloud. “O, Olaf, our subjugator, the one-eyed betrayer;"
"death-dealing demon and dragon-killing King."
"Your legend is lies, lurid and false;"
"your cunning capture of Numinex, a con for the ages."
Viarmo then paused. “King Olaf was Olaf One-Eye? He famously captured the dragon Numinex and took him to Dragonsreach. What do we say really happened?"
Link had to think of options.
‘From what it sounds like, it’s trying to falsify Olaf...’
He thought of how to present the verse as if Olaf had been unfair. “Well… I suppose we could say Olaf found him asleep?”
Viarmo visually pondered this, then shook his head. “No, it sounds too boring, I’m not sure the court will like it. Try to think of another suggestion.”
“...Olaf made a deal with Numinex?”
“Hmmm… It is probable… but I’m unsure if the court will like the option. Can you think of anything else?”
As Link gazed at Viarmo, he let his mind wander, trying to think of another option...
He looked down at his massive white paws, trying to ignore the heavy weight of the shackle. He then looked up at the glowing sword in the middle of the ruins, padded towards the weapon, felt his body start to change shape...
He found himself looking at a golden wolf, who then turned a black color, its shape contorting in the black mist that surrounded the creature until an undead warrior stood before him.
A four legged boar stood before him, its crimson eyes boring into him from across the throne room. He growled, baring his fangs at the creature, who tossed its head and emitted an angry bellow before it charged....
“Olaf was Numinex.”
Viarmo gazed at Link, then he smiled. “I think the court will love it. I’ll write it in.” The bard wrote down a few lines, then read the next section. “Olaf grabbed power, by promise and threat;"
"From Falkreath to Winterhold, they fell to their knees;"
"But Solitude stood strong, Skyrim's truest protectors."
"Olaf's vengeance was instant, inspired and wicked."
He then paused a second time. “Strange. According to history Solitude attacked Winterhold, but Aesgeir seems to be saying Olaf reacted. What do we say happened?"
‘I have to think of something else that involves Olaf being unfair.’
“Olaf ordered disguised troops to attack Winterhold?”
“I’m thinking no. While the court may like it, it isn’t likely that it would have been successful.”
“He convinced Solitude to attack Winterhold?”
Viarmo waved the quill in his hand. “Too realistic, the court will be bored, I think.”
“He sacked it and used magic to blame Winterhold?”
The Altmer made as if to write it down, but then paused. “That sounds good, however I'm not sure the court will believe that Olaf had wizard powers.”
‘Since Olaf in this verse is now a dragon, I should come up with something related to that.’
“Olaf decided to raid Winterhold in dragon form?”
“Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Oh, that is exciting! I'm sure the court and the Jarl will love it. I'm writing it in now." Viarmo smiled to himself as he wrote words down on the page, then looked up. “It has a few final lines but that's all we needed to add. I need to head to court immediately and present this. You should join me.”
“When do we leave?”
The Altmer got up from his chair. “Now.”
The Blue Palace was massive. As Link looked around in silent awe, Viarmo cleared his throat. “Do you mind waiting here while I go and see if my voice is good enough to perform the poem?”
“Not at all.” Link decided to sit down as Viarmo walked off into a side room. He could distantly hear the bard practicing with his voice.
As the Hylian sat there in a chair near the entrance, he looked around the room he was in. There were multiple pieces of furniture, a few bookshelves, and a vaulted ceiling high overhead. He then began to feel slightly off, it felt like he was slowly going mad.
The feeling vanished as Viarmo returned. “I think my voice is ready. I hope we've done this well." He motioned for Link to follow him.
Link got up from the chair and followed Viarmo up the winding stairs and found himself in an open room. Wings of the palace were to the left and right, a few people stood at either side of the room, and a throne was in front of him, occupied by a middle aged woman, who rose from the throne and spoke as the bard approached. “Ah, Viarmo. I assume you are here to petition for the reinstatement of the Burning of King Olaf Festival."
Viarmo nodded. "I am, Jarl. I wish to present King Olaf's verse from the Poetic Edda. Recovered this very day from the Bards Tomb."
Elisif raised an eyebrow. "Ah, you mentioned something that would convince us the festival should take place, but I didn't expect King Olaf's lost verse. Please proceed."
Viarmo smiled at the Jarl, took a deep breath, then began to speak in a dramatic voice. “O, Olaf, our subjugator, the one-eyed betrayer; death-dealing demon and dragon-killing King. Your legend is lies, lurid and false; your cunning capture of Numinex, a con for the ages.
No shouting match between dragon and man, no fire or fury did this battle entail.
Olaf was Numinex in human form, on moonless nights he would spread wings and sail.
Olaf grabbed power, by promise and threat; From Falkreath to Winterhold, they fell to their knees; But Solitude stood strong, Skyrim's truest protectors.
Olaf's vengeance was instant, inspired and wicked.
Because Solitude would not soon bend knee, Olaf would hurt them while his status accrued. He sacked Winterhold in dragonform, and bent their minds to blame Solitude.
So ends the story of Olaf the liar, a thief and a scoundrel we of Solitude commit to the fire.
In Solitude bards train for their service, they also gather each year and burn a King who deserves it.”
The Altmer then fell silent and waited for the Jarl’s decision as the small crowd of people politely clapped and discussed the poem in quiet tones.
“You have proven your point, Viarmo. The festival is truly a celebration of Solitude and a condemnation of false kings." Elisif finally said with a smile.
Viarmo bowed. "I thank you and the college thanks you, Jarl."
Elisif continued speaking. "Furthermore, I believe that such a fine poem deserves some payment of Patronage. The college will be generously rewarded."
Viarmo nodded, returning to a proper standing position. "Thank you yet again. I will make sure our applicant, who was instrumental in... recovering the poem, will be well rewarded."
The Altmer took Link aside as the court began to resume their various duties. “Unbelievable! You have done us a great service here. I can't begin to thank you enough."
“Does this mean I’m a bard now?”
Viarmo shook his head. “Soon, soon. These things must be done properly, you will be inducted as part of the Festival itself. I need you to return to the college and speak to Jorn. Eye paint, white long hair, wears a green short sleeve tunic, arm bands, tan pants, fur boots, can’t miss him. He was preparing the Effigy of King Olaf. Tell him to finish the preparations, the Festival is back on.” Viarmo left Link alone in the throne room and left the palace.
Link stepped into the college and eventually found someone matching Jorn’s description checking over papers while sitting at a table. Jorn looked up at Link as he approached. “Ah, the bard-to-be. Did Viarmo send you?"
“He did. He told me to tell you that ‘the festival is on’, per his words.”
Jorn smiled and nodded. “I'll tell everyone we're ready, but we'll start the festival at dusk. Come talk to me after dark, we'll get the festival started when you do."
Hadvar walked into his commanding officer’s room and politely stood there. “General Tulluis, you wanted to see me?”
Tulluis looked up from his desk, where he was reading a document. “I did. What do you know of the boy who we captured near Helgen several weeks ago?”
Hadvar gazed at the older man. “What do you mean?” He asked. “I helped him escape Helgen and walked him to Riverwood, sir. We then went to Bleak Falls Barrow and I got a taste of his fighting ability there.”
Tulluis leaned forward in his chair, folding his arms on his desk. “And what of it? His fighting style?”
“Sword and shield, occasional bow.”
The older man nodded. “I see...”
“Are you thinking of something, General?”
Instead of answering Hadvar right away, Tulluis instead moved his gaze to his assistant, a young Nord named Rikke, who met his gaze and nodded at him.
Tulluis shook his head. “He’s too young.” He looked down at the documents on his desk and mulled over his thoughts for a while before he heard Rikke speak.
“Sir, I think he’s proven himself despite his age. Have you heard what he’s done?”
Tulluis looked over his shoulder at the Legate. “That he made a dragon fall on Windhelm? I have.”
“Then why are you hesitant?”
“Because he’s not of age, Rikke. Do you think I want to have it on my conscience that if he joins, he
will
fight in the war? That each time he leaves here, he could potentially die due to my decision to let him join?”
Hadvar decided to interject. “If I may speak... Like Rikke said, Link has proven himself time and time again, General Tulluis. He’s fought several dragons, survived Helgen, and now has helped the Bard’s College. Will you at least reconsider?”
Tulluis gazed at the solider for a while, eying Hadvar, before he finally responded. “I’m proposing that he be inducted as a member of the Legion.”
Hadvar gave a small smile. “I think he’d like that.”
Tulluis raised a hand. “On one condition. You train him personally. Tomorrow morning, I’ll speak to him here, give him the trial, if he’s successful, he can join.”
The area of Solitude around the Bard’s College saw a flurry of activity during the next few hours.
Bards came from all over Skyrim to practice mock competitions and warm up for the festival, while food and drink providers shared recipes and tasted each other’s dishes and spirits.
Buildings were opened to the public to either have a place to sit and talk or eat whatever they bought at the festival. Tents were set up with various toys and games for young children of all races. The toy makers compared toys they had made and tested them to ensure they were the best quality.
Inside the college was a different story. It was quiet and peaceful, with none of the atmosphere that was going on outside. The younger bards of the college were sitting together, discussing what Link had done earlier with the retrieval of the lost verse.
Link was up on the upper level, reading various tomes and books when Viarmo walked up to him. “It’s almost dusk.”
Link looked up from the book he was reading, which was another copy of *The Buying Game*. He set the book on a nearby table and turned to face the college headmaster. “It is.”
“I never got your name, by the way. Yes, yes, I know, you’ve done all of this for us and I never bothered to ask for your name. My apologies.”
“It’s fine.” Link replied. “Name’s Link Farmanne.”
Viarmo shook the Hylian’s hand. “Link... A nice name. Short for Lincoln I assume?”
Link nodded. “Yes.”
Viarmo looked out a nearby window. “Seems to be the time... I’ll go outside and get things ready, Jorn will let you know when you can join us.” The Altmer walked away from Link and down the steps to the main floor then vanished from view.
Link suspected at least half of Solitude was outside the college, out in the large stone courtyard. Jorn had gone up and told him the festival was ready to start a few minutes ago and he had walked downstairs and out the nearest door.
Now, he was standing near the back of the courtyard, next to the entrance, feeling somewhat uncomfortable with just how many people were gazing at him. Thankfully, Viarmo soon got their attention.
“Welcome, people of Solitude! We of the Bards College are pleased to be here to celebrate the Burning of King Olaf!” The headmaster was standing near a carved wooden body, which was hung up on a wooden pole. Viarmo was holding a lit torch in his hand.
“The festival would not have been possible without the dedication and hard work of our latest applicant,” at this, Viarmo noticed Link and motioned the Hylian to come and stand next to him.
Link made his way across the courtyard and turned once he had reached the headmaster to gaze at the crowd gathered there.
“Link Farmanne.” Viarmo continued. “He was the one who traversed the barrow by the name of Dead Man’s Respite to find the lost verse of the Poetic Edda. He did this so that the tradition of burning a wooden effigy of the false king could continue for countless more generations.”
The crowd in the courtyard clapped as Viarmo raised the lit torch and stepped towards the wooden structure. “With the lighting of this effigy....” The headmaster paused as he lowered the torch to the wooden effigy and it soon caught on fire. “He becomes a full-fledged member of the Bards College. Please welcome our newest Bard!"
Viarmo was nearly drowned out from the cheers of the crowd. As he watched the wood burn, he turned to Link and spoke quietly. “I think they like you.”
“Seems to be that way.” Link watched as the flames ate away at the effigy of the false king and smoke rose into the star dotted sky, the twin moons lighting up the courtyard in a pale glow.
Viarmo smiled and shook Link’s hand. “Congratulations, you are now a full-fledged member of the Bards College. Thanks to your efforts, Elisif has declared the Burning of King Olaf should become a weekly event. We should discuss the reward she gave me to give to you.”
“Which is...?”
Viarmo smiled and placed a bag of Septims in Link’s hands. “Five hundred Septims, straight from Elisif’s vault.”
The streets of Solitude were empty, the effigy having burnt out some time ago.
Link was in an upstairs room at the Winking Skeever, lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. He was currently barefoot, his clothes were a bit loosened, and his weapons were strewn on a nearby wooden table.
’Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten that many meat pies.’
He thought as he remembered having been seated at a table and given a lot of food to sample.
The Hylian struggled to stay awake as he lay there on the bed, half aware of various voices downstairs. He was
tired
, today had been a
very
long day.
Link’s gaze moved from the ceiling to the sack of Septims on the table, next to Dawnbreaker.
’Five hundred Septims... Do I really need it? Then again... maybe I’ll have something happen and need it later....’
He closed his eyes and started to drift off to sleep when he heard a loud
crack
.
Link opened his eyes and rolled over, gazing at his knapsack, which was placed on the nightstand next to the bed. He watched as it shook once.
'What...’
The Hylian reached out and picked up the pack with one hand, then pulled it towards him onto the bed and sat up, then froze as the bag shook again.
He slowly relaxed and undid the protective flap on top of the knapsack, then flipped it over to reveal a cracked large blue egg.
‘...Is... Is it hatching...?’
Link reached into his knapsack and slowly lifted the egg out of it, then carefully set the egg before him on the bed and watched as the cracks grew and got larger. Pieces of eggshell started to fall onto the bed and the Hylian started to hear small noises from within the egg.
The egg moved slowly in a circle, wobbling back and forth as the creature inside tried to free itself, stopping constantly due to growing tired from its movements. Link occasionally heard chirping from within the egg, but he wasn’t sure what the sound was supposed to mean or allude to.
Another crack appeared, along with a tiny glimpse of blue scales as a piece of the blue shell broke off and fell to the bed.
’Should I help?’
wondered Link as he moved back slightly to give the hatchling some space.
He watched as the egg began to slowly roll across the bed in his direction, it seemed the creature had caught his scent and was trying to get to him. Link reached out to stop the egg’s roll and felt the cold smoothness of the egg before a visible crack appeared under his hand. For just a second, he also felt something like rough ridges before the feeling was gone.
The hatchling started to chirp a bit louder as it continued to bite and claw at its egg, more and more pieces slowly falling to the bed.
Link heard a tiny hissing noise as he felt hot air be blown against the palm of his hand, then a forked tongue slightly brushed against his hand before the chirping took on what he assumed was an excited tone.
‘I really think I should help...’
Link removed his hand from the egg and he saw a bright green dragon eye staring at him from within the blue shelled egg.
The hatchling blinked slowly, still gazing at Link as it attempted to get its head through the small hole it had made. Link reached out with one hand and gently broke pieces of the egg away from the hole, allowing the hatchling to get its head through.
The Hylian felt cold, rough scales rest against his hand as the hatchling headbutted his palm, still chirping as it continued to try to free itself from its egg.
He found that he couldn’t stop smiling.
‘A dragon... I get to raise a dragon...’
The hatchling slammed its head into the eggshell above it and broke it in two, it continued to bite and claw at its surroundings until most of it was visible. It simply sat there in the open shell, blinking slowly, those green eyes locked onto Link.
Link brushed off small pieces of eggshell as he gathered his hands beneath the dragon and gently picked it up, then set the hatchling in his lap and looked down at it.
The dragon chirped and closed its eyes as it made itself comfortable and its breathing grew steady, as if it had fallen asleep.
‘... I don’t believe it... I’m going to raise a dragon...’
Fear began to creep in.
’But yet everyone here fears dragons, what’s going to happen when they find out?’
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
是八刀一闪——安吉尔立刻认出了萨菲罗斯的架势，他迅速示意了杰内西斯，发现伙伴也已经换上了认真的表情。两人死死盯着萨菲罗斯，随时准备救下克劳德。
具体方案大概是安吉尔去打断萨菲罗斯的攻击，杰内西斯把人捞走——他们干这一套已经很熟练了。两人是S公司内部强化手术的实验体，虽然一打一不是萨菲罗斯的对手，二对一的赢面还是很大的。
萨菲罗斯的绝技“八刀一闪”，是同时运用了他极致速度与强悍力量的招式。作为S公司最成功的实验体，他天生拥有甚至强于顶级的肉体强化者的身体。用尽全力时，这一招能在眨眼之间斩出八次攻击，威力能够砍断X合金。
当然，二人相信萨菲罗斯没有变态到对一个接受考察的年幼男孩用尽全力，哪怕这个孩子挑起了他许久不见的斗争欲。
这一招绝对是萨菲罗斯的杀招，但是其他人包括安吉尔都没有提出异议，一个能暂时压制特色的七阶收尾人，大家都想看看他究竟能做到什么地步。
被沉重的杀气覆盖，四肢和胸口都散发着尖锐的刺痛。克劳德却无心分析这些部位将被攻击的先后以做出有效的防御，他深吸一口气，双手抬起那把萦绕着淡淡光辉的太刀。
直觉上，他不认为现在的自己有能跟上这一招的速度，因此他决定兵行险招：他要放弃招架或格挡，用尚不熟练的力量来抗下这一击——
像是在用很钝的剪刀去剪布料，这是萨菲罗斯砍到克劳德身上时的第一反应。砍中的东西兼具坚硬与韧性，如果只用斩击无法突破这样的防御。萨菲罗斯立刻转挥砍为突刺，刀尖对准克劳德，用更小的接触面积提升压强以刺穿克劳德。
村雨的刀尖穿透那层雾气的同时，萨菲罗斯感到腹部传来了一阵微弱的痛意。
是克劳德的攻击，他将筹码压在了“心”至少能保住他不失去行动能力上，并且大赢特赢。以几乎没有招架的方式，他在露出破绽的同时，被迫改变进攻方式的萨菲罗斯也露出了破绽。令人胆颤的战斗直觉没有放过这一瞬间，他立刻向着萨菲罗斯的腰部发动了攻击，并且成功对他造成了伤害。
萨菲罗斯愣在了原地。杰内西斯的眼皮直跳，他大声叹气着走上前来，把克劳德从村雨的刀锋上抽出，稳稳的搀扶着克劳德。然后从风衣的夹层里拿出一个绿色的小瓶子，吝啬的在克劳德的贯穿伤上滴上了两滴。然后他转头看向萨菲罗斯：“这可是我好不容易才搞到的安瓿，实在是太奢侈太浪费了！”
嘴上虽然这么说着，他却完全没有放任克劳德自己处理伤口的意思，这样的贯穿伤会影响到肌肉的发力，不治好的话会让克劳德变成韧带拉伤的舞者。本来给萨菲罗斯擦屁股就是他的责任，更何况他现在已经把克劳德当作自己人了。
好在K公司的治愈安瓿名不虚传，果真能够治愈任何伤口，那两滴液体才滴下去没多久，克劳德胸口的伤口就消失了，透过血迹斑斓的衬衫破口，能看到他平滑的肌肤。
克劳德咳嗽了两声想要起身，可惜他现在已经完全没有一点力气了，刚刚的战斗已经完全的掏空了他的精气神。他的眼睛都快要睁不开了，迷迷糊糊的感觉到有人伸手托住了他的膝弯，另一只手则盘上了他的肩膀。
萨菲罗斯从杰内西斯的手上接过了力竭的克劳德，轻松的将他打横抱了起来。他没去管腰部的伤口，毕竟那伤口算不上深，而且很快就会恢复。如果克劳德没有延伸“心”强化武器，他在那时的攻击有可能无法对萨菲罗斯造成有效伤害。
尽管说的这么玄乎，“心”的力量其实是以防御为主的，那些让萨菲罗斯惊讶的爆发力和速度都是克劳德本身的素质，而他今年才满十五岁不久。
萨菲罗斯低下头看向怀里的克劳德。他的白衬衫没能被“心”成功保护，被余波撕扯的破破烂烂，胸口处还有鲜红的血渍。透过这件目前和破布条的区别不大的衣服，能看到男孩白皙的皮肤和精壮的肌肉。他看上去累极了，眼皮一直在颤抖着却没能成功睁开，金色的睫毛上还挂着一点点汗珠。
“你做的很好，克劳德。”萨菲罗斯凑到克劳德的耳边，压低了声音，“先休息吧。”
男孩一直在挣扎的神智好像终于放松了下去，陷入了短暂的休憩中。
杰内西斯用一种难以置信的表情看着萨菲罗斯，他瞪大了眼睛，不可思议的指了指萨菲罗斯，又指了指他怀里的克劳德。
“对待有潜力的新人，应该怀有耐心。”萨菲罗斯说。
“是怀有耐心，不是像小心肝一样放在怀里好吗。”杰内西斯翻了个白眼。
安吉尔把杰内西斯的长风衣扒了下来，顶着杰内西斯杀人的目光把那件价值不菲的暗红色金纹风衣盖在了克劳德身上。
“你得负责，”杰内西斯失去了阻止安吉尔行动的正当理由，只能咬牙切齿的威胁，“不然这个月我的值班全归你。”
安吉尔认真的回答他：“我会负责清理的，保证原样还给你。如果你真的那么怕寂寞，陪你值班也行。”
杰内西斯偏过头，小声的嘟囔了一句，没有回应安吉尔。
他们把克劳德送回餐馆，向担忧的克劳迪娅解释了事情的原委。克劳迪娅执意留他们吃了一顿早午饭，盛情难却之下，每个人都“被迫”品尝了克劳迪娅的手艺。克劳迪娅担心几个大个子收尾人吃不饱，特意给每人准备了两道菜：店里最受欢迎、有口皆碑的炖菜和煎肉排。
“这小子命可真不错。”杰内西斯插起盘子里最后一块肉排，感受它略微焦脆的表层和富含肉汁的内里。
扎克斯在尝了一口以后就风卷残云般的清空了他面前的碗，然后非常自来熟的询问克劳迪娅能不能再添一碗。克劳迪娅微笑着拿走他面前的空碗，很快从后厨端出了一碗新的盛满的炖菜。扎克斯接过炖菜后郑重的表示了感谢，反而搞得克劳迪娅有些不知所措。
安吉尔兼具风度和速度的吃完了他的炖菜和肉排，正在擦嘴。他注意到萨菲罗斯缓慢的进食速度，询问他是否是饭菜不合胃口。
萨菲罗斯摇摇头，长长的鬓发随着他的动作轻微摇摆：“只是稍微想起来一些过去的事。”
萨菲罗斯不愿意多说，安吉尔也不主动询问。神罗事务所是由杰内西斯组建的，他是被杰内西斯亲自邀请加入事务所的。而萨菲罗斯，这样说吧，他是被S公司像烫手山芋一样抛在事务所的。尽管三人年幼时都是S公司的实验品，过去常常在同一间实验室里相遇，三人的现在也在同一个事务所内齐聚。但是他们彼此互相缺席的这些年，各自的经历塑造了完全不同的他们——安吉尔对自己的过去不做隐瞒，杰内西斯和萨菲罗斯却对过去的事三缄其口。
三人各怀心事的沉默下来，萨菲罗斯安静的咀嚼着，扎克斯的进食动静就显得有些刺耳。
好在扎克斯完全不在乎这种阴沉沉的氛围，他好像已经习惯了三人突如其来的沉默，一边吃着一边左顾右盼。
克劳德在简单休息并清洁了一下以后，换了一身新的衣服下楼，看到了正在等他的收尾人们。
他正犹豫着是否要开口询问自己的面试结果，杰内西斯就开口了：“你也太拼命了，总之，欢迎加入神罗事务所。”
“恭喜你，克劳德！”扎克斯放下碗，上前给了他一个热情的拥抱，“去事务所以后能不能教我那一招？”
克劳德完全不知道他说的是什么，总之大概是他在和萨菲罗斯的比试中的什么招式，在扎克斯的恳求下稀里糊涂的同意了：“嗯......好。”
安吉尔抓起扎克斯，去和克劳迪娅交谈了。克劳德此时注意到杰内西斯没有穿着那件长风衣，风衣底下的衣服和萨菲罗斯、扎克斯、安吉尔的是一个款式。
好帅的制服。在这一段幻想般的相遇之后，克劳德的精神好像终于回归了他的身体，让他表现出了一种孩子该有的好奇：“我也会有吗？”
“什么？”杰内西斯问。
“制服。”
“哦，问萨菲罗斯，”杰内西斯指指对面还在用餐的银发男人，“我们的制服是他托人定做的。”
克劳德亮晶晶的目光转向萨菲罗斯，萨菲罗斯刚转过头参与对话，就看到了他亮闪闪的蓝色眼睛。他下意识的点头，于是又看到克劳德小小的欢呼了一声，充满了轻快的欢欣，唤回了他沉浸在过往之中的思绪。
萨菲罗斯不由得勾起嘴角：“要一起吃一点吗？”
克劳德确实有些饿了。见他点点头同意，萨菲罗斯拉开刚刚扎克斯坐过的板凳，邀请克劳德坐在他的旁边。克劳德去后厨给自己盛了一碗全是肉的炖菜，高兴的坐在了萨菲罗斯身侧。
杰内西斯站起来：“我去跟你的母亲道谢，感谢她慷慨的招待。”
说完这话，他把刚坐在安吉尔位置上的扎克斯一起拖走了。
金发的少年舀起一勺炖菜，很快的放进嘴里，嚼了两下就咽下去了，眯起眼露出满足的神情。萨菲罗斯有样学样的模仿他的动作，由完全不同的菜肴带来的相似的想念像是被一阵微风吹走了，他不由得露出微笑。
安吉尔向克劳迪娅证明了自己的身份，本以为还需要更多的解释，克劳迪娅却微笑着打断了他：“没关系的，我不会阻止克劳德的决定。”
“他的未来在他自己的手上，做妈妈的只要支持他就好啦。”克劳迪娅这样说着，从楼上走下来，提着一个大大的行李箱，“虽然有些舍不得，但是孩子终究要独立的，做父母的要学会放手才行呀。”
她的豁达让安吉尔赞同了杰内刚刚的话，克劳德的确有一位出色的母亲。她把克劳德养育的聪慧明辨，完全不像后巷出生的孩子。
吃饱了以后才后知后觉的察觉到自己正在跟偶像共进午饭的克劳德红着脸接过了妈妈递来的行李，快速的拥抱并与克劳迪娅道别后，提着行李跟着神罗事务所的收尾人们离开了。
克劳迪娅跟出店门，看着克劳德的背影渐渐缩小——她看到远远的克劳德正在回头向她挥手，她也向着孩子的身影挥手，眼角有些泛红。
克劳德被巢内的风光花了眼——整洁宽阔的街道，林立的路灯，亮堂的地面，高耸的建筑让他大开眼界。他被几人带过了巷与巢的分界线，来到了幻想了无数次的S巢，巢内的风光超出了他最好的想象。
一路上，克劳德叽叽喳喳的兴奋发问，萨菲罗斯则提着他的行李微笑着回答他，像是一对亲密的父子。两人之间自然融洽的氛围让安吉尔和杰内西斯完全无法插入，唯一能破坏这种气氛的扎克斯被安吉尔嘱咐了一些事，已经暂时离开了。
杰内西斯此时无比痛恨S公司给神罗事务所安排的地址：神罗公司大楼旁，S巢的中心。他忍受着身后一大一小的噪音折磨，紧赶慢赶回到了事务所内。
“巢内的定居手续你去办，”安吉尔去清洗那件风衣了，杰内西斯毫不犹豫的把他的活儿分配给了萨菲罗斯，“在克劳德还不能独当一面之前，不给你排班，你负责带他。”
萨菲罗斯乐得如此，在询问克劳德是否愿意与他同居并且得到了男孩肯定的答复后，他把早就从男孩手里接过的行李箱放在了休息室，提醒克劳德下班前要记得带上它。
备注：此处S公司、S巢内的设定均为捏造设定，请注意。
都市内，管辖每个区的翼都有其代称，从1区开始，分别对应A公司、B公司、C公司......以此类推。
管辖19区的S公司，全称为神罗公司（Shinra Company），是一家负责农畜产业的企业。也因此，19区的居民能以低廉的价格购买到优质肉类，充足的蛋白质摄入让19区的居民普遍更加健康。
S公司是一片相当年轻的翼，建立至今不过二十年，却迅速改善了都市内的饮食环境。现在在都市内，除了一些特殊人群，主动食人的情况已经降至相当低的水平。[摘自《神罗公司简史》]
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Alicent watched from her balcony Caraxes leave King's Landing with a smile on her face. This poor excuse of a man was finally gone from the Red Keep, and she wouldn't have to endure his presence for a while. In fourteen days, he had managed to publicly insult her several times by refusing to call her "Your Grace", had looked down on her children, and wounded her ward, Cregan. She loved the boy almost as much as if he were her own, and Daemon should be grateful she didn’t have a dragon. Otherwise, she might have fed him to her own beast for all these offences. Perhaps even a young one, who would need several bites to kill and devour him. She rarely indulged in her violent fantasies, but Alicent couldn't deny there was an appeal to feed Daemon Targaryen to a dragon. He ranted all the time about the blood of the dragon and the blood of Old Valyria. Being fed to a dragon would be rather poetic, wouldn't it?
Once the Blood Wyrm – which was quite the ugly dragon – disappeared in the sky, Alicent turned around and sent one of her maids to fetch her some tea. She was in a good mood, and she wished to enjoy it a bit more before going back to her duties. She eyed the pile of paperwork on her desk and sighed at the thought of going through it. It was unpleasant but necessary. Her subjects relied on her, and she couldn't allow herself to let them down. However, they would need to wait for about an hour. She wished to enjoy some tea and peace of mind now that Daemon was gone. The queen sat on a cushioned armchair and sighed in relief. With Lord Flea Bottom gone, she felt as if a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. After a few minutes, there was a knock on the door, and Tanya went to open it while Alicent sat up in her chair. She hoped whoever was visiting her wouldn’t annoy her, for she had no wish to deal with her husband or the Hand at the moment.
"Your Grace, prince Aegon is here."
"Aegon?" Alicent repeated, surprised. Her son hadn't visited in a long time. "Come in sweetheart!" she called out.
Her eldest son came inside her room, and Alicent noticed he had a determined expression she hadn't seen on his face in years. The last time had been when he had insisted on flying Sunfyre for the first time.
"Mother, teach me to be king," he demanded.
Alicent's eyes widened. Time and time again, she had tried to convince Aegon that he and his brothers would be in danger should Rhaenyra take the throne. But each time, the boy had brushed her off, saying he had no interest in power or ruling. The Iron Throne looked uncomfortable and ugly according to him, and he had no wish to sit upon it nor to have a crown on his head. What had made him change his mind? Whatever it was, Alicent wouldn't complain. She was more than happy to teach everything she knew about ruling. If he wanted to learn, it meant that he didn't feel entitled to the crown, compared to Rhaenyra. It wasn't just his birthright, it was also something he had to work for.
"Of course. Tanya, leave us please, and tell ser Criston that we mustn't be disturbed."
She has almost called him "sweetling", but it felt rather inappropriate at the moment. He was the first prince and future king at the moment, not her darling son. As Tanya left the room, Alicent prepared her desk, pushing papers to the side. Which subject would be the best for a first lesson? Laws and economics often bore children to no end. Perhaps history, or philosophy so he might start reflecting on what being king truly meant. Military knowledge and strategies might also interest him more, but Alicent's knowledge of war was limited. Ser Criston would be a better instructor than her. She would need to talk to him about it.
"Why don't you sit with me? I can't teach you everything in one day, but we can start."
The boy nodded and sat down, eyeing the mountain of paperwork with both curiosity and fear. She understood him. The first time she had been confronted with her duties as queen, Alicent had almost ripped all the skin on her fingers because of the stress.
"Don't worry, we won't start here. There are several things important for a king to have a prosperous rule. What do you think they are?"
"Hmmm… money? The more money you have, the better the kingdom is."
"It's true, money is important. However, full coffers are useless if you don't use the gold properly. Throwing gold by the windows is the same as being bankrupt. What else?"
"Strength? To crush rebels and enemies."
"Strength is important. But it isn't everything. Aegon the Conqueror had Balerion and yet, he wasn't able to conquer Dorne. Do you think he lacked strength?"
The boy pondered a moment, thinking over what she had said. She smiled softly. Ruling was hard, and she was glad he had taken an interest in it. This way, the Seven Kingdoms would soon see who should truly succeed Viserys.
"He didn't. But Dorne used treachery, didn't they?" the prince asked.
"Dorne was smart. They knew they couldn't fight dragons in an open field. Who could, after all? Would you have faced the Black Dread head-on? I wouldn't call that treachery. When a fox ambushes its prey, is it treachery or intelligence?"
"Right… it's complicated."
"It is. But you're only ten, you have plenty of time to learn the nuances. For now, I think it would be better to focus on a specific subject. I lack knowledge regarding war, but I know ser Criston would love to teach you everything he knows. What would you like to learn from me?"
"Well… Economics is important, right? The maester says I'm good with numbers and sums. Maybe I'd be good at that."
"He said so? I'm so proud of you!" Alicent exclaimed. "I've never liked sums. But I'll gladly show you how economics work. We'll work with Lord Beesbury. As Master of Coins, he will have many proper examples to show you. First-hand experience is very important, and he'd be delighted to share his fondness for numbers with you," Alicent said softly, ruffling her son's hair.
'And if we're lucky, this damn old man will at least be neutral regarding the succession!'
she thought. Old Beesbury was an annoying supporter of Rhaenyra. He had sworn his oath years ago like many other lords but, contrary to men like lord Rickon Stark, refused to see that Rhaenyra wasn't worth it. He would most likely be loyal to her to the end… unless he was persuaded otherwise. And what better persuasion than Aegon being more competent? If Aegon showed he was a more worthy heir, how could that old man deny him his throne?
000
Helaena's lessons with Lady Dreamfyre happened at night when no one would bother them. Alicent was often exhausted when the time came for said lessons, but she would never miss them. She needed to make sure that Theon was a proper teacher and that Helaena was truly safe. Every time, she feared that her daughter wouldn't be able to escape her dragon's body and would be forever stuck as a gigantic blue and silver beast. Nonetheless, she trusted Theon Snow. He was competent and knew a lot about skinchanging and greensight.
As they reached the Dragonpit, Alicent smoothed her skirts in an attempt to ease her nerves. No matter how many times she had witnessed the exercises in the past few years, she was still anxious. Sometimes, the queen wondered if she would stop being anxious about something at some point in her life. No matter how much she searched in her memories, she had never truly been at ease, no matter the situation.
"Yer Grace, do ye want me to tell you what I expect from the princess?" Theon asked.
"Of course, Theon. You're much more knowledgeable than I am, so I must trust you."
"I don't think the princess will ever be able to fully warg into her dragon. Lady Dreamfyre's almost a century old and has much more experience than the princess. As such, her mind's strong. She can see through the dragon's eyes and hear through her ears, but I don't think she'll ever be able to fully control her", the man said. "She's the first skinchanger who's bound to a dragon so I can be wrong, but I don't think delvin' deeper into Lady Dreamfyre's mind would be safe. She's still a child…" the man explained.
He was scratching his neck, obviously embarrassed. Alicent remained silent, considering what he had just told her. It made sense, even for her who wasn't a skinchanger. Lady Dreamfyre was a dragon, and an old one. Helaena was a child. It was obvious that a dragon's mind would be stronger than a little girl's.
"You must be right, it makes sense to me. What about her dreams? She used to be scared of going to bed…"
"Many children with the greensight are scared of sleep. That's why I want to work on this with her. It's safer to do so with Lady Dreamfyre close to her, cuz the dragon will protect her from bad dreams."
"How will you do such a thing?" Alicent asked, refusing to think about what 'bad dreams' were for now.
"Well, she's got to let her mind fly. It's not very easy to explain. I'll show ye, Yer Grace", he replied, scratching his neck.
Alicent remained silent and observed the lesson take place. Theon and Helaena exchanged a bit while Lady Dreamfyre stretched her wings in eerie silence. It often terrified Alicent when the blue dragon moved in perfect silence despite her size. She had no idea how it was possible; Syrax and Sunfyre, despite being much smaller than Lady Dreamfyre, almost always made noise. They were never as perfectly silent as she was. Was it because of her age? The queen didn't know. Dragons were mysterious creatures.
Soon, Lady Dreamfyre was curling around Helaena, who had curled up against her. The two together were a beautiful sight, and Alicent couldn't help but smile. Her daughter and the dragon had a beautiful and deep bond. Although she would never be able to understand it, she sometimes envied it. How safe did the world feel when a dragon was ready to follow you through the Seven Hells and back? How could one be lonely when they were bonded to fire made flesh? She was glad three of her children had a dragon with them. As such, no matter what happened to her, they would always have someone to protect them until the very end.
As she watched Theon congratulate Helaena, Alicent smiled proudly.
'Come at me. Come at me and my children, Rhaenyra, I dare you. I'll make you curse the day you lied to me.'
000
Alicent entered Ser Criston's chambers and, after taking one look at her dear sworn-shield, dismissed everyone but Tanya. Not saying a word less she would curse half of the castle, the queen sat by Criston's side and dipped a cleaning cloth into a bowl of warm water.
"Your Grace, you shouldn't…"
"Don't. That man attacked you, my sworn-shield, my champion, my dearest friend. He's lucky I haven't asked for his head yet. For now, I need to make sure you're fine", she said, cutting him off.
Her hands were shaking, and she hated it. Why were they shaking? She wasn't the one in pain! She wasn't the one who had been beaten mercilessly by Rhaenyra's whore! She hated that man. Loathed him, cursed him. She hoped he would
burn
. How
dare
he lay a hand on Ser Criston, who was a thousand times the knight he would ever be? He ought to be decapitated after laying his filthy, sinning hands on her knight. Deep down, Alicent knew she wasn't rational, but she couldn't find it in her heart to care. Criston was the man who had stood by her side ever since she had lit the beacon of the Hightower. How could she not be enraged?
The door opened again, and Alicent was about to dismiss whoever was there but froze as she recognised the king and that
whore
of Rhaenyra. Alicent wanted nothing more but to scream at her and kick her out of the room. How dare she show her face here? Had she no shame?
'No, of course, she doesn't'
, Alicent told herself sarcastically.
"Alicent? I didn't expect you here", the king said, and he eyed ser Criston. "Especially in this position."
'He ought to be jesting'
, the queen deadpanned in her head. Instead of rolling her eyes and asking what he thought of ser Harwin’s position in Rhaenyra’s bed, the queen put on an innocent mask. The one Viserys had found pretty enough to marry her all these years ago.
"This position? I'm merely helping my sworn-shield, my love. Ser Criston has been by my side for a decade. Isn't it natural for me to worry?"
"It is, my queen", Rhaenyra said with a honeyed tone. "My father was merely wondering why you're cleaning his wounds personally."
"I used to do the same with my brothers when they were children", the queen replied in an innocent tone.
She turned to Viserys with soft eyes and a softer smile, taking his hand. After fourteen years of marriage, she knew how to manipulate him. At least when it came to this. As he got sicker, Viserys hated seeing her dance with other men – mainly her brothers. As such, she knew how to deal with his jealousy.
"My dear, Ser Criston merely reminds me of Gwayne. I had no idea you would be jealous, I apologise. You know you're my only love", she said gently, looking at him as if he was a maiden’s dreams come true.
"I'm not jealous, my dear. Mainly surprised", he said, kissing her hand. "I suppose I haven't gotten myself into enough fights recently", he jested.
"Oh, don't fear dear husband. You won't have to deal with my scolding at least."
He laughed a bit, and Alicent glanced at Rhaenyra. The princess was clearly frustrated she had failed to get her in trouble. Alicent almost rolled her eyes and smiled haughtily at him. Out of all the times Rhaenyra had tried to get her in trouble, this was by far her poorest attempt. She was losing her touch. Before the princess could reply with some pathetic attempt to insult her, Alicent suddenly heard a cacophony of children's voices calling for ser Criston. The queen turned around to see her children, Lyarra, and Cregan run inside the room. Ignoring the adults, the whirlwind of children jumped on the bed, grabbing the knight's hands and checking his wounds.
"Ser Criston! Are you feeling better?" Aegon asked.
"Ser Criston, the boys told us! I should ask father to break his bones again, just for you" Lyarra offered. "He'll be called Shatteredbones by the time father is done with him."
"I'm alright", the knight said with a small smile. "It's only superficial, I promise."
Alicent smiled softly at the children's open love and protectiveness for ser Criston. The knight had always been there for them, in ways Viserys had never. Nightmares, fear of the dark or heights, he had always been there to help them. Aemond was the closest to him, but Daeron had begun training with the sword a few moons ago and looked up to the knight. She could remember a time when he had followed ser Criston around like a duckling, asking dozens of questions to the man. The knight had never once looked annoyed by the boy's curiosity.
"Thank the Seven!" Helaena said in relief. "This man is no true knight."
Rhaenyra's voice cracked the air like a whip, and all the children froze.
"Ser Harwin was insulted and provoked by ser Criston," she snarled. "I had come in the hopes of questioning him."
"Provoked?" Alicent repeated. She wouldn't let the princess harass her children or Ser Criston. She had already hurt him enough. "What, may I ask, angered Ser Harwin so much that he attacked a member of the Kingsguard? He's the Commander of the City Watch, and men tend to provoke each other in the training yard, it's nothing new. Moreover, I have a hard time believing the drunks of King's Landing come quietly when they're arrested. If Ser Harwin can be provoked this easily, I fear for the safety of our subjects."
"Alicent is right, Rhaenrya", Viserys said. "Ser Harwin is a good knight, but this outburst is solely on him."
"Father, you and I know ser Harwin has always been an excellent knight. We ought to know what exactly happened. Ser Criston. How have you provoked Ser Harwin?" she asked coldly.
"Ser Harwin insulted him first!" Daeron exclaimed, getting up from the bed, and crossing his arms on his chest. "He said ser Criston was a bad instructor."
"It's true, father", Aegon said. "He implied Ser Criston was favouring Cregan and me, and that Jace and Luke should be trained the same way, forgetting that we're older and that Cregan is recovering. He also implied that Ser Criston didn’t care about them. Ser Criston answered those insults calmly."
"Enough", Viserys said, waving his hand. "I see the situation. I'll have a word with Ser Harwin and Lord Strong. In the meantime, stay out of trouble. All of you."
Alicent glared at her husband’s back as he left. If the situation was reversed, she had no doubt that her knight would have lost his white cloak for hurting the princess' favourite knight and 'dear friend'. The situation wasn't ideal, but Viserys would most likely be just at the very least. Or as just as he could be, she supposed. Alicent had long stopped hoping for any form of true justice in a place like King's Landing.
000
Alicent stared at the letters on her desk. One had been brought by a page, the other by Cregan. The Northern boy was sitting on the other side of the desk, her children and his cousin all by his side. His eyes, usually calm for a child's, were filled with tears. He seemed to try to be as small as possible despite being almost six feet tall at his age. The Queen had thought that Larys burning Harenhall would be the worst news she could receive in a while, but she was being proved wrong at this very moment.
Lady Laena Velaryon had died in Pentos. Her funerals would take place at Driftmark.
Lord Rickon Stark was dying from a fever. Cregan would soon be Lord of Winterfell.
"Your Grace, please allow me to return to Winterfell", the three-and-ten boy pleaded.
"Of course Cregan. You must be with your father and family."
"Mother, we must go on dragon back”, Helaena said in a weak voice. “Lord Stark has been sick for three weeks…"
'He won’t survive much longer'
remained unsaid, but everyone heard it all the same. Alicent closed her eyes. It was an ugly thing, to lose a parent so young. Lord Stark would be in her prayers with Lord Strong and Ser Harwin. She gulped as she thought about the knight. She had wished for his death when he had hurt Ser Criston, but now that he had passed, she realised how awful and unbecoming this wish had been. How foolish of her. And how utterly foolish of her to befriend Larys Strong.
"I'll take him", Aegon said firmly. "Sunfyre is the fastest. Fuck the funeral at Driftmark."
"Sunfyre won't be able to carry you both North, he's too young", Helaena replied softly. "Lady Dreamfyre is more suited, she can carry us both for days. Plus, she's older, she'll handle the weather better than Sunfyre."
Alicent saw her son clench his fists, but she was glad to see he kept his temper in check. Ever since he had come to her to learn to be a king three years ago, Aegon had started working on his ill temper. He would never be as sweet as Daeron or as posed as Cregan, but Alicent didn't mind. His temper would sometimes be useful during his reign, and she was proud of him for trying. It was hard to go against one's nature.
"Cregan, are you okay with flying all the way to Winterfell?"
"I am, Your Grace… I just want to go see my father…" the boy confessed.
"Then you will both depart once you’re ready. I'll inform the king of the situation. Helaena, my dear, I want you to stay by Cregan's side as long as needed. If you require anything, write to me", she told her daughter before turning to the other children. "I'll arrange for all of you to go to Winterfell once Lady Laena's funeral is over. It shan't take long, two days at most."
The children all nodded, and Alicent got up to take Cregan in her arms. He was already taller than her but, sitting on his chair, his head was resting against her stomach. She ran a hand through his dark hair, and the boy shyly hugged her back. She could feel some tears wetting her dress, but she didn’t remark on them. Men and their pride.
“Don’t hesitate a second to ask for help, Cregan, alright? You’re dear to all of us”, she told him.
As if to prove her words, the children all came to hug their friend, listening to his silent sobs and caressing his shaking shoulders. Oh, how Alicent loved them all.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Katniss POV
I look at myself in the mirror.
This won’t do.
With shaking fingers, I unbraid my hair, allowing my long, black hair to fall freely over my shoulders. It makes me look younger, and I’ll need that tonight. It also makes me look different. It's almost as if it turns me into someone else.
I’ll need that, too.
I go to the kitchen and find the sharpest knife we’ve got. The one Gale used to gut rabbits with, years ago, before the electric fence was on day and night. I go back to the bathroom, and over the sink, I cut myself. The knife is so sharp, it slices through the soft skin of my inner forearm easily. It hardly hurts at all. Gale always kept his knives in pristine condition, and I haven’t used this particular one since before he died.
The blood drips into the sink. It creates intricate patterns, mingling with drops of water that still remain from before, when I washed the coal dust off my face. I stare at it, hypnotized, for a few seconds. Then I snap out of it, and catch the drops of blood with the index finger of my other hand. I spread the blood over my cheeks, thinly, creating the illusion of a blush in them. I create the illusion of good health and actual life. Then I do the same with my lips.
It's better. I still look pale and drawn, but at least it’s… better.
I go back into the living room, where my mother is waiting. Ivy is sleeping on her chest. It’s taken forever to put her to sleep. I hardly have any milk left for her, and neither does Prim’s goat. We are both starving. We are all starving.
My mother looks up and meets my eyes. “Katniss…” Her voice is pleading.
I shake my head. “Don’t.”
There are tears in her eyes. “Please…”
I walk over to her, crouching down next to her so I can look straight at Ivy’s sleeping face. Her arm is stretched out, her hand resting on my mother’s neck. It should be nice and chubby. It isn’t. “That’s why,” I whisper to her, stroking my daughter’s hand. Very carefully. I don’t want to wake her now that she has finally fallen asleep. But, I need to gather courage. I need to remember
why
.
I don’t look back. I put on my winter boots. I should’ve bought new ones two winters ago, but Arrow needed a coat and we couldn't afford both. I wrap my upper body in a large woolen shawl and venture out into the snow. The biting cold nearly takes my breath away. The wind is the worst, though. It blows right through the shawl, and within minutes, I’m shivering. I walk faster to try to keep warm. I can’t be late.
Cray has been interested in me for years. Ever since I was 14 or 15. I was oblivious to it at first, but Gale pointed it out to me. He told me to be careful. It would break his heart to know what I'm doing. But what choice do I have?
I’ll have to compete for his attention tonight, and I’ll be competing against girls who are younger and prettier than me.
I feel a wave of nausea.
I think about the children. Ivy, with her rail thin arms and thighs. Arrow, with his gray, knowing eyes, far too large in his little face. The final paycheck from the mines didn’t last long. Mother, Prim and Hazelle have tried to help, but they are starving, too. I’m not the only one whose children’s lives are on the line. The electricity on the fence is on 24 hours a day now and it has been for years, so I can’t hunt. There are no jobs to be found. I’ve tried everywhere. But who wants to employ a Seam widow with a baby at her breast, who has no real skillset in life, except archery?
No one. That’s who.
Despite the cold, I find myself slowing down as I approach his house. I’ve never been with anyone but Gale. I never wanted to, and I never thought I would. And now… I swallow. I know I’ll have to leave Cray wanting more. I have to make him want me again, and again, and again. How am I supposed to manage that?
I need to buy some goat’s milk for Ivy. I know the Graysons’ goat is still lactating. I’ve seen babies die from starvation before, too many times. They’ve died on my mother’s kitchen table, with their crying mothers by their side. Mothers who looked just like me: Dark-haired, olive-skinned, far too thin, and far too desperate. I’m not going to be one of them, though. I won’t watch my children die.
My teeth are chattering. It’s started to snow again, and it’s difficult to walk. My boots are leaking and I can barely feel my toes. It doesn’t matter though. I’m almost there. Perhaps it’s best if I can’t really feel my body anyway.
I turn around a corner, and gasp as I bump into someone. “I’m sorry,” I mutter, automatically. The road is icy and the figure I bumped into has fallen. I reach out my hand to help whoever it is up on his feet. It's only then do I see that it’s none other than Haymitch Abernathy, the Victor. I wonder what he’s doing out at this time of the night.
He seems to think the same of me. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t Mrs… Hawthorne, is it?” He’s slurring. He must be dead drunk, as usual. No wonder he fell.
I nod. I’m surprised he knows who I am, not to mention my name.
“Katnissssss…. Katniss Everdeen. Funny how things change, isn’t it?” No. No, I don’t think it’s funny. And I have no idea what he’s talking about. I’m eager to get going. I can’t be late. But Mr. Abernathy doesn’t seem to want to let me go. “I remember when you were a defiant 16-year-old who had enough guts to find out how to singlehandedly feed her family.” He must see the surprise in my eyes, because he continues. “Oh yes. I noticed you. And now… Where are you going at this time of the night?”
I open my mouth as if to form words, but I can’t think of anything to say. No excuse. He narrows his eyes and reaches out a hand, lifting my chin. Forcing me to look up at him.
“What have you done with your cheeks?”
I take a step back. “Nothing.”
“You’re going to Cray, aren’t you?”
Hearing the name is like getting a punch in the gut. “It’s none of your business.”
I brush past him. I can’t be late. Ivy needs that goat milk so badly. She’s been more quiet lately. I know that's a bad sign. When babies still have the energy to cry because they’re hungry, they are not in real danger. Yet. It’s when they become quiet that you should worry. When they don’t have the energy to cry anymore. When they conserve what little energy they have to simply breathe.
She’s been too quiet lately.
“Katniss.”
I hear his voice behind me. I don’t stop. I don’t have time to.
I start running, but to my surprise, the old drunk catches up with me. His hand on my shoulder stops me short. “Don’t.”
He looks down at his hand, and I know what he thinks. He looks worried. He’s felt, through the clothes, just how thin I am. What does he know about being hungry? I know he’s a Seam boy, but that was thirty years ago? Forty? He’s eaten well for decades. Surely he can’t remember what it’s like to be hungry.
“Don’t you judge me,” I say. My voice is surprisingly strong. It’s like a whip: sharp and hard.
“I don’t,” he says. “Believe me, I don’t. I know courage when I see it.”
I frown. He keeps speaking in riddles. Then his hand dips into his pocket, and he takes out a golden coin. My eyes widen. I hate myself, but I can’t stop myself from staring at it. “Here. It’s yours.”
I look up from the coin to his face. I shake my head slowly. “No. I don’t accept charity.”
“Dammit, Katniss, are you always this stubborn? I said take it. I saw you that day, when your husband had died in the mines. You had two children with you. Are they both still alive?” I nod. “But only barely,” he asserts. I don’t answer. “Right?” He presses. I nod again. A tear is rolling down my cheek. “Because otherwise you wouldn’t be going to Cray to sell your body to him.” I nod again, slowly. I can’t look at him anymore.
He takes my hand, and presses the coin into it. It feels warm against my ice cold fingers. He closes my fingers around it. “Come with me.”
“What?” I don’t understand what’s going on.
“Come on. We’re going to my house.”
The coin. It can buy Ivy milk for weeks. And bread for Arrow. Perhaps some meat, too. What does it matter if it’s Cray or Haymitch Abernathy? Cray would never pay this much, anyway. I know what his going rate is. He pays more for virgins, but only the first time. And I’m certainly no virgin.
I follow Haymitch through the snow. The Victors’ Village is dark and seems almost deserted. No lights are on in any of the windows. I know only two houses are inhabited, but still. The place seems almost dead.
“Come inside,” he says, and I obey. My body is shaking now. Both from the cold and from fear.
The house is a pigsty. I breathe slowly through my mouth to try to keep the stench at a bearable level, and I’m starting to wonder if perhaps Cray would’ve been the preferred option, after all.
“Do you want a drink?” I’m startled by his question, but I accept his glass. It doesn’t seem clean, but I guess – or hope - the alcohol will disinfect it. Some liquid courage is perhaps a good thing tonight. I had no idea Haymitch Abernathy buys sexual favors. I’ve never heard any rumors of it around town. But I suppose there’s a first time for everything.
He’s standing with his back towards me, looking out the window at the snow as he empties his glass. With shaking fingers, I begin to unbutton my dress. Better to get this over with. I put the coin, the ticket to a few more weeks of survival for my children, in the pocket of my dress, like it’s a precious jewel. Then I let the dress fall to the ground, and I stand naked and exposed in his kitchen. I didn't put on any underwear since I’ve heard Cray isn’t very careful with underwear, and I don’t have any to spare.
“Mr Abernathy,” I whisper, and he turns around. His eyes widen when he sees me, and instinctively my arms go up to cover my breasts.
“What the…?" His gaze travels up and down my body, and his eyes go dark. “Put your clothes on.” I look questioningly at him, close to tears. Tears from humiliation, and from fear. Was my body not good enough for him? I know I’m thin. So thin I stopped looking at my own body in the mirror months ago.“ Put your clothes on!” He repeats, his voice angry. With trembling fingers, I comply.
“I didn’t… I didn’t want
that
,” he says. Then he stops. “When was the last time you had a proper meal?”
“What?” It seems like that’s the only word I’m able to say in his presence. I feel like an idiot.
Haymitch mutters something under his breath. He rummages through the kitchen drawers and cupboards. The kitchen is a mess, but he does manage to locate food here and there. The first thing he hands me is a loaf of bread.
“Here. Eat this. I’ll look for more.” I bring the loaf of bread up to my nose. It smells fresh. It must’ve been baked today. My mouth waters. “I got it from the Mellark’s bakery today. I don’t stock up on fresh bread often, so you’re in luck. Go ahead, eat it.
I shake my head. “I can’t.”
“I’ll send some more bread home with you to your children. Don’t worry.” It’s scary how he immediately understands why I can’t eat the bread. He seems to understand how I think. Perhaps he remembers what it’s like to be from the Seam and hungry, after all.
I force myself to eat slowly, because I know it’s been too long since I've had anything in my stomach. If I eat too quickly, it will all come up again. I chew slowly, so slowly, taking tiny bites. Haymitch gives me a glass of milk, and I look helplessly at it. “There’s more where that came from.”
I almost vomit when I feel the milk run down my throat, but I manage to keep it down. I know I can’t waste precious calories. I think of little Ivy at home. Her thin arms.
“If I’d known it was this bad, I’d…” Haymitch starts to say, but then he stops himself. Then he’d do what? He must know how many starving Seam families there are. He must. People starve to death every winter, and he has never done anything to help anyone. Why would he?
“It’s not charity,” he says. “You said you don’t accept charity, and it’s not. I have a job for you.”
I look up from my bread.
“It’s not for me, it’s for the boy.”
“The boy?”
“Peeta Mellark. The Victor. You know him, right?” I nod. Of course I do. He’s hardly a boy anymore.
“He needs someone to cook and clean for him. I’m worried about him. His house is a mess. It never was before, but it is now.” I can’t help taking a stolen look at his kitchen, and he doesn’t miss it. “It’s too late to save me, sweetheart,” he says with a smirk. “But the boy… He’s still salvageable. Maybe.” He mutters something unintelligible under his breath.
“I’m sorry?”
“Huh?”
“I couldn’t hear what you said. I’m sorry.”
“I said he’s stopped baking. The boy has stopped baking.” I don’t really know what it means, but I can tell from the look on his face that Haymitch finds this very disturbing.
“What do you want me to do?” I ask him.
“I want you to be his housekeeper. Keep him fed, clean his filthy house, do his laundry. You can take your children to live there, too.”
"Live there?"
"He's got plenty of space, sweetheart. I bet your children would appreciate living in a warm house."
“Does Mr Mellark know about this
arrangement
?” It’s a stupid question. How could he?
Haymitch shakes his head. “Leave that to me.” He packs food into two bags: Milk, some more bread, canned fruit, and canned meat. It's more food than I’ve seen in months. There are even some bananas. I’ve never seen real, fresh bananas before. “Here, take this. It should get you through the weekend. Come back here on Monday at noon. Pack the children and whatever clothes and other things you need. I’ll take care of the rest.”
Stunned, I leave his house. I’m carrying the bags of food and wearing a new winter jacket. It’s far too big for me. It must have been made for Mr. Abernathy, but he insisted.
When I arrive home it's late, but my mother is still awake. So is Ivy. She doesn’t cry. I put the bags down and take my daughter from my mother’s arms. I hold her close, pressing her to my chest.
“Katniss…” My mother whispers.
I shake my head. “Warm the milk on the stove. Quickly.” I motion to the bags on the floor.
“Milk?” She frowns. “I don’t understand.”
But she does as I ask. I mash a banana with a fork and take some of it on my finger, putting it into Ivy’s little mouth. She makes a face at the new taste, but sucks eagerly on my finger. When she learns that it’s food, she opens her little mouth for my finger immediately. She doesn't hesitate when I return it to her mouth with more banana on it. When the milk has been warmed up to body temperature, my mother gives me the bottle. “Don’t give her too much right away,” she cautions. She goes through the bags, with wide eyes. “Where did you get this?” my mother asks. She looks confused. I can’t blame her. No one leaves Cray’s house with food. They leave with a copper coin and bruises.
“Haymitch Abernathy,” I whisper.
“Haymitch… Abernathy?”
I nod. “I think… I think I’ve got a job.” The sight of Ivy’s little face, her fingers curling around the bottle as she sucks eagerly, brings tears to my eyes. As my milk supply has dwindled, not being able to feed my baby has been haunting me, day and night. “Go and wake up Arrow,” I tell her. "He went to bed hungry." He’s gone to bed hungry for months.
My mother soon comes back with Arrow in her arms. He complains, confused and dazed from being woken up, but when he sees the bread, his eyes widen and a smile slowly spreads across his lips.
When we fall asleep that night, it’s with full bellies. Ivy lies on top of my chest, and Arrow has his nose pressed against my arm.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
I am going to die.
I don't know what is chasing me, only that it is fast, furry, and has the head of a wolf but limbs too long to be one. Sure, I'm on the fifth floor, somewhere I really shouldn't be, but I've never even heard of a monster like this!
I take another turn, hoping that it leads up to the next level. I'm not familiar with the layout of the fifth floor, but this looks familiar. A left here, another right, I think left- dead end. Where did I mess up? Before I can turn around and retrace my steps, I hear a low growl from behind me.
Turning around, I am able to get a clearer view of monster that has been chasing me, the light that emanates from the dungeon painting the monster in a greenish hue. All that I previously saw about it held true, but that description was a disservice to the horror it was.
The snarling snout of a teeth laden maw, pink tongue slipping over teeth as long as my pinky and sharper than my dagger. Eyes glowing white with unnatural luminescence, no pupil to be seen. Tattered cloth concealing parts of its torso and hind, easily seen due to the odd hunch forward it has that reveals a spindly tail. Its hind legs are spread wide, with the toes contorting to form the foot. An animal with the bones of a human forming its structure.
It slowly lopes towards me, each step a conscious decision, almost purposeful in its intimidation. I'd like to say I stand my ground, knife ready to carve into it. That'd be a bold face lie I wouldn't be able to tell with a straight face. I am practically on my knees in terror, knife loose in my hand as I stare on. Closer and closer it comes, saliva marking its progress as it drips from its perpetually open mouth.
Once it comes within a few strides, it raises itself up and leans back. It means to jump at me! No sooner have I come upon that realization than it grabs me. Pain shoots through my shoulder as it begins tearing at my left shoulder, blood erupting from the wound as arteries are torn open. In that haze of pain and helplessness, I come to a conclusion: I am going to die
here
.
The question is: Will I let it have its meal without a fight?
The answer to that question comes as my knife plunges into the beast's neck, meeting resistance but ultimately piercing its hide. It had only grabbed my torso, leaving my arms free to strike the monster. It howls in surprise laced with pain. A swipe of its claws makes its displeasure known to me, easily ripping through my armor, coat, and stealing my breath as it sends me flying into the wall.
I struggle to recover my breath, and looking down reveals why. Its attack has torn my chest open, leaving a clear view of my shredded innards. Heh. Well, I don't think a healing potion can fix this. Not that I have one on me.
That thought sobers me up. I'm not making it back, and no help is coming. Miss Eina always said "adventurers shouldn't go on adventures," and she was right. And I'd be leaving my Goddess alone!
The beast lunges again, and I react a moment both faster and too slow. Slower in that it had still bit down on me, but faster in that it bit into my stomach instead of my head. I push through the pain, and stab down on its head. Again and again and again and again. Blood sprays over my face with each strike, seeping into my wounds. Each subsequent strike I make weakens as I run out of breath and blood pools out of me. With a final yell composed of what little oxygen could be forced through, I drive my knife into its eye.
My grip fails as it slaps my face, twisting my head and removing any pain I felt as I am sent flying again. I land in an awkward heap, unable to move my body. Still, from this position, I can see it clawing at its face, trying to get my knife out.
As my vision darkens, I think of the foolish dream that brought me here. To pick up girls in the dungeon? What the hell was I thinking? I can feel my eyes starting to drift closed. The last thing I see before they eternally shut are small, skinny white arms grasping my broken body.
+=+
The first thing I notice is the feeling of dirt and cold stone against my face. Slowly opening my eyes, I'm not greeted with a blinding light, heavenly gates, or a choir of singing angels.
Instead, in the light provided by the overhead moon, I see exactly what I felt: a cobbled path, though it leads to a tall but run-down house on a small hill. A staircase leads up into the building, with either side beset by moonlit glowing flowers. On the left, raised above the ground, is a very detailed doll, sitting lifeless on the stones of the wall. Off to the right and following the steps is a line of aging gravestones facing the path. Actually, there are gravestones everywhere, now that I noticed them.
About halfway between me and the staircase, on the left, is an ornate basin, possibly a bird bath, with the areas around it being raised and containing more flowers. There is another path, just before the bird bath, leading to another opening to the house, again ringed by gravestones. Behind me is a fence that protects me from falling of the edge into the foggy abyss below. At least that somewhat held up to expectations. Off in the distance, I can see pillars jutting out of the clouds.
Turning back around, I see a figure in the main doorway of the house.
He's dressed oddly. Well, no more odd than this place. What draws my attention is the tattered tricorn hat he wears, along with the long gray coat that reaches his shins. On his belt is a warped dagger and what looks like an elegant flintlock pistol.
Shortly after I notice him, I hear a befuddled "What?"
We stare at each other a moment longer before he descends down the stairs towards me, muttering in a barely audible whisper all the while to himself.
"I told you to find a suitable candidate to be a Hunter. Not a child! Why would you think a child would make a good Hunter?" He pauses, looking down on me. He has to be at least 30 celch taller than me!
I meet his eyes- and then immediately look at the ground. His gaze had been intense, sharp. Like he was finding the best way to take me apart.
Finally, after what feels like an eternity, he sighs. "Head up, child. You won't have your head bitten off."
Given how close I had come to that, any humor or reassurance it may have had was lost.
"You can call me Kyril. A Hunter, and Master of the Dream, as it is."
"I'm Bell. Bell Cranel."
"Very nice to meet you, Bell."
I see his feet turn and begin to walk off. Looking up, I see he's stopped at the stairs.
"Well? Come on, then. I can at least be hospitable."
I don't think I was meant to hear the last part.
+=+
The Hunter's Workshop was a mess. Books were piled high from where he tried to clear the space so he could move around. The rugs were overlapping and crooked. Tools had been left where they were last used on the workbench instead of hung in their proper spots. One of the drapes in the back, behind the Memory Altar, had been let loose and had sheets of paper and pins connected to it, with strings creating a bizarre web of intrigue.
If Kyril had been expecting a guest, he might have cleaned up a bit. At least straightened the rugs.
As it was, he had been caught flat footed. Thankfully, Bell seemed more confused and awed by the place rather than judgmental. The white haired boy was currently looking over the cruel weaponry above the workbench.
Kyril walked over to where the Plain Doll, his steadfast companion in this Dream, had been told to wait and whispered, "May you please prepare tea for us? Choose whatever kind you like."
At her nod, he went to arrange seating for him and Bell. There was already a table next to a bookshelf, but that seemed wrong. Instead, he pulled the chairs and table to the center of the room. A better aesthetic, he thought.
As he placed the cups they would be drinking out of, he noticed Bell had wandered to the table. Kyril motioned for him to take a seat as he did so himself.
"Tea is being prepared, but in the meantime, I think we should just talk," Kyril began. "As I said before, my name is Kyril, and this place is the Dream; A refuge for Hunters during the Hunt. I am the current master of it, but haven't been for very long. What about you?"
Bell hesitated, looking unsure, and then answered, "I'm Bell. I'm part of Hestia
Familia
, and I'm an adventurer."
"An adventurer? Does that mean you go out and scout areas? Or do you mean you seek out experiences and sensations?" He realized at the end he probably could have worded that better, given how red Bell's face had turned.
"No!" Bell said, waving his hands. "I mean I go to the dungeon and kill monsters for their stones. Our
Familia
's poor, so every little bit counts."
Blood stones? No, those are too rare for a currency
. Or had the Beast Plague spread further than he had seen?
"What do you mean by 'stones'? What manner of beasts so consistently drop blood stone shards?" The Hunter had known a few beasts that dropped them with consistency, but they were far from the numbers that would be required to sustain an economy.
"Blood stone? They don't seem like it," Bell remarked. At that, he reached into a bag at his waist and pulled out a small, black stone.
Kyril walked over to examine it better. It was a deep violet, almost black, ever so slightly transparent, and emitted a dim light. It was... odd.
"And you spend these?" he asked.
"No, I exchange them for valis at the guild," Bell explained. He reached into his pocket, before a sheepish look crossed his face. "I... actually don't have any on me."
"Understandable, given your stated financial situation. Though, why are these considered valuable?"
"They power our appliances. Everything from lamps, heaters, ovens... Practically everything."
"Fascinating." Yharnam was still lit by candlelight when he went through the Hunt, though it may have just been because of the incense being burnt. He had just arrived in the city and never seen it without a Hunt. Though, he had never heard of a currency called "valis" before. Maybe he came from further than the Hunter thought?
"Tell me more about the city, this... I don't think you've mentioned the name," Kyril asked.
"It's called 'Orario', the Labyrinth City. It's called that because there is this massive labyrinth, the Dungeon, beneath it. We have a Guild that oversees everyone that goes into the dungeon. Oh! It isn't just humans that call Orario home. There's also demi-humans that live there too."
"Who are these 'demi-humans'? And surely there must be some form of government?"
"Well, demi-humans is really a catch-all for describing those who look human but aren't. There's elves, half-elves - one of whom is my advisor for the dungeon - pallums, animal people -"
"I'm sorry, what do you mean by 'animal people'?" The Hunter's face had concern writ on it, like he had heard of an enemy gathering.
"Well, they are people who have animal characteristics. Animal ears, tails, that sort of thing."
"Are they violent?"
"What? No. Well, other than fighting monsters, and some criminals I assume. But they aren't going out onto the street and causing mayhem."
The Hunter looked apprehensive, disbelief in his eyes. But logic won out over emotion. After all, if they were the beasts he was familiar with, then Bell would be describing these "animal people" as simply as humans with additional traits. "Out of curiosity, is there a proper name for them?" Maybe he missed something in his research.
"No. They are just referred to as 'Beast Humans' or their race's name. Chienthropes, raccoons, that sort of thing."
It would seem that line of inquiry was at an end. "What of the government?"
"I don't know if we have have an official form of government. The Guild probably comes closest, but that's mainly to do with adventurers to my knowledge."
There had to be something he was missing. But what was it? Before he could inquire further, Bell made a noise of confusion.
Kyril looked down, and saw that the Doll had poured the finished tea in front of them. Bell looked unsure if the tea was safe or not, since it seemingly came from nowhere, so Kyril decided to lead by example. He took a sip, and found he still couldn't tell the difference between blends. Not that he'd admit that to the Doll.
Seeing the Master of the Dream drink the magically appearing tea, Bell decided it was safe to do so as well. They both took a minute to enjoy the tea and crackling of the fire. Eventually, Bell put down the cup.
The Kyril saw the signs. The dejection. The reflection of 'what went wrong'. The question of what more there was. He knew this because he had experienced those same emotions at the beginning of his Hunt.
The Master of the Dream decided to ease the child's worries.
"Chin up. I do not think you are dead yet. The Messengers would not bring a cadaver to the Dream. To me. Not if they thought the one they brought had some utility. I have a theory as to why you are here. Before that, though, is there any questions you have for me?"
Bell was quiet in thought, for a moment, before asking, "If I'm not dead, does that mean I can go back to my Goddess?"
The Master of the Dream stiffened. "Goddess?" There was only one type of 'god' he'd known.
"Yeah, Goddess Hestia. She's the goddess of Hestia
Familia
."
"Are there more gods than her?" The Hunter asked.
"Oh, yeah, there's tons. I don't know much - I only arrived in Orario about a month ago - but she says the gods came down to Gekai, the lower world, because they were bored in Tenkai, the upper world. We, those living in Gekai, were interesting to them. Our culture, our lives, our business- all of it was more interesting to them. So, they decided to descend, shedding their godly abilities and forms to live as we do. Goddess said we were the 'best entertainment available'. They wanted to experience how we live for themselves."
'ENTERTAINMENT'!? All that was wrought was thought of as ENTERTAINMENT!?
No. It is said Great Ones are sympathetic. Ebrietas worked with the Choir. Flora created this Dream. The Orphan lashed out in anger. Alien in thought, similar in manner. Even Oeden yearned for a child. Wait and see. Observe before striking, if necessary.
"The only god other than Goddess that I tend to talk to is Miach," Bell continued. "His
familia
is a healing
familia
. Though, they are quite poor. I typically take jobs for them because, even though they pay little, they're nice."
"What manner of healing?" Kyril asked, raising himself in his chair slightly, eyes sharp again.
Bell leaned back from the glare of the man. "They make potions that heal those who drink them. I know a few can just be splashed on a person and they're healed, but those are too expensive for me."
"No Blood? No injection?"
"What? No. You typically drink the potion. And I don't think any blood is involved."
Kyril stayed half standing for a moment longer, before reluctantly sitting back down. There was simply not enough information to make an informed decision on the matter. Bell obviously did not know what he was searching for, and he didn't know how to get across what he wanted.
Still... "Beware any healing that comes from Blood. There are types that are more detrimental in the long run than others." Certainly the type that came from the Church was more ruinous than a transfusion performed to refill someone's reserves.
"I'll... keep that in mind," Bell agreed, unsure as to why that was what Kyril had latched on to.
"These 'gods', though. I have had encounters with similar beings, but I am uncertain as to how my experience compares to yours. What do they look like?"
"The gods? Well, like us, but more... perfect? Better proportions of the face, what would be considered the perfect body, that sort of thing."
A subtle motion of the hand indicated for the doll to step to his right, in front of the doorway that led out to the Insight Messengers. "Bell, indulge me for a moment. May you please look to your left and tell me what you see?"
The adventurer looked that way, and confusion settled on his face. "A doorway leading outside?"
"Thank you. That confirms a suspicion I had." That suspicion being whether or not they were using illusions to conceal their nature. Even those that use an illusion to hide themself, like the Witch of Hemwick, still resulted in Insight being gained by the observer. If Bell could not see the Plain Doll, then it must mean these 'gods' are different. But different how? More questions that cannot be answered by someone who doesn't know the answers.
The Master of the Dream sighed. "I'll be honest, Bell, I don't know where you come from. If you came from Yharnam, it'd be a rather simple matter to send you back. But, the place you describe is like nothing I've heard of."
"So, I can't go back?"
"I never said that. Only that it won't be as simple as I would have liked. Although... Tell me of the monster that you last fought. That you said killed you."
"It was this shaggy wolf monster I'd never heard of. It had a large mouth, big enough to swallow my head in one bite. Its limbs were long, and it's body furry. Actually, it had a weird walk. A dog is more upright with the way it walks. This monster was low to the ground, with its arms and legs going out to the side instead of immediately down. Still, I was able to pierce it with... my... knife..." A knife he obviously didn't have on him.
Kyril's face grew concerned, before he opened a worn leather notebook he got from... nowhere? He flipped through pages rapidly, there always seeming to be one more page, before he found what he was looking for.
"Did it look like this?" he asked, leaning over the table to show the drawing to Bell. Contained on the page was an amateur sketch of a large, misshapen wolf. The shading was inconsistent, as if the lighting was changed mid drawing, and the snout cartoonish compared to the body. Specks of something dark covered part of the page, but did not detract from the illustration of the monster Bell had fought.
"Yeah. That's what killed me," Bell confirmed, voice growing sadder as he said it. A hard thing to accept - death - when you weren't prepared for it.
"Again, not dead," Kyril assured the young adventurer. "Though, I can imagine why you must think so, if the condition of your clothes is any indication."
The adventurer looked down, taking in the state of his apparel. Though the flesh beneath was healthy, the shirt and jacket he had worn were torn and mangled while the breastplate was missing. Quickly, he tried to cover up the exposed skin. Kyril supposed it would be rude or humiliating to see one's clothing in such disrepair compared to his own. Not that he particularly cared.
"It's fine, Bell. I've seen much worse and worn much worse. I can repair it if you want. I have several spare sets of clothes I won't be using that you can wear in the meanwhile."
"I'd... appreciate it. Thank you, Mister Kyril."
"None of that 'mister' business. Kyril is just fine, and preferred."
"Thank you. I'll... why are you doing this?"
"Please, clarify."
"Why are you helping me? I just died, arrived in your home, and you've given me something to drink, entertained me in conversation, and offered to fix my clothes. All the while you're planning to send me back. Why?"
Why? Why was he doing this? Honesty had not failed him (
have you forgotten the Skeptical Man?
), but it would paint a different picture of himself than he wanted. Still, the boy was young, and he would not damn another child with the lack of knowledge after the girl he sent to safety and failed to protect.
The Master of the Dream let out a sigh. "When you first arrived, I thought the Messengers had found someone capable of undergoing the Hunt I have planned. It would not be a Hunt like had previously occurred. Sure, Beasts would be slain, but it would include both those that look like the beast and those that look like man.
"My goal in this Hunt, Bell, is to rid Yharnam of any trace of the eldritch Truth. To remove the sins of our forefathers from knowledge. Nothing good has resulted from their pursuits, and I want the board wiped clean."
"But, wouldn't you be killing people?" Bell asked, horror written on his face as he realized the type of person in front of him.
"I hesitate to call them people. They certainly don't see the people they 'heal' as people. Test subjects, Bell. That's what they think we are.
"Their knowledge is that taken from a dead civilization. Dead via the same forces they play god with. Yharnam is dying, infected, and I seek to remove the infection. Not just the symptoms.
"But the Messengers didn't bring someone that could go through that type of Hunt. They brought you, Bell," Kyril explained, voice lowering. "A child who is innocent, and I do not want to send a child into this Hunt. Not against their will."
"But you'd send me if I agreed?"
"If you agreed to it. But only if you did. I would only give you targets. How you deal with them is up to you. You would grow stronger in the Hunt, enough that the Beast that killed you will become a trifle to deal with, but make no mistake: this would be a purge."
Bell remained silent, eyes wide as he took in the information.
"And if I chose not to?"
"I would send you back to where you came. Unfortunately, therein lies another problem. I do not know where you come from, and while I can find it, I don't know how long it will take. However, you will be safe here."
You could just sever him. Save yourself the hassle.
And potentially send him back to a broken and dying body? No.
Bell remained silent, thinking, before finally he declared, "I want to go home. I- I can't do what you want me to, on the Hunt."
"I understand," Kyril assured. "To do so, I'll need a bit of your blood."
"Huh!?"
"Just a bit, I'm not going to bleed you dry. A cut on a finger will give enough."
"Uhh, okay?" Bell said as he hesitantly held out a hand.
The Master of the Dream rose from his seat and grabbed both a petri dish and throwing knife from the workbench. "This will hurt for only a moment."
A quick cut later and blood was flowing into the petri dish.
"You said you died in a dungeon correct?" At Bell's nod, he continued. "Alright. It should be a simple matter to find the correct segment."
+=+
This place is odd. I can't tell what time it is, or if it even passes at all. The moon remains perched in the sky, illuminating Mis- Kyril as he works, kneeling in front of a grave. He had pulled out several chalices that looked like they were formed in the image of skulls. They can't possibly be actual skulls, right?
With nothing left to do, I wander around. There isn't much here aside from the building, graves, and those odd flowers that glow in the moonlight.
As I approach the basin at the base of the slope, I jump back with a shriek as several pale, grotesque
things
pop out of the water contained within. They grasp at the air, as if trying to touch me. I fall backward as more seem to come up out of the ground, trying to grab at me.
"Please forgive the Messengers," Kyril calls over. "They have no manners, but they are kind and mean well. They'll repair your clothes while I work." Sure enough, they produce a change of clothes: a dress shirt and slacks.
+=+
"What glyph?" The Master of the Dream whispered in frustration. He had narrowed down the chalice, the one for Pthumeru Root, but hadn't found the glyph. He could see the link, the crimson thread that linked here to where Bell had fallen. The problem was that he lacked the "key" to get through.
He had the materials, the location, everything but the glyph. He hadn't explored many fringe segments of the labyrinths, but he had gone through the main passages of them all. So why was this so difficult!?
"Is something the matter?" Bell asked, coming up behind him. His clothes had been repaired and he was back in them.
"There is a complication. To access the dungeon, I need a glyph. Typically, I'd just make one randomly, but this requires a specific glyph. One I don't know."
"A glyph," Bell said to himself. "If it's linked to me, could it be the
falna
on my back?"
"A what?"
"A
falna
. What the gods give to those in their
familia
so they can be strong enough to enter the dungeon and become stronger in it."
After a moment's consideration, "It might be that. What does it look like?"
"A brazier with a flame in it."
"A brazier with a flame... For crying out loud. That did it."
As he said that, a bright light and ringing noise arose from the chalice. Several Messengers also came up, surrounding it.
"Alright, Bell. This is where we part ways," Kyril said, standing up from the grave. "Just touch it when you are ready to go."
"Thank you for helping me," Bell replied earnestly. "I'm sorry for not being able to help you with your Hunt."
"I have time. Should you find yourself back here, I will offer again. Should you not, it is no matter."
"Still, thank you," Bell repeated, before reaching out to the chalice.
"Hold for a moment? Before you go, you implied you lost your weapon."
"Oh. Right."
"Here," Kyril said, holding out the knife that he had used to get Bell's blood, handle toward the adventurer. "I have many, and it's surely better quality than whatever you were using."
Bell took hold of it, looking it over. The handle was ornate, but not uncomfortable to hold. The guard had the design of skulls coming out of an opening mouth. The blade had serrations on it, but not enough to where it would get caught if used to slice.
"Thank you."
"Again no issue. Until we meet again, Mister Cranel, if ever."
With a parting wave, Bell touched the chalice and disappeared from the Dream.
Silence once again took hold, with not even the sound of breathing in the air. The Master of the Dream walked away, footsteps not producing a whisper, until he found himself behind the Workshop. He briefly stopped at the stump that was home to a few Messengers, gave instructions to the one wearing a top hat, before continuing on. Finally, he came to rest before the fence that helped protect the Dream's inhabitants.
Soft footsteps came from behind him. He didn't need to turn to see the Doll, towering over him, stand beside him as they both looked on. The pillars in the distance remained unchanged, though the sky was changing.
It was Kyril who broke the silence.
"He has his whole life ahead of him. He still has innocence. I wasn't going to subject him to the pain of the Hunt. I wasn't going to break him to do my bidding.
"If it was someone hardened by life, who had seen the cruelties of man up close, then I might have pressed harder. But he hadn't, so I didn't. I am well within my right to do so."
What he didn't say, however, was that he saw himself in the boy when he had observed him. The drive to continue, to persevere against all odds until he succeeded. If he forced his will, to make Bell partake in the Hunt against his wishes, then he would only make an enemy of the boy. And a mortal could kill a god, as he himself had done multiple times. Better to find someone who would participate of their own volition.
In the end, he would let the Hunter that agreed make that decision on their own. That was what made them human, after all. They are the sum of their choices.
The Healing Church would be held accountable by that metric.
Just as he hoped he would, in the end.
+=+
I blink as the world regains shape and color. Instead of the slimy green walls of the fifth floor, I'm in a room of gray brick that has roots growing on and through the walls. There is also a lantern in front of me that isn't lit. Curious, I approach it, but refrain from touching it. Looking around, there are candles long burned to the stump, and an open passageway in front of me.
I'm about to go further when I hear the moans of a Messenger behind me. One pops up, a top hat on its head, and points towards the wall behind me. Confused, I look at it closer, and notice a crack in it. Beyond, I can see the familiar walls of the fifth floor.
I give a tentative push, and feel the bricks move slightly. I push harder, leaning into it as I do, and feel it give some more, but not much. I look at it closer, and notice the mortar holding the bricks in place is almost gone.
Using the knife Miste- Kyril had given to me, I pick away at the material, taking bricks and putting them down as thy come loose. Eventually, I've opened a large enough gap I can fit through.
I look back, but the Messenger is gone. I shrug, and shimmy my way through the wall, until I fall onto the floor of the dungeon.
I hear a scraping sound, and looking behind me reveals the dungeon covering the opening. Something I've seen many times in the past two weeks.
But that doesn't matter right now. I have to get home. Goddess must be worried sick!
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
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CHAPTER:
HOMECOMING --- (Silent Hill Homecoming Fan remake Graphic Novel) - Chapter 6 - JustALittleAmerican - Silent Hill (Video Game Series) [Archive of Our Own]
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Rating:
Teen And Up Audiences
Archive Warnings
:
Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Major Character Death
Categories:
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F/M
Fandom:
Silent Hill (Video Game Series)
Relationship:
Elle Holloway/Alex Shepherd
Characters:
Alex Shepherd
Joshua Shepherd
Adam Shepherd
Lillian Shepherd
Margaret Holloway
Elle Holloway
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Published:
2025-06-13
Completed:
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HOMECOMING --- (Silent Hill Homecoming Fan remake Graphic Novel)
JustALittleAmerican
Chapter 6
: Chapter 2 Part 3
Summary:
Scary otherworld, and the pit.
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Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
The crack of wood shatters the morning silence.
The blade of the axe gets stuck, buried deep in the log. Hands tightening around the handle, you try to wiggle it loose with an embarrassing amount of effort, cursing as you do. Eventually, you free it, but irritation lingers as you realize the log is still in one piece.
Straightening, you feel a low burn in your lower back. You free one hand from the handle, digging your knuckle bones into your muscles to unburden them. You've swung the axe a dozen times, yet you only have a few split pieces of wood to show for.
You take a deep breath, examining the forest around you.
The air shed its winter sting, the sky stretching wide and blue. Thawed snow drips from the tree branches. Ice gives way to rich brown soil and unfurling green buds. Soon, the wild flowers will rise from the ground, bathed by the sun-soaked air. Pollinators will feast on them. Rabbits will nibble on the stems. The forest will become a living, breathing being again.
Weeks have passed since you arrived at Joel and Sarah's sanctuary. You've fallen into a rather tepid lifestyle. Chores occupy your mornings and afternoons, as you opt to spend most of your time outdoors, if the weather permits. You mostly hunt, returning in the evenings to gut your kill by the firepit. Sometimes you'll brush Cinnamon's coat or feed the chickens or collect eggs with Sarah (though ever since that rust-colored hen violently pecked at your fingers, you try to minimize your time in the coop).
At night, the three of you sit at the table for dinner, like some unspoken house rule. Joel prepares the meals, but you quickly realize he doesn't incorporate the neglected spice rack
nearly
enough to your liking. You offer to cook. He gruffly declines, as if offended by the suggestion. Apparently, he trusts you with a loaded gun, but not with the oregano.
However bland they may be, consistent meals have you nearly back to a healthy weight. Thanks to all of that labor, you find ribbons of lean muscle that weren't there before. Hands shredded, developing hard callous. After bathing yourself the other evening, you noticed the dark crescents beneath your eyes had lightened. A bit more lift in your gaze. Life.
You work hard. But Joel has yet to thank you for any of your efforts. In fact, he practically ignores your existence entirely. Each skinned critter is collected with no less than a grunt of acknowledgement. Deep down, you know there's a part of you that wants to impress him - prove that you're useful. That he made the right decision to let you stay. He has yet to give off an impression of the sort.
It frustrates you, but you try to steel yourself - it doesn't matter what he thinks. All that matters is that he somewhat trusts you - or at least, trusts you enough to carry a loaded gun around him and his daughter.
You need to move on. Now that your wound's mostly healed and you've plushed weary bones with muscle, there's nothing keeping you here. You've disturbed their world enough.
You supposed you could try and head West. Look for your parents. You don't know why you allow yourself to think that's possible - the trek to Tuscan would certainly kill you.
Refocusing on the firewood, you shift your stance, dense mud squelching beneath your boot. Lifting the axe over your head, you bring it down in a falling arc. You make contact, but the blade doesn't dig much deeper than from your first swing.
"God dammit," You mutter.
"You ever done this before?"
The axe nearly falls from your grip. Spinning around, you see Joel standing just feet away, arms crossed over his chest. Brows downward, lips twisted into that dissatisfied scowl.
Heat creeps up your neck. How long has he been watching you?
"You enjoying the show?"
"Gonna blow out your back if you keep swingin' it like that." He ignores your snark and approaches you slowly, voice gruff.
You narrow your eyes.
"The hell do you care?"
You can't help it. His unhelpful attitude makes you want to be a bitch to him.
"I care if we run outta firewood 'cause of your pisspoor technique."
Seething, you turn your back to him.
"Alright,
Paul Bunyan
." You clench out, struggling to free the axe as you speak. "Unless you're going to give me
actual
advice, leave me to throw my back out in peace."
You pause at the crunch of approaching footsteps. Before you can do anything, the handle is ripped out of your hands, causing you to stumble back. Any protest is silenced as he effortlessly yanks the axe free, heaving it over his head and bringing it down in one powerful motion. The wood cracks, splitting in two.
Smug bastard. You want to throttle him. Instead, you mumble a bitter
"I got that one started,"
as he turns around to face you.
"Don't use your arms so much," His voice has shed that derisive tone as he holds the axe out, beckoning for you to take it. "Let the axe do the work. Control is more effective than power."
"Easy for
you
to say." You mutter, comparing your scrawny noodle arms to the muscles corded beneath his flannel.
Adjusting your grip to mimic his, you feel the heel of his boot kick your inner-foot, a silent command to widen your stance. You shoot him a glare but comply, shifting your feet. Bending over, he reaches for another log and places it on the stump.
"Look for weak spots," He traces a diagonal line across a crevice in the center of the wood. "See this knot? Aim here."
You cock a brow.
"
Aim
? How do I aim? I'm just lucky I don't whack off a toe."
He rolls his eyes.
"Just shut up and swing."
Huffing, you switch your glare from the infuriating man beside you and onto the piece of wood in front of you.
Let the axe do the work.
Sucking in a breath, you pull the axe over your head and bring it down in a falling arc, unclenching your muscles on the downswing. The blade makes contact with the wood, and though it doesn't completely split it in two, it buries much deeper this time.
That felt better
, you think to yourself, feeling a pathetic swell of satisfaction in your gut. Glancing over your shoulder, you unabashedly look for Joel's approval. But he's already walked off, disappearing into the garage to check on Cinnamon.
Your lips twitch into a frown.
Prick.
You twist the axe free, ignoring the faint throb in your shoulder.
At least he doesn't pity you. Treat you with kid gloves. Like you're some broken thing, incapable of taking care of yourself. He's still that same crotchety asshole, complaining about your skinning technique and the apparently incorrect way you assemble a campfire (who is he, Ranger Rick?).
At night, though, it seems you two have an unspoken truce.
Because nights are the hardest, when the world is silent but your mind is not. They're when you're less armored, at the mercy of your memories - the images sharp as nails, lashing and clawing at your face. Not safe. Never safe.
Joel doesn't sleep well either, apparently.
A couple weeks ago, you'd woken from one of those nightmares, skin sheen with cold sweat, your wound producing a dull throb. You stumbled into the kitchen to wash off, only to find a dark blob sitting at the table. It's Joel, you realize, sharpening a knife by the dimmed light of a lantern. You freeze under the doorway, pulse quickening, your body still fighting to come down from your dream.
His dark eyes lock with yours, but it doesn't feel like a threat this time, though. No - with one of the chairs slightly pulled out beside him, it almost feels like... an invitation.
He doesn't say anything. Neither do you. You go back to bed.
You wonder if Joel's haunted in his sleep, like you. If his past weighs heavy on him. A living thing - red, constant and cruel. A ghost haunting his own skin.
Lips rolling together, you shake away those thoughts like loose parts. Joel's well-being is not of your concern. He certainly doesn't care about your own.
Resetting, your next swing splits the log in half.
Sarah's chatty during dinner.
Unfortunately, you're the topic of interest tonight.
She asks about your pre-Outbreak life. After finishing college, you tell her you stayed in Chicago for work, where you shelled nearly two grand a month for a cramped apartment in Wicker Park. After spending five minutes describing the concept of deep-dish pizza, you talk about the city's skyscrapers, the museums, riding the L (though you omit the time you walked into the cart and there was a pile of
actual
human shit on the floor).
Sarah stares at you thoughtfully while you talk, resting her cheek against her fist. Joel keeps his gaze trained downward, features not quite as pinched as you're accustomed to seeing. Listening, or maybe lost in his own head. You can't read him.
"What was your favorite thing to eat?" Sarah asks.
"I really miss hamburgers." You confess with a soft sigh. "Fries, too. Used to dip them in mayo."
She scrunches her face like something foul has wafted under her nose.
"You dipped your fries in
mayo
?"
"Hey, don't knock it 'til you try it."
"Sorry, that sounds so gross."
You shake your head, making a noise between your closed lips. "Garlic fries with a side of aioli? God, nothing better."
Sarah giggles at your dreamy expression.
"Careful. Your drool might get on the table."
"What about you?" You ask. "What did you like eating?"
"Definitely spaghetti."
"Spaghetti, huh?"
"Yeah. My dad and I used to go to this Italian restaurant for our birthdays. I'd get spaghetti. Dad always got the lasagna."
You steal a glance at Joel, as if looking for confirmation. It's hard to imagine him in a normal setting like that - scrunched in a booth amongst the idle chatter of the restaurant, a plate of cheesy lasagna placed in front of him. It's an image that chips away at that rough exterior he fronts, if only for a second.
You lean back in your chair, pursing your lips.
"You know, if you've got any tomatoes in that garden, it's pretty easy to put together a red sauce. I could show you how."
Sarah's eyes go as wide as saucers.
"Really?"
You shrug.
"Sure. Used to make it all the time. We'll have to find some pasta, though."
"That sounds amazing," She turns to face her dad. "Don't you think?"
Joel offers a non-commital grunt.
Sarah's mouth twists into a scowl at his lack of enthusiasm. Then they purse outward as she tilts her head, like something's just occurred to her.
"You know, dad, you're kinda like Gimli."
You try your hardest to not burst out laughing, containing yourself to a light snort. Grumbly and stubborn? Yeah, Sarah hit the nail on the head with that one.
His gaze briefly flickers over to you before he looks at his daughter again, frown deepening.
"Ain't that the grumpy dwarf?"
Sarah's grin grows.
"Ah! So you
have
seen the movies!"
He shrugs, fighting to maintain his nonchalance.
"Might've seen one or two of 'em."
"Oh, you're
so
busted! And to think, you've been holdin' out on me this whole time, old man? You better tell me the ending right now."
There's a teasing pull to his lips.
"Don't really remember how it ends."
"You
liar
!" She seats herself again, turning to face you. "He always liked watching those old action movies."
"Which ones?" You ask before you can stop yourself.
"Oh, you know, the ones from the 80s, with kung-fu and guns and explosions."
Oh,
those
kinds of action movies? You know exactly what she's talking about - the ones with corny dialogue and crappy special effects, with stars like Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Norris... It's not what you would've expected out of him. In fact, you didn't know Joel even had the
capacity
to enjoy things like movies.
Then a thought occurs to you.
Cluck Norris.
Did...
Joel
name the chicken?
"What was that one robot movie called? Terminator?" Sarah questions before lowering her voice, trying to quote the catchphrase. "
I'll come back.
"
Joel chuckles at her impression. The sound makes the cabin feel a little warmer.
"It's: 'I'll
BE
back.'"
It's becoming difficult to suppress your laughter. Seeing Joel like this; his expression edging
playfulness
? You don't recognize him like this, and it has you reeling.
You can't help but think it's endearing as fuck.
For a moment, it feels like you've stepped into their world again - a gentle, safer world; except this time, it feels like you're actually
part
of it. A world where you don't have to kill to survive. A world where you could discuss movies and the immorality of dipping french fries in mayonnaise. One where you're allowed to make jokes at the dinner table. Where you could just...
Be
. Live a normal fucking life.
Like before.
The feeling becomes overwhelming. You're not supposed to think about going back to
before
. You'll never go back to before. You've learned that lesson.
A stifling heat courses through you, climbing your body like a rash. You wish you had a bedroom to retreat to but you don't, so you sit there, enduring the discomfort with a clenched jaw, anxiety curling in your belly, nails digging into the hardwood of your chair.
Until Sarah attempts another Schwarzenegger impression. Then you have no choice but to just wipe your mind blank and laugh.
"Do you think he's cute?"
Sarah's question draws your attention away from the Home & Health magazine spread open on your lap. Her finger taps on one of the pages of an old tabloid. Photoed is a young man with a swathe of brown hair, his nose sloped elegantly, with the smallest purse to his pink lips.
You scrunch your nose lightly in contemplation.
"Too pretty for my taste."
She hums to herself and examines the printed man again, her gaze carefully dancing over his features.
After dinner, Joel retreats to the bathroom to wash up while Sarah invites you to hang out with her in the living room. She gathers her collection of magazines and the two of you sprawl out on the floor, using the light from the fireplace to flip through the glossy pages. Occasionally, she reads snippets out loud about celebrity gossip and news, and she asks you about it.
"Why did Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez break up?" "Did you watch Friends?" "Who is Britney Spears?"
Public breakups, scandals, paparazzi swarms - that feels like an entirely different life; a life in which you once happily divulged into those kinds of things. So weird that you used to care about who was dating who, or what skincare product gave celebrities such a youthful glow (when it was undoubtedly just a shit-ton of botox).
You feel an urge to indulge Sarah. Give her a glimpse of that life.
"Were there many boys your age at the QZ?"
Sarah flips to the next page, shyly averting her gaze.
"A few,"
You tilt your head, lips curling upward.
"Did you... Think any of them were cute?"
"Some, yeah." She admits with a blush. "They definitely didn't look like
this
."
"Nobody looks like that. Those are models. Probably photoshopped, too."
"Photo...shopped?"
"Yeah, it's like a computer software that people used to edit photos."
She nods absently, rolling her lips together.
"Life before was so strange."
"It kinda was, yeah." You agree with a light smile.
A comfortable silence stretches between you as Sarah resumes her flipping. Looking back down at your magazine, you lazily scan the ingredients listed for a seared steak and creamed spinach recipe, trying to ignore the gurgle in your belly.
"Hey," Sarah catches your attention again. "I want to get something for my dad's birthday next fall. Do you think you could help me out?"
"I don't know, maybe." You answer wearily, stomach flipping when she mentions
next fall
. "What were you thinking?"
"One of these. I want to get him one of these."
She slides the magazine towards you, finger tapping on the page. She's pointing to the man's wrist. You raise a brow.
"A watch?"
She nods.
"He used to wear one all the time, but he lost it when we left the QZ. He still liked using it, keeping track of time and all that. He's weird like that."
You think it's sweet that Sarah wants to get him a gift - you're just not sure how you feel about
your
involvement with said gift. Your relationship with Joel is prickly, to put it mildly. The last thing you want to risk your neck for is a present for that son of a bitch.
"I'm not asking you to go out of your way to find one or anything." Sarah adds dismissively, like she can sense your hesitancy. She pulls the magazine out of your line of sight again. "Just if you happen to see one when you're out."
"Do you leave the cabin very often?" You ask, curious.
"Sometimes I'll go with my dad on runs, but most times he has me stay back. Says it's safer that way."
"He's right. You never know what you might run into out there."
She watches you with a probing, steady gaze.
"How many Infected have you killed?"
"I'm not sure," You admit. "Maybe a dozen?"
She chews her lip in quiet contemplation, her expression blank. When she speaks again, her voice barely hovers above a whisper.
"I... I've killed one."
Her words make your stomach swoop with dread. You close your magazine, giving her your full attention.
"It was attacking my dad. Caught him off guard." She explains, eyes distant as she stares down at her lap. "It moved so fast. I didn't even have time to think. I took my knife and stabbed it in the head. Just like how they taught us at the QZ."
You notice how thick the words sound in her throat. You can tell the incident weighs heavy in her mind, gnawing at the most vulnerable parts of her.
"Sounds like you saved his life."
The magazine slides off her lap, forgotten, as she brings her legs in close. She hugs her knees to her chest, resting her chin on top.
"Do you... Do you think they're trapped inside?" She murmurs into her knee. "You know, their old selves, without any control of their bodies?"
You'd be lying if you said the thought had never occurred to you, either. Being on your own gave you plenty of time to construct your own horrific theories, ones that involved a slow takeover of one's body, consciousness trapped within, banging to get out. Helpless, pliant to the fungus that forces you to consume your own friends and family.
Fuck.
Even if you actually believed that, you can't let Sarah believe it.
You shake your head.
"No. No, I don't think that. They might still look like themselves, but they're not people anymore. They're gone. Passed on."
"Passed on where?"
"Dunno. Just... On."
"Like heaven or something?"
You nod. Sure, heaven.
"Yeah."
"Yeah, my dad says the same thing." For the first time, you notice her fingernails are bitten down to nubs. "I'm just... Scared of becoming one of them."
An unexpected fierceness breaks out within you - a desire to shield her from such fears. Your hand twitches, an urge to reach out and draw her in close, but you stop yourself.
"That won't happen to you." You assure her, quiet but firm. "Your dad will make sure of that. You'll always be safe with him."
She nibbles on her bottom lip, hugs her legs tighter.
"I don't like when he goes out by himself." She continues. Then, her eyes lift, locking with yours. "I'm glad you're here. To have his back."
Have his back?
Having his back earned you a hand around your throat and a bullet through the shoulder, you recall bitterly.
Then you look away, guilt rising. Sarah's happy you're here and you can't find yourself to return the sentiment? What is
wrong
with you?
Coward
, your battered mind whispers.
Just run away. It's what you're good at.
"Why do you do that to your hair?"
Sarah's question pulls you out of the maze of your mind. You blink at her before absently reaching up, your hand brushing the ends of your hair.
"Hm? Braid it? It keeps it out of my face."
"Oh," She comments. "I like it."
"Would you... Do you want me to braid your hair?"
She exhales a soft smile. Voice polite.
"Yes, please."
So you sit on the floor, Sarah perched in front of you, hair curtained down her back as you gently comb the strands with your fingers. She'd find photos in magazines and you'd do your best to copy them, twisting and binding her hair into elaborate styles. Then she'd dash off to find a mirror, and the two of you would explode into a fit of giggles when she saw how messy it looked compared to the magazine model.
You're not sure how much time passes when Joel appears, his presence always stifling the room. Your shoulders instinctively tense, rising like hackles, as he emerges from the hallway.
His hair is damp and glistening from his bath, slightly slicked back. Looks like he's trimmed his beard a bit, too. Flannel abandoned, he's left in a plain t-shirt, a towel slung over his shoulder. You catch the length of his bare forearms, and you realize it's probably the most of
him
you've ever seen.
He looks alarmingly domestic.
You tear your eyes away, face warm.
"Time for bed, kiddo." He says.
"Hey, check it out." Sarah rises to her feet, spinning once to showcase her braided-crown that you had to use paperclips to fasten together. "She did my hair. How does it look?"
He softens.
"You look beautiful, baby girl."
"
Dad
," Sarah groans, embarrassed, eyes briefly catching yours. The moment touches you, and you can't help the smile that reaches your lips. You glance down at your lap, feeling like you're intruding.
"What? I can't call you my baby girl, anymore?"
"I'm not a baby," She mumbles, cheeks reddening as she crosses her arms over her chest.
Joel seems amused by her reaction, but you can't help but notice the downturn to his eyes, like he can't believe how grown his daughter has become. A reality no parent ever wants to face, pre or post-Outbreak.
He juts his chin back towards the hallway.
"C'mon, then."
You bid Sarah goodnight, but then she does something you don’t expect.
She hugs you.
You stiffen as her arms wrap around you, pulling you close. She tucks her small frame into your torso, mumbling gratitude into your shoulder.
It’s awkward, strange - but Sarah doesn’t seem to think so. She embraces you with familiar warmth. For a moment, you think of your nephew, when he’d race towards you at top speed before clinging to your leg like a leech. He’d giggle maniacally, and you’d fold over him, nuzzling your nose against his hair, planting a kiss on top of his sweet head.
Tears unexpectedly well in your eyes.
As you’re about to move your arms and return the hug, she pulls away. She flashes you an easy smile before the two of them retreat to their rooms.
Alone, you stave tears with the heel of your hands before cleaning up your space, collecting the magazines and sorting them into neat stacks on the coffee table.
At some point, Joel reappears, watching you from beneath the living room doorway.
Glancing up, you expect a threat in his gaze, but he looks at you with indifference. Blank and unreadable.
"Just give me a few more days," You mutter. "A few days and I'll be gone."
His gaze hardens.
"Fine by me."
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
“Hey, kiddo,” Vander greets Vi as she walks down the hall toward him, balancing two drink carriers and a sack of burritos.
He looks tired - like he’d been there all night - and Vi feels her stomach twist with guilt as she thinks about the fact that she
hadn’t
been there. It lets up after a second when she sees her dad smiling at her, no sign of being disappointed, and she reminds herself that he’d
told her
to go and not come back until she’d slept.
Her dad had probably assumed she’d go
home
to do that, but that she didn’t is something Vi’s planning on telling him never.
“How is he?” Vi asks her dad, sending a quick nod toward Chief Grayson before setting down the stack of drinks. Vi’d seen her talking to her dad when she’d first turned the corner, but as soon as she’d seen Vi coming, she’d moved a respectful distance down the hall.
Despite every fucking thing Piltover’s Finest had done to Zaun, Vi’s finding that she actually really likes Chief Grayson. She’s no-nonsense, like Vander is a lot of the time, and she looks mean as shit but she’d been nothing but polite to all of them - and kind enough to be the one to stay to guard Ekko because she’d known they’d be more comfortable with her around than one of the officers they didn’t know jack shit about.
As Vi digs through the bag of burritos, her dad finds his coffee, pulling it out of the carrier and taking a long sip.
His sigh is fucking
tired,
and Vi feels that guilt again, even though she shouldn’t. Her dad works too hard - he always has - but he isn’t as young as he used to be, and even though he’d always seemed invincible…he’s not.
“You didn’t go home last night?” Vi asks, trying to keep her tone light, and knowing she failed at that when her dad shoots her a look like she knows exactly how much she wants to accuse him of working himself to death.
He shrugs. “I wanted to be here, and everything at the station was handled. I’ll go home in a bit, Vi…though I might have gone home earlier if Claggor had been able to pick up the truck for me…”
He raises one bushy eyebrow, a teasing glint in his eye, and Vi tries - and fails - not to blush.
“We were both surprised not to find you at home–” he starts, and he sounds so fucking smug about it that Vi cuts him off.
“Yeah, okay, I didn’t go home,” she confesses, rolling her eyes. “You got a problem with that?”
Vander raises his eyebrows, not all that bothered by her defensiveness, and Vi doesn’t say anything. She already knows she’s given too much away.
“So…” he starts, and Vi can actually
see him
trying not to grin as he asks, “How’s Detective Kiramman?”
Vi hands her dad a burrito, muttering, “She’s fine,” as she scoops up the drinks again so aggressively she has to scramble not to spill them and then stomps across the hallway to shoulder open Ekko’s hospital room door.
Vander’s chuckling is cut off as the door swings shut behind her, and she’s met with the
very
surprised faces of her sister and Ekko, who are
both
horizontal on his hospital bed.
“No."
At Vi's flat declaration, they startle apart.
“Vi!”
“Uh, hey, we were just–”
Vi sighs, closing her eyes and holding out the drink carrier. “I don’t want to know, just somebody come over here and take your breakfast burritos and your caffeine.”
A second later, she hears some rustling, Powder’s characteristic, skipping footsteps, and then feels food and drinks being taken out of her hands.
“Oh, fuck yeah!” Pow exclaims. “You got me my favorite!” and then Vi hears loud slurping noises. “She got you your boring ass coffee,” Pow tells Ekko a second later, and Vi can hear him chuckling.
“I like my coffee to taste like
coffee,
Pow. Not…rainbow death.”
There’s more slurping, and then Pow gargles through a mouthful of the overly caffeinated, blue and pink frapp, “The rainbow death is delicious.”
“O-kay, I’m leaving,” Vi remarks, turning to where she remembers the door being and fumbling for the handle with her free hand.
Pow scoffs, muttering, “Ugh, you’re
such
a baby,” before Vi can hear her opening the door and then feels a hand shoving her through it.
“You’re
welcome!”
Vi calls as the door hits her in the back.
Opening her eyes to see My and Clagg sitting where her dad had been two minutes ago, she walks over and shoves the drinks and bag of food toward them, taking her own and telling them, “Do
not
go in there.”
______
Caitlyn sighs, pulling off her glasses and rubbing her eyes.
She’s sitting in the dark in one of the interrogation rooms with a laptop because the footage of the apartment building had been
so
grainy that she hadn’t been able to see it on her desktop monitor under the bright lights in the bullpen.
It’s been a few hours, and she’s no closer to figuring out who might have gone into that building.
She has the list of building residents who had been present at the time of the fire, as well as statements from all of them, some of which had contained names of visitors to the building, but moving into her third hour of looking at footage, Caitlyn concludes that this is a useless exercise.
She’s never going to be able to figure out who did this with an identification by grainy, shitty footage on the building’s cameras.
In her notebook,
Knowledge of camera quality?
is written and underlined.
Caitlyn has been solving mysteries too long for
coincidence
to be her first assumption.
Shutting the laptop with a frustrated sigh, Caitlyn gathers her notes and stacks them on top of the outdated machine.
The Archives it is, then.
As she makes her way back to her desk, her cane marking her steady, mostly stable progress down the hallway to gather what she’ll need to spend several hours combing through the sea of files housed in the Archives, Caitlyn hopes that forensics has made progress.
Usually, they’re fairly quick, and Caitlyn knows that Grayson has marked this case - Ekko’s gear, especially - as expedited, but she’s anxious to receive the results all the same.
Her stomach lets out a quiet rumble as she fits her key into the top drawer of her desk, and Caitlyn glances at her watch.
It’s been…quite a while since Vi’s delicious, substantial breakfast…and it’s also been far too long since she’s had any caffeine,
especially
considering how badly her eyes ache after staring intently at that footage for hours.
The thought makes her frown.
There really wasn’t any reason to
start
with the footage without any other information, other than the fact that Caitlyn had hoped to see, perhaps, someone carrying enormous barrels inside the building, or maybe goons with Silco’s characteristic eye emblazoned on the back of biker jackets, or an enormous figure pulsating with purple, or…
something.
It’s slightly nonsensical, but Caitlyn does her best to push her silly idealism out of her mind because she doesn’t need to waste
more
time on futile exercises.
Instead, she decides that she’ll get some coffee and some food - and extra for the Archives librarian so she doesn’t get bitched at for being
“disruptive”
every time she breathes - and then she’ll head over to the Council building.
Caitlyn also plans on texting her mother’s secretary to find out where she’ll be.
The last thing she wants right now is a lecture. Or to see the way her mother’s lips purse at her shorter hair. Jean-Luc had done a wonderful job, but her mother still had…
opinions
about how she should look, and Caitlyn is in no mood to hear those, either.
Maybe she should pick up coffee for her mother’s secretary, as well. He likely needs it, if her mother has been overly irritable due to the upcoming elections.
Looping the strap of her briefcase over her head so it’s across her body, Caitlyn waves at Grayson and makes her way out of the station, ignoring the looks and murmurs from her colleagues.
She’s sure everyone had seen the news footage by now - Vi, between her and the world - and she’s very aware of the fact that they can see her using a cane, and she’s not in the mood to speak to any of them, either. If no one else speaks to her today, she’ll be thrilled, honestly.
Stepping out into the last of the sunshine and slipping on her sunglasses even though they’re not strictly necessary, Caitlyn
decisively
ignores the reporters camped out across the street, and starts on her now-roundabout walk to her favorite coffee shop.
Like hell is she going to lead those vultures straight there.
If nothing else, they don’t deserve to have delicious coffee while they harass emergency services professionals.
Let them sit outside with their shitty coffee.
Perhaps they’ll give up sooner.
Amused at the thought, Caitlyn’s
almost
smiling through the ache in her leg that she should have been paying more attention to while she was sitting in that interrogation room, but wasn’t, like an idiot.
The caffeine won’t make the physical pain better, but if she’s going to feel like an idiot, she can at least do so while drinking delicious coffee.
She keeps forgetting to ask Vi about that muscle rub, and she really needs to. The relief it had provided to her had been short-lived, but, God, it had been
glorious.
Vi’s massage skills and the orgasm had certainly helped as well, but given that thinking about such things is likely to make her blush and stammer her way through her day, Caitlyn decides to focus on the muscle rub’s contributions and put other…
rubbing
out of her mind.
It’s difficult, especially given the thinking time allowed by the longer walk and the
spectacular
sex they’d had last night, but Caitlyn manages.
Well, she almost manages, and then she thinks about Vi kissing her for permission, and how infinitely
gentle
she’d been, and how Vi had been looking into her eyes when she’d fallen over the edge, and then Caitlyn stumbles slightly, tripping over nothing, and barely manages to recover with her dignity intact.
She’s glad she thought to sling her briefcase
across
her chest rather than just carrying it over her shoulder as she usually did.
The cane hadn’t really contributed to the need for extra security, but her traitorous thoughts, the warm, fizzy sensation in her chest, and the feeling she’s had in her gut for
far
too long given the circumstances certainly had.
Chiding herself for being so utterly
ridiculous
about the, admittedly gorgeous (and kind, thoughtful, intelligent, funny, overall utterly spectacular…), woman she’d known for all of
two weeks,
Caitlyn continues on her way toward the coffee shop, taking extra care to ensure that she doesn’t trip
again.
As she walks, Vi on her mind despite her best efforts, Caitlyn decides on a new plan.
______
Vi slouches sideways in the hospital chair, propping her elbow on the armrest and leaning her head on her fist.
Across from her, Mylo grunts his agreement as he also slouches in his chair, Clagg next to him, and Vander next to
him
in the row of way-too-small chairs.
Pow and Ekko aren’t doing anything
inappropriate,
but they’re already in that lovey, moony-eyed new relationship phase that nobody really wants to see, even if they all privately think that it’s fucking adorable.
So, they’re all out here doing nothing, squished into hospital chairs that are making everybody’s ass numb.
Hospitals fucking suck. And, also, if you have to be there for fucking
days,
anxiously waiting around to find out if your brother has taken permanent damage from being fucking
assaulted
on a job, hospitals are shitty, boring, and really fucking anxiety-inducing.
After almost eight hours here, Vi’s fucking
over it.
She’s over the beeping, and the calls over the P.A., and the rushing footsteps, and the harsh lighting, and she hasn’t had good, strong coffee in
way
too lon–
“You look like you enjoy being here about as much as I do,” a familiar, lightly accented voice remarks, and Vi’s numb ass almost slides off the chair and straight onto the floor from shock.
Recovering - and noticing her brothers and her dad scrambling to sit up straight, too - Vi manages to say back, “Hey.”
Mylo mouths
“smooth,”
at her, and as Vi stands up, she flips him off behind her back.
“What are you uh– what are you doing here?” Vi asks, then winces slightly as she realizes that she probably shouldn’t have asked like that, but just as she starts to correct herself, Caitlyn answers her.
“Grayson told me that you were all still here when she left for the station, and I thought you might be in need of some provisions,” she says, holding up the stack of drink carriers Vi somehow didn’t fucking notice she was holding.
Lurching toward her, hands out, Vi stammers, “Lemme help you with that,” and then she tries to ignore how fucking
amused
Caitlyn looks by how awkward she’s being as she takes the carriers and the paper bag hanging from Caitlyn’s arm.
Vi’d probably be acting less awkward if she hadn’t realized
a few hours ago
that she’s fucking in love with her, but she had, so here she is, almost fucking dropping
another
set of drink carriers as she tries to hand shit out to her brothers.
“I wasn’t sure what everyone liked, so I got a variety,” Caitlyn comments, and it’s Vander who stands up to shake her hand and thank her.
“I appreciate you coming, Detective. You didn’t have to make a special trip just for this.”
Caitlyn waves him off, “Oh, nonsense. It’s no trouble. I was on my way anyway to drop by to see if Ekko had thought of anything he’d like to add to his statement, and I figured that it couldn’t hurt to bring some coffee with me.”
“Well, you were definitely right about that,” Vander tells her, chuckling, as he takes the coffee Vi hands him. Caitlyn hadn’t been kidding about the variety. The coffee she’d just handed her dad has “BLCK CFE 2 SGR SPLSH CRM” written on the side, and there are six others, all with different ingredients written on them.
Vi herself goes for “VNL OAT LTTE ICE,” and her first sip tastes just as good as the “repayment” coffee Caitlyn had brought her that first time.
She does her best not to think about what Caitlyn had been repaying her
for
as Caitlyn and her dad have an easy conversation about how things have been since yesterday.
______
“--with time, so I thought I’d come by and see if he remembered anything else that he’d like to share. It’s absolutely not a requirement, but I wanted to check in and see how he was doing, in any case.”
“Thank you, Detective.”
Vander considers the woman nodding at him in acknowledgement, and the part of him that sees straight posture and a badge and that stern, serious expression and
hates
rises a bit before he can squelch it back where it belongs.
The Piltover police force hasn’t been what it had been for a long time, and the protege of the woman responsible for that is here in this hallway, waiting to check on Ekko because she had come all the way here because she’d wanted to see how he’s doing. Vander knows that checking on whatever information he might provide is secondary to the detective’s main concern, and the thought settles him again. Vander can recognize that there’s warmth in Detective Kiramman’s eyes, such as there never had been in any of the officers who had seen fit to brutalize Zaun simply because they could, because Silco and other various chembarons had
paid
for them to rip the city apart - divide them.
It had brought the city together, rather than dividing them, but the kind of anger that had made it so that Zaun was able to rip Silco’s boot off her neck and gain independence is the kind of anger that festered.
It’s the kind of anger that Vander wishes he had done more to temper in his children, if only because things really
aren’t
the way they were before.
Grayson isn’t like that - had never been like that in the first place - and Detective Kiramman definitely isn’t.
Vander wants to tell the woman shooting quick, furtive glances at his daughter that he commends her bravery, because it had been very brave to step into a fire station full of the children of Zaun - the children of the people who’d
died
on that towering bridge, the children of people who’d passed on their anger as much as they’d passed on their eye color or athletic talent. It had been braver to earn their trust, and it had been the bravest of all for her to risk her life saving one of them.
It doesn’t matter to him that Detective Kiramman hadn’t known she was going after Ekko. Grayson had told him that she hadn’t known who she was saving, and, if anything, it raised his opinion of her.
He’s sure Detective Kiramman doesn’t know it yet, but her rescue of Ekko - one of their own - had officially made her one of the crew. Zaun is big on loyalty, Station 516 is maybe even bigger on it, and rescuing a member of the family from a fire - running headlong into it with no gear? The crew had been starting to trust her before, but that had made it official.
Grayson had mentioned enough about Detective Kiramman’s relationship with the other police officers that he has no doubt that she’ll notice the change when she gets back to the station for her ongoing investigation of the fires. The part of him that knows about the importance of family - which is a big one - hopes that she’ll be happy about the change.
He’s not sure anyone else - well, anyone else but Vi - would notice that, despite being very personable and a consummate professional, Detective Kiramman seems a bit…lonely; not used to the kind of camaraderie that comes with being from a tight-knit community where
everybody
is accepted, no matter who they are. Piltover has always had strict criteria for acceptance - and from what he knows about her, the detective doesn’t meet many of them.
Even if Piltover doesn’t give a fuck about it, it matters to
him
- to all of them - that she’s kind, considerate, incredibly good at her job, and determined to catch whoever’s behind all this.
Vander knows that it takes a special kind of officer of the law to come check on a witness in a case primarily out of concern for their well-being - it takes a special kind of officer to care about a witness’s well-being
period.
Grayson’s done her best with the force, but all of the officers are from Piltover, and the old prejudices - Piltover’s rancid
values
- run deep.
Somehow, even being born into one of Piltover’s founding families and raised to be the city’s princess, those prejudices seem to have just…skipped the detective.
It hadn’t really been clear to him just
how
different she is until he’d seen the way Vi looks at her.
His fierce, protective daughter is big-hearted and stubborn as hell, and it had surprised him more than he’d really like to admit when Detective Kiramman won her over.
Finding out
- in spectacular fashion - that she’d won his daughter over had been a shock, but being both born and raised in Zaun and an emergency services worker for years had made it so that even finding a half-naked woman - colleague - in his daughter’s apartment hadn’t fazed him much.
What
had
fazed him was realizing that Vi actually had
feelings
for her.
That
had nearly knocked him on his ass.
He’s not sure if it’s knocked Vi on hers yet, but he figures - hopes - that if it hasn’t, it will soon.
Life is short.
And, selfishly, he’s looking forward to seeing Detective Kiramman at family events.
Excusing himself from his conversation with his future daughter-in-law, Vander raps on Ekko’s door before letting himself in a few seconds later to ask if he has anything more information to offer the detective.
______
Caitlyn stands as normally as she can in the hallway with the woman who’d woken before her to make her a delicious breakfast and…
not
see her differently, and it’s an effort to ignore the way Vi’s brothers snicker good-naturedly at their awkwardly shuffling sister.
There isn’t really anything to talk about, since they’ve already covered how Ekko’s doing, that she’ll be off to the Archives after this, and that Vi will be staying at the hospital, and Caitlyn doesn’t trust herself not to say something inordinately stupid at the moment, because her whole chest feels warm from
fondness
at Vi’s rumpled appearance and the way she’s clearly been here at the hospital with her family for hours. No…Caitlyn certainly isn’t feeling
professional
at the moment, and it seems like Vi isn’t either, because she’s got her scarred fists shoved into the pockets of her cargo pants and she’s only making brief eye contact, a twitch of a nervous smile pulling at her lips.
It’s…well, that’s a little odd, even by the standard that’s been set by the condensed time frame in which they’ve gotten to know each other, family members walking in on both of them in various states of undress, and those family members acting as a peanut gallery of sorts to their hospital hallway meeting.
Just as she’s about to feign some sort of emergency, Chief Vanderson opens the door to Ekko’s hospital room and steps out into the hall, shaking his head as the door swings shut with a quiet click behind him.
No news.
“He hasn’t remembered anything else, I’m afraid,” Chief Vanderson tells her, and his brow creases in apology.
Caitlyn smiles at the earnest, tired fire chief. “That’s fine - we have plenty to go on for now. I hope he’s getting some good rest.”
Vander chuckles, and Caitlyn’s confused for a moment about what’s so funny, but then Chief Vanderson elaborates, “He’s resting, but I think he might need even more from all the questions Powder’s asking him.”
“It’s sweet she’s so concerned,” Caitlyn remarks, meaning it.
None of her friends or family really…ask her things.
He shrugs, and there are various groans from Powder’s siblings, and something about the familial exasperation is incredibly endearing.
“I’ll leave you to it,” Caitlyn tells all of them. “I hope you enjoy your coffees.”
“Thank you again, Detective,” Chief Vanderson tells her, and then, after a brief handshake and a wave at Vi and her family, Caitlyn’s off back down the hall.
She isn’t entirely sure what she’d intended to accomplish with her visit to the hospital - other than the obvious, professional reason - but even seeing Vi briefly and awkwardly has made her feel a little better about the day’s frustrations, including the hours she’s about to spend squirreled away in the Archives.
Her phone buzzes when she gets settled in her squad car, and Caitlyn pulls it from her pocket as she starts the car.
It’s a singular message from Vi,
thanks for the coffee, cupcake
Something about those five simple words makes her smile, and Caitlyn has to work to suppress it when she parks at a different coffee shop - her mother’s secretary’s favorite - to pick up her bribes.
______
“So…are we gonna talk about the teeth marks on your neck, or…?” Pow asks casually, flopping into the chair next to Vi and putting both her scrawny legs over Vi’s lap, effectively pinning her in place.
Vi clears her throat, adjusting in the chair and pulling the neck of her shirt up to cover where she knows Pow is talking about - Caitlyn really hadn’t marked her neck up that much…except for where she’d bitten to muffle her cry when she’d come that first time all over the strap.
She hadn’t muffled herself any of the other times that Vi’d made her come.
Staring at her phone and hoping - in fucking vain - that her sister would give up, Vi ignores her.
“You know, it’s weird that you’re embarrassed,” Pow remarks, and Vi keeps staring at the phone.
This is not good.
Pow’s got her
problem solving
voice on, and Vi knows that the jig - the one she’d just fucking figured out in the truck this morning - is probably up.
Vi finally
does
turn to her sister, faking nonchalance as she raises an eyebrow and says, “Maybe I just don’t want to discuss my sex life with you.”
Pow’s frowns at her, tapping her lips with a finger that’s tipped with chipped pink nail polish. “...nope, that’s not it.”
Sighing, Vi goes back to staring at her phone.
It’s a few
long
minutes, during which Pow sits more still than Vi’s seen her sit in a
long
time, the way she does when she’s really trying to figure something out, and then…she gasps. “Oh, shit.”
“I don’t wanna talk about it, Pow.”
“Oh my god, I thought you were just fucking her, but you–”
“I
said,
I don’t wanna talk about it.” Vi bites out quietly, gritting her teeth, staring
hard
at her phone to avoid looking at her sister and seeing whatever fucking judgement that’s there.
Pow loves her, and Vi
knows
that all Pow wants is for her to be happy, but she hates Piltover maybe more than Vi does, and…and Vi hasn’t ever…
“Okay,” Pow says, voice quiet, and then Vi has a blue-haired octopus wrapped around her from the side, spindly arms squeezing her almost painfully tight.
Vi swallows, reaching one hand up to hold her baby sister’s forearm, reciprocating the hug as much as she can without completely losing it.
She’d only
just
figured out what Pow’d put together in like…five minutes, and it’s too goddamn much.
Pow lets her go after a long moment, relaxing back into her chair and shifting to prop one of her boots on Vi’s thigh before Vi shoves her gross hospital floor foot off her lap.
“Well,” Powder sighs, “At least she’s super hot…for a Piltie.”
“Pow…” Vi groans, but she’s smiling.
______
Caitlyn follows the Archives librarian through the long stacks of books, files, and other paraphernalia that only get dustier as the rows pass, and tries not to laugh out loud at the exuberant way the elderly man is slurping the coffee Caitlyn had brought him.
It had taken
years
to figure out, since he’s…well, he’s an appallingly crotchety old man, but Caitlyn had discovered that his vice is caramel macchiatos with six shots, extra vanilla, and whipped cream, and ever since, whenever she has business that brings her here, she brings a coffee with her.
She’s not actually sure that it’s endeared her to him at all, but she still figures that it can’t hurt to bring him his sugary coffee.
To her mother’s secretary she’d delivered - covertly - a
very large
macadamia latte and a few pastries, since she’d assumed correctly that he hadn’t eaten.
Her mother had, blessedly, been in a meeting when she’d arrived at the Archives, and so she’d managed to get down to the Archives, housed in the basement of the Council building, with minimal issues.
Unfortunately, for security reasons - and the standard assumption of ableism - the regular elevator actually
doesn’t
go down to the basement, and so Caitlyn had been stuck with the marble staircase, her cane, and two coffees, since she didn’t want to wait for the shitting freight elevator.
“Here
are the bays with the records we have from before the Unification.”
Caitlyn’s eyebrows raise, unbidden at the long rows of vertically-stacked shelves.
Bays. Plural.
“Your surprise is noted, Detective, though perhaps I should be insulted. We keep very thorough records.”
“Indeed you do,” Caitlyn murmurs, taking in the
vast
amount of material she’ll have to comb through.
The librarian sips his drink, and somehow the action seems…smug. “Well…I’ll leave you to it,” he wheezes. Then, he slurps the last of his drink, belches, and shuffles back the way they had come.
Sighing, Caitlyn starts to make her way down the first of the rows the librarian had indicated, getting her bearings.
There’s a ridiculous amount of material, and, for a moment, Caitlyn feels a pang of anxiety that she
won’t
be able to solve this.
But, then, she takes a deep breath of the dusty air, sneezes, rolls her eyes at the state of things, and proceeds on.
She will not be defeated by a mountain of paperwork.
Before too long, she reaches the shelves containing the information regarding the massacre on the bridge. She walks her fingers across the files, pulling tabs back to get a look at each of the neat labels.
Bridge Riot - Evidence
Arrest Records - Piltover
Arrest Records - Zaun
Police Force Corruption Review
Police Force Restructuring
Voting Records - Unification
Voting Records - Zaun Independence
Council Restructuring
Pulling a file slightly out of the neat line to mark her place, since she has to start
somewhere,
and she has a feeling that the bridge riots are a good place to start, Caitlyn keeps going.
Sighing again when she reaches the end of the long row and there’s no file marked “Shimmer Disposal,” Caitlyn slowly makes her way back to the file she’d used as a marker and starts to pull files out, tucking them into the crook of her arm.
______
Vi stares at her phone screen and rubs at her eyes.
It’s fucking
late,
they
just
found out that Ekko’s being kept at least another night for observation and more testing, and she hasn’t heard from Caitlyn all day aside from the
“You’re welcome :)”
that had popped up hours ago in response to thanking her for the coffee.
Feeling like a pathetic high schooler waiting to get a locker note from their crush - not that Vi ever did shit like that - she puts away her phone.
Her dad nudges her shoulder a second after she leans her head back on the wall.
“Go home, Vi. Get some rest.”
Vi frowns at him, sitting up. “I can stay. What about you?”
“I’m leaving as soon as My and Clagg get here. Benzo’s bringing them and they’re taking the night shift.”
Nodding, Vi yawns. “Yeah, alright. I guess I should get a few hours if everything’s good here.”
“Everything’s good, kiddo,” Vander replies, and Vi takes a second to look at him.
He looks more tired than he has in a
long
time, and Vi hates the way any incident on the job makes her think about mortality - her own, her family’s…her parents’, and everything that had come with that when they were all too goddamn young.
Her dad claps her on the shoulder, giving her a reassuring shake, and Vi lets him pull her out of the old memories, smiling back at him.
Groaning, Vi stands up, stretching to crack her back…and her shoulders…and every fucking other thing, and she grimaces as her knee twinges when she walks across the hall to quietly open Ekko’s door.
Machines are still beeping softly in the background, the light in the little bathroom is on, and Ekko and Pow are fast asleep on the cramped hospital bed, holding hands.
Smiling, Vi shuts the door as quietly as she can.
“They’re out,” Vi tells her dad, jerking a thumb at the door.
He heaves a breath, rubbing his palms on his thighs and seeming relieved. “Good.”
It is a good sign - Ekko’s gonna be okay, but his injuries aren’t exactly
minor
and he’d been through hell, so the fact that he can sleep is really,
really
good.
“You should sleep, too,” her dad tells her, and Vi rolls her eyes, walking over to lean down and give him a hug.
“So should you,” she tells him, squeezing him tight, and when she stands up, he still seems tired, but he doesn’t seem quite as worried.
Vi tries to ignore the fact that he doesn’t exactly
agree
to get some goddamn sleep, and then she heads for the front of the hospital, jingling the truck keys between her fingers.
______
By the time she finally leaves the Archives, her notebook and her head both full of more questions than answers, Caitlyn’s
exhausted,
her injuries ache, her eyes hurt, her nose and throat feel raw from the smoke and, now, dust, and it takes effort not to slip into despair.
Pulling her phone out of her pocket, Caitlyn stares at the screen for slightly too long before shaking her head and putting it back in her pocket.
It’s incredibly late, and she doesn’t want to wake Vi, if, in fact, her firefighter is managing to actually get some sleep.
She’d been through the ringer, too, and Caitlyn doesn’t want to disturb her rest.
______
Vi taps her thumbs on the back of her phone case where it’s laying on her chest, picks it up, looks at the screen, puts it back down…
She’d been laying in bed and repeating the same goddamn pattern for a fucking while, trying to decide if she even
should
text Caitlyn and ask her how things are going at the Archives, and she’s no goddamn closer to an answer at…
fuck
…two thirty in the fucking morning.
Frustrated and wide the fuck awake, Vi sits up enough to throw her phone onto her nightstand and lays back down, eyes fixed on the fucked up paint on her ceiling.
______
Caitlyn lays in her bed, staring up at the ceiling, and considers how…empty her apartment seems.
It’s silly to think such a thing, given that Vi’s presence here last night and this morning was an
exception,
rather than the rule, but it’s true all the same.
It’s also silly that Caitlyn should feel so utterly
alone
in her bed, when it had never bothered her before, but, again…it’s true all the same.
Heaving a frustrated sigh, Caitlyn shuts her eyes, willing sleep to come as easily to her as it does when Vi is there with her, filling the silence with her easy breathing.
______
Vi shifts in her bed, rolling onto her side, and then, a few minutes later, flops onto her back. A few minutes after that, she tries her other side, and then after
that,
she twists over onto her stomach, burying her face into her pillow and muffling a frustrated groan.
It’s stupid and shitty and
weird
that no position in her
perfectly fucking fine
bed is as comfortable as being in
any
bed with Caitlyn fucking laying on top of her.
It
should
be more comfortable to be here by herself with plenty of room to stretch out and nobody’s hair in her face…
But it isn’t.
It just fucking isn’t.
Sighing, Vi pushes herself up onto her elbows and stares around her room.
A second later, she gets up, fixing her fucking sheets before padding barefoot into the kitchen to get some water.
The clock on the microwave tells her it’s after four o’clock in the morning, and, considering she started
trying
to sleep at two after she’d gotten back from the hospital and taken some time to decompress, it’s too goddamn late.
The sound of the tap running is fucking
loud
in her silent apartment, and Vi…well, Vi tries really fucking hard not to think about how
nice
it had been to have Caitlyn here over the weekend when they’d been stuck here together.
And she tries not to think about how
nice
it had been to be in Caitlyn’s apartment last night.
And then she tries not to smash her water glass to bits when she puts it into the sink because she’s frustrated but it’s been a long time since that’s made her destructive.
Scrubbing her hands down her face, Vi pads back to her bedroom to go stare at the ceiling some more and pretend she’s not a lovesick idiot who can’t manage one goddamn night in the apartment she’s lived in
alone
for fucking
years.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Reigen looks worried, and even if he
didn’t
look worried, the intermittent loss of control of Serizawa’s powers would be a pretty clear tip-off.
Serizawa can’t blame him. Being trapped in a body with no control over terrifying psychic powers is a nightmare. It’s a nightmare
he
fled into his room to escape, and he’d been born with them. Having them appear out of nowhere? He can’t imagine. Sure, there are those who’d say that it’s a godsend to a fake psychic like Reigen, but that would just betray a remarkable ignorance of what Reigen does. Psychic or not, he
helps
people. He connects to them. Touches them – sometimes literally, with their consent – but at least emotionally. Gets out, does the legwork, and actually solves their problems. Serizawa once watched him spend three hours tracing and diagnosing a wiring issue that could’ve killed someone. Sure, he said it was a poltergeist, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t make sure it was fixed before they left. Reigen’s never needed powers, and he’s always done exactly what he needed to without them.
But now? He can’t even take his hands out of his pockets without risking blasting something. He’s clearly not used to being taller, and Serizawa’s hulking frame isn’t ideal for reassuring clients
or
giving massages. The hair that will never be 100% tamed looks better than it normally does, but that probably required a lot of effort. And being in Reigen’s body is really bringing home to Serizawa how painfully out of shape he is. Reigen must be shocked at his physical weakness.
But he’s definitely not going to say that aloud, and Serizawa knows better than to bring it up when they’re trying to think positive. It’d just divert the whole conversation down a route he wouldn’t want to take in the best of times.
So, he crosses his arms and thinks,
‘What would Reigen say?’
He looks over at his own uncharacteristically stiff body (
‘This must be
torture
for him’)
and forces his smile broader.
“You’re right. I mean, Dimple was being sarcastic, but he wasn’t
wrong
when he said it’s a straightforward task. You want back in your body; I want back in mine. So, this should be easy!”
Reigen winces, and he gets the sense he’s missing something. But what? There’s no way he doesn’t want his body back.
‘… Oh.’
Serizawa’s been very pointedly
not
thinking about what he learned about Reigen this morning. It’s very much None of His Concern, as Reigen would say if he brought it up aloud. (At least, he hopes his boss would be clear on that point. If he weren’t, Serizawa would never know how angry he was, and the anxiety would eat him alive.) And he won’t pretend he 100% gets it – it’s been less than a day, and Reigen
looks
masculine enough at this point that he hasn’t really had much cause to think about it. But this must feel like some kind of cruel joke from Reigen’s perspective. A body that, useless and awkward and dangerous as it is, is at least that of a cis man, no modifications required? Like wishing on a monkey’s paw.
He needs to convey that he… well, not that he
understands,
but that he respects it. Without making things worse.
‘Of all the times to be bad with words.’
He sighs. “Look, Reigen, I – I know I don’t always say the right things in moments like these, but your body is great.” The pause is just long enough for it to register how
weird
that sounded. “I mean, not like that! I’m not saying – not that I’ve looked!” He clasps Reigen’s hands together and wrings at the fingers. His boss is still staring at him.
‘Okay. Breathe. Try again.’
(It’s easier to calm down knowing that he won’t break anything if he doesn’t.) “I… I don’t know what’s going through your head right now, but I know my body is hell to be in. And you’ve clearly put a lot of effort into yours. Um, not like that!”
‘How does Reigen-san talk so much every day?’
“You stay in shape. You look natural in a suit. You don’t blow things up just by getting upset.” Reigen’s smiling a little, although it’s got a quirk that makes him suspect that his boss is humoring him. “So, um… yeah. Honestly, it’s been nice hanging out in a body that works the way it’s supposed to. But it’s yours, so…” He makes a vague gesture towards Reigen, as if trying to throw the arms off and to Reigen.
Reigen’s smile’s a lot broader now, and his hands are firmly in his pockets. Behind him, the posters on the walls are fluttering against their tape. “You about done?”
“Um, yes.”
“Okay… so!” He strides over and moves to take a hand out of his pocket (probably to touch Serizawa reassuringly somehow), but visibly thinks better of it. “I think we need to straighten a few things out, here.
“There’s nothing
wrong
with your body. It works the way it’s ‘supposed to,’ because having psychic powers is natural for you. As for working out?” He shrugs. “You can certainly try it. I only started because Mob was doing it. Frankly, it’s a lot of work, and I probably wouldn’t keep it up if I could throw up shields like you can.
“Similar deal with dressing well – not the shield part, but you know.” He shrugs again, clearly trying to indicate some kind of hand gesture through the shoulder motion. “It’s doable, and looking natural comes with practice. It’s not like it’s some inherent part of my body.
“As for the parts of my body that
are
inherent – you do
not
want to deal with those long-term, trust me.” He chuckles. “I’m used to it. So!” He sticks out a hand and grabs Serizawa’s. There’s a zip of his own power – turned sharp and alien in a way it seldom is, for all that it feels like an intruder – and then there’s just Reigen’s showman smile transposed onto a face not at all the right shape for it. “Just focus on the good parts, and let’s swap back!”
And Serizawa tries. He really does. He closes his eyes and focuses on the feel of his own palm – dry while Reigen's hands are perpetually clammy. (How he keeps pit stains out of his suit is a mystery for another day.) He thinks about the shimmer of power and the moments his psychic abilities have given him wonder instead of fear. He thinks about the things he likes about himself – the eyes that look like his mom’s, the bend in his nose that reminds him of his long-deceased grandfather, the neck that doesn’t get cricks in it no matter how he sleeps on it. He thinks about the moments when he’s alone and his body feels comfortable and lived in and
his
in a way that Reigen’s
never
will.
… And nothing happens.
He opens his eyes to see Reigen’s smile has turned brittle and nervous. Right. Of course.
‘I should’ve seen this coming.’
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Emily x Joanna x Adon (Overwatch x Perfect Dark x Turok 2)
Emily had to get deeper. To a spaceship? Two hot female characters were in that ship, but who were they? Joanna and Adon from the Perfect Dark series and the Turok series, respectively, with Adon in her Turok 2 design, arguably the best one. Anyway, Emily, the filthy, filthy slut that she truly was, was very happy to see two naked women all alone in the ship, making it three. But would there be more? Emily's ideal pose was a nice way to greet more possible female visitors.
High-risk was written all over Professor Burnet. Even in family activities involving her, Professor Kukui, and Lei, Brigette, Professor Burnet's secret lesbian girlfriend, had to be dragged along with her, but Brigette didn't mind the high-risk fun she was getting herself into. Professor Kukui and Lei were having some father-son bonding, after Professor Burnet had told them that she had to use a public restroom, which was obviously a lie. Professor Burnet and Brigette didn't do their thing in the public restroom, but behind a large tree, right behind Professor Kukui and Lei, instead.
Not even the women's restroom at the movies, but behind Professor Kukui and Lei instead? That's another high-risk moment between Professor Burnet and Brigette, those crazy lovebirds. However, they were likely not to get caught. Why? Because Professor Burnet, Brigette, Professor Kukui, and Lei were the only ones in the same theatre room and Professor Kukui and Lei were highly invested into the movie.
Selene cheats on Lillie with Plumeria
Selene had to do it. She had to cheat on poor Lillie with the older and hotter Plumeria, but doing it right infront of Lillie was an even bigger ouch against the latter. Lillie's crying and tear-shedding didn't stop Plumeria and Selene from performing tribadism on each other.
Emily x Starfire x Blackfire (Overwatch x Teen Titans)
Starfire and Blackfire had reconciled! But how did they reconcile? Emily. Emily was 100% responsible for the reconcile because Emily had thought that Starfire and Blackfire deserved each other forever. Starfire and Blackfire were no longer enemies, Blackfire had become a Teen Titan, the other Teen Titans had accepted her, and Blackfire was a powerful addition to the Teen Titans team overall. But even better, Starfire and Blackfire had commenced a lesbian-incest relationship, something that Robin did not mind at all.
One day, Emily had to come over to the Titans tower for a friendly visit, but only Starfire and Blackfire were all alone in the Titans tower, passionately making out. Starfire and Blackfire were happy to see Emily because they had planned on having a sexy and hot threesome with her. And with that being said, Emily, Starfire, and Blackfire had commenced their threesome with each other, with Emily and Starfire making out and holding each other and Blackfire penetrating Emily's anus with her exclusive purple strapon.
Selene x Plumeria
Selene and Plumeria had to have more lesbian fun, but what was next for them? Selene's mother, who was into girls herself.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Vodka and Gamerfuel!, Part 5: Jungling
It turned out that
Worldstorm
did have NPCs, technically. There were just enough of them to feature basic masked stormtroopers in flat red or blue uniforms, trudging toward a point and shooting at towers or other NPCs, paying little attention to being struck down by the droves. It was an extremely rudimentary tower-capture Multiplayer Online Battle Arena.
Adamant shook his head. "These players, they are terrible."
In the "jungle" of dystopian-style buildings between the three lanes, styled like abandoned stretches of deteriorating futuristic highway, the creeps were mostly turrets and other robots. The towers were imposing sci-fi laser cannons, loosing beams of death mostly upon the NPCs.
Eyeing the cannons, Silver muttered, "…I want one."
The goal was to take out the enemy towers and then the final boss—a bigger tower—at the enemy base. If a player died, they had a delayed respawn. Killing NPCs, creeps, towers, and rival players granted XP that could be used to upgrade gear. Everyone started with the same equipment they had in the prior round, but could swap it out if it wasn't useful anymore. The upgrades generally made the gear do more damage or provide a more impressive effect—like the grenade launcher releasing a much bigger volley explosion similar to what had taken most of the team out at the end of the first round.
At least the rounds were fast. They had figured out a danger multiplier timer that tended to make matches finish in 15 minutes, even if stalemated.
Contrary to Companion Cube's belief that they'd be in a Swiss ranking—essentially fighting against groups with similar scores from the first round—the matchups seemed pretty arbitrary. So far, the team had been facing people who were barely a challenge. Cube thought they must be saving the highest-skilled players for the next day's elimination bracket, but at least using speed of win and relative skill for some kind of ELO calculation to decide on the final elimination seeds.
In this third round of the MOBA, the rogues were pressed into the final assault on the base. All of the enemy players hid behind chest-high walls, trying to shoot at them and slow their inevitable assault on the final tower.
"Ah, man!" one of the guys on the team exclaimed (this team seemed to be all guys, most of whom had beefed up their avatars ridiculously, making them big targets). "You guys are damned cheaters! What kind of wallhacks are you using!? Nobody can move like that!"
It turned out that voice chat with opponents was still on.
"…Good to know," Silver remarked.
"We can't lose to these guys," Shadow Boxer said to the rest of the squad, scanning for approach paths where his antigrav suit could be leveraged.
"Why are you even going cross-gen?" one of the other guys shouted at them, missing Silver again with his Phase Rifle. "No way you have three actual girls on your team and are this good!"
"Oh kid, you're lucky this is just a game…" Shadow Boxer muttered to himself at the last remark.
The final area was a generic sci-fi courtyard with a 10-meter-high partial wall, opened to the three incoming highways. The open air above and the boss cannon against a wall made it look like the front of a military base. Rubble served as chest-high walls throughout.
Bounding up to the courtyard wall, Shadow Boxer leapt, testing whether his armor would let him work his way up the sheer face to get a peek at the opposing team's layout. With the upgraded antigrav, he easily bounded to the top ring of the wall. He could now see the enemies below—haphazardly arrayed with no true discipline. Three were currently up, their melee wielders having dropped early in the fight and still waiting for respawn.
"Oh! I understand now. You are idiots," Adamant exclaimed, backhanding one of the guys with a hammer. He turned to his team. "Do not worry, I figured it out! They are some sort of charity team of mental defectives! I suspect they were invited as part of the Making of Wishes Foundation!"
His smash with the thunder hammer flung one of the interchangeable dudes all the way against the back wall with its upgrades, but he was narrowly able to duck behind the wall before the boss' death ray scorched him.
"Bah! Where are the peasants?! Their ilk should serve to distract the cannon nicely." Sadly, the NPCs spawned outside the final courtyard, so with everyone engaged in a final fight, the friendly NPCs and the hostile ones were essentially stalemated outside.
Hearing the other players, Silver began a startlingly-fast sprint directly at them, dodging shots as she went, hoping her movement had the shock effect she was aiming for. Reaching one of the chest-high walls, she hurdled it, kicking off at the top to gain some height before coming down hard with her sword on one of the sad man children.
"Three up, all ranged. Two are bunched up close to the center, one out to the right," Shadow Boxer called out to his team, then ran across the top of the wall briefly before angling a jump to come down towards the two Silver was charging at from above.
Adamant tossed a smoke grenade to cover Silver from fire by the main cannon on her approach, then lumbered up behind her, trying to follow.
"Hax!" one of the guys complained as Silver's upgraded sword bisected him and he despawned.
Hearing Shadow's cue, Silver surveyed the tower for climbing points and started making her way toward the remaining opponents. With Silver having taken out one, Shadow Boxer dropped down on a second opponent nearby, plasma knives flashing.
While Lodestone and Marxist laid down suppressing fire, Adamant and Boxer easily took out the remaining two bunkered enemies. Silver climbed the boss tower, which had convenient stairs and catwalks, smashing her sword into glowing energy spots that were clearly enemies temporarily despawned, and Lodestone and Marxist turned their guns on the tower, which managed to clip Adamant with its death ray but did little damage through his holoplate.
"Hey Silver, you want a hand up there?" Shadow Boxer asked, springing up the side of the tower and looking for any hitboxes along the way to strike.
Silver continued upward, trying to navigate into a place where the giant death ray would have a harder time reaching her. "Sure!"
"Call out if anybody needs heals!" Shadow Boxer yelled down at the rest of the team, gleefully progressing upwards.
The towers had no real downward arc, so once melee was up on them, it was up to the defending players to do something about it. One of the guys respawned just in time for Adamant to hammer-punt him back out of the arena. With focused fire, it only took a few more seconds to secure the victory.
With a particle effect display that was admittedly still pretty cool—even after seeing it three times already—the team was dropped back into the loading environment.
"Good job, y'all," Cube said through the earpieces. "Bathroom break if you need it. Looks like the next match is in 10 minutes, and that ought to be it until the elimination tomorrow."
Disengaging from his rig with more ease now that he'd done it a couple of times, Shadow Boxer grabbed some water and a handful of snacks. "I have to admit, I'm having even more fun with this than I thought I would, but it feels like it's got to get harder, right? Any word back from your niece, Adamant?" he added more quietly to the big Markovian, offering him a bottle of water.
"Really? To me, it feels… unfulfilling," Adamant said, pulling out his phone to check. There was still no response from Tara Markov. "Ugh. Like as not, she screens her calls. She once did the same when I mocked her choice of sweater at Septembersfest," Adamant grumbled.
Delighted at another satisfactory win, Silver made her way over to the snacks and gleefully helped herself to victory chips. "I'm sure. There's gotta be a twist somewhere."
That round had taken longer than the first couple, and Cube suggested, "I don't know if they were randomly assigning you or whether they're trying to dial in the exact skill of the people who didn't do well in the free-for-all."
"I mean, I wouldn't be shocked if this wasn't just a way for them to get some free testing for their matchmaking," Shadow Boxer said, his tone full of the kind of confidence that only came from skimming a wiki article and some suggested search results.
"I guess maybe they're making sure you being the second-to-last group out wasn't a fluke or something," Cube mused. "Y'all have got to be toward the top seed, even if you lose next round."
Adamant pondered why a company would develop a war game as a means to power a dating service. He concluded that the two shared a number of important similarities. "So, you think we could be paired with someone much like us by this matchmaking?" he asked, a worried edge in his voice, but continued checking his phone and saw a couple of texts from White Willow asking if he had any plans after the video game tonight. His attention was suddenly absorbed as he replied that yes, he had plans to see her after the game, should she be available.
"Cube, any info on how the other matches are going? Particularly how our one-time allies, the junior League, and the Calculator's teams are doing?" Shadow Boxer asked.
"They aren't giving out that information yet," Cube admitted. "They haven't really even posted a good way to distinguish the teams. I'm not sure if that was just an oversight or because they want to keep it mysterious."
"Dumb!" Silver called, her mouth full of Doritos.
Nodding as he grabbed another Gamerfuel can, Shadow Boxer said, "A hundred bucks that we end up against at least one of them this next round."
White Willow replied quickly, mentioning that there was some kind of Eurosynth Electrodance band at the Variety Playhouse she'd be interested in seeing tonight. It probably wasn't the actual music genre, but that was what Adamant remembered from when she'd mentioned it before. Silver slipped over, trying to side-eye Adamant's phone. "OOOH! Eurosynth is so good! So many happy machines. We should all go!"
Adamant managed to turn his kneejerk objection into a long sigh. "Very well. And I accept your wager, Shadow. Perhaps it will make our next contest a shade more interesting."
Silver cackled and wiggled her eyebrows at him before ducking back toward her rig.
He began tapping out a message to Willow about Silver's surprising fandom for the dancing musics.
Shadow Boxer smiled, partly because it was nice not to be the one feeling awkward for a change. He slapped a hundred-dollar bill on the table before heading back to his rig.
Lodestone wandered in from the longest restroom break of all time. "Nicely done, all," she said.
"If anyone else but Lodestone wants to use the bathroom, time is now," Companion Cube warned.
"Peeing is for the weak!" Silver declared, still excited, as she climbed back into her rig.
Looking at the empty bottle of water and the nearly empty can of Gamerfuel, Shadow Boxer stopped what he was doing and dashed toward the bathroom. "One sec!"
J'Ayne took care of her bodily needs and then sat back down, ready for the next round. Adamant strapped himself back in. Lodestone settled into her rig. Seconds before the loading screen resolved into a new round, Shadow Boxer raced back in and got situated.
The fourth round was the same as the first. They were dropped into their own base courtyard, a mirror of the one they'd just cleared of enemies. All their gear was depowered back to its basic version, and there was a level-up terminal right by the spawn point to spend XP on upgrades. Their uniforms were red this time, and red "peasants," as Adamant called them, began to appear outside and start heading on their nihilistic crawl toward death down individual highways. As always, a three-layered shield appeared protecting their boss tower until the smaller towers were destroyed.
Adamant followed the same strategy he had before: upgrade the holoplate until the interface wouldn't allow him to anymore, then trundle off into the cover of the dystopian building jungle, hoping to ambush some hapless opponent before they spotted him and ran off.
J'Ayne tried to blend into the background, Silver prepared to move ahead and scout the competition, Lodestone looked for a good spot to settle in and started scanning the field for targets and threats to her team, and Shadow Boxer set out to farm more easy XP off the NPCs.
Unlike previous times, Adamant soon had contact in the concrete jungle with a similarly-burly individual who did not immediately run away. Equipped with a vibro sword and marine armor, the man, his voice far too deep to manage Guns n' Roses, nonetheless sang, "Welcome to the jungle!" as he charged at Adamant.
"Wait, Viktor! One of my compatriots was given a message for you! Something more important than the game!" Adamant held up his hands, stepping back and trying to buy a moment for the other man to listen before he struck.
"Man, you guys need to freaking keep to code names. Jerk move," the big guy said, swinging his sword very effectively at Adamant. "And we got your text. Have your people call our people if you want to try to set up some trick."
Adamant gritted his teeth and threw his weapon at the other man's feet. "Is not trick. Has to do with the tech you carry within you. Is more important than this contest."
There was a brief look of consideration on Cyborg's face before he followed through with his swing and sent Adamant to the respawn room. The respawn room was very boring.
Companion Cube helpfully pinged everyone's minimap with Adamant's last location in the jungle.
Silver pressed forward, moving toward Adamant, hoping to impress the seriousness of the situation upon Stone. "Drat," she muttered under her breath as she assessed the scene. She arrived just in time to see Adamant despawn.
Lodestone scanned the area, looking for NPCs to take out. Only one of the lanes seemed to have enemy player contact. The far left lane was being attacked by a small female avatar with a shotgun. No other players were obvious, as the center and right lanes of NPCs stalemated at the middle.
From far behind, the sniper observed the situation. The mini map indicated that NPCs might soon appear in the left lane, but the sniper rifle wasn't capable of reaching that far without moving at least a bit down the highway. This would require abandoning the others, at least for the moment.
"Companion Cube, do we have enough points to advance even if we lose this round?" Adamant asked, his voice tinged with concern. "Or however this is arranged?"
Cube responded, "Yeah, like I said, you all are likely to be close to top seed unless their algorithm is screwed up. Today is just about making the elimination rounds interesting tomorrow."
Lodestone, unable to build XP from her current location, moved to cover Silver while J'Ayne looked for targets from points of concealment. A girl with a shotgun was pushing forward on the left lane. No other obvious targets appeared. J'Ayne activated her stealth suit and tried to go after her.
"Damn," Silver said, after Adamant's sudden disappearance. She turned to Cyborg, her hand prepared for action. "If you need help, we have the means to provide it," she said, ready to move quickly and lethally if necessary. "Or, you could just be stubborn and destroy the place where everyone you care about lives," Silver retorted. "I guess that's a thing you could do."
Cyborg wasn't amused. "You guys are being a serious buzzkill," he complained, charging at Silver with his sword. "This is, like, the one weekend we get off. Don't you have a bank to rob or evil monsters to summon or something?"
"Or big dumb brick walls to kill? Sure." Silver evaded his swing as best she could and rolled quickly out of the way, to then lunge at his back.
Lodestone aimed for Cyborg's armor, trying to make a shot that wasn't very threatening but that would make her feel better. Meanwhile, using the exchange between Silver and Cyborg to hopefully generate an opportunity, Shadow Boxer leaped from a low ledge, knives slashing, "Listen Robotman, maybe take a moment to think what it means if a bunch of people like us are trying to get you to not be a risk to all the good folks living their boring little lives."
As three people charged Cyborg, some laser arrows started firing down from a concealed position up high and toward the enemy side.
"Someone give him a contact number," Adamant instructed the team. "Promise him we shall fight honestly so long as he swears he will speak with us between this match and the next."
Silver evaded Cyborg's swing as best she could, rolling quickly out of the way, then lunging at his back. Cyborg's complaint rang out, "You guys lack credibility!"
Meanwhile, the archer from a concealed perch shouted, "Plus Calculator's group already tried a head$#!% on us!" Another laser arrow narrowly missed Boxer.
Working on a hunch, Silver ducked and weaved, attempting to lunge at Cyborg, trying to make hand contact. It was just a simulation, but she hoped to learn something about the forces binding them. Lodestone, scanning for the archer, moved to a spot of rubble for cover.
Meanwhile, J'Ayne rushed forward down the left lane with her own shotgun, invisible, but she spotted a short male avatar with similar gear and a staff just as he spotted her. "The stealth one on your left, 10:00," the young man's voice declared to the girl with the shotgun, as he began to move serpentine toward J'Ayne.
J'Ayne ducked, pivoted and switched targets from girl to snitch. Even though it was clear that she couldn't actually see J'Ayne, the two team members seemed to have some good rapport and Terra managed to aim close enough to clip J'Ayne with her shotgun as Red Robin continued to get close.
The Martian switched tactics and tried to stealth to a different line of attack, invisible again, but Red Robin smirked, keeping pace to watch J'Ayne try to stealth off, seemed to be moving his head to get a good sense of the terrain, then BOOM. Somehow their sniper took her out with a headshot even from stealth.
Evading blows and arrows as best he could, Shadow Boxer growled back at the archer with more emotion than he intended, "I get it, you can't be bothered to take the risk. Bad deeds mean that's all we are. People like you are why we end up people like us." Pivoting hard, he used his suit to propel him in a horizontal leap, knives aimed at Cyborg's legs.
Silver, meanwhile, managed to tag Cyborg with her hand, narrowly avoiding a backswing as Boxer distracted him. The encounter sent a burst of static through the system, as firewalls refused to transmit unauthorized data. She hissed, frustrated with the firewalls. "I'd rather do this in person," she said, shifting again and swiping at Cyborg before disengaging, heading back toward the left tower.
Adamant stalked back and forth in the respawn room, frustrated with the boring walls, seeing J'Ayne show up in front of him just as he was finally let
out
of the penalty box, dropping out at the back of their courtyard. J'Ayne said something very unfortunate in Martian.
"LEFT TOWER UNDER ATTACK!" warned the system.
Lodestone, on the lookout for the archer, finally spotted a flash of the light bow from the top of a ruined building in the jungle. She fired at the flash, missing narrowly. The archer was more adept at dodging snipers than she was at being one herself.
Down to a melee between Cyborg and Boxer, the large man shouted, "You guys realize this is the wrong venue, right? Like the clown asks, why so serious?"
"I'm buying us all books for the holidays," Lodestone chimed in. "How to Talk So Kids Will Listen, and Listen So Kids Will Talk."
Silver's move to head towards the tower turned out to be a feint, as she doubled back, to gain some altitude by climbing one of the buildings to get above Cyborg and launch herself from overhead. Huffing and puffing at a very slow sprint, Adamant re-entered the area. "At least… have my niece… answer her messages!" he yelled as he charged into the jungle and took a huge swing at robot man.
"Because we got told in the middle of this that some asshole that's half machine, interfaced in here with us, potentially in ways that aren't using a normal rig has Apocalyptan tech!" Shadow Boxer yelled at Cyborg, making high swipes as Adamant barreled in.
With a surprised face at that reveal, and between the concentrated attack, the three melee attackers managed to finally deal enough damage to Cyborg to despawn him, but not without taking several laser arrow hits from Arsenal before the archer fell back.
"And how would laser arrows even WORK?!" Adamant roared in general indignation to the digital world at large.
"Why are we even bothering trying to do some good here?!" Shadow Boxer said with exasperation, slapping a healing patch on the most wounded of the group.
Lodestone sent another shot toward the archer. "We have incredibly soft hearts. Fluffy like clouds, they are."
Silver, upon seeing Cyborg despawn, turned and climbed upwards toward the archer, taking cover where she could. "Because living on Earth is pretty nice?" she said as she made her move.
"Ugh, you want help or should I book it to the left tower?" Shadow Boxer asked, shaking his head.
The system warned, "LEFT TOWER DESTROYED!"
He corrected himself, "Well, that solves that question."
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Naruto :……..bueno esto es incómodo……-dijo al ver como erza y saeko se miraban con sonrisas en sus caras y se daban un apretón.
Muchos verían que se llevaban bien….pero las sonrisas tensas más al aura que desprendía cada una (erza es rojo y saeko morado ) decían lo contrario.
Actualmente se encontraban en earthland en la ciudad de magnolia afuera de la casa o más bien mansión que consiguió Irene para el y su harem.
En su opinión era un lindo gesto de parte de ella.
…..Aunque la verdad sus intenciones eran otra….
Naruto : bueno…..que tal si…….- no se le ocurría nada.
Erza : (suspiro) creo que deberíamos…intentar llevarnos bien no lo crees ? por el bien de todos.- dijo siendo la mas madura de los 3.
Saeko :….si supongo que si…..pero…enserio magia? ninjas? Viajes multiversales? Me esta doliendo la cabeza de pensar en todo.
Erza : te acostumbraras.
Eso no ayuda en nada a saeko….
Naruto : eso me recuerda esta bien que dejaras a tus amigos ? – le pregunto a su nueva prometida ya que dudaba que solo quisiera ser su novia o amante.
Saeko : estarán bien….los ayudaste mucho a limpiar casi la mitad de la ciudad.- dijo de forma irónica.
Ya que naruto con ayuda de sus clones en tan solo 2 días ayudo a los sobrevivientes a limpiar al menos un 35% de la ciudad de zombies haciendo una pequeña fortaleza.
Aun que takashi y rei todavía querían ir a buscar a sus padres, kohta y ella sabia que sus padres estarían bien, saya se iba a quedar con sus padres y la pequeña Alice se quedaría con la enfermera shizuka.
Hablando de ella……después de que ella y naruto tuvieron relaciones sexuales ella y miku estuvieron mirando a naruto con lujuria, incluso cuando se fueron ambas lo miraban con dolor y decepción.
Saeko : ( mmmmm si es cierto lo que pienso….entonces ellas…..tendré que hablar con erza de esto…ya que ella es la alfa o matriarca ).- por lo que dijo naruto el era el último de su clan.
Si el quería reestablecer su clan era necesario una matriarca y erza fue la primera.
Además su aura que desprendía era de alguien con autoridad así que se vio obvio que ella seria.
Naruto : bien…supongo que ire al siguiente universo…no hay problema verdad ? – les pregunto ya que para el su opinión valía mucho.
Al ver que ambas asintieron se preparo para irse.
Naruto : bien me iré en seguida.- acto seguido se acerco a erza para darle un beso el cual se empezó a tonar de mayor volumen cuando empezaron a usar sus lenguas y naruto le agarraba el trasero a erza sobre su falda.
Erza : Mmmm!!!- gimió al sentir como naruto empezaba a jugar con su trasero.
EJEM !!!
Ambos se detuvieron y miraron hacia saeko la cual tenia su seño fruncido pero tenia un sonrojo en sus mejillas.
Naruto se rio de esto y fue a darle también beso de despedida, que incluía una batalla de lenguas haci como que jugara con su trasero.
Naruto : las veo luego chicas !!!- para después irse hacia el circulo de tele transportación.
Viendo que naruto se había ido saeko decidió hablar con erza sobre cierto tema.
Saeko : erza….dime una cosa…cuantas mujeres planeas que el tenga en su harem ?- le pregunto la peliroja la cual miraba en la dirección en el cual su amado se había ido.
Erza : ……….alrededor de 6……- dijo después de una pausa.
Saeko : ( 6 eh ? eso me dificulta qu-
Erza : ya nosotras buscaremos el resto.- interrumpiendo el pensamiento de saeko.
Saeko : espera!....a que te refieres con que busquemos el resto ?- pregunto con duda ante lo que dijo su compañera.
Volteando a mirar a la pelimorado.
Erza : cuando dije 6 me referia a los universos, dime……hubo alguna otra chica que mostro interés en el ?- pregunto.
Saeko :……si……al menos 2….de eso quería hablarte pero por lo que me dices……- dijo mirando con duda cual es el plan de la peliroja.
Erza : lo supuse…..este es el plan, cuando llegue la 6 chica, cada una buscara en su universo quien es una candidata para que se una al harem.- dijo de forma seria sorprendiendo a saeko.
Saeko : wow……eso suena……..no se como decirlo…pero me gusta el plan.- dijo mirando a erza con una sonrisa la cual le devolvió la peliroja.
Erza : lo se lo estuve pensando hace unos dias cuando mi madre me regalo esta casa……fue cuando me di cuenta que mi madre le gusta a naruto.- dijo perdiendo su sonrisa y poniendo una cara pensativa.
Saeko : espera !! tu madre ?!- pregunto algo incrédula.
Erza : si ella fue quien nos dio la idea del harem…….no me di cuenta de eso hasta que la vi muy cooperativa.- dijo ya que se vio que Irene quería algo mas que la felicidad de ambos.
Saeko : mierda no se que decir.- dijo algo perpleja por esto.
Erza : si……dejando de eso…cuéntame sobre las candidatas que tienes en mente.- dijo ingresando a la mansión seguida de saeko.
Saeko : claro…por cierto una pregunta.- dijo mirando el trasero de la pelijora el cual se mecia de lado a lado.
Erza : si ?- pregunto dirigiéndose hacia el comedor.
Saeko : cuando hacemos un trio ?- le pregunto de manera pervertida.
Erza volteo a ver a su compañera y tenia que admitir que tenia un cuerpo que muchas desearían tener.
Erza : mmmm cuando naruto regrese, tengo que admitir que la idea de un trio me esta excitando….pero hay que resistir, seriamos muy malas esposas si dejamos fuera a nuestro querido no crees ?- le dijo de forma burlesca a la pelimorado la cual se rio.
Saeko : si tienes razón.- al finalizar de hablar llegando al comedor.
Universo : 4610 : DxD
Naruto había llegado al nuevo universo, mirando al su alrededor vio que estaba en un bosque.
Cuando se dirigía a hacer reconocimiento escucho una explosión y de dicho lugar detecto unas firmas de energía.
Eran 7 pero por alguna razón una de esas energías lo llamaba, era extraño pero sentía que estaba conectado a ella
Entrando rápidamente en su modo sennin para aumentar su velocidad llego al aérea donde se encontraban las firmas de energía.
De un lado había 6 los cuales eran 4 hombres, una mujer y un niño.
¿? : se acabo yasaka….te usaremos para abrir la brecha dimensional y no hay nadie que no lo impida.- dijo el hombre que portaba una lanza.
Al otro lado se veía una mujer en el suelo con un atuendo tradicional de doncella del santuario , y sobre eso llevaba una bata blanca cerrada por una cinta roja y una corona dorada.
pero su atuendo se encontraba un poco rasgado supuso que por una pelea.
Pero lo que mas le llamo la atención a naruto fueron las orejas de zorro que sobresalían de su cabeza y las nueve colas de zorro que poseía.
Naruto : ( kyubi !!!).- pensó en estado de shock.
Vio como el sujeto se acercaba a la mujer que se encontraba tratando de ponerse de pie con dificultad.
Pero por alguna razón……su cuerpo se movió solo….
Dentro de el algo le decía que la protegiera aun que no la conocía.
Naruto : shuriken kagebushin no jutsu!!!!- grito lanzo un shuriken el cual se convirtió en miles y miles que se dirigían al sujeto de lanza y sus colegas.
En eso el sujeto de la lanza vio con los ojos abiertos como miles de shuriken se dirigían hacia el haciendo que retrocediera junto con sus colegas.
¿? : quien ah sido ??!! – grito para saber el responsable del ataque.
Naruto : yo !! – grito aterrizando enfrente de la mujer kyubi.
Todos se sorprendieron de la cantidad de energía que desprendía el chico pero mas la mujer kyubi la cual reconoció enseguida.
¿? : ( eso es…..senjutsu !! )- pensó incrédula que un humano estuviera usando ese poder.
Naruto : no se quienes sean ustedes y me vale verga, no dejare que la lastimen !! – finalizo sacando unos kunas los cual envolvió con chakra de viento.
Siguiente capitulo: NARUTO X YASAKA
Continuara...........................................
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Two days later, Kagome stood in front of Kagura’s apartment door, a heavy tote bag digging into her shoulder, heart still thrumming from the elevator ride up. She’d had enough of the demoness dodging her calls—last-minute emergency meetings, vague text messages, nail appointments that somehow lasted five hours. Finally, Kagome had threatened to have Hojo dig into Naraku’s hospital records just to get her attention. It was an obvious bluff—Hojo was far too decent to actually do it—but she was banking on Kagura not knowing that.
The door swung open before Kagome could knock a second time.
“Finally, you’re here,” Kagura sighed, stepping aside to allow her friend to glance at the room while walking in. And
what
a room it was.
The place looked like a cross between an opulent stage set and the inside of a jewelry box. Feather boas draped over curtain rods like lazy cats. Walls glittered with ornate fans—silk, lace, gold-trimmed—arranged in overlapping layers like dragon scales. Plush velvet cushions in jewel tones were piled so high on every surface that it was hard to tell where the actual furniture began. A gilded bar cart sparkled in the corner, lit by the glow of a chandelier shaped like a blooming lotus. The faint scent of jasmine and expensive wine hung in the air.
“Sit, sit,” Kagura said, waving toward a couch drowning under a tidal wave of embroidered throw pillows. “What do you want to drink? I’ve got it all—gin, vodka, sake, whisky, wine.”
Trying, and failing, to settle into the cushion avalanche without disappearing entirely, Kagome let her tote bag fall to the floor and shook her head. “No thanks. I’m not here for a drink.”
Unbothered, Kagura veered for the fridge. “Fine. Food, then. Let’s see… I’ve got leftover takeout from last night, a cheese board if we get creative, or I could order from that little place you love—”
“Just stop it!” Kagome burst out. The effect was somewhat ruined by the fact that she was currently half-submerged in a mountain of silk and velvet. Huffing, she shoved a half-dozen pillows to the floor until she sat high enough to glare properly. “Tell me what happened to Onigumo. Please.”
The slight tremor in her voice on the last word seemed to pull the wind right out of Kagura’s sails. She closed the fridge without a word and crossed the room, sinking onto a purple velvet lounge across from Kagome. Without meeting her friend's eyes, she opened a slim metal case on the low table between them, plucked out a cigarette, and lit it.
“Toga set the trap,” Kagura said at last, her voice carrying the faintest thread of defeat. “I made the call, lured Onigumo in. Sesshoumaru… delivered the punishment.” She took a slow, unhurried drag, letting the smoke coil languidly around her face before it drifted upward. “And Onigumo got the point. He won’t be coming within a mile of you again.”
Kagome could tell she was being vague on purpose. Whether it was to spare her from the full truth of what Sesshoumaru had done or because Kagura simply didn’t want to relive it, she couldn’t tell.
Sinking back into the remaining pillows, Kagome weighed just how much she really wanted to know. She’d seen the pictures. She’d read the theories. And honestly? Knowing the exact details of Sesshoumaru’s “punishment” wouldn’t change anything. Demons didn’t play by human rules. Whatever happened, the former CEO had received not just a physical reckoning but a legal one too.
She looked back up at Kagura, who was already halfway through her second cigarette. “Okay,” Kagome said finally.
Kagura froze mid-tap to knock ash into a tray, crimson eyes widening. “That’s it? Okay? No questions?”
Fiddling with the strap of her tote, Kagome shook her head. “No. But…” She hesitated, biting her lip like the words might sting on the way out. “I wish he’d told me.”
“You mean Sesshoumaru?” Kagura asked. When Kagome just nodded, she smirked knowingly. “For someone who fears little, he’s still worried you won’t talk to him. And, frankly, we’ve been busy tearing down and rebuilding an entire company with Toga’s resources. Which—” Her tone brightened suddenly. “—reminds me. I’ve got a lead for you. Out-of-town assignment. My friend needs someone who’s good on the ground and can actually string a sentence together. You popped into my head immediately.”
Kagome blinked. “Wait… are you pitching me a job right now?”
“You bet your ass I am,” Kagura said, crushing her cigarette out in the tray. Rising from the lounge she added, “Come on. Let’s get dinner and I’ll tell you everything.”
“Do you mind if Hojo and Jak join? I promised to meet them tonight.”
“Sure, sure.” Kagura’s gaze dropped to the overstuffed black bag Kagome’s slung over shoulder. “What’s in there, anyway?”
“Oh, just a few things Hojo swore he threw out. Found them while unpacking at Sango’s place. I figured I’d hand them back and see if he can manage to actually dispose of them this time.”
Kagura arched a brow, curiosity flaring. One obsidian-painted nail hooked the zipper open. She peered inside, her expression brightening as she reached in and pulled out
The David
. “Oh my… Mind if I keep this one?”
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
All of the King's closest family gathered in his private chambers, in order to stay in his company in the final moments. Everyone, apart from the three year old Daenerys, daughter of Aemon and Naerys, understood what was happening. Aegon III was dying. From the first moments Daeron saw his father, he seemed to him as unnaturally thin. This, however, would have been a drastic understatement now. All that remained from his body were bones and skin, he barely had the strength now to drink water, as most of the meals were tossed undigested. Even getting up from the bed was difficult for him. It was impossible to function like that and they all knew it. The wedding of Daeron and Daena was probably the last moment the Crown Prince had seen his father in acceptable condition. About a week after, his state suddenly got worse and haven't improved ever since.
- You know - the King started, with his skinny hand in Viserys's ones - the old man was right, after all. He gave me half a year and here I lie, exactly this many months on my deathbed.
- Save your strength, father. You'll need it in your disease - Elaena decided to proclaim, probably referring to something she had read recently. The girl wasn't reading books, she was eating them, and they contained various topics.
Aegon smiled weakly.
- I'm afraid the time for that is long passed, my dragon - he stopped, seeing his youngest daughter close to tears after she heard that - Don't cry. The Stranger comes for everyone. But save the part about of strength. You will need a lot of it in the years to come. Can you promise me that you will stay strong?
Elaena nodded, to much of Aegon's pleasure. Viserys coughed to turn the attention to him and asked his sibling:
- Is there anything that we can do now for you, brother?
- Actually, yes. I... I need to have a chat with my Heir. All of you, please, leave us - the King said, finding some power in his voice.
The family started coming towards the door.
- You too, Daena - Daeron gave his wife a small nudge, as she seemed glued to the floor for a few seconds, with a sad expression on her face. Of course, the fact his hand landed just below her back was a coincidence. Total coincidence.
The Princess understood the gesture and Daeron received a brief smirk from her. Rhaena, who probably saw it, too, turned as red as a tomato. It was expected. His younger sister was a shy girl of twelve who was blushing even when she was seeing any pair hugging for more than two seconds, let alone kissing. "Someone would need to speak with her about it, but... Who?" The Crown Prince wondered.
They finally were left alone. The current King and the future one.
- Father - Daeron started. He wasn't sure what to add next, though. He knew what to do when speaking with the Lords and creating alliances and solutions for his plans after the coronation, but his father? He remained an unsolved mystery for him.
And, too add to a mystery, Aegon started talking:
- My son. My dear boy. I know I wasn't there for you in most cases - the attack of cough interrupted him.
- You've taught me well, father - Daeron thought it was important to state that - You and uncle Viserys.
- Mostly him, I'll admit that. But it's not what I meant. When you're looking at me, what do you really think?
The truth, then? He didn't want to say it, not with his father on his deathbed, but the words came, unwanted, anyway:
- I hardly know you. After mother died, you managed to get closer to Daena, to Elaena, even to Rhaena and Baelor and we both know that even trying to get on with both of them is a task on its own. Yet not me. I've seen it on your face, but I can't understand. Why? What is wrong with me that pains you so much?
Aegon's voice was no louder than a mere whisper:
- Wrong? No... There is nothing wrong - he started coughing again, but this time, Daeron didn't relent. He felt he was getting in inches to, maybe, at last, crush that wall existing between them.
- Then why?
- You're… You are too much like her. In too many cases.
All the pieces in the mind of the Prince finally connected.
'He looks exactly like you, my love' - the earliest of his memories, with his parents looking at him in his cradle. 'I was just as hurried as you' - he recalled Daenaera's voice when he first walked and after some time, called his mother in words for the fist time. He memorised Aegon's rare jape when his son started asking so many questions when he was six - 'One could think you want to outdo your mother with all this curiosity. Trust me. She asked for almost everything when she was your age'. 'And I still do it!', it was her answer. And, Gods, he realised at last. No one knew Daenaera Velaryon better than her husband. No one longed for her as much as the King. These brief memories almost certainly weren't the only things in Daeron was reminding him of mother.
- Is this… truly the case? - he asked, with his throat dry.
His father nodded:
- Yes. I tried, son, I can assure you of that. I was enough in the cases of your siblings, but for you… I was just too weak - did he spot the tears in his father's eyes? - Every look on your face, every word you spoke, every smile you gave… It was like that cursed bedchamber when your little sister was born. I'm sorry son, I truly am. You deserved so much better than this.
Daeron felt… unsettled. He was longing for this for years, to finally spat it on his father's face, to accuse him of leaving him on his own for so long. But knowing what he just received, he just could not have brought the same level of anger he once possessed about the matter.
- You know - Aegon started again before he could respond to any of that - I wasn't like that all my life. Ask Viserys or one of your aunts if you wish to know more, but I was once a normal kid like most of them are. Curious, gullible, a bit more serious than I should be at nine, yet I remember the old times, as we were. Before the Dance. Before it all went to Seven Hells and back. First was Lucerys, a shy, but good boy and brother, no older than Daena is now. Murdered as if he was some criminal by the Kinslayer. Then my dragon, Stormcloud.
- You cried after him? - that was out of character. Daeron knew his father once possessed a dragon, but he refused to talk about him with anyone and had this resentment for all dragons for all of his Heir's life. To think he once loved one of this creatures?
- He saved me, sacrificing himself for this task - his father answered - but he was too small to held both me and Viserys. We all thought my only younger brother was lost, too. If I had more in me, if I did what the older brother should, maybe another death wouldn't have followed. Jace. The Heir to mother's Throne. He would be such a good King. Apart from Viserys, he was the only one from my generation who truly had it in him to rule. Yet, he had fallen, when he was seeking any traces for our lost, little brother. He gave his life for this, because I wasn't able to do my duty. And Joffrey, oh, how he was longing to fly on Tyraxes to a battle. He didn't receive a chance and finished… torn apart by the multitude in King's Landing - he paused, exhausted.
- Father, it's alright - Daeron tried to calm Aegon down - I understand.
- Let me finish, son. I kept it for way too long in me. My father… I don't know the details, I didn't want to hear them. But he avenged Luke, at least. For once in is life he did something entirely against his interests and he perished in the process. And Rhaenyra, my mother, my beloved mum... - the tears were rolling down his cheeks - all of the previous hadn't broken me, but seeing her devoured by this… Golden Beast… Something in me died that day and never truly recovered. War and bloodshed, that's why I am so broken now. Why I have been for the last twenty eight years.
He continued after a brief moment of silence:
- I suspect what is on your mind Daeron, when you'll finally became King. I'm not blind man. But remember this talk. No matter what you'll do... Think about your family. Because one moment they are here and the next, they could be lying in the ground, dead. You may let Viserys now, I know he's waiting behind the door - he finished with a brief smile.
Daeron walked towards the door and opened it, seeing his uncle in the corridor. They sat together upon the King's bed, one on his left and one on his right. Aegon started to relax apparently and went to sleep after a few minutes. However, he was thrashing himself from side to side, murmuring some words, which were impossible to catch. then, he finally screamed:
- Mother! Run!
After this, his face turned completely still, his breath disappeared.
- Is he...? - Daeron started. Part of him refused to realise the truth.
- Yes. My brother may know peace at last - said Viserys, as close to tears as the stoic Hand of the King could be. Then, he straightened himself and looked deep into his nephew's eyes - The King is dead. Long live the King. Tell me, Your Grace, what is it that you want to accomplish during your reign?
"So it begins" the Prince, no, the New King thought. "Convincing him is the hardest part. Everything after would be a piece a cake". He gave back the look and asked:
- Tell me, Lord Hand... What do you think about Dorne?
His uncle's eyes went wider and wider as Daeron explained to him what he wished to do. The real task was starting now.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
When Mira returned to her quarters, it was empty.
Yara was obviously still with Veronica, which was very convenient for Mira. This meant she had a little time to herself in their shared quarters.
But instead of taking the opportunity to get some sleep, she sat down at Michael's console and jotted down a few lines that were running through her head.
She couldn't deny that her latest encounter with the uncouth Earther had once again upset her. Although 'excited' didn't seem to be quite the right word this time. 'Agitated' was more like it, but then again it wasn't.
In any case, this encounter had the effect that she was suddenly in the mood for a song.
The words flowed naturally into the handheld terminal that Fred Johnson had provided her with, but which she did not use as excessively as the people of this century. In fact, it was lying around in her quarters almost all the time.
However, she found it quite useful for recording her thoughts. She hummed a soft melody to it. One that she had almost forgotten, but which was completely present to her again at that moment and... after half an hour... the song was finished.
The next time Monica knocked on the door of her quarters, Mira would actually be able to offer her something.
The brunette Sleeper breathed a sigh of relief. She didn't like being in debt to anyone.
Which was why it relieved her immensely that this task was now behind her.
Glancing at the clock, however, she realized that Yara was probably planning to spend the night at Veronica's instead of hers, as agreed. Mira wasn't bothered by it. But she wanted to check on the fifteen-year-old at least once. Which is why she pulled herself together to leave her quarters and enter an almost identical one three doors down.
When Mira entered the oldest Sleeper's domicile, she was greeted by an unexpected hustle and bustle.
The youngest Sleeper was sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, enthusiastically telling the story of how the crew of the Rocinante had rescued her from Eros Station.
Mira hadn't heard the story in full either, which is why she decided to join the listeners.
Five Sleepers had gathered around the young storyteller. They looked up at Yara with astonished faces as she spoke with shining eyes about how Amos Burton had taken her from the orphanage. At first, the muscular Earther had really scared her, the blonde teenager explained, and Mira just thought that it would have been stupid of her not to feel fear at the sight of him.
But in the end - Yara didn't say exactly how he had done it - Amos had convinced her to go with him. He had smuggled her through a huge crowd of people who wanted to rebel against the security staff. Whereupon the armed security guards had opened fire on the crowd.
The armored men shot at anything that moved in their direction. Even more so when a few of Eros' inhabitants suddenly started behaving strangely. They had some glowing blue stuff on their skin and disgusting growths on various parts of their bodies.
According to Yara, they looked like encrusted cancerous growths. The girl had thought it was the effects of the radiation that the sirens had been warning about all along. But James Holden and Naomi Nagata had later explained to her that it had nothing to do with that, but was instead some kind of terrible disease.
The culprit was some kind of bioweapon that had been developed in a space laboratory.
When Yara said this, Mira's chest tightened.
There had been a time, right after she woke up from cryosleep, when Mira had assumed that in such an advanced future, things like war, terrorist attacks and bioweapons would no longer exist. In hindsight, she wondered how she could have been so naive. How could she have assumed that humanity would have changed so much?
And while Mira tried to fathom the oppressive feeling that had crept up on her when she heard the word 'bioweapon', the fifteen-year-old continued her story.
She reported how Amos had knocked out three security guards with his bare hands. One of the opponents had smashed his nose and another had broken a few of his ribs. But in the end, Amos was still on his feet, while the other three men were all lying unconscious on the ground.
At this point, Mira suddenly had a different feeling. She stood up to fill a cup with water and then took a big gulp. In the hope that she could wash the unpleasant feeling down with it.
In truth, she just didn't want to hear that the blonde girl on the couch had been out with such a thug for a week, let alone that the little girl had had to watch this Amos Burton beat other people into unconsciousness.
But Yara didn't seem to view this incident critically. After all, the three men had threatened her with their weapons and tried to block her way to the hangar.
As Yara had repeatedly affirmed in response to Mira's questions shortly after her arrival on Tycho, Amos had never touched her. He had never hit her, nor had he offended her in any other way.
The muscular Earther had only grabbed Yara roughly once. And that was at the moment when he had had to throw the teenager over his shoulder in order to get away quickly enough from the field of fire into which they had inadvertently fallen on Eros. For some reason - not apparent to Yara - the security guards had suddenly started shooting at each other instead of 'just' at the crowd.
The brunette Sleeper got goose bumps when Yara described how the man Mira had just been standing naked opposite in the shower had been shot in the exchange of gunfire. Her water cup trembled when she heard Yara tell how Amos had fallen to his knees in pain and she breathed in awe when she heard that he had not dropped Yara despite everything.
Despite the bleeding bullet wound on his leg, the Earther had somehow managed to carry Yara to the elevators. They had managed to get into one of them by the skin of their teeth.
Yara had had to press the button that caused the elevator to take them up to the dock of the Rocinante because Amos could no longer stand on his feet.
They had barely reached the top and crawled out of the elevator when it was called down again.
Actually, Yara and Amos should have taken to their heels to reach the Roci before their supposed pursuers. But the wounded Earther, with his injured leg, cracked ribs and broken nasal bone, could no longer put one foot in front of the other. Which is why he had ordered Yara to run to the Roci without him.
But according to the blonde Sleeper, she had refused to leave her injured rescuer to his own devices.
Mira suspected something less selfless as the reason for Yara's staying - fear, for example - but she said nothing about it. The fear of having to walk on completely alone and not knowing where to go was something Mira knew quite well.
She herself had felt exactly the same fear when Kiran - HER rescuer - had lain badly injured at her feet.
Well, for whatever reason... In any case, Yara had stayed by Amos's side.
And when the elevator doors had opened and she and the Earther thought they would be riddled with bullets at any moment, they saw that there were only two men in the elevator.
They were wearing the same armor as the security guards. However, they were not two trigger-happy mercenaries, but none other than the notorious James Holden and his Belter friend Miller.
The two men looked badly battered. They were leaning back against the elevator wall while blood instead of tears ran from their eyes.
As Yara had learned later, the two had really been contaminated and would have died within the next few hours if Naomi hadn't treated them immediately with cancer medication on the Rocinante.
The teenager told how Amos hadn't made a face at the sight of his captain, but had simply remarked on how shitty he looked.
His captain had replied something like: “You look like shit yourself.”
Then Alex had already rushed to their aid. The Martian with the Indian ancestors had dragged each of them to the Rocinante one by one while Naomi had made the ship ready for take-off.
The way Yara told the story and the heroic way she portrayed Amos Burton, Mira couldn't help but think of Kiran the whole time. To be honest, she could hardly believe that she had been so wrong about the tall Earther. Was the broad-shouldered man actually better than his outward appearance would have you believe?
The Sleeper with the long, brown hair didn't get a chance to think this thought through to the end because Yara had previously announced that she wanted to go to the Rocinante and check on this very man.
She talked about Amos the whole time as if he were her new best friend, and Mira couldn't help but think of Kiran - and of her last conversation with him.
The Martian lieutenant had insinuated that she was suffering from some kind of 'savior syndrome'. Mira had vigorously denied this. But the way she heard Yara talking now, she would bet that the obviously very impressionable, very young Sleeper was suffering from this very syndrome.
When the other Sleepers had left, leaving Yara, Veronica and Mira alone, and the girl announced once again that she wanted to make her way to the hangar at this late hour, Mira shook her head vigorously.
Veronica obviously felt the same way, because she also tried to talk Yara out of her plan.
She reacted very emotionally. The pubescent girl ranted and sobbed and claimed that Amos would never hurt her and that - if he was as bad a person as Veronica and Mira wanted her to believe - he could have hurt her on the flight back.
Mira would have liked to have contradicted Yara on that point too. Because - if Amos Burton was as bad a person as she thought - in her experience he wouldn't have done exactly that.
He would have first celebrated himself as her savior and then later attacked her when he was beyond reproach and no one would believe the little girl if she suddenly claimed that her oh-so-great savior had suddenly laid hands on her.
The end of the argument between the three women - each of whom came from a different generation, but who nevertheless had more in common with each other than with any other woman of their age on this station - was that Mira managed to put Yara off until the next day. The leader of the Sleepers promised Yara that she would personally accompany her to the Rocinante.
Mira didn't know what she would do if the muscular guy attacked them both - because in that case she would be just as powerless as Yara alone. But after their encounter in the shower, the danger of an attack by the Earther seemed much lower to Mira than it had just a few hours before.
Besides, she knew that the teenager would simply sneak away if she told her not to. And then there wouldn't even be a witness if something happened to her.
After Veronica had done her bit to make this compromise palatable to Yara, the two younger women left the quarters.
Mira put Yara to bed in her own quarters, making sure the girl was really asleep before she lay down as well.
However, that didn't stop Yara from getting up very early the next morning and - contrary to her agreement with Mira - stealing out of her quarters to walk to the hangar.
Mira, who woke up to the sound of the doors, grasped the situation in a flash. She quickly threw something on so that she didn't have to follow the runaway half-naked.
Then she hurried after Yara. After all, there was no question as to where Mira's underage roommate was heading.
However, the blonde girl ran so fast that Mira had great difficulty catching up with her in time.
In the end, Yara ran. Only to arrive at the hangar first. Only to realize at first glance that the Rocinante was no longer there. The disappointed teenager instantly burst into tears at the sight of the deserted dock. Yara cried so much when Mira finally caught up with her that the latter had her hands full comforting the former.
And when Mira later wanted to ask Camina where the Rocinante was heading this time, the leader of the Sleepers realized that the dark-haired Belter and her dark-skinned boss had also left the station.
No one was able to tell her where the crew of the Rocinante and Tycho's command staff were headed. Mira only learned that Fred Johnson had recruited a few dozen combat-ready Belters especially for this mission, and that it had something to do with avenging the events on Eros.
However, Mira preferred to keep this scant information to herself.
They wouldn't have helped Yara in her grief anyway, and the other Sleepers would only be unnecessarily worried.
Number of Sleepers when the Rocinante left Tycho for the second time: 10
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Casi de inmediato y, para sorpresa de Strider, un elfo salió desde el otro lado del carromato para, en seguida, acercarse trémulamente a Tosantel.
<"¿Sí, amo?" Preguntó al llegar y en su idioma.
Ignorándolo, Tosantel se dirigió a Strider.
"Mira, este elfo viene conmigo. Es mi criado. Te lo presto para que trabaje para ti y con eso te cobras ¿estamos?"
"Mi gente y yo nos bastamos para realizar el trabajo de la posada" Contestó Strider a la vez que, con una sola mirada, percibió la extrema delgadez del elfo, su palidez, lo estropeado de su cabello atado en delgada cola de caballo, lo miserable de sus ropas y, sobre todo, el temor que sus ojos mostraban "No necesito ayuda"
"¡Oh, vamos! En todas partes hay siempre tareas pendientes. Lavar ventanas, tallar paredes, fregar letrinas... Ponlo a hacer lo que nadie quiera hacer. Llévatelo por lo pronto por lo que queda de este día. Hazlo trabajar. Yo iré esta noche a cenar y a hospedarme en tu posada, y hablaremos con más calma ¿De acuerdo?"
"¿Y si la autoridad se entera?" Preguntó Strider "Por si no lo sabes, esclavizar a alguien es severamente castigado en todo Rohan"
"¿Y quién podría probar que yo esclavizo a alguien?" Preguntó con desfachatez el aludido "Este elfo viaja conmigo y, a cambio de protección, comida y traslado en mi medio de transporte, realiza de vez en vez algunas labores. ¿Qué de malo hay en eso?"
"Que es obvio que lo maltratas y que si va a servirme será porque lo obligas. ¿Qué tal si se escapa y te delata a ti como esclavista y a mí como si yo fuera cómplice tuyo?"
"No te preocupes, no lo hará" Dijo el fuereño con cruel sonrisa "Antes moriría que delatarme o intentar escapar. ¡Créeme! Me he asegurado de eso"
"Esto no termina de gustarme" Dijo Strider pensativamente.
"Es eso o llevarme a juicio y enterarte de que fuera de ese par de caballos viejos, flacos y agotados, y de mi carromato que no vale nada, no tengo algo con que puedas cobrarte"
"Si no hay otra opción... ¿Entiende nuestro idioma?" Preguntó Strider a Tosantel, haciendo una leve indicación hacia el elfo.
"No, nada. Pero no es necesario. Se le pueden dar órdenes con gestos, con señas o con uno que otro golpe. Nada más que no sean golpes que dejen marcas visibles, para no delatarnos. O castigo que lo incapacite, ya que de ocurrir eso no podríamos aprovecharlo. Aunque en cierta ocasión y luego de algunos azotes, fue capaz de trabajar aunque apenas podía sostenerse en pie" Concluyó Tosantel riendo.
"Bien" Contestó a regañadientes el posadero "Lo llevaré conmigo y veré de ponerlo a desquitar lo que me debes. Pero agregaré a tu deuda lo que coma ¿Entendido?"
"No le des nada, no es necesario. Anoche le di las sobras de mi cena. Con eso debe bastarle por uno o dos días"
Aragorn se encogió de hombros, miró hacia el elfo el cual bajó la vista, y habló de nuevo a Tosantel.
"Dile entonces que tome un caballo y que me siga"
"Los caballos deberán quedarse aquí ya que los necesitaré para ir por la noche a tu posada. El elfo puede ir corriendo detrás de ti"
"Pues dile entonces que me siga y que deberá hacer lo que yo le indique"
Tosantel se dirigió a su criado y le habló en rudimentario élfico.
< "Óyeme. Vas con éste. Haces cosas que mande. Todo día"
< "¿Él habla mi idioma, amo?"
< "No. No puede. Pero cosas que mande... ¡Tú haces cosas!"
< "¿Me dará de comer?"
< "¡A trabajar te lleva! !No comida!"
< "Pero, amo ¡Tengo mucha hambre!"
< ¡Trabajas! ¡O cinturón!"
"¿Qué pasa?" Intervino Strider "¿No quiere ir?"
"¡Claro que quiere!" Respondió Tosantel "Y si no quisiera, mi cinturón lo haría cambiar de opinión"
Por primera vez desde que se habían reencontrado, Strider sonrió a su interlocutor, pero era aquélla una sonrisa de torva complicidad.
Sin arriesgarse a dar la espalda a Tosantel, regresó Strider hasta el lugar donde había dejado su corcel. Separó la rienda del árbol, acercó al animal al nacimiento del manantial. Bebió el humano sin perder de vista al otro hombre, y dejó luego que bebiera el caballo. En seguida montó y, con una seña, indicó al elfo que lo siguiera.
Al trote corto, regresó el jinete por donde había llegado mientras que el elfo, a trompicones, se esforzaba por no quedarse muy atrás de Caminante.
Tosantel los siguió con la mirada hasta que la vegetación que rodeaba aquel lugar hizo que se ocultaran a su vista.
Entonces se dirigió a la parte trasera de su carromato, tomó de ahí una canasta que llevó hasta el lugar que le pareció más cómodo. Se sentó en la hierba, apoyó la espalda contra un árbol, abrió la canasta; sacó de ahí fruta, queso, carne seca, pan y una botella de vino.
Abrió el pan, colocó dentro un trozo de queso y otro de carne, y se dispuso a tomar el desayuno que la intempestiva llegada de Strider había retrasado, mientras pensaba en que después de todo, tal vez había sido bueno encontrarse con el posadero.
Quizá eso significaba que no tendría que arriesgarse para obtener del elfo la ganancia que planeaba.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
When Foggy got to the office the next day, Matt and Karen were already there. He saw Karen in Matt’s office, leaning forward with her elbows on his desk, her mouth moving rapidly. Matt had his head in his hands, his lips pursed. Foggy wondered what they were discussing, and if it was the Suarez case, the case that was causing Matt so much trouble. Foggy sighed. He saw Matt’s head tilt slightly when Foggy walked past to go into his own office, but he didn’t say anything, or otherwise acknowledge him in any way.
All three of them were incredibly busy, so it wasn’t hard at all to avoid Matt over the next week as they each worked their respective cases. When they would interact in the office, Matt was polite to him, but distant. It made something inside of Foggy’s chest curl up into a ball, but he didn’t have time to dwell on it.
It was slightly harder to avoid having an actual conversation with Karen, who was like a pitbull when she wanted to get information out of someone. She sweetly invited Foggy out to lunch a few days after her trip upstate. When Foggy arrived at the little sandwich shop and slid into the booth opposite her, he blinked, slightly taken aback. “What? No Matt?”
“Nope.” Karen smiled at him serenely. “I thought you and I could catch up. Just the two of us.”
“...Ok.” Foggy said uneasily. He fiddled a little with his napkin. Karen continued smiling creepily at him until their food arrived. As soon as Foggy took a bite of his sandwich, she pounced.
“So,” she said casually, sipping at her soup. “You spent the weekend at Matt’s place?”
“Mmmf” Foggy said around his bite of sandwich.
“Matt’s bed sure is comfortable, huh?” Karen asked him.
Foggy gulped a sip of his water. “How would you know?”
“I wouldn’t,” Karen said calmly. “You would though.”
Damn. He had walked directly into that one. He shrugged. “Matt and I spend the night at each other’s places all of the time.”
“I know.” Karen said. Her voice was heavy with suggestion.
Foggy sighed, and decided to end this charade. “Look, Karen, I know what you’re implying, and you’re wrong. I don’t know what Jessica Jones told you-”
“Jessica didn’t have to tell me anything,” Karen interjected. “I have eyes, Foggy. And ears. And a brain.”
“And a heart?” Foggy said sarcastically. “And courage?”
“All of those things.” Karen said calmly. “You know, Foggy, if you are refusing to sleep with Matt on my account, I just want to let you know that I am totally ok with it. More than, in fact. There is absolutely nothing going on between me and Matt anymore. There barely was anything to begin with. I just want both of you to be happy. I think you’ve more than earned it.”
Foggy shook his head. “Drop it Kare.”
“I totally thought that you and Matt were
already
sleeping
together, and were just being sneaky about it.” Karen continued, nonplussed. “But then he wouldn’t be coming into the office everyday with the face of the most frustrated man on Earth.”
“This conversation is
so
not work appropriate.” Foggy grumbled.
“We’re not at work.” Karen pointed out. She took a fry from his plate.
Before Foggy could think up an appropriately snarky response, he felt his phone buzz in his suit pocket. “Hold that thought.”
Dinner tonight? More info re Hannah Wells informant.
Larry
Foggy never thought he would think this, but he had never been so happy to see Larry’s name pop up on his phone.
“Sorry, gotta go. Just got some new information on the Wells case.” He threw some bills on the table. Before he left, he leaned over Karen to drop a kiss onto her head. “Love you Kare. But stay out of my sex life.”
“What sex life!?” Karen called after him. He saw a few of the patrons turn their heads toward him in curiosity as he hurried out.
Once he was a few blocks away, he called Larry, who answered on the second ring. As soon as he picked up, Foggy started speaking rapidly.
“No dinner. Coffee or drinks only.”
“I can work with that,” Larry said. “Just tell me when and where.”
Foggy chewed his bottom lip. It was early still, but he really needed something to break in this case soon, or he would be having some very bad news for Hannah Wells at their next meeting. “Are you free now? We could meet for a post-lunch or pre-dinner cocktail.”
“Must be nice being your own boss,” Larry laughed on the other line. “How about coffee? There’s a cafe in between your office and mine. It’s a bit far from Stafford, so I’m not likely to run into any colleagues there.”
Foggy agreed, and before he knew it, he was seated across from Larry at a little cafe table overlooking a city park. He hadn’t seen Larry again since their initial meet up after the first opposing counsel meeting, but they had been texting regarding the Hannah Wells case.
Looking at Larry sipping his cappuccino and gazing out at the park, Foggy experienced another strong feeling of deja vu. His relationship with Larry had ended extremely suddenly and dramatically. One minute, they were dating and living together, and the next, Foggy was filing a restraining order and hadn’t seen or spoken to him in eight years. It was surreal, seeing him again, looking almost the exact same as he had when they had been dating. Foggy wondered, for a split second, what would have happened if they never would have gone to that law school gala. Would they still be together? Would they have taken that trip to Paris?
Larry broke him out of his uncomfortable reminiscing. “So any luck getting in contact with the informant?”
“No,” Foggy sighed. “The last known addresses were all dead ends. I really don’t want to serve her with a subpoena. I’d rather she talk to me willingly, but I may not have a choice.”
“The Stafford pay out was a hell of an incentive to keep her mouth shut.” Larry shrugged.
“Can I ask you something?” Foggy said. He didn’t wait for Larry to respond before forging ahead. “Why is Stafford working so hard to protect this guy? Sexual harassment claims don’t typically come out of nowhere. He’s had to have done this type of thing before. Even if it was never proven, he’s bound to be a liability at this point. Why not just cut him loose?”
Larry raised his eyebrows at him. “Trying to get me to incriminate my client? I see your game, Nelson.”
“Stafford is your client,” Foggy pointed out. “He’s just the asshole who works there.”
Larry set his cup down in front of him. “Why are you so certain of his guilt in this? Listen, I think that Hannah deserves a bigger check from Stafford, absolutely. But this is all her word against his. You saw the text messages. They had some type of relationship, in whatever capacity. I’m not saying what he did wasn’t sleazy, but it’s a far cry to go from sleeping with the boss to crying rape.”
“Hannah told me what happened.” Foggy said coolly.
“And you believe her?” Larry asked. “Really? I know it’s your duty to defend her case no matter what, but-”
“Perhaps it was a mistake to meet like this,” Foggy said abruptly. “We should probably just plan to discuss this at the next OC meeting.” He made to stand up, but Larry’s hand shot out to grip his arm, preventing him from rising fully.
Foggy flinched. Hard. There was an awkward pause as neither man spoke. Larry let go of his arm carefully, and sat back. “Look, I’m sorry. Personal philosophies aside. I’ve been enjoying getting to see you again. I just moved back to the city, and I don’t exactly have a lot of friends here yet.”
“You and I aren’t friends.” Foggy snapped. He willed his heart rate to calm down. His pulse was pounding so hard he could feel it in his throat.
Larry raised his hands in a gesture of supplication. “No, of course not. Listen, I actually have something else to talk to you about, but I don’t exactly have the time now, I’m needed back in the office for a client meeting. Could we get drinks again? Sometime later this week maybe?”
“I don’t know.’ Foggy frowned down at the table. “Let me think about it.”
“Of course, Larry said quickly. “Just text me.”
***
Despite his misgivings about seeing Larry again, Foggy had agreed to meet with him for a round of drinks a few days after their cafe rendezvous.
This would be the last time, he told himself as he got ready to meet with him at the same bar as last time. He had currently hit a dead end with the Hannah Wells case, and Larry didn’t seem too forthcoming with any more information that could possibly help his client, so there really wasn’t any reason to continue to see him outside of work obligations.
He encountered Matt on his way out the door, holding a stack of papers that he was going to run through their Braille copier. Karen had already left for the day, so it was only the two of them still there. Matt had been holed up for the majority of the day, as had Foggy.
Since Foggy had left Matt’s apt, they hadn’t spent any time alone together, and had barely talked outside of comparing case notes. Foggy tried hard not to read too much into it. Matt was incredibly busy. Yesterday he had come into work moving a bit slower than usual, and Foggy had hovered around his office door like a fretful ghost until Matt had finally called out. “I’m fine, Foggy. Just a sore rib, that’s all.” Foggy had flushed and muttered something about needing to respond to an email before hurrying back to his desk.
Now, they both paused, awkwardly surveilling each other. Matt tilted his head at him above his copies. “Headed out?”
“Yep,” Foggy fiddled with his tie, before realizing what he was doing and forcing his hands to still. “Will you be staying much longer?”
“Perhaps,” Matt said. He hesitated, then said “we should get dinner later. Not at home, let’s go out. I have nothing in anyway. This case has me completely swamped.”
“I can go grocery shopping for you tomorrow, if you’d like?” Foggy said.
Matt smiled at him. “No, Foggy. Just come get dinner with me.”
“I can’t tonight,” Foggy said, his heart sinking. “I already have plans.”
Matt raised his eyebrows. “You do? But Karen already left for the day.”
“I know more people than just you and Karen, Matt.” Foggy rolled his eyes.
“Ok,” Matt said evenly. “Then who is it?”
Foggy blinked at him. “Who what?”
“The person you’re seeing tonight.” Matt said. “If it’s not me, and it’s not Karen, then who is it?”
It was a valid question. One that Foggy didn’t have an answer to. At least, not an answer that Matt would accept. He didn’t say anything. The ensuing silence stretched on uncomfortably long.
Matt exhaled hard. “Ok then. Have fun on your date.”
“It’s not a date.” Foggy said weakly. “The Wells case-”
“So you’ve said before,” Matt cut in. There was an edge to his voice. “How long do you think you’ll keep using that excuse, do you think?”
“Matt-” Foggy said. Matt shook his head at him sharply and walked by him into his office. He didn’t say anything else, just shut his door decisively.
***
“Cosmopolitan, please,” Larry ordered when they were both seated at the bar. Foggy narrowed his eyes at him, but didn’t comment on his drink choice. He ordered a martini from the bartender, and turned to face Larry once their drinks were delivered. “So? What’s this all about? You said you have some more information for me?”
“I felt badly after our last meet up.” Larry said. “I don’t disbelieve that something happened between Gronkowski and Wells, Foggy. In fact, I think a lot of inappropriate things happened between them. That’s why I’ve been willing to help you. I just think that calling it rape may be a little much, that’s all.”
“Is that why you wanted to meet tonight?” Foggy said. “To apologize for our last conversation?”
Larry said nothing, just studied him over the rim of his cosmo. “I understand why your hackles are raised around me, Foggy. But my intentions are good, I promise. I admit that I
may
be drawing out these meet ups a bit more than strictly necessary as an excuse to see you outside of Stafford. But can you blame me? You’ve been nothing but combative with me ever since you saw me in that conference room. I know we’re on opposing sides in this case, but I’m trying to
help
you.”
Foggy didn’t say anything to that. He circled the rim of his martini glass with his finger. “Can I ask you a personal question?” He blurted out.
Larry raised his eyebrows. “Sure.”
“Your ex,” Foggy said. “What did he do? How did you two meet?”
Larry blinked and looked a bit taken aback. “He’s an accountant. We met at work, actually. At Stafford. But he no longer works for the company. Why?”
Foggy shrugged. “Just curious. You said that you two dated for two years…That’s a long time.”
“I suppose.” Larry said evenly. “We lived together for about one year of it. More out of necessity than anything. Boston is almost as expensive as NYC, believe it or not.”
Foggy snorted. “Not that that matters to you, surely?”
Larry looked at him. “Oh it definitely does. My parents cut me off. I don’t receive a dime from them any more. I haven’t in a long time.”
Foggy gaped at him. “...Seriously?”
“Yes.” Larry said. “One of their conditions when I transferred to Columbia was that I not relapse. When I did and went back to rehab, they removed my name from the family trust and cut off all of my credit cards. I still have contact with them, but not much. It was a pretty tough couple of years during my early sobriety, I won’t sugarcoat it.”
Foggy stared at him. Despite himself, he felt a squeeze of sympathy. He knew that Larry’s relationship with his parents had always been strained. Foggy had met them a few times during the course of his and Larry’s relationship, and hadn’t exactly been impressed. He didn’t understand how parents could cut off their only child during his lowest moment, but he didn’t doubt that Larry was telling the truth.
“God, I’m sorry,” he said sincerely. “That’s really fucked up of them.”
Larry smiled at him and shrugged. “Honestly, I’m better off for it. But I don’t want to dwell too much on the past. I’d rather talk about the present. Tell me some of what you’ve been up to the past few years. Running your own firm is a huge deal. You know, half of my law school cohort talked about how they would have their own firms a decade out of law school, but very very few of them actually did it.”
Foggy beamed with pride. He was always glad for an excuse to talk about NM&P. “Well, it definitely wasn’t easy. It took a few goes, but I think we actually managed to get it right this time.”
“Oh?” Larry tilted his head at him, questioning. “Yeah this is about the third time we’ve attempted it,” Foggy laughed. “But, you know, third time’s the charm and all that.”
Larry smiled. “Your office is in Hell’s Kitchen right? I would love to stop by and see it sometime. Maybe we could schedule the next OC meeting there.”
Foggy froze. “Um, I don’t think that is a good idea.”
Larry raised his eyebrows. “Why’s that? - Ah, I see.” He finished his drink and set his glass down on the bar. “Matt. He doesn’t know that I’ve been assigned to this case or that you and I have been seeing each other.”
“We’re not
seeing
each other,” Foggy said quickly.
Larry snorted. “Well, it’s nice to see that some things haven’t changed I guess.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Foggy said sharply.
“You and Matt.” Larry said. “I’m just saying. Nothing about you two has changed since law school. He still has you trotting after him like a puppy while he calls all of the shots.”
Foggy flushed. “That is
not
true.”
Larry laughed. “Of course it is. Why do you think he hated me so much from the second you and I started dating? Because he was no longer the only person you listened to. Trust me, Matt is just as much a control freak as I am, he’s just better at hiding it. At least I
admit
to my issues.”
Foggy resisted the sudden insane urge he had to laugh, because honestly? Yeah. Larry had no
idea
of the extent of Matt’s issues.
He shook his head. “Matt’s not the reason I don’t want you at NM&P.”
“Come on Foggy.” Larry argued. “You just admitted it. You don’t want him to know that you and I have been working together on this case because you’re afraid of how he’ll react.”
Foggy opened his mouth furiously, but didn’t say anything. Larry had a point. Foggy
was
afraid of how Matt would react if he knew that Larry was back in New York. And if Larry knew what Matt had done, the sorts of things he was capable of, he would be afraid of it too.
Larry was watching his face. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I’m right aren’t I? Matt has
always
called the shots in you two’s relationship, Foggy. You know, sometimes I wonder if-” He cut himself off abruptly, shaking his head.
“What?” Foggy asked. Larry shrugged. “I don’t know. Sometimes I just wonder if Matt wouldn’t have been there at that gala if we would have ever broken up, that’s all.”
Foggy swallowed. He had wondered the exact same thing recently. It bothered him that he couldn’t conclusively say that he would have broken up with Larry on his own without Matt and Priya’s help all of those years ago. How much more would he have been willing to endure? How bad would it have to have gotten before he finally called it quits?
“We would have,” he said with a finality in his voice that he did not feel. “We would have broken up.”
Larry shrugged. “Maybe. Anyway,” he slid off of his barstool. “I better head home. Early morning meeting and all that. Can I call you a cab?”
When Foggy got home and walked into his dark apt. He halfway expected to see Matt there, waiting.
He wasn’t.
He checked his texts. No missed texts from him, or from Karen either. Foggy wondered if Matt had called Karen to go out to dinner with him instead, and what he might be doing right now. Foggy pressed the backs of his fingers to his eyes.
What are you doing, Franklin?
He thought to himself tiredly.
***
The next morning Foggy walked into the NM&P office a bit earlier than usual. He had puttered around his empty apt last night before finally giving it up and going to bed early. He walked into their shared reception area and was accosted by the smell of-
“Roses!” Karen said, poking her head out of her office. Foggy stared. There was a bouquet of a dozen, long stemmed red roses on his desk in his office. Foggy felt his coffee curdle in his stomach.
“They were delivered right when I got here,” Karen followed him as he walked into his office numbly. “I didn’t read the tag. I’m not
that
nosey. Do you have a secret admirer you’re not telling us about Foggy?”
Foggy didn’t need to read the tag to see who they were from, but he did anyway, his mouth dry.
I’m sorry for how last night ended. I would still like to see you again, outside of work.
L.C.
“Who’s L.C.?” Karen was hovering, reading over his shoulder. Foggy grabbed the bouquet and whirled around, shoving the flowers into Karen’s chest. “Get rid of these.”
“What?” Karen said blankly. “Why? Fog-”
“Quickly, before Matt gets here.” Foggy hissed in panic.
“Before Matt gets here what?” Said a voice from the doorway. Both Karen and Foggy looked up to see Matt in the entrance of Foggy’s office, looking toward them, his eyebrows raised. “What are we getting rid of?”
Karen was frozen, her arms full of flowers. Matt tilted his head toward her. “...Is that flowers I smell?”
Karen waited for Foggy to say something, and when he didn’t, she piped up. “Roses. They were delivered here for Foggy this morning.”
“Roses.” Matt said flatly. Foggy closed his eyes in defeat.
“Yes,” Karen said nervously. She had no idea what was going on, but she had clearly picked up on the change in mood. Her eyes darted between Matt and Foggy questioningly.
Matt didn’t say anything for a moment, then, “Karen. Can you go to your office? I need to speak with Foggy for a moment. Alone.”
Karen stared at him. Matt’s voice brooked no argument. She turned to look at Foggy, who was staring at the ground. “Did I miss something?”
“Now please, Karen.” Matt said.
Karen cast one last confused look at Foggy over her shoulder, but she left, taking the roses with her. As soon as she closed Foggy’s office door, Foggy spoke. “Matt, let me explain-” Matt raised his hand, and Foggy’s words died on his tongue. Matt had his cane still in his hand, and was gripping it so tightly, Foggy saw his knuckles turning white.
“Foggy, please tell me that Lawrence Cranston did not send you those flowers.” Matt said. His tone was even. Only the strength of his grip on his cane gave away his tension.
Foggy wet his lips. “Yes, he did.” He said. He saw Matt’s nostrils flair. “But Matt, let me explain-”
“Oh, I am
dying
to hear the explanation for this.” Matt said. “Please. Explain to me how Larry is even able to send you flowers with a restraining order against him. I think that counts as contact, don’t you?”
Foggy shook his head. “Matt, I haven’t had a restraining order against Larry in four years.”
“You stopped renewing it?!” Matt sounded shocked.
“No judge would sign the order!” Foggy said. “He didn’t attempt to contact me that entire time…Not to mention, four years ago I was kind of dealing with a lot, in case you forgot.”
Matt’s jaw tightened. “So what, he just decided to send you flowers after eight years of no contact?”
Foggy squeezed his eyes shut. “...Not exactly no contact.” He said weakly. “Matt…Larry moved back to New York from Boston a few months ago. He works at Stafford. He is one of the attorneys assigned to the Wells case.”
Matt stood frozen, staring toward him. “He’s who you’ve been seeing.” He stated. “And texting.”
He might as well come clean about everything. “Yes.” Foggy said. “He’s the one who gave me the information about the informant. I’ve been meeting with him after hours to get info on Darren Gronkowski to help Hannah’s case.”
Matt took off his glasses and rubbed his hand down his face. “Right.” He said flatly. He put his glasses back on and straightened up. “So. You’re off this case.”
For a second, Foggy thought he must have misheard him. “...What?”
“I’m taking over the Wells case.” Matt said. “Hand over all of your case notes to me before the end of the day today.”
“You can’t just
order
me to hand over the case.” Foggy snapped. “I’ve been working this case for
months.
I promised Hannah-”
“I told you,” Matt cut in. His voice was hard. “I told you eight years ago that I never wanted you in the same room as Larry Cranston again. I haven’t changed my mind about that.”
“You can’t just swoop in and take over Matt!” Foggy said in frustration. “You don’t have the time to handle both the Suarez case and this anyway-”
“I’ll make the time.” Matt snarled. “Do you want to do this, Foggy? Do you
really
want to have this argument with me? Because we haven’t even gotten into how you didn’t tell me that Larry was back in New York, how you were sneaking around with him behind my back, how he
clearly
is trying to start something with you again, seeing as how he sent you flowers, exactly as he did before you two started dating before. If you think for one
fucking
second that I’m going to let Larry Cranston lay another finger on you, you have completely lost your mind. We are not arguing about this. You are going to hand over the Wells case notes. And I’m going to file a new restraining order. Judge Turpin will sign it. He owes me a favor.”
Matt turned his back to Foggy, a clear dismissal.
Foggy abruptly saw red. “
No
, Matt. That’s not going to happen. I promised Hannah I would take care of her. The only reason I’ve been in contact with Larry is to help her. And he
told
me that he’s not trying to get back together-”
Matt laughed, slightly hysterically. “And you
believed
him?”
“He’s been giving me information!” Foggy cried out in exasperation.
“He’s
manipulating
you!” Matt said furiously. “Exactly like he did last time! And you’re falling for it.
Again.”
Foggy was shaking his head. “Matt, do you really believe that I would get back together with him? After what happened? Jesus Christ, I’m not twenty three years old anymore! And-” He hesitated. Matt picked up on it.
“What?” He gritted out. “Finish what you were going to say.
What?
”
Foggy shook his head, his lips pursed. “He-he may have changed, Matt.” He said quietly. “It’s possible. It is possible that he could have changed, since law school.”
Matt sucked in a breath. “Un-
fucking-
believable.”
“Matt-” Foggy said worriedly. Matt walked around to the other side of Foggy’s desk. He was vibrating with repressed emotion. Foggy watched him warily. “Matt, calm down.”
“I never understood it.” Matt said. “I could never, for the
life
of me, understand the hold this man has over you. Is it because he was your first boyfriend? Because he was the only man you’ve ever had sex with? Is that it?”
Foggy flushed. Tears prickled the corners of his eyes. “Keep your voice down.” He begged. Karen was still in her office, no doubt listening to their every word. Matt ignored him. He put his hands on his hips and stared up at the ceiling, his jaw tense. He was trying to calm himself down, and not doing a very good job.
“Do I need to remind you of the things he did to you?” Matt said, addressing the ceiling.
“No.” Foggy said quietly.
“Good.” Matt said flatly. “And I don’t think I need to remind you of who
I
am. And the things that I can do, do I?”
“Are you…threatening him?” Foggy asked slowly.
“Yes.” Matt said. “I thought that was obvious.”
Foggy shook his head. “Matt-”
Abruptly, Matt brought his fist down on Foggy’s desk. Foggy jumped, and he heard a clatter from next door. Karen had been startled, too.
“
You
said no more secrets!” He yelled. “After Fisk! You were the one who said we all needed to be honest with one another!”
Foggy didn’t even try to keep the tears out of his voice this time. “I know. I know I did, Matt.”
“Jesus Christ Foggy, I’ve been-” Matt straightened up, running a shaking hand through his hair. His voice cracked. “I’ve been
trying
to be honest with you. For months now. Is this-Is
this
the reason why? You never-” He cut himself off, breathing hard.
Foggy stared at him. “What are you asking?”
“Are you still in love with him?” Matt said. He was gripping the edges of Foggy’s desk. Foggy wondered if he was holding on for himself, or because he was contemplating flipping it.
“How can you even ask me that?” Foggy said in shock.
“How could I
not
?” Matt sounded strangled. “You-you’re willing to forgive
him
and give him a second chance, after everything he did to you, while I’ve been jumping through hoops to prove myself-”
Foggy reared back as if he had been hit. “No, no, Matt. I told you, that’s not what this is-this is about the case, nothing more-”
“I don’t care!” Matt exploded. “You didn’t see yourself back then, Foggy. You have no
idea
how much control he had over you. This is the
exact
same thing. Except this time, I’m not going to sit back and let you make excuses for him until he puts you in the hospital,
again
. I’m done with this conversation. Hand over the Wells case notes. Now.”
Foggy looked at Matt. His face was like stone. “Do you not trust me at all?” He asked quietly.
Matt’s jaw tightened. “Not with this I don’t.”
Foggy jerked a nod. “Fine.” said tightly. “If that’s the way that you feel.”
He walked to his office door and yanked it open. “I’m going to work from home for the rest of the day.” He called out. He knew Karen would be able to hear him. He could see her through her office door window, eyes wide behind her desk. “Do
not
follow me Matt.”
***
Foggy heard a knock at his door around 8pm that night. “Go away Matt!” He snapped. “I don’t want to talk to you right now.”
“Foggy, it’s me.” Karen’s voice sounded from the other side of his apt door. “Please let me in.”
Foggy sighed. He weighed his options. The chances of Karen leaving his apt voluntarily and not following up on his and Matt’s conversation? Zero. He stomped to his apt. door and threw it open. “Fine, you can come in,” he told her sternly. “But I reserve the final right to not answer any and all questions I deem inappropriate.
“Foggy, it’s me.” Karen told him. She sounded slightly hurt. “You don’t need to lawyer me. I just want to talk.”
Foggy eyed her warily, but stepped aside so that she could enter. Karen walked into his living room and turned in a circle. She didn’t sit down, and neither did Foggy. “Foggy-” she started to say, at the same time that Foggy said tightly “what did Matt tell you?”
Karen sighed. “He filled me in on the important bits,” she said carefully. Foggy glared at the ground. “It was not his business to tell you that.”
“Foggy, really?” Karen said, slightly exasperated. “After everything we’ve been through together? I told you that I
killed
someone. I understand why you wouldn’t want to tell me this, but-”
“Then you understand why I didn’t bring it up!” Foggy snapped. “It was pointless to anyway. That’s all in the past-”
“Is it?” Karen asked, point blank. “Foggy, the guy sent you flowers to the office. You can’t blame Matt for being a bit upset.”
“Oh right,” Foggy said tightly. “Of course you would take Matt’s side. If you’re just here so that you two can gang up on me-”
“Foggy,” Karen sounded shocked. “Nobody is ganging up on you. But you can’t deny that your behavior lately has been strange. You’ve been sneaking around with this guy. You clearly didn’t want Matt to know about it-”
“I've been handling my case!” Foggy said furiously. “I don’t have to explain my whereabouts to Matt, or to you, or to anyone. Matt’s not my-my
handler.
I don’t need him to hold my hand with this. I am
fine.
I have everything under control.”
Karen took a deep breath. “That’s not how it sounded to me.” She said quietly. “Before. When you were with him. This guy sounds like bad news Foggy. I agree with Matt. I don’t think that you should see him again.”
“That was back then,” Foggy said stubbornly. “I’m not the same person anymore Karen. God, give me
some
credit, please, for not being the same fucking idiot that I was when I was 23 years old. I’m not just going to-to fall into Larry’s arms again, just because he shows up back in the city. Besides, he doesn’t even
want
to get back together, which I was trying to explain to Matt, before he completely lost his fucking cool.”
“I don’t think people send a bouquet of roses when they want to be platonic,” Karen said drily. Foggy flushed. “Well I obviously didn’t know that he was going to do that.”
“Foggy” Karen said quietly. “Matt told me what he did. How he put you in the hospital. Can’t you understand why he would be worried?”
Foggy’s eyes blurred with angry tears.
Goddamn
Matt. He knew that Foggy didn’t want Karen to know about that. “There’s no reason for him to be worried.”
“Isn’t there?” Karen said. “Maybe Matt should have reacted more calmly, I’ll grant you that. But can you blame him? He’s terrified.”
Foggy stiffened. “What? No he’s not.”
Karen looked at him with an expression Foggy thought may be pity. “Foggy-” she began gently.
Foggy shook his head rapidly back and forth. “No. Karen, don’t.”
Karen didn’t say anything. “He’s not scared.” Foggy said desperately. “Matt doesn’t get scared of things like this. Karen. He’s
not.”
“Oh baby,” Karen said softly. “I think losing you may be the
only
thing that Matt is afraid of.”
Foggy closed his eyes. “Foggy,” Karen was
relentless
. “Don’t you think it’s time that you put aside whatever differences you and Matt may have had? I understand why you didn’t want to give him a chance…before. God knows that Matt hasn’t exactly been the best partner to you in recent years. But he’s really, really trying this time.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Foggy said. There was a roaring sound in his ears, like his head was stuck underwater.
Please leave Karen.
He thought desperately.
Just turn around, and go home. Please.
“I think you do,” Karen said calmly. “I think you’ve known for a while. I gotta say Foggy, it’s pretty hard for me to not take Matt’s side on this. He’s been incredibly patient with you while you work out whatever issues you still have with him. But honestly? I think you are treating him pretty badly here.”
“Is that what he said?” Foggy said numbly. “That he’s been patient?”
“Of course not,” Karen said. “But I work in the same office as you guys. And I
know
you Foggy. And Matt. I see the way you dance around each other. I know you two sleep in the same bed together. What I can’t understand is why it’s one step forward, two steps back with you. Matt would wait forever for you Foggy, if he thought that there was a chance. You’ve been making him prove himself to you, ok, I get it. But then you go and sneak around behind his back with the guy who put you in the hospital? Come on, you know that’s gotta sting.”
Foggy shook his head, staring at Karen’s pointed heels through his blurred eyes. He saw them move toward him tentatively.
“Foggy,” Karen said softly. “Why don’t you just
talk
to Matt? What are you so afraid of?”
“And say
what?!”
Foggy exploded. Karen startled back. “And say what Karen?! I never asked him to wait for me. I never asked for any of this!”
Foggy began to pace, gesturing wildly with his arms. He must have looked like he was losing his mind. He
felt
like he was losing his mind. Karen looked shocked. “Foggy,” she reached out to put a hand on his arm. “Foggy, just calm down.”
“Don’t
touch
me!” Foggy exploded at her. He jerked out of her grasp. Karen’s face shifted from shocked to alarmed.
“What, exactly, do you want me to say to Matt? Huh Karen? ‘Sorry Matt, I’m in love with you, but you’ll never be able to have sex with me, because I am way too fucking damaged, and it’s my own fucking fault. I can’t guarantee that if you touch me I won’t have a panic attack, but hey, feel free to try anyway.’ Hmm? You think that would go over well?”
“Foggy…” Karen said, stunned. She looked devastated.
“Sorry that I sometimes flinch when you make a sudden movement around me, my boyfriend used to smack the shit out of me whenever I disagreed with him, and now my body doesn’t know the difference between somebody who loves me, and the person who raped me almost every day for a year.” Foggy said hysterically. It’s like a dam had burst in his brain and everything was flooding out of his mouth at once. “I didn’t even
try
to fight him. I just lay there and
took
it. I mean who does that?!”
Karen’s eyes were full of tears. “Foggy,” she choked out. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“I told you!” Foggy yelled. His voice cracked. “I told you to your face that I can’t be with a man anymore. What did you think that I meant? Did you think that I was just playing hard to get? That I’m just jerking Matt around for
fun?
Do you think that I enjoy being so close to Matt, knowing that I can never have what I truly want?”
“Oh Foggy,” Karen breathed. she stepped forward, into his personal space. Foggy tried to move away from her, but she was relentless. She put her arms around him. He and Karen were the same height, in her heels, she was slightly taller than him. Foggy put his face on her shoulder and sobbed.
“It’s not your fault,” Karen said into his hair. “What happened to you. It wasn’t your fault, Foggy.”
“Of course it was,” Foggy said wretchedly. “I could have stopped it at any time. Karen, is it so wrong of me to hope that he really did change? Do…Do you think it’s possible?”
“I don’t know.” Karen said simply. She tightened her arms around him. “Foggy, why is it so important to you if he changed or not? Why do you care if you aren’t planning on seeing him any more after the case is over?”
“I never reported him.” Foggy said miserably.
“I’m not following,” Karen said slowly.
“Karen, I never reported him, that means whatever poor sap he manages to con into being with him after me is my fault.” Foggy sobbed.
“Oh sweetie.” Karen shook her head. “No, I don’t think you can assume that. Whatever he does is on him.
You
were the one to tell me that, remember? About Fisk. After he killed Ben.”
“That was different, you had no leverage over Fisk.” Foggy said, lifting his tear-stained face to hers. “Even if Larry would have gotten off on the charges, there still would have been a paper trail. I
could
have taken him to court, after…There was enough physical evidence. I didn’t because I was a coward. I didn’t want to have to face him again. Or get on the stand and testify. I didn’t want my family to know. I
knew
what Larry was, and I let him just walk away scot free. He graduated from
Harvard.
He has a job, and had a
boyfriend.
What guy wouldn’t date him? Hell, I would date him again, if I didn’t know. Karen, if he did to his other boyfriend what he did to me, it’s my fault. That’s why I’ve been spending so much time with him lately. I’m hoping beyond hope that he really did change.”
Karen sighed, “Foggy, you really need to tell Matt what you just told me. Because right now, he’s absolutely losing his mind over the fact that you’ve been seeing Larry again. He thinks you may end up getting back together. I don’t know what he’s going to do. With the way he’s going right now, he’ll either lose his law license, or end up in prison. Probably both.”
Foggy closed his eyes. “He can’t. I’ll stop him.”
Karen was quiet for a few moments. “Foggy,” she said eventually.
Foggy knew what she was going to say. “Karen, please, don’t.” He begged. He stepped away from her.
“Foggy,” Karen continued stubbornly. “It kills me to see you and Matt both so unhappy, when the thing you both want is within your grasp. Surely-”
“No,” Foggy shook his head rapidly, squeezing his eyes shut. All that was missing was him clapping his hands over his ears for good measure. “No, no,
no
. I
told
you-”
“But Foggy, it’s
Matt,”
Karen said in frustration. “You two are so close…You know him. You trust him. Surely-”
“That’s exactly why I can’t be with him.” Foggy felt like he may be having a panic attack. He was dangerously close to hyperventilating. Black spots were blurring at the corners of his vision.
“If it was someone I didn’t care about, that would be different. But it’s
Matt.
I can’t do that to him, Karen. Don’t you see? Matt’s been through so much already, he doesn’t deserve that. No.” Foggy shook his head. “No, I refuse. It’s better this way. He’ll meet someone else, eventually. Matt always does. And this way, we’ll still be friends, and business partners. We’ll still be in each other’s lives. He’ll get over his feelings, with enough time.”
“I don’t think that he would agree.” Karen said quietly. Foggy saw her eyes look at something over his shoulder. He already knew what she was looking at. He closed his eyes in resignation.
Sure.
He thought dully.
Why not this, too.
“I don’t agree. For the record.” Matt said from behind him. He must have gotten there at some point during Foggy’s freak out. He could move very quietly when he wanted to. Foggy didn’t turn around. He thought if he saw Matt right now, he would probably just collapse in on himself like a dying star. He stared at the ground instead. “Hi Matt.” He said quietly. “How much did you hear?”
“All of it,” Matt said bluntly. “Super hearing, remember? I got to your building about 20 minutes ago. I had to take the stairs. The elevator is out of order.”
Foggy nodded to himself. “Right. I’ll just go get the Super, shall I?” He pivoted on his heel and marched by Matt and Karen, resolutely not looking at either one. Matt tracked him with his head as he walked by. Foggy grabbed his keys and wallet in the bowl by his door, and was opening it to leave, when Matt appeared next to him and pushed his door shut with one hand. “Matt, please.” Foggy begged. “Please don’t do this to me right now.”
Matt crowded him against his door frame. “No. We’re doing this. Right now.”
“Matt,” Karen said warningly from behind them. Matt ignored her. His face was trained on Foggy, his eyes fixated on his mouth. “You seem to be laboring under a few misconceptions.” He said tightly. “Let me clear those up for you.” He was holding onto the doorknob tightly with one hand so that Foggy couldn’t leave. Foggy put his hand up to push him away. Matt caught his wrist as easily as if he had been a child.
“Matt,” Foggy said. “Let go of me.” Matt’s nostrils flared. “No.”
His hand tightened on Foggy’s wrist. Not tight enough to hurt, but definitely tight enough for him to feel it.
“No. You are going to stay, and listen to what I have to say.” He snarled. “How dare you. How dare you say those things about yourself. How dare you presume to know what I want. As if I didn’t already
fucking
know everything that bastard did to you. I knew it before you ever even told me.” Foggy was crying. Matt shook him a little bit. “You think you can just decide that I’m better off without you? As if you haven’t been the best thing to ever happen to me in my entire life. How fucking
dare
you call yourself damaged? Foggy I swear to God, sometimes you make me so angry, I don’t know whether to kiss you, or shake you. You-”
Suddenly, Karen’s voice rang out clear. “Matt, let him go.”
Matt was breathing hard. He tilted his head toward Karen, and then turned back to Foggy. Whatever he heard in Foggy’s heartbeat, in his shuddering breaths, in his shaking form, must have convinced him. He let him go.
Foggy didn’t hesitate. He immediately turned, and fled. As he was leaving he heard Karen say sharply. “
No,
Matt. Don’t go after him.”
***
Foggy didn’t have a thought in his head other than getting as far away from Matt and Karen as possible. But he realized soon after he left that maybe he should have had a plan. He had nowhere to go. He desperately wanted a drink, but he didn’t want to go to Josie’s and be around strangers. If only there was somewhere he could go, he thought. Where he could drink, and not have to explain himself to anyone-
Foggy stopped on the sidewalk abruptly. Of course, he was an absolute idiot. He stepped off the curb, and threw his arm up to hail a cab.
Foggy leaned on the buzzer tiredly when he finally arrived. If this didn’t work he would just go to the NM&P office and crash on his office couch. He was just about to turn back when a voice came through the speaker. “I only accept walk-ins on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Also, it’s after 10pm, so there will be a 50% upcharge on my deposit fee.”
Foggy cleared his throat. “That’s fine,” his voice cracked. “I can pay you in alcohol. Or free legal advice. Whichever you need more of.”
There was silence through the speaker, and then the buzzer sounded again, and the lock clicked. “Come on up, Nelson.”
Foggy leaned down to turn the doorknob to the office when he got upstairs, but the door swung open before he could.
“Welcome to Alias Investigations,” Jessica said in her dry, sarcastic voice. She stepped aside as Foggy trailed in. “Let me give you the grand tour. Here it is.”
Foggy dropped heavily into one of the chairs across from Jessica’s desk, and put his face in his hands. “I was hoping you could get me, just, mind-obliteratingly drunk.”
“Ah,” Jessica said, going around to the other side of her desk. “I actually quit drinking.”
Foggy blinked, taking his head out of his hands. “...Really? I mean, sorry, good for you-”
Jessica snorted. “Dude. I’m messing with you. Here you go.” She took an almost full bottle of whiskey out of her desk drawer, along with two chipped, stained coffee mugs. She filled one coffee mug almost to the brim, and handed it over to Foggy, who took it gratefully.
Foggy took a sip, and choked. It wasn’t the highest quality stuff. And it was room temperature. He looked over the top of his mug at Jessica, who was staring at him in amusement. “Something wrong? Sorry, were you expecting a 100-year old scotch?”
“No,” Foggy took another sip. It burned his stomach like acid. “This is perfect.”
For a while, they sat in silence and just drank. Finally, when Foggy’s cup was almost empty, Jessica spoke.
“You look like shit.” She said bluntly. “I’m guessing you didn’t show up at my door and ask to get drunk because you were having such a grand time. What happened?”
Foggy didn’t say anything. “Was it Murdock?” Jessica asked at last. “Did you two get into a fight?”
“Why does everyone always assume it’s me and Matt that are fighting?” Foggy mumbled. Jessica raised an eyebrow at him.
“Ok, yeah,” Foggy sighed. “Touche.”
“So what did he do this time?” Jessica leaned back in her chair and put her boots on her desk. “Want me to kick his ass?”
“It’s not him.” Foggy swirled the whiskey in his cup. “It’s me.”
Jessica snorted, “doubtful. So what did your boyfriend do? Did he run off and go fight bad guys without telling you? Did he get himself injured?”
“Don’t call him my boyfriend.” Foggy said tightly.
He could feel Jessica looking at him a little harder. “Did he do something to you?” She asked sharply. Her voice had lost its mocking edge.
“I already told you.” Foggy said tiredly. “It’s me. I’m the problem.”
“And I don’t believe you.” Jessica said bluntly. “What’s going on, Foggy?”
Foggy sighed. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
“You’re my lawyer,” Jessica pointed out. “Every question you ask me is a personal question.”
Foggy didn’t crack a smile. “It’s about sex.”
“Dude, I’m a PI,” Jessica said. “Sex is my entire job portfolio. I’ve come into contact with every weird kink you could possibly imagine. Nothing surprises me anymore. Shoot.”
“How long was it, after Kilgrave…” Foggy fiddled with his mug. “Before you were able to have sex with someone else?”
Jessica craned her neck back to squint thoughtfully at her ceiling. “Umm, about two and a half months. Give or take the half. Why?”
Foggy blew out his breath. “Two
months!?
Jesus Christ, I really am the most pathetic person in New York.”
“I take it this line of questioning has to do with why you and Murdock are fighting.” Jessica said bluntly. “So I ask again, did he do something to you? I don’t care if he is the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, I’ll kick his ass so hard,
he’ll
be the one needing an attorney.”
Foggy reached for the whiskey bottle, and poured another generous glug into his cup. “Matt has been a perfect gentleman. Also, we’re not a couple.”
“You know, for a lawyer, you are a surprisingly terrible liar.” Jessica said conversationally.
“How did you do it?” Foggy blurted out. “After Kilgrave? Two months, Jesus Christ.”
Jessica looked at him. She twirled a lock of hair around her index finger thoughtfully.
“You know what you said before? About it being different for me? That’s kinda true. I
was
mind controlled. So afterward…I don’t know. I wanted it to be my choice, you know? I jumped into bed with anyone who would have me. It didn’t matter who they were, men, women, married, single, whoever. It felt like a victory, at the time. Like I was getting back at him.”
She lifted her eyes to Foggy’s. “I’m not saying that it’s normal, or even right, though. It’s not like that for everyone. Also, in the beginning, I had to be absolutely plastered in order to do it. That part was easy, seeing as how I was plastered pretty much 24/7 anyway.”
“I’m pretty sure Matt would know if I was drunk 24/7,” Foggy said glumly.
“Ah” Jessica said. “I figured that might be the issue. That explains a lot, actually. Matt has been particularly bitchy recently. He practically tore Danny a new one the other night when we were on patrol. Granted, he was being an idiot. But then again, he always is, so…”
“Great,” Foggy slumped even further in his chair. “I’ll apologize for Matt next time I see him.”
“Dude you’re not responsible for Matt’s behavior.” Jessica said. “Although I can see why you’d think that. You two are the most codependent motherfuckers I’ve ever met in my entire life. And my best friend is Trish Walker. I always know when Matt is in the dog house because he always gets the same look on his face when you’re mad at him, like a puppy left out in the rain.”
Foggy didn’t say anything, just continued swirling his whiskey, looking down into his cup morosely.
“Not to be nosey, but didn’t you have a girlfriend?” Jessica asked. “I met her once, at HB&C, what was her name…”
“Marci,” Foggy supplied. “And yes, I did.”
“Ah,” Jessica said. “So what, you two never?...”
“No, we did.” Foggy said. “But it was different with her.”
Jessica raised her eyebrows. “How so?”
“Come on, Jess, you know.” Foggy said tiredly. “Because she was a girl. Sorry, woman.”
“I see,” Jessica said calmly. “So. It’s only men you have a problem with. Or is it Matt in particular?”
Foggy took a gulp of his drink and coughed slightly. “No, it’s all guys.”
“Not to be too fucking delicate here,” Jessica said bluntly. “But couldn’t you just top? Or would Matt not go for that?”
Foggy went red and covered his face. “Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m discussing my sex preferences with
Jessica Jones
. Sorry, no offense.”
“None taken.” Jessica said easily.
Foggy sighed. “This stays between us, right?”
Jessica mimed locking her lips and throwing away the key. Foggy looked down. “Ok, here goes. I did love Marci, when we were together. And sex between us was…good. Great, even. But it wasn’t…exactly what I wanted.”
“I see.” Jessica said gravely. “And what you want is a big strong man who will lay you down and love you tenderly all night long?”
“Oh my God,” Foggy muttered. “I regret everything. Just forget it. Forget I was ever here.”
Nonplussed, Jessica poured herself another drink. The bottle of whiskey was almost empty between them. “You know, I am 1000% certain that Matt would lay you down on a bed of rose petals with Enya playing in the background if you asked him too. I think he’ll give it to you whatever way you want, if I’m being honest.That dude has got it bad for you. Even Danny knows it. Do you have any idea how absolutely obvious you have to be in order for Danny to notice anything? God love the guy, but he’s dumber than a box of rocks.”
Foggy quirked a smile, but it quickly slid off his face. “I know.” He said quietly. “I know he would.”
“So what’s the issue?” Jessica said. “It
is
Matt, isn’t it? You don’t trust him not to lose control.”
“It’s not Matt I don’t trust.” Foggy said. “Jess, it’s
me.
I don’t trust myself to not freak out. What if we’re…and he-”
“You think you’re gonna freak out when he is inside of you,” Jessica said bluntly. Foggy nodded miserably. “Ok, and then what?” Jessica asked. Foggy stared at her. “...What?”
Jessica shrugged. “Ok, say that happens. Then what? What’s the worst that could happen?”
Foggy gaped at her. “Are you serious? I just told you.”
“You freak out, then Matt stops.” Jessica said calmly. “You both call it a mulligan, and you try again next time. Doesn’t sound like the end of the world to me.”
Foggy was shaking his head. “I don’t think you really get it-”
“Do you think that Matt is so insecure that he’ll, what, take it personally?” Jessica continued. “That’s kind of fucked up if you ask me.” Foggy stared at her wide-eyed.
“Or,” Jessica continued. “Are you worried that he’ll get angry? Or that he
won’t
stop?”
There was a heavy silence in the room. Foggy opened and closed his mouth a few times, but no sound came out.
“Look,” Jessica leaned forward. Her tone was uncustomarily gentle. “I can’t say that I know exactly where you are coming from. I have super strength, so I never had to worry about someone overpowering me in that way. But just so it happens, I happen to be fucking probably the only guy in the world who
could
actually hurt me, if he wanted to. It kinda sucks that we can’t choose who we fall in love with, can we?”
Foggy shook his head. There were tears in his eyes.
“Things were the hardest with Luke because I actually gave a shit about him.” Jessica said. “I could sleep with 100 strangers and be completely unbothered, but one night with Luke Cage, and stuff’s getting dragged up I hadn’t thought about in
years.
Really fucking inconvenient if you ask me. I won’t bullshit you, Foggy, it wasn’t easy. Things between us were a little touch and go for a while there. We’re solid now, but we broke up a few times over it.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Foggy said hoarsely. “Jess, I
just
got Matt back, after thinking I would never see him again. What if this is the last straw for us, and we’re done for good? I
can’t
lose him again. I barely survived it the first time. The only reason I did was because Karen would have been left alone. I’d rather have Matt as just a friend, then not have him at all.”
“I hate to break it to you, but I think it’s a little too late for that, muchacho.” Jessica said. “Matt is
not
just your friend, no matter what lies you tell yourself to make it through the day. You can either keep going like you have been, where neither of you are quite satisfied, or, you can risk it all for the chance to have the most mind-blowing sex of your little blonde life. And, you know,” she waved her hand around in the air dismissively. “All that love and companionship and soulmate stuff. But think of the
sex
, Foggy.”
“I have thought about it,” Foggy muttered, avoiding her eyes.
“Oh, I know.” Jessica smirked at him. “And I
know
Murdock has thought about it. Whenever you show up to give us legal advice and start yammering on about property law or whatever, Murdock always gets a glazed look in his eyes, and not the same glazed look
I
get whenever someone talks legalese to me. I’m fairly certain he’s picturing bending you over the nearest surface. That’s his version of dirty talk.”
“
Jess!”
Foggy yelped. He covered his face. “That’s not-He’s not-”
“Give me a break, Foggy,” Jessica rolled her eyes. “I’ve seen you in court. I don’t believe you’re nearly as sweet and innocent as you project. You’ve got to know the effect you have on this man. If you’re not doing it on purpose, then Jesus Christ, you’ve been walking around with kryptonite in your pocket, and Matt’s superman. All you have to do is do the ‘voice,’ and Matt will fall in line like it’s pancake day at Becky’s Diner.”
Foggy looked at her curiously. “The ‘voice’?”
“Oh my god, you really
don’t
know.” Jessica said in amazement. “And here I thought you were just being coy about it. It’s when you get all Encyclopedia Brown about the law, and start lecturing us all about the 5th amendment and our rights and whatnot. And your voice gets a bit stern and prissy. That voice has Matt Murdock on a fucking
leash.
”
They talked for a little while longer, until both were yawning and finally, Jessica grabbed a few blankets for him and he got settled on the low couch in her office.
Jessica turned off the lamp on her desk, and went into the adjoining room that was her bedroom. Foggy stayed awake for a little while longer, staring up at her cracked ceiling, until he too drifted off to sleep.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
It had been a full day of muddled hazes.
Peter would wake up in fits of aches and pain. His body kept shuddering on the bathroom floor, drawing a trembling hand to clutch at his chest — trying to ease the throbbing agony that consumed his entire being.
This was beyond just suffering.
He felt his hunger push a suffocating pressure on his back and head, choking him in waves, as his body was drenched in constant chills and sweat. He had a fever that wouldn’t break.
This entire situation felt worse than the sickness that washed over him when he transformed into Spiderman.
Peter groaned slowly, lips cracking with dried blood as he continued shaking.
The sun sunk below the horizon, the day had passed, with him encapsulated with fits of tremors. The hospital gown grew damp with the constant sweat permeating into the paper-like texture.
He couldn’t fathom the amount of willpower he’d need to stand. Let alone move from the deteriorated house. Stiffly turning on his side, Peter closed his eyes again; he’d sleep for now.
He was still so tired.
“Peter hasn’t been to school,” Steph looked at Bruce, “I mean, I’m not that surprised.” She finished, adjusting her sweatshirt in the Batcave.
The weather had hit a light heat-wave, reaching near fifties before slipping into the low twenties.
“I’ve emailed the teachers; he’s been excused from any work he misses. I — the entire situation is odd,” Bruce spoke slowly, eyes zeroing in on the large monitor before him. A frown stuck on his features; Steph leaned near him.
“Tim and I were talking, thinking, what if Peter was some kind of experiment? I wouldn’t put it past some people in Gotham.” Steph hopped on the desk, ignoring the annoyed glance Bruce gave her.
He always yelled at them for sitting near the Bat equipment — the kids were walking destruction most days.
“You guys think he was a human-experiment?” Bruce said lowly, “It’s too risky to be definite; there’s a lot of different areas that could be a possibility. But it could be plausible.”
Steph shrugged, “Damian agrees with the idea.”
Bruce thrummed his finger against his thigh, eyes staring at his hand. “Why would they pick Aaron, though? What made him the perfect subject for such an experiment? And if so, why have his DNA altered in such a drastic change?”
“Tim was speculating on it, I don’t know. He said because of Aaron’s untrustworthy background, you know with him getting charges placed against him and all that, that if he would come out against any charges of experimentation, the people could wipe it off as a mentally deranged kid who doesn’t have the proper resources to deal with his mental-issues.” Steph sunk her hands into the pocket of her sweatshirt, sinking further into the baggy material.
“I’ll look into it.” Bruce nodded towards her, “It’s a solid theory.”
The smile his statement returned him had a soft feeling ease in his chest.
Steph jumped from the desk, Bruce widened his eyes. He barely caught his water from toppling over on the electronics. “Steph,” he snapped, turning to her.
She was smiling, “Oopsie!” Shrugging loosely, she left the cave.
Leaving Bruce alone in the utter silence of the endless space. Sighing, he leaned against the back of his chair; there were many separate leads.
He felt like there was no figuring out Peter. The kid escaped from him every time he was close.
When he woke up, he felt worse than he had before.
In the dull morning, the bathroom smelled of sweat. Pushing himself on his palms, he took a heaving breath; coughing, he winced at the steady slick of blood that spilled from his lips, carrying a solid taste of iron.
He stilled against the floor, resting his forehead against the cool tiles, breathing wheezy breaths until he curled up further on his side.
Bringing his hands to either side of his body, he pushed slowly; he felt the muscles protest any movement. Shaking with such exertion, he had to pause before continuing.
Standing on trembling knees, he stood for a minute before gasping, falling back onto the cold ground.
The color of the hospital gown was stained with red from the blood he spitted up just minutes ago.
“Come on,” he chanted, gathering his strength once more. Standing on weak legs, he tipped forward, balancing the constant shifts in his weight by placing his two hands on the wall in front of himself.
Trailing his fingers over the plaster, he moved.
Slowly walking through the empty house, until he paused at the entrance. It took twenty minutes to end up there; staring around the dim house, he felt a shudder consume his body.
Coughing again, he froze with the spill of blood that splattered in front of him, coating the yellowed walling in a coat of red.
It matched the dried stains of the others.
Opening the door with enough force for his muscles to ache, he walked carefully down the stairs, wincing at each impact his body made against the ground. Standing alone without support, Peter grimaced at the effort he needed to stay upright.
He limped over cracked pavement, pausing in fits of unimaginable pain as he threw up even more blood.
The pain in his chest was growing in size until, more than half the time; he was hunched over, heaving up a mixture of drool and blood against the starting-to-thaw snow-covered ground.
He tried to keep his pace even throughout his journey. A few people threw him disgusted and wary glances — Peter knew he looked like a mess; shaking and sweaty.
It took till midday for him to finally reach the East End, and by the time he did, he felt the painful hitch of each breath moving through his constricting lungs.
It felt impossible to even speak with the pressure placed on the organ, he grasped the front of the hospital gown as if that could ease the pressure that was building up.
Pushing his body against the wall of some strip club, Peter could feel the bass from inside vibrating against his side.
He took a moment to regain the lost composure; even with the minutes he had spent trying to breathe deeply, it didn’t soothe any tightness.
Progressing forward, he took minute breaks between every five steps; it took nearly an hour, if not more, to reach the one complex he knew better than his own.
Shoving his way through the front doors, he didn’t even greet the usual old lady who sat in the front room, sipping a cup of nauseating-smelling coffee.
Peter crawled up the stairs, shuddering at the coldness the complex seemed to carry; his palms grew red with the force of pushing himself up every few steps.
Once he reached Selina’s floor his breath was escaping in sharp gasps. He leaned against the stone wall, trying to gather himself.
Blood still flowed from his sharp exhales — he left a trail of it against the stone stairs.
Opening the floor-door, he stumbled through the dirty hallway’s through pure will alone.
He stopped at her apartment; leaning his body against the door, he knocked once and twice.
Waiting for it to draw open.
It took a few minutes before the door slowly unlocked, exposing a slit for Selina to stare out of.
She must’ve noticed Peter because the door swung open after that, causing him to stumble into her apartment.
Landing messily on the floor, the impact caused him to seize with excruciating pain. His arms tightened to his side, as his body shook with such inhumane pain.
“Shit!” Selina moved towards him, throwing a hand to touch lightly against his bald head. He shuddered against the gesture, it sent an almost firey sensation down his body.
Groaning, he coughed up more blood; he felt woozy.
“Kid, oh my god.” She was going out of focus, “What’s — what’s going on with you? You look —” Her words shook slightly; she could often conceal her emotions well.
Peter grimaced, moving so his eyes could stare at her; he tried smiling, “Do I look that bad?”
Selina didn’t laugh; her face grew sterner. “Peter, I’m going to move you to a room.” She grabbed beneath his armpits; it felt like his muscles were tearing where she touched him.
Yelping, he tried twisting away from her, but she held him tighter, pushing them towards a room Peter never entered.
Selina opened the door with her hip, he dimly realized it was her bedroom. The walls were dark purple, with a large bed in the middle.
She placed him down on the mattress with extra care, making sure not to have any lingering touches. “What hurts?” She was grabbing her phone, doing something on it.
“What doesn’t?” He answered; the softness from the bed felt incredible on his tearing back. It felt like his bones were being plucked from their positions and forcefully rearranged.
Selina frowned at him, “You poor child,” her voice was pure empathy. Peter smiled at nothing; everything was too bright to keep his eyes open.
“I think you were the nicest person I met here — well, definitely one of them.” He responded, wincing at how breathless his words sounded. It was as if he ran a mile, and his body couldn’t keep up.
Selina gripped her knee tightly, keeping any sudden movements she may do to a bare minimum.
“Selina,” Peter’s voice shook now; the lack of breath in it evident by the slight wheeze following each word. “I’m scared.” He clenched his eyes tighter, “I think I’m dying.”
“Pete,” Selina responded; she didn’t touch him — he was grateful. “You are not going to die while you are with me.”
He laughed loosely; blood seeped when he did, sliding down his chin to pool over his neck. “I thought I’d be ready to die if it were to happen. But,” he couldn’t move; it felt like his body was losing all motor functions. “I’m not.”
Selina took a deep breath; he was envious for a second. It seemed he couldn’t catch his breath; it was forever out of reach, almost like an asthma attack.
“Stay awake, Peter, I’m right here.” Her words were firm. Peter tried to nod, but he felt like he couldn’t. Coughing, he winced at the low noise that escaped Selina.
She moved from the bed; she was still in the room, pacing the floor. She was calling someone.
“Bruce,” her voice was unbelievably firm, almost scary. “He’s here; I don’t —” She took a large breath; Peter made a slight noise of pain; his chest was burning. “He’s in a bad state right now.” She made various humming noises; Peter could hear only segments of what Bruce was saying.
When Selina hung up the phone, she returned to Peter’s side, “Kid, it’ll be okay.” She soothed, moving slowly back on the mattress.
Peter opened his mouth; if he were to die, she’d never know the truth of everything. “Selina —” It was becoming progressively more difficult to speak; it was as if his tongue wouldn’t move.
“Thank you so much.” He could only say.
“You’re welcome,” she returned, her words seemed empty. “Peter, you have so much love to give. Keep pushing, I know you have gone through tough shit. This is just another obstacle.”
This seemed like the end.
He didn’t say anything; he clenched his eyes tighter in response.
Before Selina could continue, the door squealed open. “Holy shit? We just got off the phone. How fast were you going?”
A deeper voice answered — Bruce, “Perks.” He only replied, moving over to where they sat. “I already have the hospital on standby.” Bruce moved closer to them.
He suddenly stopped; his voice seemed to be dampened by some muffling static noise.
“Why does he look like that?” Bruce questioned. Peter gasped with a sharp twinge in his chest.
“DNA changes, right? I don’t know really, let’s talk about it later.” Selina stated, her words almost blurred together.
There’s a hand pressed against Peter’s forehead, it sends out a hiss from the boy. He tries withdrawing from it immediately.
Bruce lets out a sharp breath, Peter feels Bruce’s arms slithering slowly behind Peter’s own arms and legs, “He’s burning up.”
Selina stands from the bed; the mattress loses her weight against it, causing it to flatten suddenly against Peter. With the shift in the bed, Bruce exhales quickly before picking him up.
It burnt — his entire body seemed to be flooded with lava. Writhing in his grasp, Peter tried to escape from the hold.
“I’m sorry,” Bruce said slowly, “I need to do this. It’ll be quick, I promise.” His voice sounded genuinely apologetic.
Peter couldn’t contain the jerks of tension spasming throughout his muscles.
They moved quickly through the apartment. Bruce tried to absorb most of the impact of his steps, but Peter still moved in his hold. Each slight jolt of his body sent another shiver of pure, agonizing pain to torment him.
The stairs were torture; Bruce walked on his side, which didn’t help with minimizing the jostling. He held Peter tight, sending more flashes of fire to lick at his skin.
The entire thing was hell.
Peter tries to silence his wails, but it does work, his slight noises echo around them. He hadn’t opened his eyes since he made it to Selina’s.
The light had been bothering him ever since the day at the hospital.
Moving down narrow hallways, they step outside. The air isn’t as freezing as it could’ve been, but it still clings against Peter’s body. The hotness coursing through his veins almost becomes soothed by it.
They approach a car; Selina opens a door, which she slides into as Bruce bends down. He eases Peter into the backseat, leaning him against Selina.
The cool leather beneath him calms the pulsating pain in his skin. Sighing, he leans further into it. Selina doesn’t touch him, but she’s near enough for him to notice her.
Bruce closes the backseat door once Peter gets settled; the front opens as he enters the driver’s seat.
The car rides smoothly, but with every hole it crosses over, it practically hurts as much as being shot.
Peter tightens his hands into fists, taking shallow breaths — he can’t seem to find any air when he breathes.
The ride is quick.
Bruce is squealing to a stop while Peter’s side door slams open; hands grab at him as he’s moved onto a stretcher. He’s wheeled inside as he hears Selina and Bruce trying to keep equal pace with the team of doctors and nurses.
“Immediate surgery required, again.” The same voice from before speaks near him; he almost remembers her face but can’t seem to recall it completely.
“How long?” Bruce asks; he can hear the woman turn.
“As long as it takes, Bruce, I suggest you two relax for the time being.” She pushes them through doors.
There’s a mask on Peter’s face, and the exhaustion that’s been clawing at him for days and hours finally catches him.
He gives in to sleep.
The waiting room is silent. Selina leans against her chair as she stares at the doors the doctors just left into. Bruce gets on his phone, already moving towards the group chat.
Bruce: Peter is in surgery right now.
Steph: what?? why
Tim: you found him?
Bruce: He went to Selina, Les hasn’t said anything about what’s going on. Just that it’s urgent.
Dick: Can I stop by?
Bruce: Only you, there can’t be too many people right now.
Jason: Tell me how it goes.
Tim: same
Steph: me 2
Duke: yeah please
“Dick is going to stop by,” Bruce adjusts in his seat to face Selina.
She nods, lips sealed in a tight grimace. Her skin looks pale with the sterile lighting of the place. Bruce moves to place a hand on her thigh, squeezing it lightly.
“Don’t worry, Selina, the kid has endured worse than this. It’s just another trial. He’ll get over it.” He keeps his words steady, not showing the doubt that floods his mind. Selina seems to hear it anyway — she always could.
“That’s what makes me worried. He’s been through so much; what if this is the final thing? The last test of endurance he can’t get over? If he survives, I swear, I’ll never let him leave. He always disappears.”
“I got my tracking devices,” Bruce smiles slightly, trying to ease her frustrations and fears.
Bruce knows he was never any good at expressing himself with those he cared about; he stayed stern, making sure they saw him as a stable figure with reliance. He understands Selina doesn’t need that right now.
He tries for her.
She sighs, “I might take a few.”
Bruce grabs her hand, moving it away from her thigh; bringing it up to his mouth, he draws a dry kiss against the skin, “Anything for you.”
Selina shares a dim smile with him.
The station had been slow today, it’ll be no issue if he leaves early.
Dick moves to stand, placing down his phone from the conversation with Bruce.
Rolling his shoulders, he gathers his supplies, ignoring the anxiety looming behind him. He ignores it, continuing to pack.
“Leaving?” Amy speaks from his side; a frown lingers on her features. Her brown hair pulled up in her signature ponytail, swinging loosely behind her. “Dick, you need to stop leaving early on the force. It sends out a bad message.” Her lecture was more exasperated than anything.
“It’s a family emergency,” he shrugged in response.
He respects Amy; he works with her on occasion as Nightwing.
Even with her moral distaste of Nightwing and the laws it breaks, she still works alongside him; she respects his dedication too much to ignore any pursuits of a future partner within the force — even if she doesn’t know it’s him.
“Bruce forgot to pick up some suits from the dry cleaners?” One of the more larger men spoke, Dan, his mustache had crumbs intertwined in the coarse facial hair from his food he ate earlier.
“Sorry, I might be forgetting something, did you take down that gang those days ago?” Dick smirked at him, tilting his head slightly to the side.
“I could’ve if I were twenty years younger; you should’ve seen me on the field when I was thirty-five, busting down gigs like no one knew.” Dan supplied, smiling in return to Dick.
“You busted a hip,” another girl sighed; turning to Dick, she began explaining, “He was stopping these two teenagers from going at it, and one got a good punch at him, caused him to fall over and fucking bust it.” Her eyes were sunken, but her voice was light, chuckling at the memory. “That was my first year here.” She finished, beaming at him.
“The fucking kid had to be a spy, no way he was sixteen,” Dan muttered, a dull flush bit at his plump cheeks.
“I’m sure he was,” Dick shook his head, laughing slightly, as he continued packing. “I’ll work overtime, promise. But I’m going to need some days off; it’s urgent.”
Amy sighed, “Do what you have too; I’ll try and pick up some of your shifts.”
“The best,” Dick grinned at her, slinging his bag over his shoulder and leaving the station; he signed out, waving bye as he passed the receptionists.
Hailing a taxi, he slid into the backseat, naming the hospital. The drive was over as quickly as it could with the slow traffic of Gotham.
Getting out, he paid the guy a fifty, ignoring any mentions of change and moving towards the back.
Already sliding a pair of sunglasses in place — the paparazzi had a way of sniffing out any Wayne members.
Sliding through the back, he was guided by one of the older nurses; she had worked on Dick when he was just a teenager.
“Hello, Grayson,” she smiled at him, pulling them through stairs and elevators. “Work was well?”
He nodded, “It was.”
They landed on the top floor; exiting the elevator, Dick paused as he saw Selina and Bruce delved into an absorbing conversation. They didn’t even greet him when he entered.
Stopping near the open seat next to Selina, he sat down.
“What’s happening?”
Selina turned, “Peter.” She said it like it explained everything.
It did.
“What’s going on?” He continued, pressing for more details.
“Peter showed up at Selina’s house, coughing up blood and shaking. He’s in bad shape.” Bruce answered; his face looked tired.
The older Dick was getting, the more Bruce showed it.
“He’s fine, though?” He prompted, stretching in his chair; he knew the text Bruce sent sounded urgent — which he no doubt trusted it was, but Bruce wasn’t the best texter.
“We don’t know.” Selina whispered, “It’s not determined yet.”
Dick looked at the ceiling, “What were you guys talking about before I came in?”
“Adoption,” Bruce spoke calmly.
Dick sighed; he was waiting for this. “Selina?” He stared at her, “What do you think?”
“I don’t have the proper qualifications to adopt him; they’d never let me. Bruce does. The kid needs someone to rely on, and having Bruce as his guardian will stop such shitty things from happening. This whole thing is a mess, but Peter deserves guidance, and with Bruce as the legal parent of Peter he could be with me still, we wouldn’t run the risk of the government taking him away.”
“He wouldn’t be living with us really. I’m sure he’d stay at Selina’s more than anything, but —” Bruce continued, nodding, “For the first month, I’d like to have him at the manor. Alfred can keep a close eye on his health progress.”
“They’re going to be pissed.” Dick didn’t expand further, he agreed with what they discussed but couldn’t help think of the kids he already had. “B, you know I could always adopt him. I may have to run through some hoops, but it could work.”
Bruce stayed quiet, his lips thinning. “It’s possible — it’d take longer for you, though. He could be put in state custody while they debated the placement.”
Dick blinked slowly, “Are you forgetting who you are? Your Bruce Wayne, tell the government not to. I mean, I have enough credits to pass it. I have a spare bedroom, an apartment, and a steady job. It’ll be easy to pass.”
Bruce rubbed at his jaw, eyes thinning, “I’ll make some calls. We’ll see if we can pass this these past few days — speed up the slow process.” He stood, moving towards the outside of the room, standing against the glass windows.
Selina smiled at Dick; it wasn’t genuine. “You took away his fun.”
Dick shook his head, “I saved him from five pissed people. He should be thanking me.”
Selina nodded, “Always thoughtful, Dick.”
“Alfred taught me well,” he replied with a small smile. Selina laughed slowly.
“He did.”
The door opens, Leslie enters in a whirl of blue, her gray hair in a tight netting with scrubs still on — the surgery gear she wore is absent.
Her eyes seem inhumanely tired.
She looks at Bruce, then Selina, finally stopping on Dick, she pushes up her hands.
“I don’t know how you always find completely and utterly bizarre people in new ways. But you always do.” She sits opposite them, “Peter is in the ICU; he’s been stabilized.
“Again, this time, his coma state may be permanent. Or he could pass later tonight. There’s rapid changes occurring to major organs; his lungs were morphing into different ones, the tissue was tearing, allowing blood to enter freely.
“It’s a miracle he is alive right now. But I am going to warn you. Assuming the same thing may happen to his heart. It may be useless to do anything; we only mended the lungs by the tissue doing most of the knitting back together. The procedure was risky, and I didn’t know what to do. The fact that he’s survived this long is nothing more than pure luck.”
Dick exhaled sharply, dragging a hand down his face.
Selina looks ill, her face paler by the minute as her palms seep light beads of blood.
Bruce doesn’t react; he sits still and listens.
“The boy’s internal organs aren’t only changing, certain features are. I’m sure you noticed. His muscle tissues are growing differently. His body is morphing into whatever the DNA pushes. This entire thing is a gamble.” Leslie speaks slowly; she places her hands over each other.
“There’s a five percent chance of him living with no consequences; there’s a weak twenty percent chance of him living with a mental disability or a physical one; he could be rendered immobile completely. The most likely truth is that he’ll die. And if he were to survive, I’m confident that he would have a problem with some of his cognitive functions.” Leslie frowned at them, “I’m sorry, the entire thing is unlikely to progress any further than the state he’s in now.”
“Can we see him?” Dick spoke sparingly, Leslie looked at him. Her eyes were sad, shaking her head as she stood.
“He’s still being treated; the state of his body is too weak to do anything. I’m sorry; I’ll grab you guys when it’s ready. I suggest going home, sleeping, or doing something else to get your mind moving away from this. I will call when he’s stable enough for visitors.” Leslie heads towards the door, “Or, I’ll call if anything else happens.” The unspoken,
if he passes,
flows through her words.
With her gone, they sit in tense silence. “I’m not leaving,” Selina declares, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Me either,” Dick agrees quickly.
Bruce stares at them; he knows better than to argue. “I’ll call Alfred and ask him to drop some food off. I think it’s going to be a while.”
Selina doesn’t spare him a glance; she keeps staring at the glass doors, her face unreadable. Dick mimics her expression perfectly, only giving Bruce a light nod in response.
Texting Alfred, he waits for an answer — he knows that’s all they can do.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
The sky turned dark with the whirl of black robes.
“What the fuck?” asked a werewolf.
“Who is that?” asked another.
“...Nuns?” said the first.
“Are you bloody joking?” said Greyback.
The werewolves looked up in confusion.
Then they began to laugh again.
The nuns moved through the air together with a collaborative fluidity that could have been a warning to Greyback, if he hadn’t been so busy howling with laughter.
A few werewolves sent up spells. They were met with ruthless counter-curses that left the casters disfigured upon the ground, missing the majority of their faces.
There was a bit of shock, a bit of cognitive dissonance to wrestle with. Some of the werewolves began to shout and regroup. Greyback was still gasping with mockery.
The nuns lined themselves above them and, wands pointed down, group-cast some sort of area-effect
Petrificus Totalus
that froze everyone where they stood.
Draco felt his limbs stiffen beyond the curse. Granger grew unnaturally still. Greyback’s laugh was frozen upon his bloodied face.
Silence fell.
A small, white-haired nun, who flew above the rest, cast a detection spell at the field.
Greyback was illuminated in red.
The nun tutted in the silence. With a swish of her wand, Greyback’s rigid body was floated into the centre of the field and dropped with a crunch into the blood and muck near the boulder.
“Clear the innocents,” she said in French, waving her hand.
There was imperiousness in the gesture – she was used to command. She was the Prioress.
A contingent of nuns flew down and levitated figures out of the battlefield. From the insignia upon their cloaks, it was the Aurors and the DMLE operatives. Draco saw Tonks-Granger, Buckley, and Goggin’s stiff forms lifted out.
Then he was, himself, levitated, jostling against Granger, Potter, and Weasley. They were deposited at the very top of the ridge.
When the innocents had been cleared and only Greyback’s men remained on the field, the Prioress flew higher.
“Shall we have a Summoning?” she asked.
The nuns, cackling anew, whirled over the battlefield upon their brooms. Threads of violet magic glowed between them until they formed a floating pentagram.
The Prioress raised her wand, as did her sisters. They began a low chant in Latin. Shocks of occult magic coursed through the air – Dark, forbidden, dangerous.
A shape ossified into existence where the currents of magic concentrated at the centre of the field. It was a grinning goat’s skull, silent and inert.
“Who will be the sacrificial lamb?” asked the Prioress.
A nun floated a bloody-faced wizard up – one of the ones who had begun the attack on the nuns. “I have a sinner.”
The sinner was levitated towards the goat’s skull.
His screams, muffled by his Petrified tongue and clamped jaw, echoed across the silent field.
The nun flew above him and brought him in close, until his forehead pressed into the back of the skull.
There was a flash of red light. The man slackened. Now he looked grotesque, a hanging puppet with an oversized, horned head.
The nun resumed her place in the airborne pentagram.
The skull trembled, then shuddered, then shook.
Its eye sockets, which had been shrouded in shadow, were lit by two red flames.
The man’s body elongated and ripped. From within him, a form twisted and birthed itself into existence – a being of Fiendfyre and darkness, rending the fabric between worlds.
Granger
had
opened the gates of hell.
As it tore its way into existence, the thing vomited a sound out of the goat’s skull that was half unholy laughter, half pain. It was suffering, but there was a hideous anticipation in it.
Limbs took shape. The thing was tall. The skull hung at the end of a long neck. Stringy wings, black, and dripping with abominable afterbirth, unfurled.
Two cloven hooves reached the earth and made unhallowed ground of that place.
There was no light of conscience in the thing’s flaming eyes. Only a terrible thirst for death.
The nuns, breaking into shrieking laughter, released their paralysis spell within the confines of the pentagram.
It was not to give the werewolves a chance.
It was for sport.
The demon’s soul-blighting laughter joined that of the nuns. Hell in its eyes, it launched itself at the werewolves.
by
Cypraeidae
Half of them tried to run, half launched spells. A curling talon swiped at five of them and left corpses in its wake. Liquid fire was disgorged and burnt a dozen where they stood. The searing blow of a wing left a group of men standing without their fronts – no faces, no skin, only guts and bone. They fell with a wet sound.
Those trying to run found themselves hemmed in by the pentagram, repelled, and cast back towards the demon’s cloven hooves.
There was the crunch of skulls being crushed and a hoarse, unearthly cackle from the creature.
Ten killing curses flashed green and hit the demon at the same time. They did nothing. The thing wasn’t alive – it was the prince of some underworld, and they were merely stoking its fire.
The spellcasters were gutted.
The nuns held their pentagram. The demon dared not or could not go beyond, but it did not matter – it found its pleasure within those ungodly confines.
Its rampage was sickening, hideous, perfect. The screams and its laughter mingled in a ghastly chorus. The shrieks lessened and lessened as the demon made its way through its feast. Now there was only the sound of its terrible pleasure and the shatter of bone.
It saved Greyback for last.
Greyback fled from one end of the pentagram to the other, desperately hammering at it with curses. The nuns laughed. He aimed killing curses towards them. They dodged and laughed even more.
The demon caught sight of its final victim. The goat skull tilted. A plume of flame emerged from black nostrils.
Greyback was panicking, scrambling. He pushed his way into the pentagram and was repelled backwards.
He landed at the demon’s feet. It planted one cloven hoof into the centre of Greyback’s chest.
Draco had the vast pleasure of watching Greyback torn, limb from limb, and eaten.
The massacre was complete.
There had been two hundred of Greyback’s men in that pentagram. Now, nothing within it moved, save the demon. The air was fetid with brimstone and sulphur and heat-curdled blood.
The nuns began another chant in voices high and pure – the Lord’s Prayer.
Pater noster, qui es in caelis,
Sanctificetur Nomen Tuum;
Adveniat Regnum Tuum;
Fiat voluntas Tua,
Sicut in caelo, et in terra.
As the prayer went on, the nuns drew forwards on their brooms. The pentagram shrank.
A heavenly halo glowed now above each nun’s head. Their crucifixes floated off of their necks and shone with a pious light.
The demon hissed and spat plumes of hellfire as the bounds of the pentagram came in towards it. The field shook with its discordant, infernal screams as it was forced inwards, and inwards again, until it had curled itself into a shadowy ball.
… but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
Forever and ever,
Amen.
All that remained of the demon was the goat’s skull, then it, too, disappeared in a flash of red.
The holy auras surrounding the nuns faded. They broke the pentagram and began a leisurely flyover of the battlefield, cursing any member of Greypack’s pack that still twitched.
The Prioress flew over Draco and Granger, her wand raised. She eyed his Auror insignia and Granger’s lab coat and moved on.
Draco, petrified of her in both the physical and metaphorical sense, had never been happier to be irrelevant.
The nuns were satisfied with their absolute victory. They conjured a driving rain – something of holy water, something of the Genesis flood – that quenched the fires left behind by the demon and washed that unhallowed ground clean.
They released their paralysis over the remainder of the battlefield.
As witches and wizards began to sit up with gasps and groans, one of the nuns threw an entire tin of Floo powder into Granger’s fire.
It flared green. The nuns flew into the flames and were gone.
~
The aftermath of the battle was a mess of muck and blood and confusion. The Anti-Apparition Ward fell. Someone summoned mediwitches, who Apparated across the field and distributed potions and Healings to those who needed it the most.
A pair of them worked on Draco and Granger until they were satisfied that they were stable. They moved on to Potter and Weasley, both of whom were groaning enough to confirm that they were alive and well.
Draco and Granger looked at each other – filthy, cut-up, bruised, and battered. Across Granger’s face was a wide spray of blood. Droplets of it decorated her cheeks in a fine mist, running down in rivulets, now, as the rain washed it away. Draco felt the wet on his face and knew that he was similarly adorned; some his, some that of others.
They sat up and reached for each other’s hands, face, shoulders, blurting out a flurry of questions – are you hurt, bloody hell, did they get you, are you all right, can you stand, are you sure you’re all right, I saw you get hit, can you walk, oh, thank god, you’re all right, you’re okay, you almost got killed, you stupid, bloody idiot–
They found their feet. He held her dear bruised-up face in his hands and she held his in hers.
He kissed her, softly, under the downpour, softly, against her split lip, softly, amongst tears and rain and blood.
She slid her arms around his neck and rose upon her tip-toes and kissed him back. Draco knew happiness, then. Happiness was her, alive, her tear-filled eyes spilling over, her heartbeat thudding against his chest. It was knowing that her greatest threat was dead and gone, it was the beauty of days ahead that he hardly dared imagine, it was the feel of fingers in his hair, it was the shudder of her half-crying, half-laughing, it was her whisper of
you absolute idiot
against his mouth.
She pushed her face into his chest and gasped out sobs of relief and joy.
There was movement around them. Potter and Weasley were on their feet. Tonks, looking like herself again, limped towards them, as did Goggin and Buckley.
As he held Granger to his heart, Draco, frankly, did not give a single solitary fuck about the opinions of his colleagues. He only cared about her – about this – this exquisite catastrophe, this beautiful, stupid disaster.
There were gasps, then grins, then Weasley chortled and said, “Steady on, mate,” and Potter burst into wild laughter and said, “I told you, I bloody told you.”
Granger hid her face in Draco’s cloak, shaking with something that verged on hysterical giggling.
Tonks, one eye swelled shut, put a fist on her hip and observed them with pursed lips. “I suppose this is what the word was going to be about?”
“Yes,” said Draco. “I’m – er – no longer able to be objective–”
“Funnily, I
had
worked that out just now, when I watched you walk into a curse for her,” said Tonks. “You’re off the Granger assignment, Malfoy.”
“Brilliant,” said Draco, a wide smile upon his face.
Tonks shook her head, but there was a smile on her face, too.
“Sorry to interrupt the love-making, but can someone explain the fucking nuns?” asked Goggin with a gesture to the sky.
All eyes were now on Granger.
“They – erm – they owed me a favour,” said Granger.
“A
favour
?” said Potter, looking at her in wonder. “You properly called in the cavalry, Hermione.”
“I’m inspired,” said Tonks. “I think that demon would make a fine Auror.”
The group wandered the muddy battlefield, variously looking for colleagues or wands or – in the case of Draco – bits of family jewellery.
Draco’s wand was located near Granger’s fire. Granger’s was in a gooey pile of what looked suspiciously like demon-chewed human flesh near the boulder.
She plucked it out with a grimace. “I believe that is all that remains of Fenrir Greyback.”
Draco pointed his wand at the pile of charred mince and said, “
Accio
Malfoy ring.”
A deformed piece of silver whizzed towards him – not from the pile, but from a spot a few metres away.
Granger winced. “Oh, no – he ripped it off me and smashed it to bits, as soon as he saw me turn it–”
“It’s fixable,” said Draco, pocketing the damaged ring. “Everything is.”
She looked at him with a swift smile. “Everything
is
.”
“Shall we go home?”
“Yes, please – let’s.”
~
At the Manor, they showered and found one another in the small salon at the back of the house.
Granger came down in her most appalling pyjamas.
Henriette and Tupey were given a redacted version of the day’s events, so that they would not grow hysterical.
Opimum
was brewed to palliate the shock and soften the day’s emotional toll.
Granger explained her kidnap – such as it was. “Someone tampered with the Floo at the lab.”
“
What?!
”
“Yes. I know. It was meant to only have two connections – the lab and the Manor. I stepped into it to come here – and I
promise
you I said Malfoy Manor – and the next thing I knew, I was spinning out onto a field, and that monster was in front of me. They Disarmed me the moment I landed. Greyback saw me twist the ring and tore it off me – I thought he was going to rip my fingers off, he was so rough. He knocked me about for trying to call for help. Absolute ulcer of a man. And, of course, Fernsby hadn’t followed me into the Floo – I was coming straight here, he had no reason to…”
Draco paced. “Who tampered with the fucking Floo? I’m going to – I’m not even going to use my wand, I shall strangle them with my bare hands. And the bloody nuns?”
Granger, who was curled on a sofa with her arms wrapped around her legs, tucked her face into her knees and laughed. “I still can’t believe that worked.”
“
How?
”
“After having seen a bit of what they were capable of at the monastery, when I returned the skull, I thought it might be useful to – erm – harness the nuns for our benefit, if I could.”
“Of course you did.”
“When I sent the skull back, I pretended to be a collector who had bought it off a gang of thieves. I told the good Sisters that I was returning it to them because it was sentient, and it deserved to be in its own home – it seemed wrong to keep it. I said if they wanted vengeance on the gang, I could help them. I told them what tracking spell to look out for – that I’d activate it when the moment was right for them to exert their revenge.”
Granger swallowed. “I didn’t expect them to exert it so
thoroughly
… Anyway, I’ve been practising that bloody Floo spell for weeks and weeks. Finally got it down to three minutes. It’s as difficult as
Portus
– possibly even worse – I hate it and will never cast it again. The Floo specialist who came to my laboratory gave me a decent tutorial and I studied the rest. I knew the nuns wouldn’t be able to Apparate across the Channel, but if I had a Floo connection open wherever I was when I activated the tracking spell, then we’d have a chance…”
Draco was too gobsmacked to make any sort of articulate commentary. He merely said, “Fucking hell, Granger,” and rubbed his palm across his forehead.
“I know,” said Granger. “I may be the more ghoulish of the opportunists between us.”
He stared at her. She laughed into her knees again.
“But – speaking of tracking – how did you find me?” she asked. “When Greyback destroyed the ring, I was convinced that I was done for – there was simply no way you’d have had time to even attempt an Apparition to me.”
“Your hairpins,” said Draco.
“My… hairpins?” blinked Granger.
Draco made a general gesture towards her hair. “They’re everywhere and you always have them on you. I’ve been doing it since our first meeting. They’ve come in handy a time or two.”
Granger pulled a hairpin out of her curls and cast a revelation spell. It glowed green.
“Of course,” continued Draco, “next to Miss Floo The Fucking Nuns In, it feels rather uninspired, now…”
“I think it’s brilliant,” said Granger, smiling at the hairpin. “The simplest ideas often are.”
“Right.”
“This explains Uffington.”
“Yes.”
“You’re a wily one.”
“So are you.”
Henriette popped into existence. “
Pardonnez-moi,
Monsieur, Mademoiselle – Madame Tonks is Flooing. She would like to come in, if this is a convenient moment? She has a Mademoiselle Brimble with her.”
“Send them in,” said Draco.
A moment later, Tonks’ voice echoed down the corridor as she queried Henriette. “Not interrupting, are we? They aren’t up to anything? A bit of slap and tickle?”
“
Euh – non, Madame…
”
Granger was pink in the cheeks.
Tonks burst into the room with a ridiculous amount of vigour, considering what they’d just gone through a few hours ago.
“Hermione,
that
is an outfit,” she said, spotting Granger’s pyjamas. “Small wonder Draco couldn’t keep his hands off you.”
Granger grew even pinker. “Tonks!”
“What? Is it not true?”
Brimble followed meekly behind Tonks, clutching at a stack of parchment.
It distracted Tonks from the pyjamas. “Right. Brimble’s got news. Tell us what you’ve found so that we can be properly outraged together.”
Henriette cracked into existence again. “So sorry – Monsieurs Potter and Weasley are at the Floo and they–”
Monsieurs Potter and Weasley had not waited to be invited in. Their footsteps and shouts of “Hermione? Malfoy? Where are you?” echoed through the Manor until Tonks stuck her head out of the salon and waved them in.
Draco’s vision of a quiet evening of rest and recuperation (and snogging Granger) was fast fading.
Henriette served
opimum
to the newcomers as they settled into sofas.
Brimble briefed them on her findings. In the end, the Auror Office really had done all it could have. Granger had been betrayed by two relative unknowns who would have been difficult to preempt.
“First bit of news – there’s been an arrest,” said Brimble. “A Mr. Terris has just turned himself in. Floo technician from the Department of Magical Transportation. Says he’s the one responsible for tampering with the hearth in Healer Granger’s laboratory. Greyback kidnapped his wife and children yesterday and gave him twelve hours to do it, or they died.”
“No!” gasped Granger.
“The family is fine – they were found bound and gagged, but otherwise unharmed. Mr. Terris is cooperating – it sounds as though he was quite repentant, actually – rather a lot of crying.”
Granger looked at Draco. “No strangling.”
“Yes, strangling,” said Draco, who did not find this to be an adequate excuse for what the man had done.
Tonks observed them with pursed lips. “Kindly discuss your bedroom plans at another time – Brimble is talking.”
Granger blushed. Weasley guffawed. One of Potter’s eyes twitched.
“As for my second bit of news,” said Brimble, taking out a long scroll of parchment. “This is a list of the dead. The ones whose remains we could identify, anyway.”
She held up the list. A name was circled on it.
A Miss Clotilde Fiddlewood.
“Who?” said Granger.
“
What?
” said Potter.
“No,” said Weasley.
“Shacklebolt’s assistant,” said Tonks, her lips pressed into an unhappy line.
“That old cacklebag?” said Draco.
That had been the witch who had looked familiar on the field – the one who had been patching the ward, barring their escape.
Brimble nodded. “We can’t interrogate her – obviously – but we are speculating that she may have overheard bits of Healer Granger’s very first conversation with the Minister. The one that triggered his protection request. Getting word to Greyback would’ve taken her months – he was deep in hiding at the time. We’ll be investigating what we can and we may never know for certain – but she was one of few individuals who could’ve known anything. And, of course, to find her running with Greyback’s pack, afterwards, is rather damning evidence…”
They sat in silence. Granger looked shocked. Draco shook his head.
Then, in the quiet, Potter said, “Greyback is dead.”
Saying it made it real.
Granger’s hands found her cheeks. “Greyback is dead.”
“Greyback is fucking dead,” repeated Draco and Tonks.
“The arsehole is
dead!
” said Weasley.
They touched their cups of
opimum
together.
“Right,” said Weasley after downing his. He clapped his hands together. “What’s a bloke got to do to get a real drink round here?”
They decided to make a proper party of it. Patronuses and Jots were sent out. Soon, the salon was filled with family and friends – Lupin and the kids, Potter’s wife and tots, Luna Lovegood drifting dreamily about, Granger’s colleagues and star students, Shacklebolt (enduring much piss-taking on his choice of assistant), Aurors and their families, a host of Healers. Word of the victory and party got out and more people began to pour in, many in sleepwear because of the late hour – Longbottom and Pansy, Zabini and Patil, the entire Weasley clan (gods help Draco), Macmillan and other Ministry colleagues, and, finally, Theo, in a set of ridiculously sheer men’s pyjamas.
Henriette, Tupey and the kitchen elves were delighted to assist in the merrymaking. Tupey plied Weasley in particular with the hardest stuff in the cellars.
At some point during the festivities, Potter and Weasley waylaid Draco as he was making his way towards Granger. Draco found himself pressed into a corner by his favourite colleagues.
They were all properly sloshed.
“What?” said Draco.
“I knew it. I
knew
you were up to something,” said Potter, leaning in so close that his boozy breath wafted up Draco’s nose. “I saw how you looked at her.”
Draco pushed him away. “Back off, you speccy fucker.”
“What are your intentions with Hermione?”
“My
intentions?
Have we returned to the Victorian era? Are you her father?”
“Answer the qu-question, Malfoy,” said Weasley, with what was presumably meant to be a threatening loom. (It ended up less than intimidating as he finished the movement by resting his head on Draco’s shoulder.)
“I haven’t any intentions,” said Draco. “Get off me.”
He held Weasley at arm’s length.
“You smell good,” said Weasley. “He smells good,” he repeated to Potter.
“Does he?”
Potter came in for a sniff.
“Get away,” said Draco, now holding Potter at arm’s length, too.
“Did you do something to her?” asked Weasley, one eye narrowed in suspicion (the other was closed and taking a nap). “Dose her with a love potion?”
“Of bloody course not – women fall for me all the time – I know that’s a novel concept for you–”
“What about
you?
” asked Potter. “Are you in love with her?”
“I – that is none of your business – and why don’t you ask her if she’s dosed
me?
”
“Because she’s not a – a scoundrel like you,” said Potter.
“A m-miscreant,” said Weasley.
Draco attempted to say “Tsk,” but he was so hammered that it came out as a raspberry. “You’re both under the delusion that she’s a perfect angel but she’s – t-ten times the scoundrel I am and that’s why I–”
“You what?” asked Potter.
“...Like her.”
“You like her.”
“Yes.”
“You’re her Auror, you know,” said Potter, aiming a vague finger in Draco’s direction. “That is unprofessional. Not allowed.”
“Unpfoff – unpfoffess – unprofessional,” repeated Weasley.
“
Was
her Auror. And I never – we didn’t cross the line – or if we did, it didn’t really happen–”
Potter blinked unfocused eyes. “Did it or didn’t it happen?”
“Dreams. By a window ledge. Fantasies. In Spain. Nothing real. It was Samhain, you know. We got drunk on fire – genuinely – you have to admire the Spanish, they know how to make a drink – or was it the Celts? Anyway, it was all – fantasies – gorgeous fantasies–”
“Stop talking to us about your fantasies,” said Weasley, looking alarmed.
“They are excellent, though. Right, my favourite one is when she–”
“No,” said Potter, pressing his hand to Draco’s mouth. “Do not.”
Draco beat his hand away. “Why are your fingers
sticky?
”
Potter looked at his fingers with intense focus. “Treacle tart,” he declared with a firm nod.
“There isn’t any treacle tart.”
Weasley, endeavouring to be helpful, poured his Firewhisky on Potter’s hand and all over Draco’s shoes.
“Thank you,” said Potter gravely to Weasley as he wiped his hand on his robe. “You are a true friend–”
“You
idiot
. Now my toes are
moist
,” spat Draco.
“–Unlike Malfoy, who is a tosser. Listen, Malfoy – if you do anything to yurt her–”
“Yurt her?”
“–Hurt her, we will yurder you. Murder you.”
“K-kill you in cold blood,” said Weasley. “Set fire to your house. Liberate your elves.”
“I would never do anything to yurt her,” said Draco in a rare, drunken plunge into genuine honesty.
“Wouldn’t you?”
“No. She’s – I – right, it’s none of your fucking business, as I’ve just said–”
Weasley grasped Draco’s collar and, with a kind of plaintive desperation, said, “You
promise
you’d never do anything to hurt her?”
“Yes.”
Weasley pressed his forehead to Draco’s and stared into his eyes. “I think he’s telling the truth.”
“Stop that – get off me – you’re not a Legilimens–”
“Do we give him our blessing?” asked Potter, frowning into space.
“I don’t need your fucking blessing,” said Draco.
“It would matter to Hermione,” said Weasley.
“She doesn’t need it either,” said Draco.
“Tell him that we’ll kill him if he hurts her,” said Potter.
“We already did,” said Weasley. “I think.”
“Right.”
“Do you think we should just – kill him now?” asked Weasley.
“Preemptively?” asked Potter.
“Yeah. I reckon that’d be proper proactive of us.”
“I like it.”
Draco pushed Weasley away. “For fuck’s – stop breathing at me, Weasley – eurgh, why are you so moist – why is everything moist and sticky – get away. Right. I would never hurt her. She’s genuinely important to me. I care about her. A lot. Too much, really. To an idiotic degree. I wish I didn’t. But – I do and it’s – anyway, this is not a conversation I wish to have with you slobbering imbeciles. You can kill me if I hurt her – but I won’t – I would never – she’ll be the one hurting
me
, if anything – that’s
my
fear – my fucking Boggart – all right? Have we finished here?”
Potter and Weasley narrowed their eyes, but it was unclear whether they were processing Draco’s diatribe or merely falling asleep.
“I think he’s all right,” said Weasley.
Potter nodded and said, “I’m satisfied.”
“Oh?” said Draco. “Are you? Good. Now bugger off. I need to change my shoes because you are literally incapable of holding a glass upright – Tupey! Fresh shoes and socks, please, Weasley had an accident.”
They rejoined the party, got even more drunk, and pissed away the night in high spirits.
~
Draco had fallen asleep on one of the sofas. He awoke at dawn with a stiff neck and a throbbing headache.
He rose and stepped over bodies in various states of consciousness. Granger was nowhere to be found.
Henriette was making her way through the salon, placing a croissant and a hangover potion beside every snoring guest.
“Where is Mademoiselle?” asked Draco.
“I believe she went to take some air, Monsieur,” said Henriette. “Shall I call her?”
“No, no – I’ll find her.”
Draco downed one of the hangover potions. Then he stood at the window and sighed a melodramatic sigh.
“Is everything all right?” asked Henriette.
Draco pressed his forehead to the cold window. “No.”
Henriette approached. “What is the matter?”
“
Henriette?
”
“
Oui?
”
“
Je suis – je suis ensorcelé
.”
“
Ah!
”
“
Je l’aime de tout mon cœur, Henriette. De tout mon être.
”
Henriette put down her plate of croissants and wrung her hands.
“Don’t be happy yet,” said Draco.
“No?”
“No. I haven’t told her. But I am going to go tell her. I am off to bare my soul, Henriette.”
Henriette watched him go with tears in her eyes and her hands clasped to her chest.
“
Bon courage, Monsieur,
” she said in a whisper.
The December dawn brightened the eastern sky.
Draco found Granger amongst silver birch and rising mist, walking a slow walk through the trees. It was cold.
She looked pale and tired as she stepped along the path. She had wrapped herself in a sort of shawl that looked suspiciously like one of Draco’s handkerchiefs, Transfigured. Her hair was only half-pinned and tumbled down her back.
She spotted him in the distance. She paused and watched him come to her amidst the frozen gorse and fen-sedge.
Everything about her seemed distinct and sharp, uncannily so. Breath misting from between parted lips. Fingers gripping the shawl. Dark lashes around bright eyes.
“You’re awake early,” she said, with a kind of soft surprise.
When Draco continued to stare at her like a love-struck cretin, she asked. “Are you all right? Is something the matter?”
He was taken by a kind of fool’s courage. An idiot’s courage.
It was true courage, for all of that. After this, things would never be the same again.
“Yes, something is the matter,” said Draco.
“Oh?”
“Something is very the matter. I need to – I need to tell you something. It’s stupid, and probably a bad decision, but it feels like it’s going to kill me if I don’t, so–”
Granger was regarding him with curiosity, with something serious – with her puzzle-solving look. She pulled the shawl more closely around herself.
Well, he was going to solve the bloody puzzle for her, right now.
“I don’t want to maintain the equilibrium,” said Draco. “I don’t want to quash anymore.”
“The… equilibrium?” repeated Granger. “Quash?”
“The – the back and forth – the not daring to do more – the not crossing the line. The blaming of booze for my lapses. The pretending I don't care for you – that I wouldn't die for you – I suppose that ship has already sailed, anyway. The denying – suppressing – slowly suffocating my heart – all of that.”
Draco took a moment to compose himself.
Not composed at all, he continued. “You're – fucking brilliant and beautiful beyond – anything. It's actually quite unfair that one person should have all of those – attributes. And I want to be more than your Auror, and I want you to be more than my Principal, or Healer, or any of your – many and diverse – titles. I'm – I've fallen for you despite what has been, I swear to you, a most
sincere
railing against. I know it was wrong – inappropriate – contravened all the protocols – all that rot. I did everything a man could do to quash these things, but I – failed. You are too much. I couldn’t withstand you. You found fissures in my defences and you tore them into great bloody rends, and then you came to live in my heart, like some sort of – light in a dark place. And the worst part is, I know you didn’t do it on purpose. I know you didn’t ask for it. I know you were just being – you, your stupid, brilliant, do-gooding self. But you are – as it turns out – everything I want.”
He dared to look at her. There were tears in her eyes.
“Right – now I’ve bloody made you cry – brilliant–”
“M-me?” said Granger in a shaky voice. “I’m the one finding fissures?
I
couldn’t withstand
you
.”
“What?”
Granger took a breath. “I keep trying to control it but it’s – stronger than me. I don’t want it – I
didn’t
want it – I don’t know what I want. Yes, I do – I want one sodding night without thinking about you. I want to be in the same room as you without feeling that I’ll die if I don’t touch you – if I
do
touch you. I want my head to be my own again, and my heart. But you’re in them both, you idiot – you’re driving me round the bend–”
She brushed away a tear. “I just want to know – a bloody moment of peace, without you in my brain, but that is, apparently, too much to ask for.”
“What about
me?
I can’t – can’t cast the thought of you from my mind. You – your smile – you doing arithmancy – bloody Spain–”
“Do you
know
what my Amortentia smells like?”
“Do
you
know how much you haunt my nights?”
“I hate this,” sniffed Granger. “It’s rubbish. I hate not – not being in control – I shouldn’t have
any
sorts of feelings for you – this is your fault–”
“
My
fault?”
“Why did you have to be so–?”
“So what?”
Granger threw her hands into the air. “So everything! You were meant to be an arrogant, moderately competent Auror! You weren’t meant to be funny and endearing and heroic and – gentlemanly when it mattered. You weren’t meant to – to literally charm my knickers off and –
worse still
– worm your way into my heart–”
“Speak for
yourself
,” said Draco, outraged. “You’re the wormy one. You were meant to be an insufferable swot whose presence I couldn’t stand, not someone whose company – laughter – kisses – everything – I ended up craving like a bewitched, lovesick fool. Do you know how many bloody dates I went on to push you out of my head?”
“I went on a date with that stupid gardener!”
“
What?
”
“
You
set me up.”
“Gods.”
“How can I be in love with you? You’re Draco Malfoy.”
“And
me
? In love with Hermione Granger? Head over fucking heels? I don’t
do
love. I can’t even say the word, it feels horrid in my mouth.”
“I should never have accepted this arrangement,” said Granger, addressing the sky. “I should have insisted on someone else, the moment I saw your stupid name on that stupid letter telling me that you had been assigned to me.”
“
I
tried,” said Draco. “I was told not to have a complex about Granger – well, here we are–”
“A
complex?
”
“–And now I have one – yes, a complex – a great bloody complex about Granger, beyond their wildest expectations.”
“I don’t want your
complex
.”
“Well, you have it – and far more besides.”
Silence fell. Granger wiped away a tear. Draco took a step closer to her. Their hands reached for one another’s.
“I feel as though I’ve given you a part of me that you could break,” said Granger. “Please don’t break it–”
“I shan’t break it. I would never. Potter and Weasley have informed me that they will kill me if I hurt you – not that their threats count for anything. And you have a part of
me.
I’m sick over it – you’d better not break it–”
“I would
never
.”
“–And why must you be so beautiful, even when you’re crying?”
“How do you make looking like a hungover vampire so alluring?”
“I’m going to snog the living daylights out of you.”
Her smile broke through the tears, a flash of sun.
She was happiness aglow in his veins. She had his little black heart in its entirety.
He closed the distance between them. He held her face in his hands. Their breath misted together in the cold air.
The sun rose in earnest, and brightened the snow, and greened the grass, and wreathed them in light.
He kissed her.
And it was the sweetest, most searing, most wondrous thing, to finally be able to do so, without interruption, without excuses, without breaking away. To do it knowing that his torment was shared, and had therefore become something else – a relief, a thundering joy.
He had a part of her and she had a part of him and it was going to be – it was going to be something beautiful. Could there be anything sweeter, could there be more bliss, than this?
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Part LIV. Ajax’s New Adventures as an NPC
Eventually, Lumine gives up trying to stab Ajax, but not without getting in a few good swings of her sword that have him countering with his Hydro daggers. It also takes a combination of Kaeya’s (slow, amused) intervention with his own fast talking to get her to sit down.
“So… all this time you’ve planned to fake your death,” she says with her arms crossed over her chest. Beside her, Paimon nods, mimicking her pose and scowl. “You’ve been planning this ever since you realized where your mission was headed. Did I get that correct?”
Ajax, who’s made sure to position himself next to Kaeya and across from her (with plenty of table space to act as a buffer in case she decides to lunge over and stab him again), nods meekly. “I was suspicious about the Tsaritsa’s order to send me to Liyue. I thought she was setting me up for something and I realized that I wanted out of the army. So, I started to devise a plan to escape, but um, the only way I can do that is to permanently disappear. I was trying to minimize the damage though and I was hoping for things to end more peacefully…”
He trails off, the last few words spoken with a grimace. Gods, the fight at the Golden House and the subsequent trial are the definition of a shitshow.
It could be that he presents a rather pathetic sight—he certainly
feels
pathetic—but Lumine’s glare lets up and her face softens. She gives him a look over.
“Are you feeling okay? Is your—”
She cuts herself off and glances quickly at Kaeya. Ah. She probably wants to ask him about his Abyssal Taint but realizes that this secret shouldn’t be told. Ajax feels a surge of warm fondness in his chest at her thoughtfulness.
Even when mad, Lumine is still looking out for him. She’s the best protagonist (despite her homicidal tendencies.)
Of course, she doesn’t actually need to be discrete since he already shared about the effects of his Abyssal Taint already with Kaeya, but she clearly doesn’t know
that
. The way she’s acting does have the benefit of reassuring Ajax even more because it means the Mondstadt gang didn’t divulge his secrets to her.
“I got treatment and lots of time to rest,” he reassures. “I’m back to my usual self. I, um, also explained what happened to Sir Kaeya here and to Grandmaster Jean and Master Diluc. It’s a
long
story,” he adds quickly, when she whips her head around to look at Kaeya. “But basically, I’m staying with Venti. Oh, I know about Venti. And about Zhongli. So does Sir Kaeya.”
Lumine splutters. “How do
you
know about Venti? Wait, better question, how do you know that
I
know about Venti and Zhongli?”
Shit. Good questions. Lumine catches on quickly. He talks fast. “Venti confessed during our meeting with Sir Kaeya, Master Diluc, and Grandmaster Jean. As for how I know that
you
know the Archons’ true identity, I just realized it at some point. Zhongli mentioned that you were on a quest to talk to every Archon since you wanted to find your brother. I figured that since you left Mondstadt, you must’ve met its Archon already.”
Nobody is looking at him funny at the table. Good. Looks like they bought it.
“Jean, Diluc, and I agreed to help Master Ajax on Lord—
Venti’s
request,” Kaeya says, pitching his voice low. “Given that we wanted to ensure that we remain on good diplomatic terms with Liyue’s deity, even if he is retired.”
Paimon gives an approving nod. “It’s good for everyone to be on the same page. Paimon’s head was starting to hurt from trying to remember all these secrets!”
Lumine makes a sound of agreement.
Then, quick as lightning, she lunges over and punches him on the shoulder.
He clutches the spot where he’s hit and curl into his chair. “Ow! What was that for?”
“For making me worried!” she hisses, settling back into her seat. “And for breaking your husband’s heart! Why didn’t you tell him? Did you know the hell you’re putting him through?!”
“I wanted to tell him, but things got really crazy and out of hand!” he cries, rubbing his wound. “I was so out of it when I was rescued from prison. I didn’t even remember my journey to Mondstadt! I’ve been trying to get into contact with Zhongli but I haven’t heard back from him at all! Do you know how many letters I’ve sent?” He lowers his voice and grumbles, “I even asked Venti to use his powers to help! He didn’t get a response either!”
Lumine closes her eyes, pinches the bridge of her nose, and exhales in a long sigh. “Why am I not surprised? Zhongli’s been holing himself in a cave in Jueyun Karst and threatening murder and bloodshed. The adepti have been walking on eggshells while trying to prevent him from drowning the nation with earthquakes.”
“Zhongli wouldn’t do that! He’s a gentle soul!”
“Gentle my ass!” Lumine counters, jabbing a finger towards him. “And I don’t want to hear your ridiculous rants defending him, either! You haven’t seen how he acts as of late. Did you know that one of his titles is the Warrior God? Well, he’s acting like it now! After we’re done with helping Kaeya, we’re going to figure out how to fix this mess!”
Ajax pauses. “We?”
“Yes,
we
! Like hell I trust you to get it right on your own!”
Wow.
Kaeya disguises his laugh by coughing into his fist. “This is a good opportunity to go over today’s mission. There have been reports of frequent monster activities northeast of the Dawn Winery, including sightings of elite units like Abyss Mages, Mitachurls, and Lawachurls. We suspect that there’s a nest nearby, so our goal is to track down this nest and eradicate it.”
“That sounds simple enough,” Lumine says. “We should be able to take care of that in no time. And then, we can move on to our
other
matter.”
She gives Ajax a glare so vicious that it has him flinching.
“You’re going to have to make so many cookies for Paimon to forgive you,” Paimon grumbles, as they leave the tavern and head out of Mondstadt through the side gate. “So many cookies!”
He supposes he deserves that. “Yes, yes, I’ll make you something nice,” he promises. “I really am sorry for deceiving you this way.”
“Hmph!”
They follow the dusty road and head southwest, passing through soft rolling hills and dense forest. At first, they run into busy merchants, Springvale hunters, and bright-eyed Adventurers going about their day, but as they venture further and further away from the lively towns and bustling cities, the number of people occupying the roads dwindles to nothing.
Ajax looks around the silent trees as they stop at a grassy clearing for a quick break. They’ve travelled the entire morning and they’re somewhere deep in the forest close to where the nest should be. The area is blanketed by an eerie silence that’s only interrupted by the soft rustling of leaves. There are no birds chirping, no frogs croaking, and no insects buzz. No signs of life to break through the thick oppressive stillness aside from the light chatter from their small adventuring party.
It reminds him all too much of the unnatural spookiness from the Guyun Stone Forest when Xiao had taken him near where Osial had been sealed. It’s this same type of…heaviness in the air and it makes the hair on his arm stand.
“I don’t like this,” Paimon mutters, peering around nervously before floating close to the Traveller. “Why is everything so quiet?”
“The animals have probably all fled from the strong Abyssal power in the air,” Kaeya explains. His keen eye scans across the horizon. “It means that our monster nest should be nearby. Keep a lookout for fresh monster tracks around you.”
Lumine nods. “Understood. I’ll check the bushes over there.”
“And I’ll survey the trees there,” Kaeya offers.
They turn to stare and Ajax.
“Um, I can cover the trees to the south?”
“Sounds good,” Kaeya answers. “Let’s split up and reconvene with our findings in 15 minutes.”
They split up. Ajax ducks behind a tree and pretends to look like he knows what he’s doing.
Um, AR? Help!
he cries in his mind.
How the heck do I look for monster tracks?
It’s not his fault! Ajax is a city person through and through! He has zero survival skills! He’s only managed to survive in the wilderness in this world by relying on his body’s muscle memory to set up a tent and build a fire. Unfortunately, tracking does not appear to be something that he can use his muscle memory to help him with.
Luckily, good ol’ AR can.
“What you want to do is survey the area and assess which path is the easiest for a creature to take,” comes AR’s patient response. “You see over there where the bushes are less dense and the ground is more flat? That’s a good place to start. Odds are the monsters would’ve gone through that area. Look for signs of broken twigs and flattened grass.”
Ajax moves closer to the spot AR pointed out.
I’m not seeing anything,
he admits.
It’s all just…green as far as the eyes can see.
“Look a bit closer. The shrub to your right has bits of broken branches, which means something has passed through. If you look down to your left, on the patch of dirt by that rock, there’s a mark on the ground. It’s an indentation like a footprint. The shape is unlike the prints any animal would make, so it’s likely from Hilichurls. From the direction of the footprints, I would guess that the nest is further east.”
Ajax leans over and squints at the patch of mud. Slowly, the signs begin to show up as his eyes become adjusted to what he’s seeing. He grins and fist pumps.
AR, has anyone ever told you that you’re amazing? How do you know all this?
AR chuckles as they go eastward to scour for more clues.
“It’s nothing special. Part of my knowledge comes from my experience of living in a small, rural town where we have to hunt for our own food. Part of it comes from Fatui refresher courses.”
The mental image of AR being in a scout uniform traipsing around the wilderness makes him smile.
It is special to me! That’s so cool!
“Are tracking skills rare in your original world?”
They aren’t common where I’m from. I lived in a city all my life and unless you join special outdoor clubs, you wouldn’t be taught those skills.
AR makes a noise of understanding. “Interesting. That implies that where you’re from, spending time in the great outdoors is treated more as a leisure activity than a necessity. I’ve always been curious to know more about the life you led prior to your transmigration, ever since we spoke about it right before the Golden House fight. You mentioned you were a university student studying…human health and your world’s economics?”
They pause to inspect some trees where the bark has been rubbed off. After declaring the track to be animal-made, they continue their way eastward.
Ah, close enough. It was Health Science and Economics,
Ajax reminds him.
I also had music side-gigs to pay rent and put food on the table, but otherwise, I spent my free time indoors, playing games. I’m not exactly what you call an outdoorsy kind of guy.
“Hm, that’s surprising. I recall you telling me that prior to your college days, you got into quite a few scuffles here and there. I suppose I thought that meant you spent a lot of times outside.”
Nah, I spent a lot of time outside, but I was still within the city. I wasn’t actually frolicking in nature. When I started college, I buckled down and mostly stayed indoors.
At AR’s chuckles, he adds a touch defensively,
I know! I became boring! You don’t have to laugh!
“No, no, I wasn’t making fun of you. I’m rather charmed by how peaceful your life became,” AR reassures. “Your old life was one I wanted to provide for my siblings. If there was one good thing that came from being a Harbinger, it was that I had the resources to fund my siblings’ futures. I could send them to the best schools in Teyvat and ensure they lived peacefully the way you did. It’s a bit surreal to think that in another world, a version of me could also be leading such a life.”
A familiar pang of guilt flares in Ajax’s chest at the wistfulness in AR’s voice.
I’m sorry that your life got cut short,
he says.
My offer to do stuff you want still stands, though! Seriously, if you didn’t have to be a fighter, what would you have done?
“Your offer, though kind, remains unnecessary. This is your life and you should live it for yourself. Oh, can you please stop? I want to inspect those bushes to your right.”
Ajax follows the instructions and kneels down to get a better view of the foliage.
Okay, but humour me for a second. What would you do if you weren’t in the army?
AR makes a humming sound. After a few seconds of silence, he says, “I think I would like to work a normal office job. I like having set working hours—a simple nine-to-five where afterwards, I can have the rest of my evening to do as I please. From working as a System, I’ve also discovered that I rather enjoy information monitoring and processing. Analyzing numbers and drawing conclusions from them are challenging but rewarding.”
Of all the answers I was expecting to hear, this wasn’t one of them,
Ajax admits. His mental image of AR changes from a kid wearing a scout uniform to an adult in a stuffy grey suit and a pair of thick, dark-rimmed glasses, one hand holding a briefcase while the other, a neat stack of paper held together by a binder clip. Strangely enough, the look suits his personality quite well.
You know, I think you might actually enjoy working at the Northland Bank as an Accounts Manager.
“I think I agree. By the way, those are monster tracks. You should head north. I think we’re close.”
AR is spot on. They find the entrance to the cave deeper into the woods a few minutes later with plenty of footprints leading to and from the dirt entryway. They make a note of the location and head back to the clearing where Kaeya and Lumine are waiting.
“I think I found our nest,” Ajax says. “Spotted a lot of monster tracks that way and I followed them to a nearby cave.” He motions for his travelling companions to follow him back that direction.
“Oh, well done, Mister Ajax,” Kaeya praises, when they return to the cave entrance. They’ve hidden themselves behind some nearby trees and shrubs, keeping an eye out on monster activity. There have been no movements so far. “That’s our nest entrance. From all the marks on the ground, I predict that we’re dealing with a large tribe, including multiple Lawachurls. I hope you are ready for a fight.”
“Good,” AR says. “I should be able to trigger the Foul Legacy Transformation. Permission to obtain more Auto-Pilot abilities?”
Sure. Are they available at the Shop or do you need to do your special hacking again?
“They are now available at the System’s Shop for 50 SP per three uses. A surprisingly reasonable price.”
Did the Administrators have a hand in this? …But if they did, why didn’t they make the price even cheaper? Ah, whatever. Ajax is not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Okay, let’s buy a few more.
Meanwhile, Kaeya and Lumine are checking their gear and weapons one last time. “Everything looks good to go,” Lumine says when she’s done, her dull blade gleaming in her hands. She eyes Ajax. “Are you going to be alright? You don’t even have any armour on you.”
“I’ll be fine!” he answers. He taps himself on the chest. “Fighting is what I do best anyway. Ex-Harbinger, remember?”
“If we’re all ready, then let’s get going,” Kaeya offers. “The sooner we’re done, the sooner we can go home and enjoy a nice glass of wine.”
They step into the cool, damp cave. Ajax scans around quickly and takes stock of the mossy stone walls, the stalactites hanging from the ceiling, and the uneven ground littered with small, dark puddles. There’s nothing out of the ordinary except for the monster footprints on the ground and the pale marks against the walls—signs that something big and heavy has scraped up against it.
They venture deeper. There’s a turn up ahead where the path curves sharply to the right. They wait to see if they can hear any sounds of monsters before continuing their path.
Still nothing. The cave is eerily quiet.
They exchange looks of confusion. Where are all the monsters?
They get their answer when they run across what appears to be a dead end, except—
“There’s a rift on the wall,” Kaeya says, drawing his sword. He steps closer to the thin, glowing, jagged purple line that runs down the stone wall from top to bottom, splitting it in half. “I’ve seen this before. It’s a portal made by an Abyss Mage. The monsters’ hideout is probably hidden behind there. To activate it, one simply needs to use their Elemental Energy…”
Swirls of pale blue frost gather in his hand and travel down his blade and he swings. A shower of thin ice needles hurtles towards the rift and lands against the rock, causing ice to spread along the stone. The rift reacts immediately; the purple emanating from the split glows more vibrant, pulsating like a heartbeat. Then the opening
widens
, stretching out unnaturally as if a pair of invisible hands have taken hold of the left and right side of the rift and
pulled
. The hole becomes bigger and bigger until it’s reached the size of a small narrow door.
“Quickly, before it closes.”
Kaeya ducks into the portal with Lumine and Ajax following close. The moment they step through, the opening shrinks to its original form.
AR
, Ajax thinks,
I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.
Unlike what he had expected, the other side of the rift isn’t simply more cave. It’s a whole new world featuring a maze of crumbling stone walls and buildings that remind Ajax of fallen Roman temples. Lit torches line the unkempt cobblestone paths, throwing dim, warm light in an otherwise dark and dreary space.
“What’s Kansas?” AR asks, interrupting his observation.
Ah, nevermind. It’s just a quote from a famous movie in my old world,
Ajax explains. Kaeya has taken the lead, followed by Lumine, leaving Ajax to catch up to them. As they march forward, dark shadows lurk at every corner, casting strange and foreboding shapes against the stone walls. Occasionally, Ajax catches a stray figure flitting about in his peripheral vision, accompanied by the sounds of skittering and scratching, but they would die down a second later, leaving Ajax to wonder whether his mind was playing tricks on him.
“We’re being watched,” Kaeya murmurs. “They’re getting ready to ambush us.”
“How about instead of waiting, we attack first?” Lumine asks. “We’ll need an attack that can smoke them out or…”
She eyes Ajax. “An attack that can flood them out. Will the whale be strong enough to do that?”
The whale? What wha—oh!
Ajax brightens. “I can summon the whale!” he says, trying his best to keep his voice down despite his excitement.
Ever since watching AR summon the Hydro whale, he’s been curious on how he can replicate that power. He imagines it’s be something like the Hydro bomb, except a million times more powerful and cooler-looking, and he can’t wait to test it.
“We should go to higher grounds first, just in case if things get a bit out of control, though,” he adds in a murmur.
Kaeya eyes him suspiciously even as they climb a set of crumbling stone stairs to reach a lookout perch far above the ground. “What’s this whale? And what do you mean, ‘a bit out of control’?”
“The whale is a Hydro-based attack that I can do,” Ajax explains, once everyone is settled comfortably on the perch. He flashes Kaeya a grin. “When I fought Lumine, I used it against her and it created a huge splash.” Or more specifically,
AR
used it against her. “But I wonder if I can make it even
more
powerful. We’re probably going to need it to drown out these hallways.”
Lumine nods. “Do it. Summon what you’re able.”
With permission like that, he doesn’t need to hesitate. Ajax rolls up his sleeves, closes his eyes, and concentrates on the strong Hydro power emanating from his Vision. In his mind, he can see a simmering blue orb of water swaying ever so gently with his every breath. It ripples when he focuses on it, sending a ring of misty blue radiating from the core. Slowly, tendrils of water peel away from the core, creating thin streams of power that rise up and up into the blank, blue space of his consciousness. The tendrils combine like clay to create a bulging amorphous shape, one that grows with every pulse.
I want to shape this into a whale
, he thinks, furrowing his brows with concentration. The shape is growing exponentially now but it’s nowhere near whale-sized or whale-shaped. It’s as if the water is struggling to take the form he desires.
AR, do you have any tips?
“Picture an animal that’s powerful and be shameless in drawing your Hydro from your Vision to bring this creature to life,” comes AR’s answer. “For me, I picked Snezhnaya’s horned whale because it is an Apex predator that lives in the waters near my hometown, but you should pick something powerful that resonates with you.”
Something powerful, huh? There are tons of animals that are powerful in his old world—a hippo, a shark, a crocodile—but they pale in comparison to living beings that exist in Teyvat. In fact…
His mind drifts to that fateful evening at the first Rite of Descension, where he was leaning against the railing, staring up and up at a majestic, serpentine form cast in golden light, a form that was so large that its very shadow could blanket the audience below. Ajax remembers its glossy brass scales, its thick fur, and its horns—its powerful curled horns that glowed with charged power.
Ah
, he thinks, yearning and fondness filling his chest once more. What can be more powerful in this world than the regal form of his Zhongli in his dragon body? There is nothing that can compare. Nothing at all.
And he will do Zhongli’s form justice, even if it’s merely an imitation.
More water tendrils shoot from the orb to flood the shape, causing it to bulge and expand violently. Then, the form stretches thin as if it was being rolled out like dough into a thick noodle. Four stubby limbs appear and they lengthen to form powerful golden claws as fur sprouts along the head and tip of its tail. The shape grows larger still but with every second, it gains more and more details to its body until it resembles a clear blue statue of Rex Lapis Morax.
He's beautiful,
Ajax thinks. He’s not done though—he tweaks the replica a little, adding delicate water whiskers to its snout, shaping the scales along the spine so they look a touch more jagged, and smoothing the fur of its mane until it’s neat and tidy. When dragon Zhongli is absolutely perfect, he gives the form a loving mental pat on the head.
Be free, my precious
!
He releases it from his mind space.
He opens his eyes to the sound of rushing water. Ripples form on the floor below his perch, the water growing more frequent and turbulent until suddenly, Zhongli’s dragon form comes bursting forth from the space before him. It flies upwards, spinning, its watery scales catching the torchlight of its surroundings and making its body glitter like diamonds. It circles overhead twice before pausing to look at Ajax and his colleagues, its long body coiled loosely as it remains floating in the air.
“I-is that Zhongli’s dragon form?!” Paimon exclaims as Ajax lets out a whoop of pure joy. “That is Rex Lapis’s Exuvia! But how—!”
“You made a water Rex Lapis,” Lumine says, her tone incredulous. “I—of course you did. I can’t believe I have to watch your
obsession
with your husband manifest in physical form…”
Even AR has something to say about this.
“This is one
detailed
construct,” he teases. “You must have been thinking about this dragon form a lot to recreate it so faithfully.”
The person who seems the most unfazed is Kaeya, surprisingly.
“So this is what Rex Lapis looks like. This is most impressive,” he murmurs. He’s also holding Ajax back with one hand. “Mister Ajax, please. You’re going to fall off the perch.”
“I just want to see Water Rex Lapis better!”
The water dragon appears to appreciate the attention. It blinks slowly, exuding the smug happiness of a purring cat lying in a patch of sunlight before getting to work. It turns around and rears its head, causing the fur of its lovely mane to ripple, and its horns begin to glow, first a dull, soft blue, then brighter until they resemble two pillars of blazing light.
It opens its mouth and, with a ferocious, ground-shaking roar, the dragon unleashes its power.
Columns of water crash down from the heavens in terrifying funnels of death. Debris and loose stones fly into the air where the water hits before being swept up in the churning waves. Water floods the floor rapidly, flowing through the meandering halls in endless cascades. Ajax thinks he hears a few cries of alarm amongst the chaos, but those are quickly silenced with the arrival of more waterspouts.
“Uh… I don’t remember the whale attack lasting this long,” Paimon says. The water level is quickly rising. “Maybe you should stop Water Rex Lapis, Childe.”
“I trust Water Rex Lapis to stop when he needs to,” Ajax answers, crossing his arms over his chest. Water Rex Lapis appears to be having the time of his life. He’s just summoned yet
another
funnel and Ajax isn’t about to ruin his fun. “There are probably more monsters that need flooding out!”
He gets it right by sheer coincidence. A new, deafening roar rattles the ground and walls, sending more loose pebbles raining from the ceiling, followed by loud splashes of something large wading forcefully through the deluge.
Finally deeming its job done, Water Rex Lapis circles around twice more and gives a happy chirp towards Ajax as if to say, “Look at what I did!” When Ajax answers with a happy, “You did such a good job!” it makes a trilling sound and dissipates in a shower of water.
Just in time for their new guest to arrive.
Ajax’s eyes go wide when he finally sees what he’s up against. Shit. Correction. Looks like they have way more than just one guest. Kaeya was
not
kidding about this place being a monster nest.
“Four Lawachurls, eight Mitachurls, and six Abyss Mages,” Kaeya notes. He draws his sword and frost builds around his blade once more. “Luckily, they are soaked.”
A gust of frost and ice explodes from the sword tip. Hundreds of tiny, sharp icicles cut through the air and land on the water. Seconds later, a sheet of ice crawls along the surface of the water, spreading and catching everything in its path. The monsters roar and scramble out of the way, but the ice is moving too quickly; it surrounds them, locking their legs into place, turning their limbs blue and as solid as stone before spreading upwards to devour the rest of their bodies.
“Now!”
Lumine hops off the ledge and plunges her sword down. The force of her blow cracks the ice on the monsters and splits open flesh, sending streams of sticky, crimson blood spewing from fresh cuts. Pained cries fill the room, accompanied by the heavy scent of copper—but before the monsters can retaliate, Lumine jumps back in time for Kaeya to send another blast of ice, freezing the creature in place once more.
Ooh, the classic Freeze Comp. Nice,
Ajax thinks, while stroking his chin. It’s amazing how much damage Lumine can do with such a shitty weapon. Her stats must have gotten even higher since the last time they fought. He wonders if he can sneak in a Scan on her—
“Oy! Are you going to join in or what?” Lumine shouts, snapping him out of his thoughts. “Don’t just stand there! Do something!”
“Please heed Miss Lumine’s advice,” AR says. “We need to build up the Battle Gauge for me to use the Foul Legacy Transformation.”
“Alright, alright, I’m coming!”
He summons his water lance and hops down from his perch, drawing his arm back to deliver a mighty slash. More ice cracks and more wounds open with trails of crimson quickly dyeing the surrounding water until it turns dark and murky. Despite the pain and the damage done to their bodies, the monsters seem unfazed; they continue to trudge forward, swinging their axes and hammers between bouts of being frozen solid, though Kaeya’s power is slowing their attacks down to a crawl and making their fight significantly easier.
“At this rate, we might not be able to fill the battle gauge,” AR murmurs. They’ve taken out two-thirds of the monsters at this point, and the remaining stragglers are looking rough. “We’ve only got one Battle Gauge filled, and we need to unlock the second one to access Foul Legacy Transformation.”
Ajax twists away from an axe blow meant to cut open his stomach, feeling the cold breeze brush against his hot skin while blood-water splashes against his boots. He spins on the ball of his feet and counters, stabbing his enemy in the arm and neatly deflecting the next attack as the monster rears back in pain.
I can try to hold back even more,
Ajax offers mentally.
Give these monsters more opportunities to take more swings at us to help build that last Gauge. Will that help?
“Even that may not be enough. We’re going to need more monsters.”
Apparently, the universe has heard their pleas and is willing to grant their wish. Just as Ajax finishes his opponent off with a well-aimed cut across the throat, more roars ring out from down the hallway. There’s a series of loud water splashes, and out comes an army of monsters pouring into the battleground, weapons raised and charged with power.
“Incoming!” Kaeya yells from the perch. He launches another freeze attack and jumps down, landing in the water next to Ajax. “It appears there are many more monsters hiding in the midst. We should retreat for now.”
Ajax tosses a water dagger. It whistles through the air to sink deep into the monster’s heart with a satisfying thud. “And give them the chance to recoup? No way. Besides, I have one more ace up my sleeve. Just need a beat up a few more monsters.”
Lumine, who’s finished off her opponent nearby, fires a quick look of disapproval in his direction.
“You better not be thinking of using that awful transformation power!”
Naturally, that has Kaeya squinting at him suspiciously. “What awful transformation power?”
Ajax stabs another monster and makes sure it’s down before responding. “Okay, so maybe I am thinking of using that power—”
“No! Absolutely not!” Lumine snaps. She gives a nearby Hilichurl a high kick to the head, which sends it sailing through the air. “The last time you used it, you became someone else! You were barely able to control it!”
“—which is all the more reason to use it! I need to learn how to control my power properly! Besides, more monsters are coming and I can end this fight for us!”
“If this power is as terrible as the Traveller is saying, then I agree with her,” Kaeya interjects. He blasts the monsters in front of him with ice and deftly slices them up before jumping back to avoid the arrow aimed at his chest. “I vote that we retreat. What say you, Lumine?”
“I agree! We’re retreating! Childe, you’re coming with us or I’ll tell Zhongli that you’re being reckless!”
“It’s best to heed your teammates’ advice,” AR advises. “There will be other opportunities, Ajax.”
Oh, goddammit.
“Fine!” he says, trying not to sulk. “I’m retreating. Yeesh!”
They back away, giving Kaeya the space to cast an ice wall before turning tail and fleeing down the hall. They manage to get halfway through when they hear a loud crack, followed by thundering footsteps and furious snarls.
“This way!” Lumine calls out from the front. She beelines for the right path at the fork in the road with Kaeya and Ajax hot on her heels.
More furious snarls sound out, but amongst that, there’s a strange, sing-song voice that’s oddly rhythmic almost as if it is chanting—
The ground shakes and rock pillars shoot from the ground and the ceiling.
“Watch out!”
Ajax yanks Lumine and Paimon back in time before the pillars slam into each other and crush them into pancakes. More rocks shoot from the ground to form a crude wall blocking their way. Behind them, the rhythmic snarls stop, replaced by the unmistakable sound of pleased cackles.
He curses. “A Geo Samachurl!” He brandishes his Hydro blades and slams the ends together to form a two-headed spear. “Looks like we’ll need to take it out to get the wall down.”
Easier said than done. The spellcaster is smart and has hidden itself somewhere behind the wave of monsters that is rapidly approaching. With a quick nod to his companions, Ajax leaps forward with a twirl of his weapon, ready for battle.
He realizes his mistake a second too late.
“Childe!”
Rock pillars slam up from the ground behind him as another set of pillars descends from the ceiling. It takes all of three seconds for the constructs to slide into place, forming a second sturdy, thick wall except this time, it’s trapping Lumine and Kaeya behind and leaving him to face the monsters alone.
And there are a lot of monsters in front of him. They’re standing before him now, a sea of beady, hungry eyes locked onto his every move like those of a predator smelling blood. They know he’s alone and their excitement to tear into him is palpable.
“Ah, fuck!” he hisses, falling into a guard stance with his spear placed in front of him and across his chest. “What a rookie mistake.”
The muffled cries behind the stone wall grow louder. Panicked.
“Childe!”
“Mister Ajax!”
A familiar mechanical sound chimes in his head. “Second Battle Gauge has been filled,” AR says. “Foul Legacy Transformation has been unlocked.”
He eyes at the monsters. Well then. Looks like he has the perfect excuse to execute his plan.
“Sorry, Lumine, Sir Kaeya,” he calls back. “I’m going to have to use the power. I’ll try to be quick, though, so hang on tight.”
Looks like you’re up, AR,
he says in his mind to the backdrop of his companion’s frantic calls.
You ready for this?
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
Ajax nods.
Alright. Good luck, bud. Activate Auto-Pilot
.
The world spins around him, blurring together and losing definition. Pure, blinding white begins to creep from the corners of his vision and they spread inwards, stealing the colours of the outside world as they move closer and closer to the center. Ajax blinks and…
He’s in the white room with the bright spotlights again. The room looks unchanged from the last few times he’s visited with its stark whiteness and lack of furniture save for a seat in the middle of the floor. The only colourful thing in the space is the large floor-to-ceiling screen that’s projecting what AR is seeing.
“This does not get any less weird,” he mutters. He grabs the seat and tries to make himself as comfortable as possible. “Do you hear me alright, AR?”
“I hear you,” comes the voice from somewhere in the ceiling. A speaker, probably. “Let’s end this already.”
Dark smoke and purple lightning bellows up to fill the screen and cutting off his view of the outside world completely. The lack of interest only draws his attention more towards the sound of wet cracks, like bones being snapped, and grunts that grow more and more guttural, more
beastly
, with every passing second. Ajax is curling into his seat, grimacing hard and flinching, but he doesn’t dare to curl up and block his ears—not when AR might need him.
Eventually, the cracks die down, leaving harsh, pained breathing and the smoke starts to fade. The screen pans around at the row of frozen shadowy figures—the monsters, who have not moved an inch. It pans down and Ajax sees wicked clawed hands in dark gleaming armour.
“AR?” he calls out.
Dark, raspy chuckles ring from the invisible speakers. Ajax shivers.
“Hm. This power. I can feel it coursing through my veins,” AR says. There’s nothing but sadistic glee and malice in his voice. “How utterly delicious.”
Purple Electro rushes towards his hand, solidifying in his two-headed halberd. AR spins the weapon effortlessly and points one end at the crowd.
“I wonder, how long will it take to cut these insignificant insects down? Let’s find out, shall we?”
The screen blurs. AR has dashed forward and in the next second, he’s right in front of a massive Lawachurl. He’s so close that Ajax can see the white of its terrified eyes.
AR cackles. “Too slow!”
The purple blade swings down like a guillotine. The screen is filled with red.
Then, the screams begin.
This is not the first time that Ajax has seen Tartaglia massacre. He’s had the pleasure of witnessing the way young Tartaglia tore apart monster after monster during his dream of his time trapped in the Abyss. He thinks he’s seen all sides of him at this point: the glee he sports from the opportunity to shed blood, the excitement from facing a strong opponent, the arrogance, the cruel playfulness, the
madness
, none of this is new.
But knowing that it’s coming from
AR
who had, just moments ago, wished he could live a peaceful life…it makes Ajax sick to his stomach.
“AR, remember what we’re trying to do,” he pleads. “Control it!”
On the screen, bodies are being sliced and diced without a care. Limbs fly in the air amongst the flurry of attacks. The screen shifts, and a Geo Samachurl is seen curled behind its staff with its back against the wall. It's shaking violently.
“Found you,” AR says in a sing-song voice.
He brings his blade down before Ajax can even scream, cleaving the head in half down to its chin. He withdraws the blade, ignoring the sickening wet slurps and the way the two halves of the skull fall open like—like a cracked nut—as red viscera trails down from the open gape in thick streams. Most of Samachurl’s mask have fallen to the wayside revealing the wide-eyed expression of horror forever frozen in death.
He raises the blade high.
And brings it down.
The blade sinks further with another squelch, this time, stopping at the collarbone.
He withdraws the blade and repeats his motion. Mechanically. Thoroughly.
Again and again.
Gods, Ajax feels like he’s about to puke.
“AR! Stop it already! He’s dead!”
He doesn’t stop, not until the body dissipates into black smoke. And even then, he turns around and dashes towards his next enemy and slices its stomach open.
Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck.
“Goddammit AR! Stop! Remember what you’re supposed to do! You made a deal with the Administrators!”
Another monster is struck down, but the motion is slower. Ajax yells louder.
“Remember what Skirk said! Remember her wish for you to do better! You promised her you’d control this! You
want
to control this. Do you
want
to be stuck with the Abyssal Taint forever?!”
The blade stops mid-swing from further desecrating the latest monster's body.
“I…” AR stutters out. “I don’t…”
“Get it together, AR, and snap out of it!”
The body drops to the ground and disappears into harmless dark smoke. From the screen, Ajax can see the tremors running up AR’s armoured arms. Strained breathing can be heard over the speakers.
“I…” The blade disappears and the clawed hands move towards the screen. AR is clutching his head. “Urgh.”
“You got this,” Ajax says, trying to soften his tone. He’s not doing a good job, not with how shaky he sounds. “That’s right. Control, buddy. Control. Deep breaths, okay? In and out.”
He repeats himself until the breathing eases to something less choppy and AR stops shaking. With a last exhale, black smoke rises and covers the screen. When it drifts away, he sees his human-gloved hands once more.
They’re tremoring a bit, but they’re human.
“You’re back, bud?” Ajax asks.
The screen shakes. AR is nodding. “Y-yeah. I’m—I’m in control. I think.”
Not exactly the confident answer he wants but it’s the best he can get for now. “Good. How do you feel?”
“Like shit. I
failed
.”
“You stopped. Not immediately, but you did eventually. That’s improvement. We’ll keep working on it, okay?”
“You
still
want to work on it after seeing what I did? I was a monster. I tore into them and I liked it.”
“You saved our lives,” Ajax counters, swallowing the uncomfortable lump in his throat. “Sure, some of your attacks were gratuitous, but that’s what the Abyssal energy does. It fucks with your head. It’s why you’re trying so hard to control it—because you know that’s not who you are.”
The screen shakes. “We took too many risks going into this. We had no contingency plan on what happens if I didn’t stop. What if you couldn’t get me to stop in time? What if I ended up destroying more than just monsters? What if you’re stuck in Foul Legacy’s form when Auto-Pilot runs out?”
With every question, the dread grows in the pit of his stomach. AR has a point. They were so eager having finally figured out what the Administrators want from them that they did no actual planning in case things went wrong.
Still, giving up is not an option.
“We’ll plan better for next time. We’ll figure out how to put in safeguards in case things get out of control.”
AR does not answer for a while. When he does, he switches topics entirely. “Auto-Pilot is about to run out. Remember the effects Foul Legacy has on the body. Take care of yourself for the next two days. Terminating in 3…2…1…”
Ajax feels a strong tug in his chest like a hand has grabbed onto the front of his shirt and is yanking him off his seat. He feels himself being physically lifted up and then…he blinks.
He’s back in the cool, damp lair except the stench of copper and putrid guts is much stronger than before. Around him, monster bodies are starting to fade, but not fast enough for Ajax to avoid seeing their mangled state.
He looks down. His shirt, his pants, his shoes—everything is splattered with blood.
It still feels warm and it’s making the fabric stick to his skin.
He instantly feels queasy. He bends over and squeezes his eyes shut, breathing through his nose to stop his urge to gag. “Okay, okay, that’s—oh god. Get it together. Get it together.”
“Here. This will make you feel better.”
A cold cloth is shoved under his nose, drenched in a refreshing minty-peppery scent. He breathes in deep gulps of it while a pair of hands prop him up by his shoulders and waist.
“Better?”
Ajax nods. The cloth is pulled away from his face. “Hm. Thanks, Sir Kaeya…”
He freezes and his eyes snap open.
Shit.
Kaeya, Lumine, and Paimon are right there.
They’re right there, holding him up. Just like how they were right there behind the wall during the fight, which was subsequently destroyed when AR killed that Samachurl
brutally.
Fuck. How much did they see? How much did they
hear
?
“Hey, steady now,” Lumine murmurs when he tries to pull away but ends up listing to one side. “Are you hurt anywhere?”
At the reminder, fiery pain lances throughout his body, sending all of his nerves tingling as if he’s been stabbed by thousands of needles. Gods, his everything hurts, including his head, which is subject to a growing migraine. He takes a deep breath and tries to focus on an answer.
“I don’t think anything’s broken.”
Lumine’s frown deepens. “I don’t like how you’re not sure. Can you move?”
“Y-yeah.”
“Good. Let’s get out of here.”
They head down the hall towards the rift, crossing through the entryway after Kaeya activates it once more. Through it all, they remain silent while keeping Ajax propped up between them.
There are no questions, nor any signs of being disgusted, not even when he asks for a break to take a quick shower. He ducks behind a few bushes, strips down, and douses himself and his clothes with his Hydro power before drawing the dirty water into an orb and lobbing it away onto some grass.
Much better. His clothes are still a bit stained with pink, but the smell is gone.
They resume their travels once more in silence. It’s driving Ajax a little crazy, to be perfectly honest.
His will to stay quiet finally cracks when they’re back in the forest clearing they previously stopped in for a break.
“So, um, about what happened…”
“Your reputation as the Vanguard makes a lot more sense now,” Kaeya starts. His tone contains the same level of curiosity as someone stumbling onto a neat fact in a book. “I know you mentioned how the Abyssal energy affects you, but there’s nothing like experiencing your…Tartaglia persona to drive home the point. I’m assuming that’s what that was: your Tartaglia persona, correct?”
Despite prompting the conversation, Ajax finds himself unable to answer. He nods silently instead.
“Tartaglia doesn’t seem to be as angry,” Paimon notes. “I mean, after he turned back from being the giant armoured being thing. He sounded sad.”
“Was he talking to you?” Lumine asks. “He seemed like he was carrying on a conversation with someone.”
Ah, shit. What does he say?
The System’s chime sounds in his mind. “Lumine already believes that I am a separate persona. That was what she told the Qixing during the trial, remember? And Kaeya seems to believe I exist due to the effects of the Abyssal energy in your body. I think confirming their stories is the path to least resistance and it might lower their suspicion compared to making a new story up.”
It’s good advice.
“That was Tartaglia and he was talking to me,” Ajax admits. “He tends to come out when I’ve got a lot of Abyssal energy accumulated in my body and when I use Foul Legacy Transformation.”
“Does he normally talk to you?” Kaeya asks.
“Yeah.”
“Does he tell you to hurt people?”
Ajax flinches. “No! He tries to protect me! He keeps me alive! He’s not a bad guy!”When he sees Lumine, Paimon, and Kaeya exchange looks, he doubles down. “He’s not! It’s just the Abyssal Effect messing with him! It’s why we’re working on controlling his reaction when he uses the Foul Legacy Transformation!”
“I understand. He appeared concerned that you couldn’t control him,” Kaeya says with a soothing tone. “He’s also concerned that you would be stuck in the, ah, Foul Legacy Form if…Auto-Pilot runs out? What’s Auto-Pilot?”
Ah, double shit.
“Reminder that you can’t disclose that you’re a Transmigrator,” comes AR’s warning. “But you can say that it’s a system that we devised to keep me in control whenever I’m operating your body.”
Ajax repeats AR’s answer. He adds, “Basically, Tartaglia and I have, um, lots and lots of rules and systems in place that restrict when and how he takes over. We’ve recently talked things over and he agreed to only take over when I use Foul Legacy Transformation and for a maximum of 15 minutes. But once that time runs out…”
Kaeya nods. “I understand. If the time runs out, he will retreat back into the recesses of your mind, leaving you to deal with being in your Foul Legacy form. Has that happened before?”
“No. But to be honest, that wasn’t even a possibility we thought of before this fight. We kinda jumped into wanting to control this power. We should’ve planned more.”
Lumine snorts. “I’ll say. That was reckless. Tartaglia seemed to agree with that too.”
“So now what? Will you be using that Foul Legacy power again?” Paimon asks.
“We’ll need to come up with a better plan but, yeah,” he answers just as AR says in his head, full of reproach: “Ajax…”
“We’re doing it again!” he repeats, directed at AR this time. “We’re not going to let this one failure stop us!”
“I can’t say I agree with this plan,” comes Kaeya’s answer. “Not when the risk is so great. I think to ensure Mondstadt’s safety, we will need to discuss further with the Acting Grandmaster to see what sort of containment measures we can use so that you can practice safely. Until then, please refrain from using that power.”
Triple shit. Ajax should’ve seen that coming. He just knows that he will be having another long interrogation session with the Mondstadt crew in the future.
“…Understood.”
With the ice thoroughly broken, Kaeya and Lumine proceed to fill the silence by exchanging information on Ajax’s condition and the effects of the Abyssal power. At least they’re actually taking him seriously rather than calling him crazy, but Ajax knows this strengthened partnership between the Traveller and the Calvary Captain will be a real pain for him.
Part LV. Ajax’s New Adventures as a Bed-Ridden Patient
There’s one upside to experiencing his side effects from using Foul Legacy Transformation, and it’s how pathetic Ajax looks at the moment. With his HP cap, his full-body pain, and the Abyssal Taint running rampant, he looks and feels like utter garbage, so much so that Kaeya and Lumine are more focused on dragging him to the closest Statue of Seven rather than continuing their questioning.
They make him sit down by the foot of the statue before shoving some apples in his hands.
“Offerings. Make them now,” Lumine commands.
He puts the apples down at the statue’s base. “Uh, I, Ajax, humbly present my offerings of apples to Barbatos, the Anemo Archon, for his aid.”
A gust of refreshing wind whips up and ruffles his hair and clothes. The scent of mint and flowers fill the air and in a blink of an eye, Venti materializes into existence in the blank space beside the statue.
“Ahoy there! Did somebody ca—holy mackerel, what happened to you?!”
Ajax’s face is being smooshed between a pair of slim, pale hands while Venti frets. “How did you—you were perfectly fine this morning! You were healthy and hale! How did you go from that to looking like death?! And this Abyssal energy that’s on you! It’s so powerful!”
Kaeya clears his throat. “He used some sort of Abyssal power and its side effects are affecting him.”
Venti looks unimpressed. “Why would you do a stupid thing like that? Oh, nevermind. I have to fix this first!”
Venti’s blessing feels like a gust of spring breeze gently tickling his skin. With every second that the wind blows, the sense of heaviness in his head slowly lifts away, and the sharp headache against his temples dies down to low throbbing. Ajax sighs, letting his eyes slip shut. He feels warm and the tension in his muscles is dissipating bit by bit, leaving his limbs feeling nice and loose. The stabbing pain in his nerves is also easing to a manageable dull ache.
Of course, the treatment would have been a lot more relaxing without Venti’s low, dissatisfied grumbling.
“I can’t believe this. The sheer stupidity! Why would you do something so reckless? Do you want to court death?”
“I’m sorry, I was trying to learn how to control this power better.”
“Did you succeed?”
“…No.”
“So that means you’ll try again?”
“…Yeah, probably.”
Venti rolls his eyes and lets his wind die. “Of
course
you would. I see why that old blockhead placed so many layers of protective magic on you.” He gives Ajax’s shoulder a couple of pats and draws away. “The Abyssal energy should be under control for now, but I will need to monitor it and re-apply my blessings if it flares up again. You’re welcome.”
Ajax opens his eyes and flashes the ex-Archon with a sheepish smile. “Thanks, Venti.”
“Thank me properly by not using your power again!”
Kaeya and Lumine help him up. Although he doesn’t hurt as much anymore, he still feels sick, like he’s suffering the beginnings of the flu. Was the 80% health reduction this bad last time? Maybe he hadn’t noticed it given the shit show he was in, what with his impromptu arrest and all. Between his distraction and the adrenaline, his body probably suppressed the worst of his pain.
“It’s fine, I’m fine. I just need to take it a bit easier for the next two days. I’ll be right as rain afterwards.”
“You’re fevering and you can barely stand up,” Venti says flatly, crossing his arms over his chest. “It’s going to be a full week of bed rest and you’ll be having nothing but medicinal tea! Captain Kaeya, would you be so kind as to summon a doctor for him as well?”
“Of course, Lord Barbatos.”
“Wait, a full week?” Ajax squawks. “Isn’t that overkill?”
“No,” Venti says. “You can complain when you’re in bed at home. Let’s get going.”
For being the Archon of Freedom, Venti sure knows how to lay down the law like a tyrant. Ajax is ushered to the washroom to take a nice warm bath before being marched to bed with the ex-Archon guarding him like a warden (with Lumine and Paimon acting as backup, because apparently, they didn’t trust his “troublemaking ways”). A doctor, guided by Kaeya, appears by his side as he’s seated in bed in his pajamas, nursing his mug of warm medicinal tea.
“You are showing signs of anemia and very low blood pressure. Young man, have you been ill for a long time?”
Ajax sighs as he feels Venti, Kaeya, Lumine and Paimon’s judging eyes focus on him.
Not this again. That’s the diagnosis he had received in Liyue too when the doctor treated him in his holding cell.
“No, it’s a…magic-afflicted side effect,” he says. “How long before I make a full recovery?”
“Under normal circumstances, at least several months, but since this is magic-afflicted, the symptoms might clear once the root cause is mitigated.” The doctor bends down and reaches into her satchel. She pulls out a couple of pouches and hands them to Ajax. “I’m prescribing some medicine to treat your anemia and fever. Please dissolve two spoonfuls from each pouch in a cup of water. Drink one cup every five to six hours. If you experience no improvement after the first week, please call me again. In the meantime, get plenty of rest, drink lots of water, and stick to a diet of red meat, beans, and dark green leafy vegetables.”
“Alright, you heard the good doctor,” Venti says. “Looks like Master Ajax here needs sleep. We can talk some more downstairs.”
The group shuffles outside and the door closes with a soft click. Ajax settles into his covers and groans. Now that he’s lying comfortably, the muscle and bone aches that were lying in wait come rushing back, accompanied by an unpleasant chill.
“Owww,” he whines. “Hey AR, can I get some Healing Food?”
“Unfortunately, your HP is full, so Healing Food won’t help.”
Ajax sighs and snuggles into his blankets some more. Stupid Health Point cap. “Looks like there’s nothing to do but sleep away the pain then.”
It’s easier said than done. Although his body is tired, his mind can’t stop replaying the day’s events between their failure with control and his confirmation that Tartaglia exists as a separate persona. The moment the doctor leaves, Ajax just knows that the crowd downstairs will begin to share intel about him. He knows it won’t take long for Jean and Diluc to hear about this as well.
How will this impact the Mondstadt crew’s view of him? Will this erode the tentative truce they have? What sort of gossip and plotting will this information ignite? Oh gods, will Venti, Jean, Diluc, and Kaeya ambush him again and stage another interrogation session?
Will this be like Liyue all over again, with that awful trial and imprisonment?
The thought sends his heart rate skyrocketing. The only reason why he got away from what happened in Liyue was due to pure luck and a solid foundation of allies he had built from his time living there. He can’t rely on the former and he can’t say he’s got the latter established in Mondstadt just yet. He’s got nobody here who will stick by him through thick or thin—sure, the Mondstadt crew is nice, but at the end of the day, their loyalty is towards their nation, and rightly so. If Ajax becomes a threat to that…
As for the Traveller, although he’s on friendly terms with her, he doesn’t want to know which team she will pick if she had to choose between him and Mondstadt.
(He thinks he knows the answer. She’s known the people of Mondstadt longer and Team Mondstadt isn’t nearly as sketchy as he is. He doesn’t blame her for her choice either. After all, who would choose
him
?)
This is pathetic. He’s got no real friends except friendly acquaintances in the form of tentative allies. It’s not so different from his life before Teyvat when he lived as a sad, lonely college student. Now, a world away and several adventures later, he manages to come back to the same sad state of affairs. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
He buries his face into his pillow.
He misses Liyue.
It’s a sentiment that he tries not to dwell on. What good is it to think about Liyue in his current predicament? It’s not like he can go back any time soon and he knows this. He’s had to make peace with it during the long months spent bringing his pseudocide plan to fruition.
Still, it’s in quiet moments like these when he’s by himself in a foreign land that the yearning comes seeping through the cracks of his shield.
He misses Liyue.
He misses the people he had befriended there. He misses the merchants who would greet him with bright smiles and share gossip with him, the grandmothers at the local parks who would pinch his cheeks while trying to ply him with more food, and Miss Li from his favourite grocery store who would share recipes and ask, with an all-too-knowing smirk, how he and Zhongli were doing.
There are his colleagues at the Bank and the Spy Gang. He misses having them around even if all they did was nag at him. He hopes they’re doing okay now that he’s gone. He hopes Hu Tao is taking good care of them.
He misses the relatively simpler times in the city where he would work, train, and spend time with Zhongli. He misses his peaceful days with Zhongli, misses the stories the ex-Archon would tell him, misses the gentle evenings spent together, misses going to bed at night wishing the other sweet dreams, then going to sleep, secure in the knowledge that he’ll be able to do it all over again the next day.
Gods, he misses Zhongli terribly. He misses his sturdy presence and the man’s unwavering devotion to him. Zhongli had been ready to toss his retirement aside and disclose his real identity if it meant setting Ajax free.
(And Ajax had paid him back by stabbing him in the gut.)
(No wonder he’s not answering his prayers. No wonder he’s not answering to his messages. Did Ajax manage to push away the one person who would have his corner? Did he manage to screw up in such a colossal manner that he made Zhongli give up on him—)
“I’m sorry, Ajax.”
Ajax uncurls himself from his foetal position and lets go of the ring on his necklace. Huh. He didn’t even notice that he’d been clutching it like a lifeline. “I—pardon?”
“I’m sorry,” AR repeats. “If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t be dragged into using the Foul Legacy Transformation. You wouldn’t be stuck in bed right now. You wouldn’t have to disclose my existence to others. It appears that even in death, I continue to cause trouble to those around me.”
“Hey, that’s not fair. I agreed to help you.”
“But you wouldn’t have to if not for my predicament,” AR counters. “You finished your Main Missions already. You should be living your life peacefully, not lying in bed with a health penalty cap while being afflicted by the Abyssal Taint.”
“AR, it’s okay—”
“No, it isn’t. This won’t be the only time you’ll have to suffer either. What if you have to do this ten more times? Twenty more times?
Fifty
more times? What if it takes a decade before I learned control? What if I never succeed?”
Ajax goes tense. There’s no way AR wouldn’t learn to control his powers, but what
if
it ends up taking a lot longer than anticipated?
Even so, what are his alternatives? He can’t just leave AR with his unresolved regret.
“Even if it takes that long, I’ll help,” Ajax answers. “I…I promise I won’t complain about it.”
“That’s not what I’m saying!”
“Then what
are
you saying?”
“I’m saying that I’m uncomfortable with this arrangement! I don’t want you to sacrifice your life for me! And the way you wouldn’t stop and really
think
about how this will hurt you is a problem that I should’ve anticipated if I didn’t get so swept up with…with everything!”
Ajax sits up, annoyed. “Hey! I can make my own decisions too, you know!”
“You put yourself last out of some misplaced guilt for taking over my body! You keep getting yourself hurt willingly, so you’ll have to excuse me for doubting your decision-making abilities!”
“What’s wrong with feeling guilty?” he shoots back. “How can anyone not feel guilty in my position? Just because I feel guilty doesn’t mean it’s the only reason why I agreed to help, either!”
“No, but I bet it’s a big driving factor!”
Annoyance gives way to burning anger. A big driving factor? Does their friendship mean nothing? “What about the fact that I’m your friend and I want to help? Have you considered that as well or are you too busy looking for ways to self-sabotage?”
A sucked in breath. “I—
how dare
—”
“Yeah, I dare! It’s not like I said anything wrong! All you’ve been doing is feeling sorry for yourself. You’ve tried once, AR, and you’re giving up already!”
“I’ve tried more than once!” AR snarls. “What do you think I’ve been doing ever since I was a child? It’s because I’ve had this power for so long that I know just how bad it is but for some reason, you think it’s a great idea to downplay the risks like a naïve child!”
“I’m not downplaying shit and I’m not a child!”
“You are refusing to listen to reason and you are choosing to bury your head in the sand! Until you’ve demonstrated that you can acknowledge the risks properly like an adult, then I will treat you like a child!”
Oh,
fuck
that noise. “You’re just looking for excuses! Don’t lay this on me just because you’re scared!”
“I am
not
—you know what? This is impossible. You are being impossible. We’re done here.”
Silence. Ajax waits a little longer for an answer. When he gets none, he snaps, “Oh, really? You’re going to give me the silent treatment? Who’s being the child now?”
He lies back down and throws his blanket over him.
Getting the last words in does not make him feel any better. It takes him a while before he drifts off to sleep.
His rest is fitful. Though Venti’s blessing and the medicinal tea helped sooth the initial ache, the pain slowly comes back with every passing hour as with the annoying chill and sense of malaise wracking his body. He shivers and pulls the blankets around him tighter. He can feel sweat beading on his forehead but he still feels so cold.
He has no means to distract himself from his misery. The room is quiet. The windows are closed so he can’t hear the sounds of chirping birds or the rustling leaves, and he can’t make out any noise outside of his room save for the sound of faint footsteps that suggest multiple people are in the house. It appears that there are guests in the house. Whoever they are, they’re making a concerted effort to keep their voices down.
AR hasn’t said anything, either. It’s been more radio silence every time he wakes up.
Everything is still and the lack of sound is suffocating, pressing against him on all sides and threatening to crush him under its weight. It’s all too easy for old fears and anxiety to come slithering back once more.
Who’s with Venti downstairs?
a familiar, dark voice hisses from the recesses of his mind. Every word spoken is like poison dripped into his mind.
What are they talking about in the living room? Are they talking about me? Are they planning another ambush? Are they planning another surprise interrogation? Are they going to arrest me and put me on trial?
Ajax rolls over and squeezes his eyes shut as tightly as he can. Shit. Go to sleep. Go to sleep—
It’s so quiet. What secrets are people hiding? Of course they’d be hiding secrets. You’re a threat to the country. You’re a threat no matter where you go. It doesn’t matter that you’re trying your best to lay low and live a peaceful life. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t have a choice when it came to releasing Osial, or being the Tsaritsa’s pawn, or being in La Signora’s line of fire. Nobody cares. Once a villain, always a villain.
That’s not true. Not everyone believes that.
His hand snakes under his shirt and he grips the ring on his necklace.
Zhongli doesn’t believe that—
How many messages did you send Zhongli? How many prayers did you make? How many times did you beg others to reach out to Zhongli?
It’s—he—
How many times did Zhongli answer?
He buries his head in his pillow.
Zhongli cares about him. Zhongli misses him. Lumine said so as much. He’s just been outside of Liyue Harbour because he’s been—
He’s been grieving because he thinks you died,
the voice counters. It sounds almost gleeful.
He opened his arms and his home to you and you repaid his kindness by stabbing him. Then, you broke his heart by pretending to be dead. You lied to him in the cruellest way. Do you think he’ll want to see your face after such betrayal? Do you think he’ll want anything to do with you?
Zhongli’s status points remain unchanged though. Zhongli’s L Points are—
L Points. R Points. Those are just tools that the Administrators use for their own agenda. Do they actually reflect what he feels about you? Stupid little idiot. You don’t know, do you? You don’t think. You just take things at face value. No wonder La Signora was able to frame you. No wonder you fell into her trap so spectacularly. No wonder AR is so furious. No wonder he doesn’t want to talk to you.
Outside of his mind, the room is silent.
He tries to ignore the whispers.
He wakes up.
The room is silent.
The whispers come back.
Do you think Zhongli will forgive you after all the things you’ve done? Do you think he’ll want you anymore? Do you think he’ll want to see you when he finds out you’re in Mondstadt? Or maybe, he’ll simply go, “Good riddance” and move on with his life. It’ll serve him well to cut you out entirely after all the grief you’ve given him. Xiao and his adepti friends would certainly approve. Gods know how much Xiao hates you.
Clutching onto his necklace, he shifts around a little and tries to sleep.
He wakes up.
This time, there are murmurings.
“…the Abyssal Energy to come back…strong…”
“…can you do to fix it?”
“…only suppress…can’t erase it…Celestia’s purview only…”
Blessed cool wind ruffles through his hair and cools his heated cheeks. His head feels less heavy and the whispers retreat back into the darkness. Someone is lifting his head up and he feels lukewarm liquid poured into his mouth. It tastes like herbs and lemon.
“Slowly now,” the voice says. “Good. Make sure to finish the cup.”
“Venti?” he croaks out. He squints his blurry eyes to the blob beside him. “Sir Kaeya?”
His vision clears a little. All of them look visibly tense.
“Hey there! Back to the world of living, I see!” Venti greets with a strained smile. “You scared me there for a second. I wasn’t expecting the Abyssal energy to come back this quickly after I cleared it.”
“We brought you some soup,” Kaeya offers. “You should eat something.”
He pulls himself up slowly so that he’s leaning against the headboard. The chill, the ache, and the general muscle weakness have not gotten better. Great.
“How long was I asleep for?”
“About half a day. It’s night now. We were giving you your dose of medicine and some dinner before you sleep some more.”
A tray table with soup and bread is placed over his lap. With a tired “thanks”, he digs in. He manages to finish half of his meal before he gives up.
“Does the Foul Legacy Transformation do this to you every time you use it?” Kaeya asks, taking away the tray. “I can see why the Traveller is so worried. These side-effects are no joke.”
Ajax tries not to wince. Kaeya’s words remind him too much of what AR had said. “It gets better, though.”
“So you say, but those words are not that comforting to hear,” Venti says. “I also don’t like how the Abyssal energy keeps coming back despite my blessing, either. Normally, it’s controllable through daily offerings, but that’s not the case anymore. I suspect that it’s feeding off the negativity from how ill you’re feeling.”
“Great.”
It makes sense. Zhongli had given him his blessing during the whole trial shenanigans but Ajax can still hear those dark whispers, even if he had an easier time telling them apart from his own thoughts. He had thought that it was due to Zhongli being weakened by his lack of a Gnosis and that his blessing wasn’t as powerful to scrub out the Abyssal Taint flare-up. Apparently, that wasn’t the case.
He reaches for his necklace and clasps the ring in his hand. Zhongli had been frantic to the point of getting himself thrown in jail. His panic only eased a little after he spent the night with him, their cots pressed as close together as possible despite the cell bars between them.
Come to think of it, that evening was the last time he had seen Zhongli smile.
His grip on his ring tightens.
“Hey Venti, have you, um, have you heard from Zhongli at all? I know you sent a lot of messages to him…”
Venti shakes his head. “I’m sorry, I haven’t received any messages from him. But it’s only been a little while. I’m sure he’ll answer.”
He doesn’t want to see you again. He doesn’t want anything to do with you—
Ajax swallows hard. “Yeah. I’m sure he’ll answer eventually.”
The ring feels cold in his hand.
He sleeps. He wakes up. He sleeps again.
It seems like every time he manages to drift off slightly, the whispers grow louder, plaguing his dreams and making him wake up in a cold sweat.
There is no reprieve to be had except for the sensation of the metal of his ring digging into his palm. His lifeline to sanity and hope.
He probably hates you for the hell you’ve put him through. He’s going to leave you.
He misses Zhongli.
He wakes up to Venti’s blessing. He’s starting to recognize the way the ex-Archon’s power feels against his tired body and the temporary peace it brings to his mind.
It’s time for his medicine. He downs it obediently and asks if Zhongli answered.
He has not. Venti looks apologetic.
Not even the blessing can ease the fresh ache piercing through his heart.
He thanks Venti for the update.
He goes back to sleep holding the ring.
You hurt him.
He misses Zhongli.
You broke his heart. You stabbed him. And he was willing to sacrifice his freedom for you.
He misses Zhongli.
He’s going to leave you. Just like how your father left you. Just like how your mother abandoned you. Nobody wants to stay. Nobody wants to stay because it’s you.
He can hear the first notes of “Salut d’Amour” playing, can feel the cool ivory keys against his fingers as the spotlight beams on him. He looks out onto the sea of audience and—
Empty chairs.
He misses Zhongli.
He wants nothing to do with you.
He misses Zhongli.
You deserve it. You deserve all of it.
He misses Zhongli.
He wakes up again and he feels like death.
The room is dark (someone must have pulled the curtains over the windows for him), but he can see the morning sunlight peeking through, making the once-oppressive space feel lighter.
He shivers under the mountain of covers on his bed (did someone pile on more blankets while he was asleep?) and tries to get himself comfortable in his cocoon once more. The effort is lackluster at best. He’s exhausted. Moving is a pain.
He’s half-asleep when he hears knocks on his door. “Come in.”
“Good morning,” Venti greets, with a tray of breakfast and tea. He sets it down on the table beside the bed as Ajax sits up. “How are you feeling? Better?”
Ajax cracks a weak smile. “Just hanging in there. Thanks for the extra blankets and for taking care of me. It couldn’t have been easy.”
Venti gives him a dismissive wave. “It’s not a trouble. You slept a lot and took your medicine without complaining. Speaking of which, you should drink your tea before it gets cold. I also have some Sunsettia juice and bread as chaser.”
“You’re a gem, Venti. Thank you.”
He downs his drinks and food while the ex-Archon flits about, smoothing out his covers and fluffing his pillows.
“Do you need more blankets? Pillows? Water?”
“I’m okay Venti, really,” Ajax says, with a genuine smile. “I’m probably going to go back to sleep after I’m done so why don’t you go and take a rest too? If I need any—”
A loud rumble shakes the room like thunder from a violent storm. The window rattles, the curtains sway and the walls creak. Outside, flocks of panicked birds leave the trees in a dark cloud, their cries and the sound of frantic beating wings audible even from his bed.
Venti looks around, his green eyes wide. “What in the—”
A second rumble and the entire cabin
shakes
. The furniture shifts, including his bed, and Ajax has to quickly reach for the bowl and plate on his lap before they crash to the ground. Venti stumbles but manages to brace himself on a nearby table.
“Is Mondstadt under attack or something?” He rushes towards the window and looks. “I’m not seeing anything from here. Stay put. I’ll go take a look.”
Without waiting for a response, Venti opens the window fully and leaps outside. A strong gust of breeze whips up the curtains, then dies down into nothing.
Ajax remains still for a total of ten more seconds before scrambling out of bed.
Stay here? Nah, fuck that. What if Venti is in danger?
He drags one of the blankets on the bed and wraps it around himself like a cape and rushes for the door, tripping and swaying a little from the dizziness and weakness in his legs. He manages to get downstairs without falling to his death and stumbles to the front door, stopping to cram his feet into a pair of house slippers, then rushing outside.
He almost bowls over Lumine and Paimon, who were waiting at the front porch.
“What are you doing out of bed?” Paimon asks. “And where’s Venti?”
“He left to find out what’s going on,” Ajax answers, pulling his blanket cape tighter around his body. “I’m going after him.”
Lumine scowls and crosses her arms over her chest. “No, you are not. You’re going back to bed.”
“Look, you can order me all you want, but you know that the moment you leave, I’m just going to follow behind,” Ajax says bluntly, patience long evaporated. “Or, we can go together and you can keep an eye on me. What’s it going to be?”
Lumine tosses her hands up. “Gods, how is it that you’re more difficult half-dead? Fine. Come with me. The sound is heading that way.”
They head northbound towards Mondstadt City, following the dirt road that cuts through the lush, dense forest of their surroundings. Although they’ve set off on a brisk pace that has Ajax’s heart pounding, lungs burning for air, and sweat pouring uncomfortably from his brows, he doesn’t dare to complain, not when Lumine looks like she’s seconds from leaving him to rest by the side of the road “for his own good”.
His stubbornness can only carry him for so long, though, and he feels like he’s about to vomit from overexertion when he hears Venti’s familiar voice.
“…doing here?! You couldn’t have sent me a message or something? You scared the wits out of me! And look at what you did to my forest! Look at my apple trees!”
“My most sincere apology, Lord Barbatos,” a voice says. A
very
familiar-sounding male voice. “We were in a rush and spent the night travelling here. We received important news that—”
“Where is he?” a third voice interrupts with a growl.
Ajax freezes.
He knows that voice well. He’s heard it frequently during countless outings around the bustling marketplace of Liyue Harbour. He's heard that voice from the lectures given on the artistry behind making celadon vessels, delicate brushstroke paintings, and fine jade carvings. He’s heard that voice from the retelling of old legends about the proud gods that walked on the sun-soaked land, of the long, bloody battles to rid the territory of evil, and of the painful sacrifices to seal away the evil beneath the ocean waves.
Ajax has heard that voice while the speaker is amused by the shows they’ve watched together, delighted by the exquisite meals they’ve shared, and excited as Ajax is prepared for his own musical performance dedicated to the speaker. He’s heard that voice while the speaker is wistful and sad while lost in his long memory, annoyed as he recounts the shenanigans his boss is up to, and agitated from the way Ajax was treated in prison while awaiting his trial.
Ajax is very familiar with that voice and the low, soothing way it sounds. Recently, he’s been hearing that voice in his memory, sweet and filled with love.
“When you are with me, please do not force yourself to smile when you are unhappy. Please do not pretend that everything is fine. You are allowed to just be. Alright?”
“My door will always be open to you should you need a place to seek shelter or even a place to call home. You will always have somewhere safe with me.”
“Wherever you go, I will follow. I promise.”
Ajax thought he’d heard all flavours of that voice.
But this is new; Ajax has never heard the voice sounding so…tired and anxious and desperate. He’s never heard that voice sound so
heartbroken
.
Ajax reaches for his ring and curls his fingers around it, gripping it so tightly that the metal bites into the flesh of his palm.
Look at what you’ve done,
the oily voice whispers.
Look at how pained he sounds. Look at the damage you’ve caused.
“Barbatos, where is he? Where is my Childe?”
Look at how much hurt you’ve inflicted,
the voice continues.
It’s no wonder he sounds like this. It’s no wonder that he’s so miserable. It’s a miracle that he’s even here at all—
Realization hits him, clear and soothing like the first drops of rain on a parched land.
It’s a miracle that he’s here.
He’s here. Zhongli is here.
For all the wrongs Ajax has committed and for all the ways he has broken the other’s heart, Zhongli still decided to come. He did not give up on Ajax.
He did not leave him. He did not abandon him. Zhongli is here.
There’s a funny pressure welling inside of him and it steals the breath from his lungs. It makes the back of his eyes burn, makes his chest hurt, and makes it hard to swallow past the growing lump in his throat. He thinks he can hear the beginnings of “Salut d’Amour” playing.
From the recesses of his mind, a long-forgotten memory resurfaces—a young boy in a house with white trimmings, a front porch with a sturdy swing, and a large backyard. One day, that happy little boy asked his father why he had chosen to play that song for his mother when he asked her to marry him.
“A good question, Yasha. The composer was inspired by his love when he wrote that song and when they got engaged, he gave it to her as his most precious gift. It’s why the name of the song means Love’s Greeting.”
A song that he had associated with sadness and abandonment but at its core is meant to celebrate falling in love. It is meant to welcome the new, beautiful life that love will bring and the promise of sweeter days ahead.
And what greater sweetness can Ajax have than with Zhongli by his side?
Ajax takes a step towards the sound. Then another, then another until he breaks out into a run. He ignores Paimon and Lumine’s cries and heads for the tree line. He crashes through the bushes and pushes his way forward as twigs and branches scratch his face and hands while snagging on his clothes. He thinks he's bleeding. His clothes are probably torn. But he doesn't care.
He runs. He hops over fallen logs, tripping, stumbling, but scrambles up and keeps going.
Zhongli is here.
Zhongli is here
.
He breaks out of the forest and finds himself in a grassy clearing. Blue sky stretches above and in front of him—
Zhongli.
He’s not alone. He’s standing beside Ganyu and Xiao facing a peeved Venti, but Ajax's eyes are drawn to him and him alone.
He’s taken a form that Ajax has never seen—a hybrid between dragon and man with great, majestic golden horns blooming from the crown of his head and his long dark hair cascading over his shoulders. He's wearing a simple sleeveless robe showing off a pair of clawed hands lined with gold geometric marks that snake up his muscled onyx arms. But even in this novel form, it’s clear that the man has seen better days. There are dark bags hanging from his golden eyes and his face looks pale and wan. His hair looks mussed and his clothes look dishevelled. A far cry from the meticulous, proud state he’s normally in.
But to Ajax, there is no sight more beautiful.
His Zhongli. His dearest Zhongli.
And Zhongli is looking at him like he has seen a ghost.
“Childe?” he breathes. “Is that—are you really here?”
The pressure in his chest grows as with the burning in his eyes. He can feel his cheeks grow warm and wet, and yet, despite the pain and the sadness and the doubt and the heartache, he can’t help but give the love of his life a wobbly smile.
“Hi,” he croaks out. “I like your horns.”
Zhongli’s eyes go huge and he makes a low, wounded, keening sound.
He rushes towards him.
Ajax lets out a choked laugh when those onyx arms wrap around him in a desperate embrace. He laughs as he buries his face in Zhongli’s chest and returns the hug with his own, and his heart feels lighter than it has ever felt since coming to Teyvat. He laughs again as Zhongli draws away to cradle his face in his hands with delicate tenderness like he’s holding the most precious treasure in the world.
“Childe,” Zhongli murmurs, his voice as broken as Ajax’s. “My Childe.
My Ajax
.”
Ajax only stops laughing when warm lips slot against his to seal an unspoken promise they've long held in their hearts.
A promise of sweeter days to come, indeed.
Finally.
Finally.
Zhongli is here.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Morristown, NJ
The revelation that she was never meant to be a mother is one that it took her decades to come to. Once she did, a lot of things about her life that have always puzzled her suddenly made sense.
That’s not to say that she didn’t love her children. In fact, that’s what made the revelation so hard to come by. She’s always loved them, from the moment they took their first breaths. It wasn’t the children themselves that were the issue; it was the mothering.
Fox was the sweetest baby. His cherubic little face made her heart ache when the nurses placed him in her arms at the hospital. She was told again and again by friends and neighbors that Fox was such a
good
baby, so curious and easy to care for. He hardly ever fussed compared to most of their children. This left her wondering why she felt such vehement resentment towards him for needing her so much when he wailed for milk at 2:00 am.
Women are meant to be mothers. That’s what she’d always been told. She expected it to come to her naturally, as easily as walking and talking. But that wasn’t the case, and she felt defective and ashamed. She hoped that things would be different the second time. Then Samantha came along and made her aware just how easy of a baby Fox really was.
It was constant. Someone was always needing her, crying for her, tugging on the hem of her dress. Bill was never home, and when he was, he may as well have been an apparition for how much help offered. When Fox started school it got a little better, and when Samantha joined him she at least had school hours to herself. She’d start to think that maybe she missed them, and then they’d walk in the door squabbling and something thick and sour would rise in her throat. Hatred. Not towards the children themselves—she was intelligent enough to understand that they were simply behaving as typical children do. But the mothering. The mothering made her want to swallow a whole bottle of valium with her nightly glass of wine.
And then there was Carl, always lurking around somewhere in the background. Sometimes he ignored her, and other times he showered her with gifts and attention, cornered her in the pantry and promised her the world. They could run away together, make a new life in Guam or Puerto Rico. She strongly considered it, especially when Fox was out of diapers and it seemed likely that Bill would be able to find some kind young woman to marry him and be a proper mother to Fox. But then she realized she was pregnant with Samantha, and Carl told her that he wanted to be around to see the children grow up. He wasn’t even their father and he was still more interested in being a part of their life than she was.
Shortly before Samantha disappeared, he asked her a bizarre hypothetical question regarding which of the children she would give up, if she had to choose. She balked, but he pressed her, and finally she said Samantha. Not because she loved Samantha less than Fox, but because mathematically, there were fewer years until Fox left home and she could be free again. By the time she realized that the question wasn’t hypothetical at all, it was too late. The heavy guilt she wore draped over her shoulders like a shawl didn’t allow her to enjoy having only one—highly self sufficient—child to look after. It didn’t allow her to feel relieved when Fox moved across the Atlantic ocean to attend college. It didn’t allow her to feel anything, really, ever again.
Many years later, when Samantha was long since gone and Fox was away at Oxford, she met a young woman at the Country Club who was vibrant and self-assured. They got to talking, and it came to light that the woman was well into her forties, though she looked and acted more like she was twenty-five.
“How old are your children?” she’d asked the woman, wondering how someone could find such joy in life amidst all the mothering.
“Oh, I don’t have children,” the woman corrected her, seemingly unoffended.
“I’m sorry. Were you not able to?” she asked, feeling a pang of jealousy.
“I could have, as far as I know,” the woman said plainly. “I just never wanted any. Kids are great, but I’ve just never had any desire to have my own. My husband feels the same way, so we’re well matched in that regard.”
She almost felt silly that she’d never come to the same conclusion herself. She knew that she wasn’t a great mother, but until that moment she’d always chalked it up to a personal defect. At that moment, she understood that she wasn’t meant to be a mother at all; she never should have had children in the first place. But it just wasn’t an option you considered in her time. Young women grew up and became wives and mothers. Regardless of whether they wanted to. Regardless of whether they were any good at it.
But by then it was too late. Fox and Samantha were gone, literally and figuratively. She hoped that as two adults, she and Fox might find their own way to relate to one another, to cultivate a relationship that was not predicated on her having birthed and raised him. But she found that his wounds were too deep and too raw, and her guilt over having inflicted them still too heavy. She was proud of him, so very proud of who he became in light of how little she and Bill did for him aside from providing food and shelter. But even that motherly pride was not something she felt entitled to. Fox became the man he is despite her, not because of her.
The Paget’s Carcinoma diagnosis felt like poetic justice, in a way. Her breasts, which were designed to feed and nurture babies, would ultimately be the end of her. The grisly, painful end. She knew that she could call up Carl, enlist the help of his mysterious doctors and unorthodox treatments, but why? Why keep on living this way? Fox would never forgive her for how she failed him, nor would she forgive herself. She made her decision, and she felt at peace with it. Her hand was on the phone, ready to call Fox and say her final goodbye, when it started ringing and she found Carl on the other end.
He presented it as a second chance. A way to right all their wrongs. He couldn’t bring Samantha back, but he could give her a dignified death, and make her loss less traumatizing for Fox than what really happened. He could re-write history, make her the kind of mother who baked cookies for Fox’s friends on Friday afternoons and cheered for him on the sidelines of his basketball games. And she and Carl could finally be together, Bill nothing but a footnote in the deleted scenes. It would be like everything had gone the way it was supposed to, and Fox would truly be happy. That was the selling point that finally won her over: a chance to give Fox the mother he deserved, and the life that came along with it.
It was like a game for Carl to construct the optimal childhood. Did they take Fox and Samantha to Disneyland before she died, or did they just take Fox by himself afterward? Why not both?! Carl coached his Little League team, Teena was the chair of the PTA. Samantha died peacefully in her bed with her family by her side. They carried on, made new memories, flew to Oxford for Fox’s graduation. Fox met Diana at the Academy and they were married on the Vineyard. It all felt so incredibly perfect.
But seeing Fox’s face when Diana brought him by for dinner, calling him by the name of Carl’s other, forgotten son, made her nauseous. The placid, comfortable looks on Carl and Diana’s faces baffled her. How were they so unbothered? She’s not sure this was the right thing to do. She’s not sure that Fox is really any better off now than he was before. She’s not sure
she
is.
Her reverie is interrupted by the ringing of the telephone.
“Spender residence, Teena speaking,” she says roughly, her throat thick with emotion.
“Hey Mom, it’s me.”
Her shoulders slump with the weight of the guilt.
“Hello, Jeffrey, how are you?”
“I’m okay. I wanted to ask you about something, and it’s going to sound really strange, but I need you to hear me out,” he says, his tone severe.
Her heart pushes up into her throat. He knows something.
“Okay, I’ll do my best,” she tells him, half hoping he’ll give her an opening to just come out with it.
“Was I…when I was born, was there another baby? Was I a twin?” he asks, and her fear is replaced with confusion.
“What? No, of course not.”
“Mom,” he says, his tone pleading. “Is there any way there was another baby? Were you given any medication that might impact your memory, like that…what was it that they used to give women in labor so they wouldn’t remember the pain?”
“Twilight sleep,” she answers flatly.
“Yes, twilight sleep. Were you given anything like that?” Fox—Jeff—her son, replies.
“No, Jeff,” she says tightly. “I was alert and I remember my entire labor with you, and your birth. There was only one. Why are you asking me this?”
Clearly something has tipped him off, and she’d feel safer if she knew what. There is a pause long enough that she almost asks if he’s still on the line.
“Can I share this with you in confidence? You won’t tell Dad…or Diana?” he asks.
It’s painful, all that she’s done to him and is still doing now. But this moment in which her son is trusting her with sensitive information, where his inclination in a time of difficulty was to reach out to her—his mother—is such a balm on her heart that she feels tears flood her eyes.
“Of course, Jeff,” she assures him. “You have my word.”
“Twice in the past week, someone has mistaken me for another man. A man who goes by ‘Mulder.’ Does that mean anything to you?”
I, Elizabeth Ann Kuipers, take you, William Richard Mulder, to be my lawfully wedded husband.
We proudly introduce our son, Fox William Mulder, born October 13th 1961 at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital.
“No, Jeff, I can’t say that it does,” she lies. Why do lies always come more easily than the truth?
Fox sighs, and she pictures him running his hand over his head and across the back of his neck like he’s done since he was a child. Since Samantha was taken. Since his life turned down a darkened path.
“Okay,” he huffs, disappointed. “Sorry to bother you, Mom. How are things going? How’s Dad?”
“Dad is fine,” she says, thinking of Bill, cold in the ground. As much as he saw and was party to in his time on Earth, she’s glad he did not live to see this. “We were just going to watch some television.”
“I won’t keep you,” he says. “Thanks for talking with me, Mom. I love you.”
Her chest becomes so unbelievably tight that she cannot form words, just an insufficient, “Mmhmm.”
The line goes dead, and she replaces the phone back on the receiver.
“Who was that, dear?”
She looks up to see Carl in the doorway, that unsettling smile on his mouth. She liked him better when he didn’t try to replicate normal human emotions. When he just told her sweet lies, fucked her over the sink in her powder room in Chilmark, and let her believe that life could be anything but miserable.
“No one. Telemarketer,” she answers. Lying doesn’t always feel bad. Sometimes, it feels very, very good.
She was never meant to be a mother, but maybe she can be a friend to her son. Maybe she can slip him a key to the exit, even if she’s the one who locked the door in the first place.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Heave. Heave.
Nezuko was panting
hard
. Yea, she ran. Yes, she went long distances. But this was
exhausting
. The trip was much longer than she ever had to walk and now running was piled on top of that.
Nezuko scrunched her face and kept her eyes trained on the man in front of her. He was running so quickly. And his footsteps were silent too(unlike her own)
So this was a demon slayer.
She could feel poor Tanjiro on her back bouncing around in the basket. Well. It is what it is. Right now he'd probably want her to keep running. She patted the underside of the basket and whispered, “Sorry, Tanjiro. Hope you're doing ok in there.”
.
.
.
Nezuko was panting on the doorstep of the man’s house, doubled over and gasping for air. Between breaths she managed to weese out, “So did… pass?” She looked up expectantly for an answer, but she was met with disappointment and a hint of annoyance when his response was,
“Set your brother up a bed then come with me. The real test starts now.”
They set up a futon in the corner of the room and lay Tanjiro in it. He was already asleep but when they put him in he grew in size. Huh.
Once he was settled in bed, Nezuko put on a borrowed outfit and followed Urokodaki to her test. And, her future.
.
.
.
Nezuko was following Urokadoki up the mountain. She didn't know where she was going. Just that he was leading her to the test. She probably would've asked what that test was, but she was so out of breath.
She'd only been walking for like 30 minutes; but the air was much thinner than her own mountain. And pile the whole demon encounter and a two hour run? She had every right to be tired.
Well, this was the future Nezuko wanted- and it was the future Nezuko was going to get.
Nezuko was so tired, and so sleepy, and so delirious that she didn't notice that Urokadoki had stopped until she bumped into him. She was startled awake.
Urokadoki turned to her and said something along the lines of, “In order for me to accept you as a demon slayer, you will descend this very mountain. Arrive before sunrise and I'll take you on. Good luck.” He then vanished not a second later.
Nezuko stared at where she had just climbed.
He does realize I can just follow our footprints, right?
Well she'd get back by sunrise at least.
With the footprints guiding her and her legs carrying her, she thought she could get back in about 45 minutes. That was until she got hit by flying rocks. That would leave a nasty bruise.
But that wasn't what she was concerned for at the moment- because she then was knocked over. She tumbled for a little bit; and then she fell into a covered pit. This was going to be frustrating.
She got herself back on her feet and continued moving.
So that's his plan. Show me down with a bunch of booby traps? Well you're gonna have to try harder to get me to stop!
She felt a wave of confidence wash over her- then was immediately washed out when she got whacked by bamboo sticks. It was gonna take a lot more than a boosted morale to get through this.
She looked at where she had just been and spotted a faint glint of a wire that she probably stepped on. Also most likely what activated most of the traps. Now she knew what to look out for.
She jumped the next string, and spotted the flying rocks. And though she could see what was happening, she couldn't necessarily dodge it. She still got hit and she still fell. She got battered and bruised up. She placed her hand on her first injury of the night: the rocks that had slapped her across the face.
She felt a glint of determination swell in her heart. A drive to keep going. She still felt the pain- but ignored it. And that drive is why the hut was now in view.
To the left of her peripheral vision, she spotted a brown box. A brown box that had a door, chimney, and some windows. She sighed in relief as she made her way to the front door. She stumbled her way over and as she made it to the door frame she collapsed.
Her breathing heavy and her eyes droopy, she managed to whisper, “ I did it.”, then fall asleep right then and there. Her body was aching- but that didn't matter. She passed.
….
Sakonji watched as Kamado sat still in the door way. She had a long day, and many challenges along the way. He picked her up and set her into a second futon, next to her brother’s. He cleaned up her injuries and then let her rest. She would need it for the training.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Step One: Survive.
Returning to Manhattan after defeating Thanos was more painful than it should’ve been. Days before, he was dead, so you think he would’ve been overjoyed. But in reality, he wished he was dead again.
Loss weighed upon his shoulders heavier than it ever had. Steve Rogers, Captain America, was gone.
His
Steve, his best friend Steve.
Bucky Barnes was alone.
The Avengers knew this. They thought they could help him. So, they set him up in an apartment in Brooklyn with a roommate: you. They hoped you could take care of him, help him piece his life back together.
But you weren’t sure what was left to put together. To be honest, it would probably be better for him to start anew. But he wasn’t ready for that either.
“James?”
You entered his room one quiet Saturday morning. You hadn’t seen him for a full 24 hours, which was worrying. Your concerns were confirmed when you discovered a pitch black room and the shuffling form of the Winter Soldier still in his bed.
You sighed and spoke quietly, sure that his head was pounding. “Bad day?”
He didn’t reply, but he didn’t have to.
You’d only lived together for about two weeks, but he’d already had quite a few of these days. He would shut himself away from the world, from
you
especially, and wouldn’t come out for at least the rest of the day. Yesterday was a bad one, too. You hoped this wouldn’t become a regular occurance.
You moved to sit on the edge of his bed. “Can I get you anything?”
There was a pause before he shook his head just slightly. You bit your lip as you looked at him. You could leave him be, let him simmer until he felt better...or maybe there was a better way to do this.
“Do you want company?” you asked hesitantly.
Step Two: Don’t isolate.
The pause was longer this time, but he finally nodded.
You scooted up the bed so that you could rest your back against the wall and sit right next to him. Carefully, you pulled your knees up to your chest and pulled your phone out of your pocket, making sure that you weren’t touching him. He hummed gratefully before the two of you sank into silence.
Step Three: Let others in.
On a good day, you and Bucky would have breakfast together before you went to work. Mostly you talked about when you’d be home and how he was doing, then you’d leave.
You weren’t entirely sure what he did all day without you there, but after a muttered movie reference, you realised he was watching Netflix religiously. Once you found out about that, you realised that you probably should get him something else so he wasn’t as painfully bored.
“I’m home!” You called one day, entering the apartment.
You found him on the couch with a show playing on the TV, which he paused as soon as you entered. “How’d your day go?” he asked quietly.
“Meh, same old, same old,” you replied cheerily, flopping onto the couch beside him. “I got you something.”
He furrowed his eyebrows and sat up, his gaze questioning. Before he had to ask, you held out a small, shiny card that had his name on the back of it and some unrecognisable logo on the front. He flipped it around to look at it, but still looked confused.
“There’s this, um, library down the street,” you told him. “I figured TV is gonna get old sometime, so I got you a card for it.”
His eyes widened and he nodded. “Thanks,” he finally said, almost wistfully.
“Yeah, of course. Just let me know when you wanna go and I can show you the way there,” you said with a smile. “It’s a really nice, quiet place. I think you’ll like it, James.”
“Bucky,” he corrected. “Only one that called me James was my mom.”
You blinked dumbly a few times before nodding. “Bucky.”
Step Four: Get into a routine.
Bucky took to the library like a fish to water. He said he wasn’t much of a book guy, but he was clearly a liar because every time he went, he checked out more books than before. On weekends, the two of you would make it a group outing, but while you were at work if he found himself lacking reading material, he would make a quick trip. The lady at the front desk already knew both of your names after a few weeks and was one of the few people Bucky actually felt like talking to regularly.
It was a massive relief, seeing as he hardly ever left the apartment otherwise.
His bad days happened less and less often, but when they did happen he was content to curl up next to you in his bed as you read your own book silently. The first time he put his head in your lap, you nearly jumped out of your skin. The next few times, however, you got into the habit of running your fingers through his hair.
Step Five: Find comfort in the little things.
And then came Alpine.
You woke up one blissful Saturday morning to find Bucky already awake and on the couch. You were about to say something about how much of an improvement that was, but then you spotted a puddle of white on his lap.
It was a cat.
“Uh…” You didn’t even know what to say.
“He climbed in through my window and he won’t leave,” Bucky said instantly, his own eyes wide. “(Y/N), what do I do?”
You were shocked silent. “I...don’t know.”
“I’ve never had a cat, is this how you get a cat?” he whispered frantically.
Apparently, it was. Bucky dubbed him Alpine and he became a permanent resident of the apartment.
He was a little bastard, but the both of you adored him. He usually slept in Bucky’s room, but he was always up and about when you woke up, purring as he invaded your personal space while you attempted to cook breakfast.
A day wasn’t complete without someone shouting; “Alpine,
NO
--”
Step Six: Reach out.
Slowly but surely, Bucky was putting himself back together. Or maybe he was becoming someone else-- you didn’t know. But you liked Bucky as you knew him, as he was now.
Through libraries and breakfasts, cats and Netflix, the two of you became inseparable. Bucky Barnes was quite possibly the best friend you’d ever had. You would never admit that to anyone who asked, though, as Bucky nearly died under even the slightest compliment. He was still figuring out positive reinforcement.
He still struggled with Instagram and the news often gave him a headache, but his reintegration was going smoothly. In fact, he’d made a few more friends other than you and Alpine.
“And then he fell on his face like an
idiot
--”
The laughter from the living room made you smile as you reentered the room, carrying three specially made sandwiches.
“Sorry we don’t have a decent dinner,” you muttered as you passed them to the boys.
Sam Wilson, ever a sweetheart, just shook his head. “Hey, sandwiches are great. I wasn’t planning on any dinner, so…”
“Sandwiches are perfect,” Bucky repeated.
You sat down on the couch in between them, gently shoving Alpine aside when he tried to get a bite of your dinner. Sam snorted at the sight while Bucky rolled his eyes fondly.
“Dibs on picking the show,” you said as you turned on the TV.
“
Rude
,” Sam said, mocking offense. “Age before beauty, (Y/N)!”
Bucky lifted his legs to rest on top of your lap. “In that case, I get to pick.”
“Old man,” you teased, elbowing his side. “If you’re both gonna be so whiny about it, then we should make this a regular thing. New person picks every week.”
“Deal,” Sam agreed instantly.
Bucky grinned. “Only if it doesn’t mess with your work schedule.”
You waved him off. “A little late night won’t kill me.”
“Okie dokie,” he said, finally agreeing. You turned bright red when he leaned over to kiss your cheek. “You’re the best.”
You desperately tried to ignore the way Sam waggled his eyebrows. Luckily, Bucky didn’t seem to see it. He snatched the remote from your hands, citing his age once more as Sam choked on his food when you smacked his chest.
As Bucky put on some comedy, you snuggled deeper into the couch, smiling to yourself.
One step at a time had worked wonders. He was taking bigger steps every day and, to be honest, so were you. Recovery was a slow process, but it was worth every moment just to see him smile.
Step Seven: Realise you’re not alone.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Out from the mirror came a burst of water and the body and spirit of one Zhongli and Cirrus. The water spilled over everyone’s shoes, even pushing Huohuo back as she jumped.
Before he even had the chance to push himself to his feet he felt someone grappling his shoulders and Huohuo’s frantic voice beside him.
“Mister Zhongli! Are you alright?!” She wailed, letting go of him once she saw he wasn’t noticeably injured.
He picked himself off the floor quickly. He was drenched… but he was otherwise alright. The parts of his body bearing cracks hadn’t spread, though they did hurt. Zhongli sighed and wrung his hair out. This certainly made matters more annoying, but he was just thankful everyone had made it out alive. Well… Guinaifen aside. He caught Huohuo’s eyes staring at his face and noticed her outstretched hand held his glasses.
“Thank you. I am fine.” He reassured her after putting his glasses back on. He removed his overcoat and wrung it out as well, but it was a vain effort- it was going to be wet and cold for the remainder of the trip. His hair was also heavy and plastered to him. But, the dripping water was the worst of it. He realized belatedly that madame Xueyi also hovered over him, her expressionless eyes conveying, somehow, some level of concern.
“If you’re sure…” The judge agreed reservedly, before looking at the trailblazer. “What exactly happened in the mirror?”
While Zhongli focused on folding his jacket, Stelled outed Cirrus with haste.
“A heliobus possessed me!” She blurted. Cirrus didn’t dare appear at the moment, though Zhongli could hear her faint echo of nervous laughter.
Xueyi listened intently to the trailblazer’s explanation, who waterfelled a retelling of their short journey to her. Stelle had found Cirrus inside the maze, by which she’d then been possessed. No wonder the heliobus had wanted out so bad… he wondered how long she’d been stuck there. Not too terribly long he supposed, given the furnace’s recent destruction. Huohuo nodded along to the story, interjecting only to reiterate how mean Cirrus had been.
“I see.” The judge conceded with folded arms. Her face was drawn tight. Her face seemed stormy- she wanted to deal with this heliobus, with the overall situation, with everything, but it was too much at once with too little manpower. “We don’t have time to deal with the heliobus at the moment. Fyxestroll garden has been encompassed by a powerful illusion.” She motioned to Zhongli, “you’ve all seen it firsthand- far closer to the heart of it than any of us have been. An even stronger Heliobus is behind it, but I’ve lost contact with the spiritfarers who left to subdue it.”
“We cannot underestimate the heliobus, nor can we assume the spiritfarers who left are still alive.”
“Huohuo.” Madame Xueyi’s sharp eyes bore into the girl’s. “I am going to reach out to Hanya again. If she and I fail to suppress the parasite,
you
will need to step in and defeat it.”
“Wh-what?!” She physically recoiled. “We barely made it out alive, th-there’s no way I’m even close to as powerful as you two- I’m too much of a scaredy cat!” Excuses spilled out of her mouth. “Y-you’ll be strong enough, surely-”
“Do not underestimate your advantages.” Xueyi placed a hand on her shoulder that shocked her from her breakdown. “A heliobus cannot possess a body that is already under possession.”
Stelle pumped her fist. “I have that too!” She sounded all too enthused, though Zhongli didn’t turn to gauge her expression. He imagined she looked as excited as she sounded. That one had a craving for chaos.
“That is true, however Huohuo has had years of training and experience in fighting heliobi. Whereas me, Hanya and Zhongli will only have a brief window of time to subdue it.” One of the aforementioned three who was not currently accounted for.
“You hear that, brat! You’re the ace up the Ten-Lords Commission’s sleeve!” Mr. Tail somehow managed to twist his compliment into sounding crude and rough with his crooked smile. It was unmistakably tinged with pride, however.
“B-but it’s not like- it’s just- everyone thinks I have way more experience than I actually do…” Huohuo frowned. “It’s not like I’ve had to actively suppress you or anything, you’re more like my friend!”
“
You
- shut it! I don’t make friends with food.” The mirth all but vanished in his voice. A blue spirit swirled out of Stelle. Cirrus finally made herself known, eliciting a startled jolt from the foxian. Xueyi didn’t react, but her icy stare pierced the parasite.
“Hehe, ‘Mr. Tail’, show some humility~ We were deprived of Ignamar’s power long ago… If even a child can subdue us, then there’s little point putting on a front.” She cooed. The parasite could not help but reveal herself for something as petty as demeaning the other heliobus.
“Shut up!”
“Cirrus.” Xueyi tilted her head in the heliobus’ direction.
“
Judge
.” The title was tinged with venom on Cirrus’ ‘tongue’. Xueyi’s gaze swept back to Huohuo.
“Heliobi are stronger in numbers. We may have a chance at suppressing Furynox if we can break it into fragments.” The judge explained. “It won’t be easy, but it is not impossible either.”
“You have a solid plan, your honor.” Everyone turned to look at Cirrus once more. Stelle squinted and Huohuo was surprised she’d used such an honorific given her attitude just moments ago. Actually, no, it was obvious to the trailblazer after sharing her body with the thing that she could only mean it artificially. Zhongli shared the same sentiment, and they expressed as much through a shared glance. He was not one to jump to conclusions, but he was certain she was just worming her way into something dubious. “Allow me to offer my assistance…”
“Why? You have no reason to aid us after the Xianshou kept you prisoner for so long.” Madame Xueyi interrogated immediately. She folded her arms and held a scrutinizing stare- the same gaze she’d held on Zhongli before they’d begun this mission. It was nice to have it redirected elsewhere.
Cirrus scoffed. “Why? Must heliobi always have a reason? We aren’t like you emotional beings. Perhaps I don’t want Furynox to devour me. Maybe I dislike the idiots I was trapped with- and those who brute force everything. Perhaps I want to fight the general myself… Or, maybe, I just want to do a favor that’ll ensure I’m allowed to leave here in one piece. You’re already carrying a fragile load with you as is, I’m surely the least of your worries.” She tacked on to the ending with a not so subtle jab at Zhongli that the judge undeniably picked up on.
Xueyi sighed. By her tone, she sounded tired. She looked to Huohuo and Zhongli before her gaze landed on Stelle.
“I…” The trailblazer frowned. “Would
not
trust her.”
“I do not.” The judge agreed. “And yet, we have no choice but to allow her to tag along for the time being unless we wish to make you more vulnerable to Furynox.” She turned back to Cirrus. “Judges of the Ten-Lords Commission are bound by our promises.
If
you truly help us, I’ll put in a request for your freedom with the Commission. I cannot, however, guarantee its outcome.”
“How… convenient. You better uphold your end of the deal,
puppet
.” Cirrus scowled, dropping her sickly sweet tone before moving on. “Me and Furynox were ‘furnacemates’... I know them well. They’re powerful, but obsessive. I know exactly what makes them tick.”
“Stelleee~” the parasite chirped, “I’ll need one last little favor…”
Stelle grimaced.
“The pavilion above us should prove good to get Furynox’s attention. Come on, I’m not going to hurl you off the edge.” The parasite laughed. She floated past Stelle, guiding her up the stairs. The three followed behind. At the top the girl hesitantly removed the tag still attached to her forehead. Cirrus filled the empty space immediately.
“Ehehehe, ahem,” ‘Stelle’ cackled, clearly pleased with herself. Upon seeing the others behind her she cleared her throat.
“Furynox!” Cirrus yelled over the balustrade. “Furynox!” A moment passed before she tilted her head. If there was a response, no one heard it.
“Before you fight the general, why don’t you fight
me
?”
Zhongli watched with the rest as Cirrus spoke through Stelle to something too far away to reach their own ears.
“Your territory my ass!” Cirrus laughed. “Those pawns you’ve got? They’re
nothing
compared to me. I scored the best piece for myself- one that expelled Phantylia!”
Everyone frowned at her boasting, but she of course did not care.
“Then send your spiritfarers to find me! If you can defeat me, you can use my strength to aid in your battle against the general! What do you say?”
There was this talk of fighting the general again. Zhongli wondered if something like this would even be brought to him to deal with personally. It was a grave circumstance, so to speak, but he couldn’t imagine Jing Yuan strolling through here to deal with Furynox himself. Perhaps his view of the Arbiter General had been tainted by the first year he’d known him, when he’d not known what his position in the Cloud Knights had been.
“See? Easy-Peasy. Furynox is going to spread themself thin just to find us.” Cirrus turned to grin at the three. Seeing everyone’s unenthused faces she groaned, slapping the talisman back on Stelle’s forehead herself. Stelle blinked, shaking off the unnerving feeling of having her body and mind invaded.
Mr. Tail seemed to have heard the entirety of the conversation judging by his terribly disappointed face. “Does that mean every spiritfarer has fallen? What a useless army!”
“Every single one…” Zhongli frowned. Xueyi shared his expression.
“Ah- do puppets feel empathy?” Cirrus scoffed from somewhere unseen. “We heliobi think of such matters as business transactions. A means to an end. As long as something can bring us victory, we do not hesitate.” She materialized again only to make a point, flying past Xueyi with her wild eye.
Xueyo sighed, eyes narrowed, ignoring the parasite’s superior tone.
“And you- you barely know these people, do you not?” Cirrus turned to admonish Zhongli next, seeing as she could hardly get a rise out of the judge. He pinched the bridge of his nose, not wanting to deal with her incessant annoyances either. His clothes were
still
wet from the illusion.
“Stelle, Huohuo, I’d like to talk to you for a moment.” Xueyi took the chance and motioned between the ex-consultant and Cirrus before leading the other two away. Oh, so he had to keep her entertained now… she did not seem to mind being excluded, entirely unbothered by the potential for colluding behind her back.
“Heliobi are incapable of empathy, I presume?” He looked past her, over the balcony railing.
“Oh, no, we can feel it- when inhabiting a body… but the feelings of hatred and love are things we still experience differently. Even when I have the capacity to love, I can just as easily mow them down for what lies ahead of me.” She seemed giddy explaining it to him. He sighed and closed his eyes.
“I don’t suppose you
have
ever loved someone before, either.”
“Guilty as charged~” Cirrus cooed. “Say,” She continued
sweetly
, “you saw it too, didn’t you? In the domain.”
He frowned, turning to give her his full attention.
“The creature in the water? It was just there to scare us. A fragment that looked vaguely like someone I knew.”
“So you don’t know.” Cirrus all but giggled. “In
your
domain. Ehehehe…”
“What are you implying?” He did not mean to sound intrigued or remotely concerned. He could not let her get under his skin.
“I know what you are.
” She hissed. Zhongli blanched. She was bluffing, clearly. Obviously. Sewing discourse, that’s all it was.
The three returned to them soon after.
“We’re ready to depart.” Xueyi nodded to the two. “Stelle and Huohuo will focus on containing the fragments of Furynox that have spread throughout the garden. You,” she looked at Zhongli, “and I will make our way down first- we will deal with the spiritfarers ahead of them.”
The team split off down two different paths from there. Xueyi led him down the garden’s mountains quickly, taking unconventional and frankly dangerous paths as she entirely avoided the elevating platforms and opted to jump straight down. He caught up to her swiftly nonetheless despite his clothes sticking to him. She only slowed down momentarily when they reached such a distance that the other two and their heliobi passengers were entirely out of view.
“We are only knocking them out.” She ordered. “If you unnecessarily harm any of them, your sentence will be reevaluated.”
“I had not planned on it.” He nodded. Xueyi’s posture was stiff- stiffer than it had been before somehow. SHe was more than tense now, worry visibly plaguing her.
“Have you not heard from Judge Hanya?” He guessed. Her tensed shoulders answered his question.
She didn’t respond at first. They entered a courtyard where two spiritfarers turned to head toward them. They were dispatched before the heliobi piloting them could react.
“No.” She admitted.
They took a detour from their straightforward path to the center to deal with a group of wraith wardens that were headed toward the path Stelle and Huohuo would later descend from.
“I’m sorry.” He knocked one out with the flat of Hu Tao’s polearm. “We will defeat Furynox. I’ve no doubt in the trailblazer’s, nor judge Huohuo’s, abilities.”
Xueyi looked at the downed wardens. She then sighed and turned back to continue onward. There were a good handful of spiritfarers and many wraith wardens stationed upon their arrival here to be dealt with.
“I… should apologize as well. Do not mistake me- I still hold misgivings about you, but you helped bring Huohuo back from the depths of the illusion. Thank you.”
Zhongli appreciated the judge’s sincerity, even though it took the two being in a harrowing situation away from others to receive it. He’d long outgrown caring about what others thought of him (with few exceptions), however he still found himself thankful that he’d finally gotten through to her somewhat. He didn’t want her to think of him only through the lens of his tampering with the Abundance. That had been an uncharacteristically rash choice of action on his part after all. He knew better than to cling to remnants of Liyue now.
Seeing as a bridge had been built between their cavern wide gap, he decided to cross it with a question of his own.
“If you do not mind my asking…” He began. The way ahead seemed relatively clear enough to bring up what he hoped was a benign question born out of curiosity. “Cirrus called you a puppet- twice.” As an insult it felt too repetitive for the heliobus.
“I am one.” She answered swiftly. “Of an ingenium body- though my spirit is not artificial.” He did not know what she meant by the term ingenium, but it wasn’t hard to infer. He hummed in acknowledgement nonetheless.
“You reminded me of someone from my home.” He explained. After Makoto’s death, Ei’s isolation and subsequent creation of Raiden Shogun was not unnoticed by him. Time and grief wore down her mind, and in order to avoid the all consuming curse of erosion, she withdrew into a shell of herself, letting her puppet speak for her.
There was another group of spiritfarers ahead. It seemed the heliobi preferred sticking to groups. Perhaps, unlike Furynox’s core itself, they knew how dire their situation was.
“A puppet?”
“The only one I was aware of, yes.” Perhaps two, but he was not quite sure. The matter of the missing harbinger was not one he’d ever confirmed- if everyone else had forgotten he too decided it best to act as if he never knew. It was undoubtedly something the traveler had dealt with.
“I was unaware you had them in your homeworld.” Xueyi replied after knocking out a spiritfarer that had jumped at them from behind a column. They had mostly cleared the path for the two to collect the heliobi on their descent. “I remind you of them?”
He spared another glance at her, surprised that she was continuing to make conversation with him. As the two continued he thought about it. Her straightforward speech, mannerisms, devotion to one particular goal- he had not met the Ei of present- past- time, but his memory of her when she was Makoto’s kagemusha burned bright still. The two’s personalities leaked from them in the same way, protective and guarded.
“You do.” He surmised.
Xueyi hummed. The two looked down at the courtyard below them. A dozen people milled about in militaristic fashion, guarding what looked to be absolutely nothing in the middle of the platform. A few spiritfarers stood among them- this was no doubt Furynox’s hiding place.
A spot of bright red flashed in the bushes not far from the platform.
“Is that-?”
“It is.” Xueyi replied before he could finish. She had a renewed fierceness in her eyes and she worked her jaw anxiously. “Let’s go.”
The two descended upon the crowd swiftly. Xueyi’s fighting style was swift and concise- she wielded her mara-sunder awl with mechanical precision. Examining her now that he knew she was a puppet, he realized this perfected style was due to her artificial body (or perhaps she was far older than he presumed). He fought similarly, though not as fast and with more force- holding back so much slowed him considerably as he tempered each strike to incapacitate but not permanently harm.
Despite their increased numbers, they could not match the two. The wardens, trained as they were, were only able to trade a few blows before they were knocked out. The spiritfarers tricks were neat, but Zhongli’s defensive capabilities meant they could not scratch him or the judge with their meager power. It seemed Furynox had spread itself too thin, not even granting its subordinates the means to properly fight.
As soon as they finished, Zhongli pointed out the stark red in the bushes with his polearm.
“Guinaifen, you may come out now.” Xueyi called out to her. The girl moved, stumbling out of the overgrowth with leaves and sticks in her hair, brushing off the dirt on her skirt.
“That… was awesome!” She squealed. She picked up the pace and stopped just short of the two. There were positively stars in her eyes. This Guinaifen confused him more and more. Scared of ghosts, not scared of a fight against many ‘ghosts’ possessing people. Was she not scared? Her hands trembled slightly and her body seemed rigged on adrenaline. But her face seemed equal parts enamored and nervous.
“Are you injured?” Zhongli asked. She shook her head. Of course not. She’d trespassed- she was clearly one with a flair for danger- of course she was fine.
“No, I’m fine. I-I saw a ghost- um- I mean heliobus- earlier, and then I totally freaked out and ran. And then all the guards were acting weird, so I dove into the bushes before they spotted me!” Guinaifen explained. She twirled her hair with a slightly crooked smile. “I’ve been crouching down for hours…”
A single hour, but no one corrected her.
“Where’s Stelle and the other judges? Are they alright?”
Xueyi’s expression drew tight, no doubt thinking of Hanya.
“Stelle and judge Huohuo are on their way.” She reported to the streamer. “We are dealing with a dangerous heliobus. When they get here, you will need to retreat to a safe distance. Do you hear me?”
Guinaifen stuttered, “y-yes madame Xueyi.”
“And
no
recording.”
“..Yes, madame Xueyi…”
Assured of her safety for now, the two were able to marginally relax. He was certain a few wardens or spiritfarers had escaped their notice, but was confident the two could still dispatch them. Moreover, he was more concerned about Cirrus doing something to undermine this whole operation.
Guinaifen was content to wait with them. She didn’t try to pry for information (which shocked him), nor did she check her phone. The latter he figured was out of fear of Xueyi thinking she may try to record something. Or do that ‘streamer’ business of hers.
Within a few minutes the remaining two came barreling across the bridge. A glowing gourd was tucked under the foxian’s arm with a glow emanating from it.
“Miss Guinaifen!” Huohuo called out. Her voice pitched up upward enthusiastically upon seeing the girl. “I’m so glad you’re okay! You don’t have any injuries?”
“Same here!” Guinaifen greeted her with similar spirits. “And no, haha. I hid as soon as everything got weird…” How she’d escaped both girls’ sights without a trace was yet to be explained, but alas. Everyone was just happy no one was injured, or worse.
“We have defeated all of the spiritfarers controlled by Furynox.” Xueyi reported. “How goes your task?”
“We’re doing well. We’ve sealed most of Furynox’s fragments!”
“Good, then we can begin. We will seal its fragments into the Evil Binding Matrix. Once its power has been diminished, the illusion warping Fyxestroll garden will be shattered.” Finally, the time was upon them. While this mission hadn’t gone as smoothly as intended, it was a relief to have everyone together again to finally wrap up this whole ordeal. His tea back home was calling to him…
Guinaifen’s eyes lit up with interest when Huohuo produced the gourd from under her arm. She stepped forward to get a better look, ‘oo’ing.
“Oh, that gourd… it’s so pretty!” Guinaifen interjected, looking at the instrument in Huohuo’s hands. “Is this what they call a ‘sacred vessel’ on the Xianshou?” She took another step.
“
Miss Guinaifen
.” Xueyi warned.
Nervous laughter bubbled in Huohuo’s throat. “Miss Guinaifen, please be careful… you could feel diz-”
“It’s okay.” She cut the foxian off. Stelle frowned- the closest to Huohuo, and the one with the most exposure to the street performer prior to this whole night’s debacle. “It’s okay. This is my first time seeing the Ten-Lords Commission’s exorcising tools up close…” She swayed as she spoke until it became apparent, even from behind where Zhongli and now Xueyi stood, that something was wrong.
Mr. Tail snapped “Get away from her!” just as Stelle reached to pull Huohuo back. Guinaifen was faster, though, and yanked the gourd out of her hands. She dropped it where it smashed into countless pieces on the ground. Many small lights burst forth from it. They swirled around the group.
Guinaifen stared at the mess she’d made for a moment then began stumbling backward. Zhongli caught her under the arms before she could crash to the ground. But the escaping heliobi had become a much higher priority, so he settled for laying her on the ground and summoning a protective jade shield around her body.
“Oh no!” Huohuo shrieked. Her eyes jumped around every heliobus with ears pinned back at the chorus of voices. Their voices joined together into a cacophony singing praises for the blue parasite that had accompanied them here.
“Cirrus~ Cirrus~! You won, you won!” They hissed with glee. “Absorb us… use our power… let us restore Ignamar’s glory together!”
“Hahaha…!! Thank you,
dear judges
, for helping me clear this obstacle and free these heliobi!” Cirrus’ voice echoed around them, louder than the chorus of smaller fragments. Of course, of course! No one had trusted her, but with the looming threat they’d had little choice, and now…
“I told you I’d leave your body, Stelle. I keep my promises~” The sound came from within Stelle now. Suddenly the girl pitched forward as Cirrus’ blue light dragged itself forcefully from her chest. She collapsed and was left gasping for breath on the ground while the heliobus cackled happily above the six of them. All of the fragments swarmed her immediately, swirling around her like a tornado. Cirrus absorbed them. Her form became a bright, blinding ball of fire that grew before the group’s very eyes.
“With this power.. I can take on the general himself!” Cirrus’ single eye opened wide. Her pupil darted around, her body trembled in the sky with the sheer amount of heliobi she’d absorbed, still acclimating. Finally her sights landed on the courtyard below her, staring daggers into the group. In her eye now the group looked weak as ants, which reflected in her sadistic laugh.
The unconscious bodies of the wardens around them jerked upright. They stumbled unsteadily to their feet. The heliobi piloting them did not wake the wardens, instead controlling their limbs like limp puppets. They were immediately surrounded. Everyone backed up shoulder to shoulder, forming a protective circle around Huohuo, Mr.Tail included. Guinaifen lay beside the girl dead to the world in her sleep. The small judge trembled, covering her ears and closing her eyes as if it could make this all go away.
“Th-this isn’t how it was supposed to go!” She cried desperately.
It was not an issue of simply defeating the wave of puppetted warriors. They still could not risk mortally wounding the wardens, yet the bodies were capable of being controlled without consciousness, meaning the fight would last as long as their own stamina. Xueyi took the offensive lead immediately with Stelle, and Zhongli focused on keeping everyone alive. Cirrus took a keen interest in reaching Huohuo specifically, and it took all of his concentration to ensure none of the controlled wardens reached her. A jade shield was a good start, but against so many opponents he was allowed to do no more than scrape the shells of, it was not enough.
Ten minutes into ceaseless fighting Zhongli was beginning to prepare to cut his losses and accept the consequences of a proper assault (if they did not, he reasoned, there would
be
no one left but him and Xueyi), yet the judge herself seemed adamant. She fought with such restraint, hitting only when it could serve to deter or impede the progress of her once-comrades.
Then a heliobus saw an opening in her positioning and struck, catching her arm with the warden’s sickle. It left a gash of broken wires and cracked metal plating in her arm. She retreated to the group.
“This demon… is quite troublesome.” Xueyi hissed through grit teeth. She held her arm- the cables spilled from her like blood, and a foreign artificial liquid seeped between her fingers. Even if she could not feel pain (though Zhongli was uncertain of this) it was still a gruesome sight.
“Are you okay?!” Huohuo asked. Xueyi shook her head.
“I do not know how long this body can continue fighting. She’s absorbed too many heliobi… this is a battle of stamina- a battle we will not win.” Madame Xueyi declared grimly. There was no sugarcoating it- no false hopes to assuage Huohuo’s fear- this was dire.
Stelle was beginning to wane. Zhongli ushered her back when the shield he’d summoned around her broke. Taking the front he focused his energy into a shield around the group. It would buy them time at most. The wardens beat against it relentlessly. He mended every crack the moment it appeared, but…
Mr. Tail looked between Huohuo and Xueyi.
“There’s still a chance… Cirrus said it herself. Heliobi are prone to in-fighting.” He turned to stare at Huohuo. “You know what to do, don’t you?”
“Ah- but…!” Huohuo flinched as soon as he looked at her. She clasped her collar, looking down and away from him. Her body was frozen in place with fear.
“But what? Isn’t this what you wanted?!” He grinned- despite the nature of what he was discussing, his smile looked sadistic. Huohuo closed her eyes and covered her ears, pinned back against her head.
“I don’t know…!” She squealed and curled in on herself.
Cirrus spoke again from her place above them.
“Ugh, these pawns are no fun. Flimsy puppets at best,” her eye squinted at them gleefully, “why don’t you join in too, hmmm?” The wind picked up and whipped around them. Cirrus’ stare evolved from looking down upon them to piercing their very souls. Only Huohuo was spared unwillingly. Seeing the wraith wardens had ceased their onslaught Zhongli finally repaired the shield- only for it to be broken through by a burst of heliobus energy. He looked back to see Stelle and Xueyi swarmed, the latter of which’s circuits sparked dangerously.
He made only a step in their direction before the heliobi attacked him as well. His jade shield could not defend against the psychological attack that befell him. A sharp burst of pain ripped through his skull, gripping his head in blinding pain. It rendered his senses simultaneously muted and far too sensitive. He lost sight of everything and couldn't resume his summoning of the shield. The shield itself fell apart around them, dissolving to dust. It was as if his body had been stolen from him despite still residing within it- he couldn’t move.
“Useless!” He heard Mr. Tail’s voice distantly- though he knew the heliobus was only a few feet away from him. Huohuo sputtered something between sobs. Xueyi was speaking, or had spoken a few moments ago from above him, but he felt like he’d sunk beneath the earth. While Stelle and Xueyi were being dragged toward Cirrus, she had decided to instead incapacitate him.
“Morax!” He heard behind him. Her voice was immediately recognizable- light and airy like a feather, yet with a grate to it like dust. He stopped and turned to face her, causing her to nearly topple into him. But she had utmost grace and only nearly did so, digging her heels in the dirt in front of him. “I came to ask- or, well, I was wondering, really- what you thought of the plains?”
“Your dedication to agricultural development is admirable.” He answered.
“Not that-! I meant the name, Guī lí yuán. Guili plains. I wanted to run the name by you… even if I may already have begun calling it such around my people.”
Mr. Tail went uncharacteristically silent. There was a massive pressure from his left as something powerful erupted- something distinct from Cirrus-
“Morax, you were lost in thought for a moment.” Another voice, gruffer now. It rumbled with all the earth and held all the power of the ley lines in his voice. Even adoration, if one peered too closely.
“Was I? I suppose I was reminiscing.” Morax replied.
“About?” The voice inquired, then as if nervous about overstepping boundaries, added “if you do not mind.”
“Get out! Get out!!” The giant heliobus screeched. “Why are you helping humans?!” He heard two people hit the ground, and the sounds of chains rattling and vanishing.
If only her power would relax its hold on him, he could help. But his mind was splintered between memories Cirrus was digging up as distractions and the pain of simply staying
upright
.
“Mr. Tail! I-I can’t.. I won’t let your sacrifice be in vain!” Huohuo yelled. He heard the sound of countless paper dolls flying. He registered the small slap of one landing on his head before his limbs went limp.
“So, this was Guizhong?” The newest voice, the most recent- smooth, pleasant, and constantly half-awake, ever inching toward another nap. Before him was a woman. In his arms. She stared past him- he did not remember her doing that. He
remembered
she’d held his gaze the entire time, until her body had disintegrated into the finest dust.
“A memory of Dust. You’ll get to be something like that one day.” The man’s voice drawled mirthlessly. It lacked its usual compassion. It lacked any humanity.
“Look at yourself.” The voice suggested. Ordered, more so. Morax would not. Nor would he turn to look at this man. A splintering sound.
“You’re clearly hanging on by a thread. How long do you think you can cling to it before it snaps? How many lives loved and lost before you become-”
Zhongli’s eyes snapped open. Abruptly the illusion was dispelled and he awoke on the ground while the sounds of battle raged at his side. Something had disrupted Cirrus’ hold on his psyche. Though his mind reeled and his consciousness waxed and waned periodically, he could not afford to idle. He was grateful to the aid that had dispelled the heliobus’ influence before it could rattle on further- he did not need to hear what other vicious fortune telling it had had in store for him. He could almost physically feel where she’d wormed into his brain, pulling up memories he had not dwelled on for many years, so much so the details had grown thick coats of dust.
Pushing himself unsteadily to his feet he saw Stelle and Xueyi (though the latter only had use of one arm now) fending off the wraith wardens while talismans that he recognized as Huohuo’s assaulted Cirrus’ true form.
So that was what had saved him. His attention snapped back to the wardens encroaching upon them.
“You’re back!” Stelle shouted over her shoulder at him.
He ignored the lingering pain and stepped forward just behind the two frontliners. All he could offer was support, funneling the wraith wardens with his pillars and knocking a few back with his polearm when they slipped past the two’s defenses. His mind slipped for fractions of a second, enough to reduce him from any frontlining.
“I am. Huohuo’s talisman broke Cirrus’ hold.”
“And Mr. Tail.” The trailblazer amended. But they were focused too much on battle for him to inquire further.
Though his focus was split the fight was somehow tipped in their favor. Cirrus screamed, screeched, and cursed all of them, but the talismans were too strong, and the wardens too weak- and Mr. Tail…
She writhed, her pupil shrunk and dilated. The parasite exploded into a massive splintering of heliobi fragments, fading all over Fyxestroll Garden.
Everyone collapsed to their knees afterward. Zhongli could hardly think through the haze fogging his mind- it was clearing up, but fighting as soon as he’d been able to stand again had not helped. Xueyi was severely injured- she now sported a slash behind her knee and her other arm was nearly coming off past the elbow. Stelle, somehow, seemed the most fired up- he chalked it up to her youth. Guinaifen was still unconscious. Huohuo… sobbed.
She’d retreated to the edge of the pavilion as soon as Cirrus was defeated, suspiciously lacking her tail. Her shoulders shook uncontrollably. Had something happened to Mr. Tail…? He recalled… he could not recall. It took a minute for him to regain his bearings enough to stand.
Zhongli forced himself to his feet. First he checked Guinaifen’s pulse before dragging his limbs toward the foxian. She needed consoling, and he wished to thank her for saving him from more of Cirrus’ unruly tampering.
“Judge Huohuo-” He began. In an instant she’d whirled on her feet and buried her face into his torso. And so pivoted his plans.
“What kind of a judge a-am I… I-i-if I was st-stronger, I wouldn’t have had to… he wouldn’t have had to do it!” Her voice was muffled as she wailed into his shirt. He… admittedly had not quite brushed up on consoling people in some time, nor had it ever been his strong suit (not for this, certainly not in this situation).
From what he could gather, Mr. Tail was here no longer. He wrapped an arm around her, trying to reassure her. Reassure her of what? He wasn’t certain.
“Ms. Huohuo. You fought well, please do not belittle yourself.”
“If I were stronger…” she continued instead. “I only got this stupid, awful job because of Mr. Tail! I-I thought I’d be so much happier if we’d never met, but… but I feel so empty now instead.” Ah, she was mourning. Of course. She was upset over her lack of strength, certainly, but more than anything, she missed the heliobus. Mr. Tail had been so protective of her. At first he’d chalked it up to the parasite’s natural tendency to protect its host to prevent danger from befalling itself, but he knew better now. Mr. Tail had genuinely cared for Huohuo.
“I am sorry he’s gone. None of us were strong enough to withstand Cirrus’ influence. If I were to wager, I would bet Mr. Tail wanted nothing more than to protect you. He chided you, but I don’t think he actually thought you incapable.”
Huohuo nodded against him, pulling back finally to wipe her eyes and nose. The front of her face was damp- his clothes had still yet to dry.
“Y-you’re right, I think.. I don’t know.. I-it’s just I’ve looked forward to this day for so long. I told him everyday how much better it would be if we’d never met, if he could just go away, if I could finally have some peace and quiet.” She threatened to burst into another round of sobs. Zhongli, without much idea of what else to do with his hands, placed a hand on her shoulder now that she’d taken a step back.
“I recall he said the same things about you. But you knew he didn’t mean any of them, not really. You called him a friend.”
“That’s… true. But what if he left thinking I hated him?”
Zhongli frowned. Obviously the heliobus didn’t- or he didn’t think he did, at least. But it wasn’t such an easy thing to prove. Words alone would not suffice, but they were all he had to offer. He knew well enough it wasn’t so easy… he himself often wondered back to Azhdaha. The dragon had initially offered himself up freely to be imprisoned. But as time wore on, before he’d lost his sanity completely, had he come to genuinely hate him…? Was the representation that broke his body and stole his eye an accurate depiction of the old sovereign’s feelings?
And the yakshas, before they died. The adepti. In the final days of Teyvat, did Mountain Shaper think ill of him for not visiting, despite knowing,
feeling
the decay of themselves as the leylines withered? Did anyone harbor hate toward him for not even
trying
to stop the second cataclysm?
… He shook his head. His grip on her shoulder tightened imperceptibly and he let go. Thinking so hard after such a fight hurt, and would do no good for him or the judge right now.
“He didn’t.” Stelle’s voice came from behind. She walked up to the two as she was dispelling her baseball bat. “And don’t forget, didn’t madame Xueyi say something about heliobi being really hard to kill…?”
Huohuo looked like she was about to ask Zhongli if he was okay, so he took the distraction gratefully. The foxian turned to her now, her face scrunching at first and then brightening.
“You’re… you’re right. Madame Xueyi said heliobi are eternal flames that never burn away. I’ve never heard of one being outright killed… e-even those absorbed are freed when the larger heliobus loses control of them.” She began. Her excitement grew despite the fatigue and she began to stumble over her own words. “Mr. Tail… has to be out there somewhere!”
Well. That had certainly done a lot more than his own attempt. He’d grown so used to acceptance he’d forgotten to even consider ‘hope’. Especially after he last dared do so.
“I can do this… I just have to pull myself together and finish the job. Th-then we can find Mr. Tail!” Huohuo seemed to rebound unbelievably quickly. The joys of youth. He was disrupted from staring off in thought by tapping on his arm. “Mr. Zhongli, are you alright? I’m sorry my talisman knocked you out like that earlier…”
“Hm? Oh, I will be fine. Some rest will do me well. I’m grateful for your work- Cirrus was an unruly pest in my head, and the fall didn’t hurt.” He responded. She returned his smile, nodding.
“O-okay, I’ll leave you to rest then! Ms. Stelle, I have a favor to ask…” They parted ways. Huohuo and Stelle walked a bit farther away, and Zhongli found his way toward Xueyi to check in on her. She sat along the low stone wall of the pavilion. Both her arms hung limply by her side, and her injured leg was bent a fair bit in the opposite direction.
“Judge Xueyi.” He nodded. She did so in turn. Her eyes flicked to Huohuo.
“Thank you for your support today. I was hesitant to let you take part at first, but now it seems like your help was invaluable.” She sighed. It seemed she was not the biggest fan of admitting when she was wrong, but still wanted to thank him properly.
He shook his head. “I suppose it was my job, but I only wanted to help. I’m afraid I didn’t do much in the battle regardless.”
“Nonsense, your shields- gah!” She tried to motion with her arm, but her elbow socket blew a fuse instead, flipping her forearm backwards.
“You’re injured. Do you need-”
“No.” Xueyi cut him off. “This body is one of many. I can swap to another easily, do not worry. I’m only staying back to wait for judge Hanya. Now that communications are restored, she told me she’d left for the Ten-Lords Commission to retrieve reinforcements.” Thankfully then they had not missed the judge on their way down here. He’d worried about that… seeing her eyes glance at the foxian judge-in-training again, he waited for Xueyi to continue.
“I just… worry about Huohuo. The one possessing her disappeared in the fight. I would generally think this is a good thing, and yet I feel sad for her.”
She sighed, shaking her head. “Nevermind, I’ve never been good at figuring out emotions. Reinforcements will be here soon, and Guinaifen will be transported to an apothecary. I’ll put in a good review of your work here today.”
“Huohuo will be fine.” He reassured her. After his previous conversation he could confidently say it as a matter-of-fact. But he could somewhat imagine Xueyi’s difficulty. The judge was seemingly vehemently against any and all potential threats to the Loufu. Understandably enough, however Mr. Tail seemed to be an outlier. He no doubt threatened her solid moral standing.
A good review- he wondered if that meant his next tasks would involve mara. He wasn’t sure whether to be happy or sad about that… neither, for now. Xueyi hummed.
“You should see a healer as well. You have more cracks along your face. Rest.” She told him.
Did he? He reached up to his face and felt along the hole carved around his eye. Beneath his glasses the deepest part felt the same, but following along the edges- there. Splinters stretching to his cheek. Nothing he could not cover, but it was concerning. He sighed. He had no energy to deal with these injuries opening back up or widening further.
Thankfully at least it seemed this job was over. He began to leave- until a clamoring outside the pavilion took his attention. Atop the stairs out of sight, a child was yelling and shouting curses at what sounded like a group of guards.
“Pay it no mind,” Xueyi said, “Cirrus was able to possess a spiritfarer before we could bind her. She is no threat, for now.” He looked back toward the shouting for a moment. Seeing as Xueyi was ushering him out and he could feel the fatigue sinking into the cracks of his skin, he decided to take her word for it and left. It would be nice to leave the foggy, gray atmosphere. At first it had been calming, nostalgic, reminiscent of Wuwang hill. Now it felt stifling. He’d like to see the sun again, even if it were fake.
As he sat aboard a starskiff he pulled out his phone to check his injuries in the camera, only to find he had missed messages. Ah, right, now that the connection was restored…
Several texts from Jing Yuan awaited him. He’d intended to text the general himself afterward.
[Jing Yuan: I heard your mission is taking place today.]
[I hope for your swift completion and utmost safety. Perhaps sometime in the following days you might join me for starchess?]
[Seeing as our last meeting was interrupted by other matters.]
Then, a few hours later…
[Jing Yuan: Are you alright?]
[A judge sent for reinforcements.]
Ah. This entire time, he hadn’t realized Jing Yuan had been texting him, nor that he’d been worrying the general. Granted, he could not have known until now, but still… it made his core ache just a little to know his friend had worried.
[Zhongli: I am fine.]
[The mission went well.]
Was that an appropriate response? The mission had… certainly had its fair share of twists and turns. The mirror domain was not something he could say with certainty anyone enjoyed- and for him chief of all certainly not the portion that portrayed itself as a malformed echo of his own Liyue Harbor.
But no one died. And taking Xueyi at her word about other bodies, no one was mortally wounded either- not a single warden or spiritfarer was left permanently harmed (this was yet to be seen for Cirrus’ spiritfarer host, but alas). Mr. Tail was missing, but Stelle had pointed out that as an energy parasite he was not likely to have died. He may have landed elsewhere, or even ran away… the latter felt less likely to him however. He seemed too attached to Huohuo’s wellbeing to do something like that. And though the heliobi had not all been sealed, he would argue defeating Cirrus in battle paved the way for smoother operations ahead. Hopefully he would not be contracted for said operations.
So yes, he supposed the mission did go well.
-
A zhong I forgot to upload in previous chapters :]
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE:
The Hatake were loyal.
It was why the clan joined Konoha– Senju Hashirama was the grandson of Hatake Mitsuki and when the Senju proposed their idea to rally the clans together, the Hatake had cautiously agreed to side with their kin.
That loyalty was also why Konoha was responsible for killing the clan– the Hatake were loyal, and once they gave the village their loyalty they fought to their last breath to defend it, throwing themselves between fallen packmates and any threat.
Kakashi was a Hatake born and bred, loyal to the village that had made a murderer of him before even his sixth birthday. War had only made the blood staining him soak too deeply into his skin to ever be scrubbed away, yet he never flinched from his duty. His village had turned him into a weapon and Kakashi had submitted to it, bowing his head and barring his throat to the Hokage, following his orders, letting hands that knew only death serve to protect his village, even when serving Konoha cost him everything he had ever cared for, ever loved, before even turning fifteen.
The Hatake were loyal and Kakashi was a Hatake and he was loyal.
And then the village threatened Fuyuko.
Konoha had his loyalty, but Fuyuko was
Pack
and
Pack
was what kept a Hatake alive.
When Kakashi lost his father, Minato had become his Pack; Minato, who was charismatic and clever and drew people to him; Minato, who may not have felt emotions the same way most people did, but who had claimed Kakashi as
his
without hesitation and had then treated him as such, housing him and training him, letting Kakashi scent him and borrow his clothes so he could curl up in the
ink-sharp-cool
scent that meant safety-home-pack.
When Minato had taken
salt-fury-flames
Kushina as his mate, Kushina who Kakashi once saw tear out an enemy nin's throat with her teeth and laugh as blood ran down her chin, who hugged him with tight, greedy hands and let him scent her without hesitation, who let him rest his ear against the curve of her stomach as it swelled with her cubs, she had become his Pack too.
Kakashi would have killed or died for either of them. Just as he would kill or die for their cubs, for Fuyuko and Naruto, without hesitation. The twins were his Pack now; he had claimed them as his from the moment Kushina's scent shifted to that milky-cub scent, and the twins had claimed him back, had called him Pack even before truly knowing him. They had his loyalty, beyond any other alive– beyond the Hokage, beyond Konoha, beyond all of his comrades, and Sarutobi had
sent Fuyuko to die
.
Kakashi would never forget that betrayal. That was the moment the loyal soldier Inu had died and there was nothing Konoha could do, nothing Sarutobi could do, that would ever bring their loyal hound back to heel. He owed them nothing and he would give them nothing. Not anymore. He was the last of the Hatake and now the Hatake had lost their loyalty to Konoha.
It was only the knowledge that Fuyuko was alive and the sense of responsibility he still felt for Tenzo, his kohai (his almost-Packmate), that kept Kakashi on-mission long enough to kill the onmyōji. It wasn't a clean kill. He was intercepted by an oniwaban after slitting the onmyōji's throat and the resulting fight was violet and bloody. The shōgun's agents were among the best, even if they would never be ranked in a Bingo Book and their blank masks made it difficult for the Hidden Villages to identify them.
However good the oniwaban was, Kakashi was better– and he was a Hatake fighting with the protective fury of the Pack. He defeated the oniwaban, killed them so they couldn't report back to the shōgun, then slaughtered his way through the Earth Daimyō's guards that had been summoned by the disturbance caused by the fight.
He left almost three dozen dead in his wake as he escaped the Daimyō's Palace, henging to hide the blood soaking through his armour to his skin– most of it from the dead, some his own.
His ANBU team met him outside the Earth capital city. It was on high alert and the gates had been locked down, so Kakashi had been forced to add the patrolling guards to his kills in order to escape the confines of the city. He didn't care, too accustomed to ending lives to be bothered by the body count.
"Hokage-sama isn't going to be happy," one of Team Ro observed, stiff and unhappy and not trying to hide it. Kakashi had been the only one to carry out the assassination– it had been a risk and outside of mission parameters. Only Tenzo had known that Kakashi planned to slip away to complete the mission ahead of schedule and not according to their careful plan of infiltrating the Daimyō's Palace without being caught.
A bloodbath was to be avoided at all costs.
Kakashi just didn't care.
"We're leaving," he told them. They were already packed, ready to go.
"Do you need healing, taicho?" Tenzo asked and Kakashi shook his head sharply. He could deal with his wounds when they'd put distance between them and the city.
Running hurt. It tugged on his cuts which still bled sluggishly and Kakashi was forced to grit his teeth through the pain, changing the bandages while still moving. He wouldn't let Team Ro stop, pushing further and faster. They didn't understand, he knew. He just didn't care. Every moment he was away from Konoha, he felt the fear within him grow, the wolfish part of him snarling and snapping its impatience and anger, tense and furious. Konoha wasn't safe for Fuyuko or Naruto, so he needed to be there, to protect his Pack.
After nearly three days of running without sleep, they arrived back at Konoha. Kakashi didn't even bother with the pretence of returning to the Hokage first to report on the mission. Instead, he veered straight for the Yūkaku, where Sarutobi had seen fit to house Minato and Kushina's children.
He didn't even think about how he would look; ANBU mask in place, armour soaked in blood as he scaled the steps of the apartment building. He just pushed the apartment door open, already searching for his cubs.
There were three children in the apartment. One of them was vaguely familiar; he had that faint crackling scent of all nin with a lightning affinity, and the dark hair, dark eyes and pale skin of an Uchiha. Kakashi noticed how his scent soured in terror and panic, but dismissed it, turning to the other two children.
Naruto was sunshine and salt and fox-musk; golden-bright and too-thin, but still smiling with bright, sharp teeth.
Next to him, Fuyuko was frost and fox-musk and flowers; all pale, wintry skin, her hair a spill of blood over the white tunic she was dressed in.
Fuyuko's eyes met his– the blue of deep, unsettling oceans to drown in– and then she was on her feet, darting across the room as he knelt, opening his arms. Fuyuko half-crashed into him, her face pressing against where his heart beat solidly in his chest. Her shoulders trembled slightly as he held onto her with tight, desperate hands, able to feel her shifting bones under his palms, the round shape of her joints, the shiver of her spine.
Naruto collided into Kakashi's other side, Kakashi shifting his grip on Fuyuko to open his arm just in time to hold him too; Naruto buried his face into the curve where Kakashi's neck met his shoulder, latching onto the skin there with his teeth, desperate little cub. Kakashi let out a quiet rumble, moving his hand up to the back of Naruto's neck to grip lightly, feeling as the small boy went boneless against him.
Kakashi stayed kneeling there for a long time, holding his cubs, breathing in their scent. They were alive, they were safe, they were his. He would protect them, he would keep them from harm.
The little Uchiha watched from the couch, legs curled up to his chest, dark eyes cautious and uncertain, though his scent had lost that sour fear from Kakashi's entry into the apartment.
It was Fuyuko who pulled away first.
"You're hurt," she said, and Naruto let out a panicked whine, pulling back from where his sharp teeth were still worrying at Kakashi's skin.
"Anija*?" he demanded, "are ya hurt?"
"I... might be," Kakashi admitted. Mostly because his vision was beginning to grey around the edges and he was so exhausted his hands were trembling and he'd stopped feeling any pain from his wounds a full day ago, which he knew was never a good sign.
He just couldn't bring himself to care. Not when he had his cubs in front of him.
"Naruto, Sasuke-kun, why don't you try and help anija clean up a bit?" Fuyuko suggested. "I'm going to go fetch Kabuto-kun."
Kakashi didn't recognise the name. He also growled slightly at the thought of Fuyuko leaving his sight but she sent him a sharp look, those deep, drowning-blue eyes as commanding as Minato's had been, and Kakashi found himself relenting almost immediately.
Watching her leave was still painful. It was only Naruto's presence, and the knowledge that of the two, Naruto was less able to defend himself, that held Kakashi in place.
The Uchiha– Sasuke, Itachi's little brother– didn't seem comfortable approaching him, which Naruto seemed to recognise as he instructed Sasuke to heat some water as he carefully helped Kakashi strip off his armour, now encrusted with dried blood, and rid himself of the ANBU mask. Kakashi wasn't bothered by his nakedness, years of being a shinobi had stripped any body shame from him, and Naruto didn't blink at it either, only frowning at his wounds before helping Kakashi into the shower. The water was cold, which made him hiss– both in anger at the landlord and at the temperature. He didn't stay under there long, only until the water draining at his feet ran from reddish brown to murky pink to clear.
Some of the wounds had reopened under the spray of the water and Kakashi blinked tiredly as blood oozed down his skin, soaking into the towel Naruto offered him. He wrapped the towel around his waist after drying the best his weary limbs would allow and followed his cub back to the couch, sitting down heavily before pulling Naruto after him, so his cub was curled into his side. Naruto snuggled under his arm, making happy-cub sounds, and Kakashi could almost relax as he waited for Fuyuko to return.
When she did, it was with the stranger he assumed was Kabuto. Kabuto was a boy, older than her– by about five or six years, he'd guess. The boy had ash-grey hair and dark eyes half-hidden behind dark-rimmed glasses. He was smiling, but it was an empty smile, with no emotion behind it.
"Anija, this is my teammate from the Chūnin Exams, Yakushi Kabuto," Fuyuko introduced the boy. "Kabuto-kun, this is my older brother, Hatake Kakashi."
There was a certain possessiveness in Fuyuko's voice as she called Kabuto her teammate. Kakashi nodded slightly. He understood the deep bonds that could be formed in combat– particularly in a team that had been sent to die but had clawed their way to survival instead. He didn't doubt that Fuyuko and Kabuto had seen the worst of each other during their time in Kiri, and yet Fuyuko had brushed her hand against Kabuto's wrist during her introduction, and Kabuto glanced down at her in response, his empty smile softening into something more real as he did so.
"Anija, Kabuto-kun is a talented medic-nin," Fuyuko told him, "he can help you. Will you let him?"
As a rule, Kakashi didn't like medic-nins. Most of them were useless in combat and cost the lives of their teammates who had to defend them. He also hated how they treated shinobi in hospitals, as if their patients didn't have very real fears of being vulnerable around strangers, instead of just being difficult patients for the sake of being difficult. But Fuyuko trusted Kabuto; she had brought him into her home, where she and her beloved little brother lived, and now she was trusting him with Kakashi's health.
If Fuyuko could place her trust in him, then Kakashi could bring himself to allow the medic-nin to heal his injuries.
He nodded once; short, sharp, and Kabuto approached slowly, clearly projecting each of his movements as his hands lit up with the gentle green glow of healing chakra.
For all his youth, Kabuto was just as talented as Fuyuko had claimed he was. He calmly and concisely narrated to Kakashi each of his actions, requesting permission for every step of healing. His chakra was cool and slippery, almost; it slid under Kakashi's skin like a scalpel so sharp that his flesh split painlessly under its edge. It wasn't unpleasant and Kabuto's manner did more to set him at ease then most medic-nin ever managed.
Kakashi wasn't surprised to hear that two of his ribs were cracked, or that several of his cuts had become infected. "It hasn't led to blood poisoning yet," Kabuto told him, "but another day and you'd be looking at a hospital stay."
Kakashi just nodded shortly.
It took Kabuto a little under an hour to finish healing him. When he finally stepped back, Kakashi could barely keep his eyes open.
"Your body is fatigued and sleep-deprived, and I'm prescribing at least a week of rest to recover from the infection, but otherwise you're healthy." Kabuto said. Kakashi dipped his head slightly in acknowledgement and Kabuto turned to Fuyuko. "I have to return to the hospital to finish my shift," he told her, "are we still on for dinner with Chiyoko-chan tomorrow?"
"I'll let you know," Fuyuko said and Kabuto nodded, giving everyone a polite smile before leaving the apartment, his footsteps as silent as any skilled shinobi. Naruto brought him a blanket and helped Kakashi tuck it around himself, leaning in to nuzzle his cheek against Kakashi's before returning to Sasuke's side. Kakashi waited then for Fuyuko to lock the door to the apartment and– much to his approval– activate a series of trap seals before gesturing for her to come over. Fuyuko's mouth quirked slightly but she still crossed over to him, crawling up onto the couch. Kakashi stretched out, pulling her down so she was curled up across his chest, and closed his eyes, finally allowing himself to fall asleep, knowing that his pack was with him and safe.
He wasn't sure how long he slept. It was a dreamless sleep, a rare event that only ever occurred when he had truly exhausted himself. He woke eventually to the sound of low voices and when he opened his eyes, it was to the sight of brilliant, vivid red hair, spilled out across his chest and neck.
"Morning," Naruto chirped, from over by the stove. Kakashi sniffed the air, turning his head to see the sunshine-bright blond standing with a frying pan, Uchiha Sasuke next to him, and Tenzo leaning against the wall. His kohai smiled slightly at him, the slant of his shoulders relaxed enough that Kakashi was confident the Hokage wasn't about to send an ANBU squad to break into the twins' apartment and drag him out to report on the colossal fuck-up of a mission.
Uchiha Sasuke's continued presence was interesting. He was standing very close to Naruto and now that Kakashi wasn't quite so single-mindedly focused on the twins, he could see that there were signs of a third person living in the apartment, from the extra pair of shoes by the door, to the third sleeping mat, neatly rolled up with the other two, to the addition of a photo of Uchiha Mikoto and Fugaku at the shrine where before there had only been three framed pieces of embroidery, one of the Uzushio spiral, one of a grey-furred wolf with yellow-gold eyes, and one of a red fox with nine tails in shades of red, orange, bronze and yellow, a collection of origami foxes and seashells, and a rock with the kanji for 'four' carved into it.
Kakashi didn't doubt for a moment that Fuyuko would have told Sasuke the truth about Itachi. Even if she hadn't, he suspected he might tell the child himself. Itachi was one of his– not pack, but one of his kohais. A boy he'd taken in, much like he'd taken in Tenzo, to train and care for and keep alive. The idea of letting Itachi's pack hate him was sickening to Kakashi– it went against everything the Hatake stood for.
"Breakfast is ready!" Naruto announced. Fuyuko made a small noise from her place sprawled out across Kakashi's chest before pushing herself up, yawning as she slid off him to stand. Tenzo moved over to Kakashi, pausing only to gently reach out and squeeze Fuyuko's hand, smiling down at her.
"Here, senpai," he said, pulling a sealing scroll from his pocket. "I brought you clothes."
"Ah," Kakashi said, remembering he was still wrapped only in a blanket. "Thank you."
He changed in the bathroom into a jounin uniform he must have left at Tenzo's before joining everyone else again. There was no table to eat at, so they all sat in a circle on the floor, the bowls of fried eggs on rice balanced on their knees. Naruto happily chattered up a storm, coaxing answers from the rest of them as he spoke about everything from his interactions with the local yakuza to the senseis at the Academy to the upkeep of the shrine he and Fuyuko prayed at.
It was shockingly domestic, something Kakashi didn't remember experiencing since before that terrible night when Minato and Kushina had been ripped away from him, and he felt a tension he wasn't even aware of ease from his bones as he settled in, content to be surrounded by his pack.
~
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Emiya was scrubbing dishes idly, late at night. They were already polished to a shine, but what else did he have to do? Save the world, maybe. Maybe destroy it. Just depended, apparently.
He held his hand to his head, heaving a sigh into the countertop. He couldn’t focus on anything.
“Should I come back later?”
Emiya jerked up. He almost dropped the cup he was holding, but, being honest, he wasn’t that out of it. He had rarely dropped dishes in his life, and apparently even finding out he was a murderer, again, wasn’t enough to diminish that discipline. Nothing new.
Emiya Kiritsugu stood just inside the doorway. He had left behind his combat webbing, wetsuit-like uniform and ballistic armor, and his scarred red shamagh, and now simply wore slacks and a loose gray dress shirt. Servants were more and more joining the trend of casual clothing, undoubtedly provided by Da Vinci and Sion.
This man wasn’t the father Emiya remembered. But the loose fit and dark colors of the clothes over his haggard features almost fooled him, despite his shock-white hair.
“What brings you here?” Emiya asked.
“Coffee,” Kiritsugu said. “That’s still what you do here, isn’t it?”
“It’s a bit late.”
“You and I don’t sleep, anyway.”
Emiya put the cup down in its proper place. “…No. I try not to.”
Time dragged as Kiritsugu crossed the distance, leaning onto the counter. “Me too,” he said.
“So?” Emiya prompted. “Why are you really here? Not to discuss more efficient mana usage in battle, I assume.”
“I came to--” Kiritsugu flicked his head to the side, an abortive move as if there was an insect bothering him. “I wanted to apologize.”
Emiya raised his eyebrow. “That seems unlikely.”
Kiritsugu shrugged.
Keeping one unconvinced eye on the other Counter-Guardian, Emiya prepared two cups. While the coffee brewed, he pressed espresso -- six shots in total, dropping three into each cup before topping them both with full pours of coffee.
“Seems I won’t need Time Alter for a while,” Kiritsugu said.
“You make jokes, now?”
“Sometimes.”
“Good for you.”
Kiritsugu stared into the black liquid. “I thought you said you tried to avoid espresso.”
Emiya sipped. “What is it you want, Kiritsugu?”
He placed thumb and one finger on opposite sides of the rim of the cup, spinning it slowly in place. “The Lostbelts… they’re a lot like our day job, aren’t they?”
“If you’re here to lecture me again--”
“No,” Kiritsugu said. “I try to avoid people, if you haven’t noticed. Especially when I…
feel
for their situation. Your choices are yours to make, and I respect that. I was out of line before.”
“You seem to have a knack for avoiding people except when we
want
to be alone,” Emiya said.
“I figure we’ve both spent enough time alone.”
“Maybe that’s how it was meant to be.” The words came tumbling out without Emiya’s permission.
Kiritsugu drummed his fingers on the counter, just once. “This kid really is bothering you, huh.”
Emiya’s teeth set.
“Well… if you need any help killing him, you know who to call.” Kiritsugu’s eyes searched his face for a moment, both equally impassive. “…That was another joke.”
“... Hmph. You never were very good at being a father.”
Kiritsugu cracked what might have one day grown up to be a smile, with enough effort. “I don’t doubt it.”
Emiya shifted on his feet, cupping both hands around his coffee. “Tell me, is that really what you think? That it’s better to be dead than unable to see the job through?”
“First,” Kiritsugu said, holding up a finger, “You’ve proven more than a valuable ally, and regardless of what I think of your morals, Chaldea would be hurt tremendously for your loss. Second… No. I think that there are hard things to be done, and someone has to do them… but that’s what
I’m
here for."
He took a sharp little intake of breath and jumped into the gap before Emiya could respond. "Have I ever told you about my father?” Kiritsugu asked.
Emiya shook his head. His old man had never spoken of his past before the fire. Not Illya or Irisviel, certainly not his parents.
“When I was a child, I shot him,” the Counter-Guardian said. “With a model 1911, .45 caliber. He was experimenting with Dead Apostles, see, and the research got out of hand. I did what I always do: I killed him to keep him from doing it again.
“A girl named Natalya took me in, and I think of her instead of the mother I never knew. But now that I’m older, I think I misjudged my father. I didn’t want to admit it at the time, but it wasn’t his fault. He had actually done everything he could to avoid testing his research on humans or any other animals, even though it must have slowed him down tremendously. It was… his lab assistant who tested it on herself -- to prove that he was wrong, that it was ready for human testing.
“When I walked in, he was relieved. Decades of training made sure he stayed totally calm, but that was the first thing he thought of: he was glad I was safe, and he had an escape ready for us. I couldn’t think straight at the time. Even if I had, I had never met any other magus families. But now?”
Emiya knew. “He sounds like he was still more than you can usually expect from a magus parent.”
“He was. He was far from perfect, but he wasn’t quite the monster I made him out to be. The days before that were happy. What’s more, I think he was trying to raise me to be better. He didn’t involve me in his research. He barely taught me magecraft at all. Natalya tried to teach me to be more than my work, too."
"What happened to her?"
"I killed her, too. With an FIM-92 SAM launcher."
Emiya regretted asking it almost as soon as he'd said it.
Kiritsugu continued on, conspicuously unaffected. “The other me. It sounds like he tried to do the same, give you a better life. Which seems ironic, because unlike Emiya Norikata, I
am
a monster.
“I don’t like who I am,” he breathed. “I am what I needed to be. People should be more than that. Nobody should have to be like me. To do what I do. What
we
do.”
There was a moment, still lodged in Emiya Shirou’s mind. His father sitting with him on the deck of their house, looking at the night sky.
When you grow up… it’s hard to call yourself a hero.
“I’m sorry,” Kiritsugu said.
“Don’t be,” Shirou shook his head. “You gave me everything. You saved me.”
“It doesn’t look like it.”
The Counter-Guardian spread his hands. “This was my choice. It’s not without many regrets… but it’s what I was meant to do.”
Kiritsugu appraised him, then smirked. He sipped at his coffee. “You sound more like yourself. You were sounding an awful lot like me when I walked in that door.”
“Like you said… that brat really bothers me.”
Kiritsugu nodded shallowly to himself. “He’s not quite the same as us. He’s fixated on creating, and doesn’t care what he destroys in the process. You and me, we destroy with impunity, so that the world can continue to create. It’s natural you’d hate him. How do you think Artoria feels about her Alters?”
“That’s something of a complicated question, actually.”
“Regardless… what makes you different from either of us, is those choices you’ve made. We pursue our crafts alone. You’ve taken the harder road.”
Emiya quirked his mouth. “You don’t have to stay alone. My old man--”
“I know, I know,” he waved him off. “…I’ve been talking to Irisviel.”
“You’re through punishing yourself, then?”
“I doubt it. But when she came asking this Valentine’s Day… I didn’t say no, for some reason.”
“Is that why you’re suddenly so soft?”
“Funny how that happens, isn’t it. But I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I’m usually busy removing evil from the world. It’s nice to put a little happiness back out into it, for once.”
“... Yes.”
“So? What are you still doing here? Time is valuable. Especially for us.”
“Yeah,” Emiya smirked. “Once in a while, old man, you still say something wise.”
Kiritsugu tipped his cup. “I’ll see you around.”
He looked, for a moment… at peace. His eyes closed, and in the dark of the closed kitchen, he almost looked like he was in a dark kimono, enjoying the night air, cicadas chirping in the distance. Almost.
And he was right. Emiya was wasting his time, whiling away his hours here in the kitchen, brooding. Meanwhile, Artoria was likewise alone, like she already had been too often, giving him his space. He always made the same mistakes.
She was calming, she was warm and -- by some miracle -- she was his. It was something that made him the same as those
other
Emiya Shirous, yet still different. Something that made all the fighting worthwhile. Made
him
worthwhile. He’d deny a hundred Lostbelts if it meant he could stay with her. It almost scared him. Whatever else the world threw at them, he knew at least they could face it together.
"Just no more copies," he muttered.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
"How foolish!"
All for One roared out in the vestige world, causing cracks and the area surrounding the Izuku and Shigaraki to fall apart while taking shape as a gigantic version of himself with the latter hovering over All for One’s face.
"Did you think I would allow this to happen to my vessel? Tomura, you foolish boy, to this day, you've never made a single decision on your own!"
With a bite, Tomura Shigaraki’s body disappeared into All for One's mouth as Izuku stumbled backwards, the ground coming undone underneath the green-haired vestige. The child-like form Izuku had taken continued to fall while glaring at the giant form of All for One that had appeared out of nowhere mere moments after he finally managed to get through to Tomura Shigaraki. “ALL FOR ONE?!”
"Thanks to your success in weakening Tomura’s will, Izuku Midoriya, I've managed to regain control once more! This is far from how I wanted to do this, but I suppose I have no choice thanks to the sins you’ve committed against me,"
All for One snarled as the scattered remains of the surrounding vestige world began to transform and merge into his image.
“It was a clever move to use One for All as a mental weapon. But in doing so, you have destroyed both it and my precious Yoichi!”
"Foolish Shimura Tenko,"
All for One mocked, happily discarding the original name he had given him and forcing him to see more memories of how he manipulated him,
"No more than just a fragile ego, trying to cling onto your so-called life! I gave you a purpose, and you tried to bite me!?"
"As I said before. None of your decisions have truly been yours. I merely made you think you did, otherwise you would have never attained such hatred and willpower,"
All for One explained while memories flashed of his encounters with the 5th user of One for All, En Tayutai, the Pro-Hero known as Smoke-Eater, and the sixth user Daigoro Banjo, the Pro-Hero known as Lariat.
“It was during my time facing those two that I learned that in order to secure One for All I needed to surpass the emotions and willpower of both User and Quirk… So, when my search for a soul that could help me do just that while I was being hounded by All Might turned sour, I decided that if I couldn’t find someone that met those requirements… I would MAKE one!”
Shigaraki struggled in the darkness as he tried to understand what was happening, being forced to see memories belonging to his former mentor. He could only watch in silence horror, slowly crumbling into pieces as he saw through All for One’s eyes as he conversed with his asshole of a father and mentally manipulating him, before it switched the villain stealing Shigaraki’s supposedly original quirk factor when he was only a baby and waited until the right moment to inject the quirk he murdered his family with. And it wasn’t even the complete version of it! Just a butchered copy that Doctor Garaki had created from that pathetic yakuza, Overhaul! All of these horrible things that happened to him…
The pain his father inflicted on him.
The tragedy that led to the death of the three most precious to him.
…His mother… Hana… Mon…
All the crap he had gone through since then. Forming the League of Villains, meeting Stain, becoming leader of the Paranormal Liberation Front.
His loses… his victories… His
sacrifices
.
Shigaraki could feel his mind shattering with each thought…
…
…
…
…
…
…
‘It’s too bad I wasn’t able to kill you…’
Shigaraki’s eyes widened as a familiar female voice echoed through his mind as he felt more of himself break apart in All for One’s vestige, the panels of memories surrounding him coming to a stop on his battle against America’s Number One Hero, Star and Stripe, and the moments after he had taken her quirk from her.
‘But be sure to remember this. A heroic spirit will always rise up against evil… So, as long as people stand up to save each other... someone will inherit that will of heroism. And make no mistake... they will strike you down.’
…
…
……No, not yet.
‘My hatred… my… convictions… There is still something… my hatred…
needs
to destroy! Even if I must use someone else to do it!’
Shigaraki thought to himself as he willed what small amount of control he had left with his remaining hand and mentally reached out as if to grasp something. A small wisp of red formed over the palm of his hand, pulling specks energy towards it.
‘…… because I was so focused… on stopping Midoriya’s forcing One for All into … that I didn’t notice it before. But that also means that
they
didn’t either!
’
"Everything that has happened. Your tragedies, your trials, tribulations, rejection or acceptance, all came from me! You were just a puppet that danced to my whim!"
All for One’s voice echoed from all around him, driving even more despair into Shigaraki’s heart and mind with his boasts, not noticing what his soon-to-be destroyed vessel’s vestige was secretly doing.
"A mere chess piece, a pawn meant to be sacrificed! That decree that your heart would never waiver is as worthless as a dead ant on the street!"
In mere seconds, a tiny golden sphere the size of a golf ball appeared under Shigaraki’s curled fingers,
‘While the other vestiges dealt mental blows, you separated from the rest… and somehow did the impossible… Manipulated or not, you’ve always made me sick, but at least you’re consistent!’
Feeling more of All for One’s presence erase even more of his, Shigaraki reached up his hand to his throat and began to scratch it like he always did, breathing harder as even more cracks broke his vestige’s body. He could see them. All the people he fought, heavily injured, and even
killed
, because of his ‘choices’.
“Hehehe,”
A dark chuckle escaped from the large grin that formed on the giant vestige of All for One’s face, feeling malicious satisfaction in hearing Tenko scream as his body was breaking a part even faster while the cracks started to glow in a red and black light.
“I’ll make sure to erase your soul from this body! NOW VANISH!”
With that last shout from his former master, Shigaraki felt what remained of his consciousness finally snap and the lights coming out of his body exploded outward, leaving nothing behind as both what remained of the former Decay user and the mental world created from his vestige were turned into ash and fragmentation that slowly faded away the further it moved from All for One’s large body. One of the larger fragments traveled downward in the same direction that Deku had been sent flying, breaking down even further to reveal a golden ball that continued its trajectory and made it pass the divide that separated the two vestige worlds just as All for One severed the connection. Only one remaining thought of Shigaraki silently echoed as the final remains of his world transformed into All for One’s.
‘… You… better… win this…
Hero
…’
(Meanwhile in the Void)
“Damn it! How could this have happened.” Izuku gritted his teeth as his child-like body fell through the unknown void surrounding him, the green-haired boy’s body returning to his teenage form while glaring up at the large monstrous mass that was All for One’s vestige,
‘I was so close to reaching him! After everyone sacrificed themselves to get me through his mental defenses!’
To be honest, he had known from the moment that Kudo, the Second User of One for All, had told him the plan to send each of them at Shigaraki as mental bullets, that it was a reckless and very stupid plan. Not only was there the chance it wouldn’t work, but it would also return him to being Quirkless again. Sure, the large ember left inside him would stay in him for a while after losing it just like it had done when All Might had passed the quirk onto him, but the odds that the
embers
left behind would hold a candle against Shigaraki and the All for One quirk when he had difficulty fighting at
FULL
power with six other quirks to help him was a stretch. The best that Izuku could hope for if the plan was unsuccessful is that the strain of One for All would be too much for Shigaraki and break his body apart, just like having a body hold multiple quirk had done in the past.
Like he said, it was stupid and reckless. All because of what he saw back then in that one, single moment when his soul connected to Shigaraki’s… of the child he had once been, crying out for someone to help. That scared child who had been abused by his father and lost his loved ones to a horrible quirk manifestation, falling into All for One’s grasps when no one would bother to even look at boy.
Was it messed up that he wanted to save the part of Tenko Shimura that might still be inside Tomura Shigaraki? That he knew that even if he did succeed, none of the crimes that Shigaraki and All for One had done could never be forgiven and Izuku would probably be forced to kill Shigaraki in the end?
… Yes.
As his best-friend-turned-bully-turned-rival-turned-friend, Katsuki Bakugo, would say,
‘It was fucked up.’
It was also something that his current best friend had agreed with as well, even as she went through a similar situation with her own personal Villain, Himiko Toga.
The result was this war pushing him and everyone else to their limits and left both physical and mental wounds on many that would never heal. But as much as he tried to close his heart to it… Izuku wanted to be a hero and use One for All to save people, not to use it exclusively as a weapon for murder. It was a quirk that the former Number One Hero had given him just to be able to stand in the ring with everyone else, one that he had struggled for one year to be able to even use and another to reach a level beyond what many Pro-Heroes were capable of.
And he just threw it away without any back-up plan…
LIKE AN FUCKING
IDIOT
!
He succeeded in reaching Shigaraki, broke through the mental shields and confronted the trauma that etched itself onto Tenko’s psyche with his old house and father being the source of it all, and with Nana’s help, stood face to face with Tenko… only for the vestige to destroy his arms in the processes. The two conversed, and even though it seemed like both enemies had finally managed to understand each other, they both knew that their fight had to conclude one way or another. Something that Deku knew he would have to go Plus Ultra to come out on top and hoped that forcing One for All to transfer to Shigaraki would deal some significant damage as well….
… and then All for One had to show up like some final boss trope you see in video games or comic book, continuing with the usual cliché of apparently being responsible for all of Shigaraki’s misery. Because of course the narcissist with a god-complex couldn’t handle NOT being the center of attention. His actions destroy everything in the process and ejecting Izuku out of the connected vestige world.
‘If All for One is really back in control, then this situation has gone from bad to worse.’
Izuku thought to himself in frustration, his eyes lids scrunched closed while doing his best in trying to readjust his positioning in the void with little success.
‘Unlike Shigaraki, All for One has a lot more experience with handling quirks of different varieties! How can I stand up to that without One for All… No… It’s not over yet! I can’t give up now!”
“Heh, very nice! I can see you’ve got that heroic spirit down pat! As expected of our master’s true successor!”
…
…
…
“Huh?” Izuku’s eyes snapped open at the sound of a new voice echoing through his mind, just in time to see a shining, golden ball fly towards him before entering his chest.
“Looks like I got to you just in time!”
He barely had time to register what was happening before his body started to glow the same color as the sphere and the void was canceled out in a bright flash of light. The next thing the green haired teen realized, he was no longer falling, but instead he was laying on top of something that felt warm, grainy and strangely familiar. “Sand?”
“Not a bad spot! I could just stare out into the distance for hours! Just look at that sunrise!”
Blinking at one again hearing the new voice, this time much clearer and coming from right next to him, Izuku lifted his head up to see a large figure standing several feet ahead of him with their back facing him, allowing only to see their long flowing blonde hair with eight distinct tufts swept backward that sort of reminded him of All Might’s muscular form… wait… EIGHT TUFTS?! That looked like All Might’s?!
“Star and Stripe!”
“That’s right! I AM HERE… inside your head! That sounds like something All Might would say, right?” The woman turned to face him while letting out a laugh, once again, reminding him of All Might. She donned her Hero costume that just screamed American flag, only she didn’t have the domino mask that he had seen her wear whenever he saw her in the news. “Though, you can just call me Cathleen, or Cassie! All my bros called me Cassie!”
If it wasn’t for the bizarre situation, Izuku would’ve gushed about being face to face with the Number One hero of America, the strongest woman in the world, the one who’s quirk seemed to make the laws of reality bend over and lick her boots! But just how was the woman here? All her companions that traveled with her to Japan had confirmed that she died in the battle against Shigaraki, sacrificing herself and her quirk to deal a major blow to the All for One quirk from the inside. The data had suggested that her quirk hadn’t survived the battle since Shigaraki wasn’t able to use it… Wait, did that mean he was dead too?! Did being sent down the void destroy his vestige too? And his arms were still gone, too! Oh, God, there were so many things he wanted to do! Graduate from UA, adopting Eri and watching her grow up, pursuing a relationship and get marri-
“Whoa there, don’t go jumping to the conclusion that your dead already. Geez, Master did say that you had a motor-mouth when you overthink things, but seriously, hahaha, damn!” The woman laughed as she lifted Izuku by scooping him up by his armpits and helping him to his feet. “I don’t really understand
everything
that’s going on right now, but we’re still in the… inner world? Or the vestige world, I think it was called. Don’t really know myself, the last thing I remember was trying to tear apart Tomura Shigaraki and All for One from the inside after my real body gave me her final order.”
Oh.
“You’re the vestige created by her quirk… But how are you here… wait, this place…” Izuku looked around in surprise as he instantly recognized where the two were standing, after all, he had come to this spot for ten months to turn it from a trash heap into the beautiful beach spot it once was. “This is Takoba Beach. Why are we here? This looks nothing like the vestige world I saw when I came here before.”
“It’s certainly better than the last place I saw. That place was just a wasteland inside a crimson void with all the stolen Quirks making up the very ground All for One and Shigaraki were standing on.” Cathleen huffed at the memory while crossing her arms, memories of the rampage she had dealt to the villain somewhat fresh in her mind. “Bastard thought that the others were pieces that made up his world and didn’t see them more than object he could collect.”
“The inner worlds of One for All was a large void with a big piece resembling the vault that the First User said was the origin of the quirk… and Shigaraki’s was that destroyed city surrounding his childhood home… If that’s how the inner world works, than that means that this beach… is my true inner world without One for All’s influence.” The green-haired student deduced as he and Cathleen’s vestige looked around, taking in how detailed the world was down to the breeze and the sound of waves hitting the sand.
“It certainly is a beautiful place, but unfortunately we’ve got more pressing matters to deal with. We’re lucky that time here moves a lot faster than in the real world, but you’re about to head back there soon. The only reason you ended up here was because I managed to catch up to you in time… I’ll be blunt, New Order shouldn’t even exist anymore after the damage back then, and honestly, I don’t think the present me is going to remain for much longer. But thanks to your actions with forcing One for All into Shigaraki, a chance opened for us.”
“Huh? What chance?”
Cathleen motioned for Izuku to follow her to the gazebo at the end of the pier nearby, where the two walked to in silence before coming to a stop at the railings facing out to the vast ocean in front of them, “… Did you know that All Might had saved my life when I was a child, back when he had come to America as an exchange student?”
“Really?” Izuku blinked in surprise at that piece of information.
He knew that All Might had already started to make a name for himself back then and even learned English just so he could read up on all the missions and interviews he did while over there. But he had no idea that one of those people he saved involved the future Number One Heroine.
“That’s right. My family and I were on our way to Santa Monica Pier, just a normal outing for us. But a robber and his partner were on the run and started attacking our car,” Cathleen moved forward so that she was leaning on the railing, staring down at her clenching fists. “At the time, only one thought repeated over and over in my head, ‘If I can just save my little sister! I don’t care if I die!’… and then, he appeared. With a reassuring grin on his face and those two golden tuffs of hair, I knew we were saved.”
“Saving people with a smile, to not only save their bodies, but also their hearts.” Izuku commented as he thought back his ultimate reason for wanting to be a hero, and the lessons he learned from both All Might and the Seventh User, Nana Shimura.
“Exactly, and it was because of that, that I saw that Symbol of Peace as my master. Not as a physical one, but for the ideal that I wanted to follow when I became a Pro-Hero myself. I even copied his hairstyle and color, with my own eight tuff added into the mix, just to show my devotion.” Cathleen let out a sigh as a sad smile formed on her face, “But in the end, while I become the Number One Hero in America and the Strongest Heroine, I never truly was able to catch up to him.”
“But your admiration for All Might and your sense of duty are like shackles. It creates discord in your mind!”
“… I can understand that… For so long… I didn’t really understand what Gran Torino said to me about how my looking up to All Might and wanting to be like him was messing up my progress. But after everything I’ve seen and experienced, I started to get it… I’m
not
like All Might… I’ll never
be
All Might… and honestly… I don’t
want
to
be
All Might either.” Izuku raised his head up to look that the sunrise shining in the distance, not noticing the Heroine next to him look at him with a surprised expression. “He is an amazing Hero, and a goofy person at times, but I can’t hold up society on my own the way he did… So many people, including me, didn’t want to imagine what it would be like when he retired, or worse, died. How could the world survive without the Symbol of Peace? But the truth is… it needs more than a single pillar to hold it up. The world needs multiple pillars to shoulder the weight, so that everyone can help one another and create a better future together.”
Cathleen stared down silently at Izuku before a chuckle escaped her lips, before slamming the palm of her hand into Izuku’s bare back. “Ha! I guess my fellow disciple surpassed both me and our Master. You’re really a romantic at heart, aren’t ya?”
“Um, well, I-”
“That’s good! You’re gonna need it for the battle ahead!” Lifting herself up straight, Cathleen turned to face Izuku before holding out her palm, to which a golden-yellow flame formed over her hand. “Recognize this?”
Studying the flame for a few seconds as he turned to face the heroine, Izuku’s eyes widen in shock as he felt a familiar pulse come from the flames. “Is that All Might’s-”
“His Vestige from One for All, or rather, what’s left of the piece he sent after me. It was thanks to this that I was able to temporarily reform myself. From what I could gather from the brief images I got from it, his vestige found me when you were firing those Mental Bullets over and instead focused on restoring me instead of helping with Shigaraki’s mental defense. Still the same hero he ever was, sacrificing himself to save the both of us and give you the tools needed to win, New Order combined with a little portion of stockpiled power left behind by One for All.” The muscular woman smiled down at the remains of the man who saved her once more, before shaking those thoughts away. She still has one last task to complete. “But the truth is, New Order is no longer the same quirk that I held. After being reduced to nothing and reconstructed by these embers, it is a completely new, stronger version that has no user now. Think of it like that old philosophy, Theseus’ Paradox, you know about it?”
“That’s the Greek one about the ship, right? It was mentioned in that pre-quirk heroes franchise from America. I watched all the movies and read the comic books.”
Cathleen nodded her head; silently glad she wouldn’t have to go too far into the subject and grinned at that last part. "Such a fanboy, but you are now officially my favorite little bro. Anyway, think about how that ship was dismantled and replaced by new pieces because of the rot, while the bad pieces were restored and reassembled into a separate ship without the rot. But while both ships look the exact same down to the smallest details, neither can be considered the original ship. Think of New Order as the restored second ship, while I am what remains of the first, and Tomura Shigaraki only sent the former with a piece of me attached.”
“Shigaraki?” Izuku frowned as he thought back to just a few moments ago, when All for One destroyed the Decay User and took over.
‘Did he pass on a Quirk while the connection was still there?’
“Can’t say that I can tell you what exactly was going through his mind at the time, but I do have a guess. Chances are, he sensed New Order being restored and gave it to you for one reason. To make sure that All for One is defeated and achieve a complete victory.” Cathleen’s body began to illuminate in a golden glow, wisps coming out of her form and slowly entering the flame in her hand. “But like I said, this New Order is different from what I had thanks to the enhancement of One for All’s residual energy. Don’t know if that means that the limitations I had will be there or if it has a completely new set of rules to it.”
“Star and Stripe! What’s happening to your- Ouch!” Izuku could finish his question as Cathleen raised her free hand and flicked the smaller boy’s forehead.
A grin formed on her face as she watched Izuku rub his forehead from the pain, “I told you before, my bros call me Cassie. It wouldn’t do for my little brother not to do the same. Don’t worry about me, though. This was gonna happen once New Order fully passed onto you because it’s your Quirk now. I’ll leave a rule in your mind to help you understand how the Quirk works, but there won’t be any vestiges this time. You are the new and only wielder of New Order from now on.”
“New Order… belongs to me now…… I won’t let you down.” Tears began to well up in his eyes at her words, making her smile brightly at him.
“I know you won’t… although, I do have two final pieces to say if you’re willing to hear me out.”
(Back in the Real World)
The surrounding forest trees were flying through the air from an explosion coming from the epicenter where All for One and One for All met, and fingers created from Shigaraki’s body broke apart as it crashed to the ground. From it, two humanoid forms could be seen with one standing while the other was on the ground.
“My intermediate goal is foiled
{AAAAaaaaahhhhh!}
.”
The standing figure took a step forward through the dust to reveal Tomura Shigaraki looking forward, his body damaged and no longer looking like himself, especially since a new persona was in control. All for One glanced down at his mouth with a hollow laugh escaping his lips, “Oh, so there’s a lingering note still there?
AAAAaaaaahhhhh!}
Be silent!”
Emerging out of his face, a mask began to form over his mouth, very similar to the hands that Shigaraki used to wear, and once it had finished forming the second voice cracking behind All for One’s ceased to be heard.
‘It looks like the spiritual damage taken has been reflected onto the physical flesh. But not only that, I can’t feel the rage and hatred that fueled this body, nor the Decay Quirk… To think, after all these years, the vessel I spent such time on is ruined and all traces of my brother are gone now.’
“All… For… One… We aren’t… finished…”
“You aren’t dead yet, boy?” All for One remarked as he stared down at the former user of One for All in silent fury. It was a new experience, one almost similar to what he felt for the Second User after he took Yoichi away. “I’ll be moving onto my final goal now, as hollow as it is now… The world will be mine.”
Izuku struggled to get back up, ready to continue the fight despite the pain he felt, “I won’t… let y-”
Any attempt at standing came to an abrupt halt as the green-haired hero slipped back to the floor, revealing that he had lost both of his arms in a bloody mess just as he did in the subconscious realm. The realization of his destroyed arms signaled even more pain that caused Izuku to thrash around in agony.
“I see that neither of us emerged from that encounter unscathed…”
‘Not yet! I’m not done yet!’
Izuku thought to himself as he struggled to ignore the pain he was feeling and focus on the task at hand, even as he thought back to the doctor’s warnings about losing his arms permanently and what that truly meant.
‘… I knew that there would be consequences and mentally prepared for it! But still… I can feel it inside me…
New Order
!”
“A narrative trope that I believe fits me most at this moment is how loss engenders strength. But the same can’t be said for you,” All for One stated while raising a hand towards Izuku and began concentrating a combination of Quirks to enhance his
Air Cannon
, to not leave a single trace of the one who took everything from him. “A pitiful child with nothing to lose in the first place… I doubt you have any last words worth listening to.”
…
…
…
… If he only knew…
Izuku lifted his head up from the ground to glare at All for One, “The Earth…”
All for One’s eyes narrowed slightly at Deku’s strange words, before dismissing it as he finished charging the Air Cannon in his left hands. “I suppose it doesn’t matter what your last words are. They as useless and have as much worth as you do. Nothing.”
Deku’s green eyes flashed as he watched All for One release the devastating shockwave of air pressure at him,
“
[
New Order:
All the earth within five meters of this spot will rise from the ground… and form a perfectly compressed wall two meters thick!]”
“WHAT?!” The shock was evident of All for One’s face as the dirt and grass all around Deku seemed to follow his exact command and his view of the former One for All user was cut off by a large barrier mere seconds before his attack could make contact, the very earth itself somehow withstanding the air blast except for several large cracks. The realization that his attempt to kill Deku failing was coupled by the fury he already had as he watched the hero emerge from behind the barrier, “How is that possible… those words… your actions… How did you do that?”
Izuku looked at the wall he created for a few more seconds before turning to face All for One with a melancholy expression, one that was slowly replaced with an infuriating smile that reminded him of that oaf All Might and Nana Shimura, two previous wielders of the quirk he once coveted.
“…”
“…”
“…”
“ANSWER ME!”
“… Over a year ago… when I first received One for All… All Might told me there was a difference between receiving something because you are lucky and something you are given because you are recognized. For a long time, despite his words, I had thought that I had been the former… I was a Quirkless nobody that was given this amazing quirk that so happened to belong to my idol and the Number One hero. How much luckier can you get than that?” Izuku’s memories of that fateful morning were still as clear as the day he had
been forced to eat All Might’s hair
received his Quirk after ten months of grueling training, “But I did everything I could to make that power my own, to prove to myself that I was the latter… And just when I thought I would go back to being Quirkless, it happens once again.”
“What?”
“… Leftover Embers of One for All…
[
New Order:
The energy from the embers shall take physical form outside my body and harden to become my new arms!]
” Izuku let out a painful shout as he could feel the residual power left behind by One for All follow his commands and focus on the bloody stumps that had been his biceps, green electricity and flames erupting from them before binding together until they resembled two working arms similar in shape to his original limbs. Taking a deep breath, Deku held out one of his glowing arms in a tight fist, his harden gaze focused on All for One’s masked face. “Just like before, I was recognized by another and was given the power to finish this fight once and for all!”
“That should be impossible… That quirk destroyed itself after that blasted woman ordered it to attack me from within. I watched it break apart with my own eye. But that sequence of activation requirements has too many similarities to just be a coincidence… So how? How did you manage to steal New Order from me when it was reduced to nothing?!”
“I didn’t steal it. It was given to me.” Deku replied while shifting his stance into a more combat based one, “Just because you have a powerful quirk doesn’t mean you’re the one always in control, or did you forget that Shigaraki also had use of All for One as well.”
Several veins throbbed on the villain’s temple upon hearing that,
‘That brat Tenko. Somehow he managed out one last form of rebellion again me before I destroyed him! I don’t know how he reconstructed a quirk when I am incapable of such a feat… but no matter, I’ve already dealt with New Order before. Its restrictions are known to me, and he’s already used one of the two rules to make those arms of his. So, he only has the limit of one rule left.’
“Here I come, All for One!” Izuku yelled as he charged forward, reaching up to tap his shoulder with a glowing hand, “Izuku Midoriya…
[
New Order:
Izuku Midoriya’s physical abilities… will be enhanced to a similar level to how his body was fifteen minutes prior!]
”
“Such foolishness! You may have gained Star and Stripe’s quirk, but obviously, you don’t realize the limitations! The only reason you were so powerful earlier was because of all the extra quirks merged withing One for All thanks to the previous users,” Lifting up his arms, large bolts of black lightning shot out at incredible speeds towards the approaching green haired hero, “Even that blasted woman could not reach the levels that All Might was capable of, since it went beyond what she could balance out. You wasted your orders!”
“Lightning!” Reaching up with both hands in an almost unseeable speed, Deku intercepted the bolts with a tight grip,
[
New Order:
Lightning will cover Izuku Midoriya’s body without harming him!]
” True to his orders, the black lightning shifted around and encircled his entire form from his head to the remains of his iron soles without hurting the hero in the slightest. But that wasn’t the end of it as Deku, much to All for One’s shock, seemed to vanish from sight before reappearing upside-down above him with one leg already descending,
“FLORIDA SMASH!”
The next thing All for One knew, a powerful blow slammed into the top of his head, followed by the shock of his own lightning striking down and causing his body to seize up from the electricity hitting every inch of his muscles. But Deku wasn’t done as he spun his body around with the back of his elbow slamming into the side of the villain’s face,
“WYOMING SMASH!”
“Gah!” All for One gritted his teeth behind the hand mask as he felt the force of the blow temporarily made his vision twist, before snapping his gaze at Deku’s face with glowing eyes, “
Eye Laser plus Heavy Payload plus Scatter plus Lock-On!
” Blue beams of light fired out of the villain’s eyes before spreading out in a burst of multiple slightly streams, causing Deku to backtrack back as fast as possible to avoid being hit, only for the attack to follow him no matter how he adjusted his movements or sharp be turned. “I wouldn’t bother trying to avoid them, Lock-On is a very handy quirk that I had managed to get my hands on from a young girl several years, those beams will continue to follow you until they hit. Hilariously, she wanted to be a Pro Heroine just like her favorite one, not knowing that disposable trash had such blood on her hand!”
Izuku’s eyes narrowed in rage as the mention of Lady Nagant, the sight of her charred cracked from when All for One detonated that exploding quirk inside her body still fresh in his mind.
“How do you like the lasers, by the way? The Quirk came from a family member of the one I took Navel Laser from, though they weren’t as willing. It was much more efficient and easier to use than Naval Laser, so I discarded that useless variant onto that classmate of yours. It gave me three pawns to manipulate and helped me to discard some trash from my inventory.”
Aoyama’s teary eyes face as he was restrained alongside his family was another memory to flash through the green haired teen’s mind. But that rage Deku felt was put on hold as he increased his speed to avoid the beams trying to perform a pincer attack, only for them to curve just before they hit one another. It was just like the fifth user, Daigoro Banjo, had told him. Izuku was allowed to get angry at something, but he needed to control it and properly direct that anger into something more productive in battle.
‘First things first, though!’
Spinning himself around, Deku clenched his energy-based hands while taking a deep breath. “I’ve only seen her use this in a recording when she teamed up with Godzillo against Queen Geedoria, but still… Air!
[
New Order
: The air hardens into my form, but a hundred times bigger!]
……
Fist Bump to the Earth!”
(Meanwhile, in America)
“There’s no doubt about it… That boy somehow managed to acquire Cathleen’s quirk.”
A man with an elongated head, bushy whiskers, and large eyes watched through a large monitor that was broadcasting the final battle that was taking place in Japan, where they had already seen so much already taken place. He had lost count how many times it felt light his heart had come to a stop from watching All Might’s battle against what he had understood to be a de-aging All for One with a battle armor he had commissioned himself, and how the former Number One Hero almost violently torn apart before he had been saved by two of his students. And now, he was watching this green haired boy, who had been revealed to be All Might’s successor and inheritor of the man’s quirk, struggle and put his body way passed its limit to fight against Tomura Shigaraki. For a moment, it had seemed that something had happened between the two in a large clump of what appeared to be mutated fingers before they broke apart to reveal the damage the two had received from that interaction. The teenager had lost both his arms in a bloody mess and seemed to have lost the power he had wielded earlier while his opponent was still standing.
… Only for the very earth to come to Izuku Midoriya’s defense and reality seemed to bend to the boy’s commands. Granted, there was no audio for him or anyone else in the world to hear what either were saying, but Timothy Agpar hadn’t become an American military commander without learning some tricks, which included reading lips. He could easily pick up Midoriya’s words. The actions, the wording, the way reality itself seemed to bend to his whims, all of it he had seen more times than he could recall through his work with the deceased Star and Stripe.. and yet…
“The number of orders he’s made has well gone over Cassie’s limit.” Agpar didn’t have time to ponder this for long as his office door burst open and a man in a suit, one of his communications between him and the President, came rushing in. “What is it?”
“Sir! The President just issued an order! He wants us to send all available Heroes to Japan right away!”
It took a few seconds for the commander to process these new orders, before a large smirk formed on his face. “Very well. Set up all communication to the agencies! I want our Top Ten to prepare for the long-distance travel while our Rescue Heroes and every Hero with a Healing Quirk are getting ready as well. Japan is going to need a lot of help with the aftermath and recovery!”
“Yes, sir! Right away!”
With those orders given the man soon rushed out of the room as quickly as he entered, leaving Agpar by himself as he took a quick look back at the monitor in time to see Midoriya unleash a rush of punches at the incoming attacks, his unseeable giant avatar of air mimicking his movements and landing powerful punches that made contact with the beams of light and detonated each one long before it hit the teenager. At a first glance, the boy didn’t seem have anything worthwhile about him, especially compared to the likes of All Might or Star and Stripe… but that just made him shine brighter upon seeing him in action.
“Inspiring others by pushing forward against the odds, giving hope to those that believe the situation to be hopeless. Do your best, young man.”
Perhaps the world was looking at the birth of a new Symbol.
(All Around the World)
“Whoa! Did you see what that kid did!?”
“I thought he was done for after pushing himself so hard! He lost his freaking arms and kept trying to fight!”
“Come on, Deku!” Katsuma Shimano cheered next to his sister, Mahoro, as they stared at the tv broadcast with their father standing behind them.
“Look at him go! It’s like he has a completely new Quirk now! How many abilities does that hero have?”
“But he’s not using those black whips or flying anymore? Do you think that villain stole them? He’s got that power, right?”
“I think that kid took a power away at the same time! Those moves of his kinda look like Star and Stripe! They said that she died fighting that villain, so maybe he had taken her Quirk, and this boy took it back!”
“No way! Is that even possible?!”
“Damn it, just watching him go is infuriating. We are Pro-Heroes too! We’ve got to send our support over to Japan!”
“Whatever he’s doing… Keep it up, hero!”
“You can do it, man.” Rody Soul and his two siblings watched from their house in Otheon, watching the hero continue to fight off this overpowered foe.
“Take him down!”
On the technological floating I-Island, Melissa Shield had her hands clasped together as she watched Izuku clap his hands together and created a shockwave that sent his opponent flying, “Do your best, Izuku!”
(Underground Bunker in Japan)
“Izuku…” Inko Midoriya watched with tears falling down her cheeks as she watched her son reach out a glowing hand towards in incoming giant projectile All for One had fired at him, clenching his hand as if he was grabbing something causing the attack to stop. Her son didn’t stop there as he reared his arms back and acted like he was throwing something to which the object was sent flying back towards the villain. “Please, do your best and come back to me alive…”
It had nearly broken her when she had seen what had become of her son throughout the fight, breaking his own body using the Quirk that had been given to him by All Might and using the six others inside of it to take on this villain that so many others, including the current Number One Hero, Endeavor, could not defeat. Then she had seen her baby boy turn himself into a monstrous marionette using Black Whip to move his arms and legs to fight off the dozens of Quirks coming at him. The sight of his collapsed body without his arms was too much for the green-haired woman and she had nearly fainted at the exact moment that Shigaraki/All for One, whatever he called himself, poised to finish Izuku off. And then a miracle happened, and a wall of earth intercepted the attack. At first, she had thought that other heroes had come to join the fight, only for it to be revealed that it was all Izuku’s doing… her baby began to used abilities that she had never seen before and this time it wasn’t hurting him in the slightest, it even gave him a new pair of arms to fight with. She didn’t care about where this new power came from, if it would bring her boy home then that was all that mattered.
“Holy shit! For a moment, it almost looked like he was using a supped-up version of your Quirk, Inko.” Mitsuki Bakugou commented while wrapping a comforting arm around her best friend as they watched the shorter woman’s son continue to fight. The taller woman had been somewhat quiet after seeing her own son, Katsuki, work with Izuku to save All Might’s life before he took down the other All for One by himself, but Inko knew it was just because the woman was feeling relief that her brat was alive.
Mitsuki’s husband, Masaru, was standing a few feet from the two with a concerned look on his face as he watched the broadcast as well. He and his wife had known the boy since he was an infant, growing up alongside their son and had seen Izuku as their pseudo nephew… so seeing him in action now was incredible, but… “He’s really pushing himself now, Izuku hasn’t had a moment to catch his breath.”
“You’ve got a quick trip to the frontlines possible, right? Then let me go too! I want to help!”
“I want to fight too! I may not be famous or well-known, but I’m a Hero as well!”
“Here! We’ve got some water and bandages!”
The three were pulled from their thoughts as they saw some of the people in the crowd start to get rowdy off to the side, where they could also see a bunch of people standing in front of Shouta Aizawa, the Pro-Hero Eraserhead and the homeroom teacher of Class 1-A, who was standing on one leg in front of a black, swirling portal. Multiple clones of his fellow teacher, Ectoplasm, were taking offered medical supplies and water bottles from the civilians that wanted to help. What caught their attention the most was the familiar white-haired child standing next to Aizawa with her hand cupped together and holding something out to him.
“E-Eri!” Inko called out in worry as she left Mitsuki’s arms and ran over to the little girl, who turned her head to see the slightly overweight woman rush over.
“Grandma!” Eri didn’t have a chance to say more as the woman wrapped her in a warm, but firm embrace.
Inko pulled back to look down at the girl that her son had kept taking care of ever since he rescued her from a Yakuza family that had been doing horrible experiments to use her quirk to erase quirks completely. After that, she became a ward of U.A. High with the teachers and several students watching over her, Izuku included. She didn’t know when it happened exactly, but apparently little Eri had been reading a book with one of the other students and started calling Izuku her Papa, which in turn made her a grandmother. Inko barely remembered the water damage done to the building when she had been introduced to Eri during a video chat with Izuku and she called her Grandma Inko… because, apparently, they had to call Mitsuki to head over to the apartment to check up on her after she passed out dehydration. After that, she made a point to head to school to help watch over Eri and give her lessons whenever the chance came up.
Not that any of the Pro-Heroes could say no to the woman, especially after seen how All Might himself was nervous around her, though her heard the principal only broke out in a loud, forty-five-minute laugh that he had playing through the intercom. A lot of people had scared looks on their faces when she tried asking about it.
But that was something for another time, instead, Inko’s attention instantly locked onto her forehead where Eri’s horn, where her Quirk’s power was stockpiling, was broken and slightly bloody. The green haired woman looked down at Eri’s hands where a large piece of her horn rested. “E-Eri! You’re horn! What on earth did you do, sweetie?!”
“I had some help with breaking this off… but I want to help Papa!” Heavy tears started to build up in Eri’s eyes as she looked up at her grandmother, “He and everyone have done so much for me, making me smile every day! That’s why I… want to sing for them after this bad day is over! To make them smile too!”
“Do you think… I can be a hero, too?”
“I’m sorry, Izuku… I wish things were different.”
…
…
‘… For so long… that one night has constantly repeated in my head so many times… About how much I failed him. All but crushing my son’s dream because I didn’t want him to get hurt or worse… Not having the strength,’
Inko hadn’t been blind to how their relationship became strained after that, nor on how her son’s life had become so difficult because his previous status as Quirkless. She had told Izuku that she would support him and even made that homemade costume from his notes, but she still… “Mr. Aizawa… Do whatever you can to help my son.”
“Of course.” The eyepatch wearing man nodded his head as he took the offered broken horn from Eri’s outstretched hands.
But as he grabbed the horn, Inko placed a hand on top of his. “And there is something else I want you to do for me as well…”
(Back with Izuku and All for One)
“I must admit. I am surprised how well you are handling that new Quirk, especially with such a burden.” All for One mockingly said as he stared at the painting Izuku, who had fallen to his knees after giving out yet another order to erase the air between them to extinguish the torrent of flames that All for One had unleashed. While he could not see it, All for One could sense the large avatar that Izuku had created had returned to normal air along with the vacuum pocket and electricity surrounding him.
Izuku said nothing in return as he slowly lifted a leg, so he was only resting on one knee.
‘I didn’t realize the mental strength Cassie used when doing her hero work. She didn’t just give orders based on her power meter, she also had to strengthen her mind since she was inserting her will into whatever she used her Quirk on, and this new enhanced version has a much bigger strain. I was able to hold out because it was like using the Quirks of the previous users at the same time, but I don’t have the time to get used to it!’
“However, I can see it now. The new limits of your capabilities. Most of your New Order remains the same, though the only changes are that your number of orders has increased to five and the meter of its limitations is slightly higher. But even with that, you still aren’t close to the level that Cathleen Bate had reached with her decades of experience with it… and then there is the misdirection you pulled with those ‘arms’ of yours.”
The ‘Demon Lord’s’ eyes narrowed in satisfaction as he noticed Izuku’s body briefly flinch at the comment.
“It was ingenious to use the embers left by One for All to create workable arms for you to fight with, but they are still just limbs of energy and not your actual body. You’ve been pretending to activate New Order when your ‘hands’ have touched them, but in truth, you’ve been using your entire body. Not many realize that being able to touch something isn’t limited to just your hands, and since most only ever saw Star and Stripe use her hands to activate her Quirk, it made sense for people to assume it was a hand-contact requirement. Your head, torso, legs, feet, even your very skin. Each part of your body is in contact with the thing that you are setting a rule on. You were taking such a risk, weren’t you.”
‘… Damn, he figured that out as well.’
Izuku thought back to his actions in controlling the lightning that All for One had tried to hit him with earlier. If it hadn’t been for his enhanced reactions and timing, the electricity would’ve reached his heart and caused major damage seconds after it started to spread across his body.
“You have done well, but we both know that this battle has reached its conclusion.” All for One stated as he raised his arm up, each of his fingers activating a different quirk of different types including
Fire Twisters
, his
Rivet Stab,
his finger bone emerging from the skin with a
Bone Cannon
, bladed
Fingernail Launchers,
and a large mouth coming out of the final finger. “Now that I know that you only have five rules to use, and are already using two of them, all I must do is give you more challenges than you can handle. I won’t bother in trying to take New Order since you would just repeat what that woman did and sabotage the Quirk once again, so I will just destroy the both of you and continue with my plans.”
“I won’t let you win!
[
New Order-]
”
Several white bindings encircled All for One’s arm and pulled it back, catching both him and Izuku by surprise as they turned to see a figure in the air behind the villain with the white strips coming out of their elbow. The figure turned out to be Izuku’s classmate, Hanta Sero aka Cellophane, who was grinning even with the injuries present on his body and secured his Quirk,
Tape
, around All for One to prevent him from attacking. “Don’t worry, Midoriya! We’re here to help!”
‘So weak and trivial! I was so focused on Midoriya that I didn’t pick up the lesser warnings.’
Ripping off the tape wrapped around his superior strength, All for One barely had time to turn his head as two others came from the side and attacked him. The next thing he knew, a large bulky tail and a strong fist slammed into his torso.
“TORNADO TAIL DANCE!!”
“SUGAR KNUCKLE!!”
Watching his classmates knock All for One flying back with their combined strike, Izuku was almost at a loss for words. “You’re all safe. Sero, Ojiro, Sato… But how did you get here?”
“Sorry to keep you waiting Midoriya.” Izuku snapped his head back to see Aizawa hopping out of a swirling portal, one of many that formed throughout the battlefield as Pro-Heros that had been fighting in the various locations they had set up were coming through one by one. “It took a few minutes, but we managed to resolve every other battle besides this one.”
Kirishima, also known as Red Riot, let out a chuckle as he noticed more of his classmates come out of the portals near Midoriya. “Funny bumpin’ into all of you guys here.”
“Right back at you.” Mezo Shoji, Tencacole, let out a grunt as his maskless face fully exited the warp gate.
Anima, another classmate by the name of Koji Koda, stood next to Shouji with a glare on his face, “Communication from the police went around asking if there was anyone who could still fight!”
“As long as I’m still conscious, I’ll do whatever it takes!” Tsuyu Asui, the hero called Froppy, nodded in agreement as she landed nearby.
“We heard that Aizawa-sensei managed to win over Kurogiri…” Mina Ashido, otherwise known as the acid using hero Pinky stumbled a little but kept her form standing tall.
Chargebolt, Denki Kaminari, looked like he was close to going over his Quirk’s limit but was holding up two thumbs-up. “When we saw our pal busting his butt to keep on fighting…”
“How could we possibly
not
take action and help?” Momo Yaoyorozu, the hero dubbed Creati, finished as she came to a stop next to Kaminari.
“… Everyone…” Izuku muttered to himself as he saw more of his classmates, friends that were injured and had barely received proper treatment, continue to arrive via
Warp Gate
along with other Hero Students and Pro-Heroes.
“So, you’ve all come to have your Quirks stolen, have you?” All for One raised his hand at the slowly growing number of heroes forming, showing off the hole in his hand that his Quirk’s true abilities resided.
‘I doubt this was the work of that copycat student from UA’s Class 1-B, based on the data his time limit should’ve run out… which means, Kurogiri has…’
“Sensei! What are you?!
“Don’t move around so much.” Aizawa ordered as he knelt to Izuku’s level, staring down at the glowing arms with narrow eyes, “Good improvision, even though I don’t know how you did it. How long has it been since you lost your original arms?”
“I don’t know how long it was while we were in that subconscious space, but it’s been about five or six minutes since I returned…” Izuku answered while keeping his focus locked on All for One, his mind racing in thought know that he had the chance to think.
‘He was right about my level of experience not being on Cassie’s level, but there is another reason I wasn’t using some of the rules she implemented in the past. I saw her memory of her fight against Shigaraki when she tried to use a rule on him. It didn’t work because she had focused on Tomura Shigaraki and didn’t know about the two of them slowly merging consciousnesses, which meant that her perception and theirs were not matched up for it to work.’
When Izuku had arrived at the battlefield and started fighting Shigaraki/All for One, the latter had boasted about how the two were now perfectly fused together, only for that to fail because Shigaraki overthrew his former mentor and completely swallowed him up. There had been nothing left of All for One and even if there had been, the small bit that remained should’ve been destroyed when Izuku had smashed Tenko’s spirit. That didn’t seem to be the case as All for One somehow managed to return, but something did not seem right about whatever method he used. Which had brought about Izuku’s biggest inquiry and issue with using New Order on All for One up to this point.
Was this person before them still All for One?
Izuku was pulled out of his thoughts as he felt something poke against his shoulder, causing him to turn to see Aizawa pressing a familiar looking horn against his body. His eyes widened as he recognized the broken horn and turned to his homeroom teacher, who let out a breath, “It might be a long shot since not a lot of energy has stockpiled into it, but she wanted to help you. So, you can’t die, until you’ve heard your daughter’s singing.” Looking down at his body, the green-haired teen saw the glow from Eri’s
Rewind
Quirk coating his body and slowly reversing the damage dealt to his body. He quickly dismissed the rule creating his pseudo arms as he felt his limbs slowly start to reform. “… I’ve also got a message for you… from your mother.”
Blinking a few times at that, Izuku could already feel tears building up in his eyes already from the thought of Eri potentially harming herself to help him and was wondering what his mother had to say.
“She told me to tell you this, ‘You can be a Hero. In fact, I know you’ll be one that will surpass even All Might. Just make sure that you promise to work hard and come home to us alive.’”
The tears started falling down Izuku’s face at those words.
It had taken thirteen years, but his mother’s words made him just as happy as when All Might said something similar the day they met two years ago. Both his mother and daughter were supporting him and wanted him to make it back alive, and everyone else had come to help finish this fight as well.
…… He had to respond to those feelings in kind.
Taking a deep breath, Midoriya looked down at the slow process of time being reversed on his arms. “All right… If there isn’t enough stockpiled into the horn, I’ll just give it more. Rewind Quirk, One for All embers…
[
New Order – Conjoined:
A small portion of the ember will supply Rewind with enough power to restore Izuku Midoriya’s body to how it was twenty minutes ago!]
”
Aizawa watched in shock as the green energy from earlier mixed in with the golden aura of Eri’s Quirk, actually speeding up the process and returning Izuku back to how he was before the fighting began. “Did you just say… New Order?! But that’s impossible! None of the Quirks in One for All should have anything like that… and that green aura…”
“… I don’t have One for All anymore, I gave it up.” Izuku revealed as he made it back to his feet, already feeling most of the damage he had gotten from the earlier fight being erased. “Not just it, all of the other Quirks are gone too… But in it’s place, I got something else to help me fight… The embers that took root inside me like they did All Might, and the New Order Quirk that I traded in its place.”
“That’s unbelievable… You have both inside of you?!” Aizawa couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Even with the actual first Quirk gone and the remaining energy only temporary, at this moment his student had the power of two Number One Heroes dwelling within him.
Feeling his arms being fully restored and the wound on his face close up, clenched his hands into fists. “All for One isn’t done with me yet… I’ve still got those embers, and I will finish this…”
Seeing the resolve in Izuku’s eyes, Aizawa knew there was no stopping his student, and handed over a large shirt with All Might’s face on it. “Midoriya… Take this, it’s from the refugees. They handed over a lot of medicine and bandages too, but it looks like you don’t need it.”
“It’s the Series Five, One-Size Shirt from the Men’s Non-No Brand!” Izuku was blown away at the rare merchandise he was given before sliding the t-shirt over his head. Turning his attention back to the villain standing across from the large group of Heroes surrounding him, Izuku began making his way to the front of the crowd.
(Brief Flashback)
“Final pieces? What are they?” Izuku asked as he looked up at the taller woman while slightly tilting his head to the side.
“The first one is about your Hero name, from what I heard in reports, you went with the name Deku, right?” Cathleen asked while crossing her arms, a small frown on her face. “From what I know that word translates to useless, good-for-nothing or a wooden doll. So, I wanted to ask why you decided on that name specifically.”
“Well, that’s because I wanted to change the meaning of that name. It was something bullies used to call me all the time because I was Quirkless and weak, and honestly, I hated it for so long…” Izuku explained before the face of one of his best friend’s, Ochako Uraraka, smiling face flashed through his mind. “But a close friend of mine showed me that it could be represented in a different way, like saying ‘I can do it!’”
“Is that so… Hmmm, I suppose I can understand the meaning behind it. But if you want my suggestion, I think you should change it a little bit.” Holding up her hand to stop the teen from interrupting her, the former Number One Heroine continued, “I’m not saying that you can’t hold onto the meaning. However, if you want to be known as the Hero that broadcasts that meaning, go with the actual word instead. From what I can put together, Deku was the name you wanted when you were starting to solidify what kind of hero you wanted to be and followed after All Might. But with this new name, you can actually be your own hero and really match up to that name’s meaning. Bringing hope for a better future!”
(Flashback Finished)
“ALL FOR ONE!” Izuku’s voice echoed throughout the battlefield as his enemy and allies turned their attention towards the teen, who was positioning himself just inches ahead of the crowd with an arm raised high. “You said that I was somebody worthless with nothing to lose, but that is far from the truth! I AM THE ONE FOR ALL HERO, DEKIRU! This story of yours after two hundred long years will finally come to an end, and do you know why?”
Clenching his raised hand into a fist, Izuku brought it down to point it at the angered villain with all of the other Pro-Heroes positioned behind him.
“BECAUSE WE… ARE…
HERE!”
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Talon sat on the bed and stared through the glass wall. It usually did not get glass walls. It got concrete walls, if it did not get put into the freezer. This cell was cold but not as cold as the freezer and it had glass walls.
And it could see everything outside the glass walls.
It did not know if this was a test or if its new Grandmaster made a mistake. New Grandmaster was much smarter than its Old Grandmaster. New Grandmaster had survived Talon’s assassination and, before Talon could be terminated or reeducated for failure, had destroyed the Court. Talon had watched.
Old Grandmaster was dead. Some Owls were dead too, refusing to come in alive. The rest were in prison. Talon was the only one taken by New Grandmaster but Talon did not know why.
Talon had failed to assassinate the Bat. Talon had
failed
. Why did New Grandmaster want him?
Talon did not understand.
“Richard?” New Grandmaster was outside. New Grandmaster insisted on calling Talon a people name though it did not know why. It was not a person. It was a Talon. “I—I’m sorry it took so long, but I tracked down Haly’s Circus. Do you remember the circus?”
Bright lights, laughter, wide wide smiles. Hands in his and he was flying. He was falling.
Talon shoved it all deep down where Talon could not remember and Grandmaster could not punish it for remembering. It was not a person. It was never a person. It was always Talon.
“No,” Talon answered.
“Oh,” Grandmaster looked sad, drooping in his costume. “I—okay, but they gave me some things of yours. Stuff that was left behind when—stuff that was left behind.”
Talon did not have things. Talon was a possession and a possession could not have possessions.
“Would you like it?”
“Talon does not understand.”
Grandmaster sighed, a sharp, frustrated thing. Talon braced itself. But Grandmaster did not come into the cell to punish it. Grandmaster had barely punished it at all and Talon had to stop counting all the missed punishments. “You’re not Talon, Richard. We went over this.”
Oh, yes. The new rules. No killing, no hurting Alfred-the-butler, it-was-Bruce-not-Grandmaster and Talon had to answer to Richard. It was still waiting for the rest of the rules.
“Yes, Bruce.”
Grandmaster sighed again. He looked tired. “Okay, Richard, how about this? I’ll give you the things I got from the circus and you can decide what you want to keep and what you don’t want to keep. How does that sound?”
Talon didn’t understand. But Grandmaster was waiting for an answer, eyes sharp and expression anticipatory. Yes or no? Which one did Grandmaster want?
It was so hard here. Talon wasn’t in a freezer, but in a freezer it didn’t have to make all these
choices
.
Talon nodded, sharp and quick. It tensed for a punishment if it was wrong.
But Grandmaster’s face split into a bright, gleaming smile and Talon relaxed despite itself. “I’ll go and get them!” Talon watched as Grandmaster headed to the big computer in the center of the cave and called for Alfred-the-butler. Alfred-the-butler appeared from the elevator with a box.
Talon tensed again when the glass door whooshed out of the way, but Grandmaster didn’t enter the cell. He put the box down on the floor, smiled again at Talon, and stepped back.
Anything could be in the box. It could be dangerous. It could be another test. Talon waited five full minutes for the box to explode before cautiously pulling it closer.
Grandmaster was watching. Grandmaster was
waiting
. Even if this was a punishment, Talon had to take it.
Talon reached inside the box. Nothing stabbed it. Nothing burned it. Nothing exploded.
There weren’t very many things inside the box. There were some children’s clothes, including a bright leotard in red, green, and yellow. There were some souvenir knick-knacks inside, cheap and plasticky. There was a circus poster that made Talon hurt like it’d been stabbed in training and it ignored it. And finally there was a small gray plush elephant.
Talon stared at it. It was light when Talon picked it up and oh-so-soft under its fingers. It looked worn.
Well-loved
drifted up from a corner of its mind and for the first time in a long time, Talon didn’t try to shove those half-whispers down.
Zitka. Talon didn’t know how or where it had come from, but the elephant had a name and its name was
Zitka
. And if—if this
thing
could have a name…then maybe Talon could have a name too?
Richard was too long. But Dick—Dick sounded just right.
Dick clutched Zitka tightly as the first of many mental barriers finally gave way.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
It’s not so much that Leon’s never
liked
being with men or hasn’t been attracted to them in the past. Celebrities, the occasional man he’d see pass him on the street, some of his own coworkers he’s found himself attracted to. So, it’s not that he’s not
into
men, but rather the idea that he’s never had the opportunity.
When he’d first met Ada, it was natural. Leon’s used to being with woman, it’s just what he’s considered the default for himself from the beginning. That’s what he’s supposed to be into as a man, right? It all came about naturally.
And then Ada mentioned a friend of a friend who had been looking for a one night stand of sorts. Wanting to do some exploring of his own, maybe join in on a threesome here and there. Leon hadn’t thought much of it when she first mentioned it, rather, he’d just turned over in bed and thought,
huh, I hope he finds what he’s looking for
. Whoever it was Ada was talking about.
The idea of threesomes or being non-monogamous with Ada was never a question for him. If they opened things up here and there, it wouldn’t be a big deal for him. He doesn’t mind. He enjoys new experiences like that, he just doesn’t actively seek them out.
But then, Ada brought them both out for a lunch date. Something simple, just to talk. She’d dropped it to Leon on her way to work one day. “Hey, by the way. You remember that friend of a friend? Chris? He’ll be joining us today at lunch. I think you two would get along well.”
Leon thought it was strange for her to drop it on him last minute, but thought nothing of it. He was just a friend coming to talk more people.
And the moment Leon’s eyes rested on him, he swears his heart skipped a beat and he had to down his water at the table to combat the dryness of his mouth. This guy was
fit
. Not overly so with bulging muscles or prominent veins, but enough that Leon knows he has to work some sort of military job or something of the sort. Chris sits beside Leon at the table and talks to Ada mostly about working under some guy named Wesker. Leon doesn’t think much of it, but he finds his eyes continuing to lower to Chris’ chest, and then to his stomach… and lower.
“Leon, what do you say we invite Chris over one of these nights, show him around the house? You wouldn’t mind, right?”
Leon had looked up at her and through a choked breath, he’d nodded. “Oh, yeah, of course not.” He came off casual, genuine. Thank God, but there was a look in Ada’s eye that he’d only ever seen the first time she’d brought a collar home for Leon and told him to kneel at the end of the bed with it on, head tucked between her thighs. It’s a thrilling look, one of curiosity and perversion. One that screams something is happening and he’s not entirely in on the idea of it all. He swallows down his inhibitions and smiles at them before turning his eyes away, trying to ignore the flutter in his heart.
Ada had fucked him that night with the strapon, hands tangled in his hair as he’d been told to stare at the wall and call Chris’ name over and over again like a chant, urging her deeper and deeper against his prostate until he’d come undone, burying his head in the sheets with tears in his eyes. She’d asked him, knowing he would say yes to going all the way on the night that Chris would come over. And of course he did.
The night came and Ada watched Leon shave himself for the first time in years, preparing himself in ways that he hadn’t for Ada in a long while. She wasn’t jealous, far from it, actually. She enjoyed knowing that he was excited, perhaps a bit anxious, but certainly excited. He had prepared himself beforehand, too, labored over the bed with his fingers in his ass up until Chris actually showed up, knocking at the door. Ada had answered and it became clear, then, that she was in charge of what was going to happen.
Leon stares down the hall, dressed again as Chris makes his way past him to the bedroom, dropping his bag off in the corner of the room before clapping his hands together awkwardly, turning his eyes between Leon and Ada.
Ada takes Leon close, lips ghosting his to ease him into it all. She’s familiar. Home. Her perfume reminds him of so many days spent lounging in bed with his mouth thick in the taste of pussy and her fingers around his cock, urging him through orgasm after orgasm after orgasm. He swallows back his anxiety as he kisses her back, deepening it.
And then he feels Chris against his back.
He’s taller than him. Stronger than him. His hands are massive, trailing down his shoulders to the curve of his waist and Leon can feel his hardon through his sweats. A real, throbbing cock. It’s nothing like he’s ever had with Ada before. It’s warm, almost…
alive
in a way. He shudders into Ada’s lips, tries to ignore the building anxiety in his chest.
“Relax, Kennedy,” Ada whispers in his ear. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”
Leon nods dryly, shutting his eyes as Chris churns his head to the side and plants a trail of kisses down the span of his neck, licking the salt from his lips a moment after. “Are you sure this is alright? We don’t–”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Leon replies firmly, desperate to ease Chris of his inhibitions. He doesn’t dare want this to end, he’s just a bit nervous. Performance anxiety.
Ada undresses first, slipping that signature red dress from her frame and leaving herself in a laced black bra—the one she only wears on special occasions. Leon kisses across her collarbone and takes her nipple in his mouth, suckling her and worshipping her chest. Familiarity. Familiarity. His eyelashes tickle the mound of her chest when he blinks, brows furrowed.
Chris goes next, simply for the hopes of comforting Leon and making him as confident in himself as he possibly can be. He strips himself of his shirt first and Leon’s finally turned to face him, confronted with those thick pecs. He does the same to Chris as he had Ada while she coos words of praise in his ear. “There you are, Leon. Just like that. You know how to do this already.” And Leon groans as Chris pulls him in further by his hair, encouraging him.
Chris strips himself of his sweats next and Leon swallows back his anxiety as the bulge of his twitches in his briefs. He’s gently urged down to his knees by Ada and coaxed as that cock pops from the confines. Leon’s breaths are hot, eyes wide and nervous.
“Nice and easy, Leon. Open up.” Ada purrs into his ear, holding his hair in one hand and coaxing him closer. Leon moans when Chris lowers his cock to his lips and he finally opens up, taking him in.
The taste is so different from what he’s used to. Salty and musky with the taste of Chris’ body. The length twitches in his mouth and he thinks it’s the most arousing thing he’s ever experienced. That cock works itself down his tongue and to the back of his throat, coaxing tears to his eyes.
“Attaboy,” Chris hums above him, pulling back a bit so he doesn’t immediately gag. “You’ve never done this before?”
Leon, with a mouth too full to answer allows Ada to answer for him. “Only the strap. Isn’t that right?”
The blond finally pulls back and groans out sharply. “Yes, Ma’am…”
Ada lays back in the bed afterward, legs spread she urges Leon close. He pulls her underwear down and laps at her slit for a few moments before he’s working himself on the edge of the bed, sinking in. She moans around him, gripping the sheets and clenching around his length. He follows soon after with his own moan of pleasure, tucking his head into her shoulder.
“I’m going in now, alright, Leon?” Chris asks behind him. Leon breathlessly nods, brows furrowed. He bares down and slowly, gently, Chris works himself inside of Leon, easing him into Ada at the same time. With each inch that Leon takes, he moans a bit louder, his muscles tense up.
Still, despite how overstimulating it all is–and the fact he nearly comes on the spot when Chris sinks in enough to find his prostate–it’s one of the best experiences of his life. He calls Chris’ name and then Ada’s as he follows Chris’ pace, each thrust domino-ing him further into her.
They work a pace up–awkward and clanky but
good
nonetheless. And when Leon cums, he presses himself back into Chris’ chest and pulls Ada up into him, sandwiched between the two bodies. He’s never felt so lucky. He’s never felt so
hot
.
They lie in a puddle of overstimulation by the end of it. Leon talks about how he felt about it, his favorite parts and Chris tells him he did good and Ada kisses him on the lips and he kisses back. It’s something chaste and gentle and so different than anything Leon expected. He falls asleep between them and has the best rest he’s had in a long while.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Later that night, Happy and Natsu sat together eating the fish Natsu had caught that morning. Happy joyously ate his grilled fish, but Natsu only stabbed his fork at the white flakes. Although Happy hummed with each bite and chatted about his attempts at wooing Carla—which failed, yet again—Natsu said nothing, brooding silently, his face slack as the events of that day swirled chaotically through his mind again and again.
Then suddenly, Happy said, "It's too bad Gray couldn't eat with us."
Natsu poked apart a flake of fish with his fork and muttered only, "Yeah…"
Happy was not so dense as to miss seeing the depression in his best friend. "Is he sick?"
Natsu's brow tensed, and his voice came out hoarsely. "He's already sick, Happy."
"No, I mean like with something else, like maybe his tummy hurt so he had to go home, or…" He really was worried about Natsu's sullen attitude. "Is he okay?" he asked softly.
Natsu could not look up at Happy, but he answered, "Yeah, he's fine."
Gray was fine. Gray would get well. And Natsu was well. All the stuff they had been doing, pushing the limits of what was safe, and yet he was still well. Gray should have been relieved to hear the good news. So why … why did he…?
"Natsu?" Happy looked down at the plate. Although Natsu had torn the fish apart with his fork, none of it had gone up into his mouth. "You're not eating anything. Are you feeling sick?"
An anguished tenseness crinkled the Dragon Slayer's brow. Sick? No! He
wasn't
sick. He was fine. He might have bit Gray and licked the blood, but the doctor said that was safe. Gonorrhea rarely passed through the bloodstream, only if a person was
really
sick with it, and Gray was fine, he was almost done with treatment. What Natsu did was never a threat to begin with. So why had Gray shouted at him? Why had he pushed Natsu away? Why did he say such painful words?
Happy tipped his head down, trying to see the lowered face better. "Natsu?"
Natsu suddenly slid his chair back and rose to his feet. "I'm not hungry," he snapped. "You can eat it." He turned, stomped to his bedroom, and slammed the door behind him.
For once, Happy ignored his fish as he looked at where his best friend had fled. His little kitty mouth tugged down with worry. "Natsu…"
Natsu flopped onto his bed and threw one arm over his eyes, covering his face just as a tear slid down. Gray's words echoed endlessly through his ears.
"From now on, I don't want you around."
Gray's face when he shouted that had been so furious. Natsu knew he screwed up, he forgot about Gray being sick, but … but he hadn't caught it! He was fine! Shouldn't Gray have been relieved?
Tears kept falling, and the worst thing was that Natsu knew these sorts of tears could not be held back through willpower alone. He had lost his will standing on Gray's doorstep and hearing him shout in rage, "
Just stay the hell away from me.
"
"Dammit," he whispered as the hot tears dripped down both eyes. He flipped over and buried his face into the pillow to muffle the shaking breaths that shuddered out. "Dammit!"
He screwed up, and Gray…
Gray was so mad, he…
The door creaked open, and Happy peeked inside. "Are you okay, Natsu?"
Natsu growled into his pillow, "Just leave me alone."
He did not want to cry in front of Happy. He felt ashamed. He thought he and Gray were truly in love, but in the end their relationship crumbled after less than two months. Maybe it was not all that important to Gray. Maybe Natsu was just another person to fuck. He sneered as he realized how foolish it was to hope that maybe—just maybe—a relationship like that could last forever. He had even told Gray that he wanted to be a marked mating couple. So stupid! As if Gray even understood what that meant!
Happy walked up to Natsu and patted his leg. "Did the lunch go bad?"
Natsu's fist clenched. The lunch! The olives! He had wanted something sexy but simple, yet it all went to hell.
"Maybe you cooked it wrong, and maybe Gray got sick, and he'll get better, and—"
"Happy, shut u-…" Natsu choked back the words. This anger was not meant for Happy. It was for himself, his own foolishness.
Happy backed off. "Sorry."
Natsu sighed, and his whole body sank a little more into the mattress. "No. I didn't mean to snap. I'm sorry."
Happy heard a snuffle, and although he did not have the nose of a Dragon Slayer, he had the nose of a cat. He smelled the saltiness of tears. "Natsu, what happened?" Another snuffle muted itself in the pillow. Happy lightly touched his best friend's head, stroking the pink hair in sympathy. "Natsu?"
Unsteadily, Natsu answered, "I think Gray broke up with me."
"You
think
?"
Natsu gave up trying to be strong. If there was one person to whom he could be honest about his feelings, it was Happy. If not Happy, then no one else! Through tears, he explained, "He said, '
From now on, I don't want you around.
' That…" He snuffled again and hugged the pillow around his head. "That's breaking up, right?"
Happy's lower lip quivered at seeing how heartbroken Natsu was. He hugged around Natsu's head, comforting him for once. "Why? What happened?" he cried in sympathy.
Natsu sneered in anger at himself. "I screwed up."
"Did you cook bad food?"
"No!" he yelled, but Natsu slammed his mouth shut. He did not want to take this out on Happy. Happy was just trying to be a friend. "He's mad at me. Something I did."
"You can tell me."
"I don't think I can this time."
"Why?"
"I just can't."
Happy smirked and nudged him. "Is it something
sexy
?"
Instead of cheering him up, that anguished Natsu even more.
Happy sensed a lot through the silence, and his teasing smile fell. "Oh. Did you hurt him?"
Natsu slumped, all muscles going limp as he remembered how Gray ran off with blood dripping down his shoulder. "Yeah," he whispered guiltily.
"I told you to be careful with Gray. It's his first time with a guy and—"
"Happy!" Natsu shouted, and he yanked himself off the pillow, wiping his eyes. "For one, it's
not
his first time with a guy."
"Ooh!" Happy said in surprise. Who would have thought Gray… "So, this isn't about sex?"
"No! W-Well…" Natsu squirmed as a flush crept from his cheeks all the way up to his ears. "Kinda."
"And you hurt him?"
"Not like that. Not
that
way."
"Is he okay?"
Natsu frowned in dejection. "I don't know. He kicked me out. He told me he doesn't want me at his house anymore. He said to stay away from him."
"Was he injured?"
Natsu's eyes drooped, and his lip began to quiver again. "He was … bleeding."
"Natsu!"
Natsu drew his knees up and rested his chin on them, staring ahead blankly. "I really screwed up," he whispered. "He didn't even give me a chance to take care of him." His face suddenly turned angry. "I could have
healed
him!" he suddenly shouted. "Even if it was dangerous to me, I don't care. I wanted to heal him, to take care of it, because … because it was
my mistake
." Natsu slumped back down into his knees. "He wouldn't let me. He was scared; I could see that. I could
smell
the fear. And … and he was so mad. He kept yelling at me, telling me to stay the hell away." Natsu snuffled again and crossed his arms over his knees to further bury his head.
Happy patted Natsu's arm. "I'm sure Gray didn't mean it."
Natsu sighed as the truth left him feeling hollow. "I think he did." He gulped, but sobs still shook his shoulders. "I lost him. I screwed up so … so he left me. He told me … he doesn't want me around …
from now on
." The sobs really wracked him now, and Natsu threw himself down into his pillow again, too ashamed to be crying like this over a little thing like romance. "Dammit, I don't want to cry over that damn popsicle. It was stupid. Stupid! Me and Gray. How ridiculous! You know what? I'm
glad
we didn't tell the guild. They just would have laughed. Me and Gray. Fucking hilarious!"
"Natsu, stop it," Happy scolded. "You love him."
"Doesn't matter anymore. It never mattered!"
"Stop it. I don't believe that. Gray really loves you. He wouldn't break up with you just because you made him bleed a little. Or … or was it really bad?"
"It … was." Natsu clenched the pillow until the fabric began to tear. "I really screwed up. I … really …
really
screwed up."
"Natsu." He began to reach for his head.
"Happy, don't! Just … just don't. I don't want to yell at you; it's not your fault. I'm really a mess right now. Can you leave, just for an hour or so?"
"Do you need to cry?"
"I need to settle down. Cry, maybe break a few things," he admitted. "I don't want you around. I might hurt you. Please, just … just give me an hour to settle down."
"I understand." Happy's wings formed, and he flew to the window. "Don't do anything stupid, and don't set the house on fire again, and try to eat. You need to eat, even if it's just rice and not fish." He worried for Natsu, but he knew that sometimes the Dragon Slayer simply needed some time alone. "I'll be back later."
"Sorry."
"No, it's okay. I know you really love Gray, so this is okay. Just don't do anything drastic."
"You know I'm not like that."
"You've never been in love before. Erza says love makes people do stupid things, so don't do anything stupid."
"I won't," Natsu said, smiling weakly, "and I'll try to eat."
Happy nodded and flew off. He soared through the evening sky and back into town. He saw the lights still shining in the Fairy Tail guild hall. He could easily spend an hour or two there, but he decided to help Natsu out. That was what friends were for, or so he told himself. So he turned his wings and flapped over to Gray's apartment. He walked up to Gray's door and gave a knock.
"What?" came an angry shout.
Happy leaned his mouth to the door. "Gray, it's me."
A few seconds later, the door opened and the Ice-Make wizard looked down in surprise. "Happy?"
"You need to go see Natsu," he insisted.
Gray's shock instantly turned to anger. "I can't! That bastard is on his own for now."
"He really needs you," Happy insisted.
Gray began to turn away, but a moment of panic hit him. Natsu was heartbroken, and Gray was unsure how badly he might take this. He looked around with a chill in his veins. "Is he okay? He hasn't done anything stupid, has he?"
"He's really sad."
Sad? Just sad? The terror turned to anger. Stupid flame-brain was
sad
, huh? Serves him right!
"Gray, I don't know what happened, but you need to make Natsu happy. He's really sad, and he's not eating." Happy knew not to tell him about Natsu crying. That would just humiliate the Dragon Slayer.
"I can't be around him right now," Gray insisted. His heart ached as he imagined how bad Natsu must be, for Happy to come here and beg for help. However, if he ran to Natsu now, he knew he would never be able to keep his distance. For Natsu's own safety, he had to stay away, just for a few days. Gray needed to be strong, to not give in to his own heart … just for a few days.
"But Gray—"
"I can't!" he snapped.
Happy backed up a step, but he did not give up. "Did you really tell him not to come around here anymore, and to stay away from you?"
Gray firmed up his resolve. "Yep. I don't want to see him."
"Because he did something bad?"
Gray reached up, and Happy saw the bandage on his neck with some blood already soaked through. "He really messed up, and … and so did I. We're both messed up, which is why I don't want him around me."
Happy felt a shiver as he saw for himself how stern Gray was about this. He really was breaking up with Natsu! "Gray?" He felt a little anger on behalf of his best friend. "Did you ever even love Natsu?"
Gray's eyes slammed shut at the sadness reflected in Happy's voice. What could he say, though? Had he been in love? Of course he had been. Could he confess it? Could he admit it to Happy when he could not even say the words to Natsu himself? Was he still in love?
"Yes," he whispered with a shiver at confessing that.
What if Natsu died just for admitting to that feeling? Everyone to whom Gray had ever said 'I love you' died. He had not said it directly to Natsu, but he felt it. He felt it painfully in his heart. That emotion terrified him.
"I … feel that way. That's why he shouldn't be anywhere near me."
Natsu was probably brooding at home, not eating, likely crying, and he must have kicked Happy out, either in anger or for Happy's own protection. Gray wanted to protect Natsu. This was the only way he knew. He hated that it was something that only caused Natsu pain.
"Happy." Gray looked down at the blue cat and smiled sadly. "Take care of him … because obviously I
can't
!" Then Gray slammed the door shut before Happy could see his tears.
Happy stood there, stunned at being shut out, but he smelled once again the saltiness of tears. Gray was trying to act tough, but this was hurting him far worse than he would let on. Happy wondered if there was anything he could do. He was only a friend. The real healing had to happened between Gray and Natsu themselves.
He scratched on the door and called in. "Gray?" With his ear against the door, he heard a snuffle. "Graaay?" he called in again, but there was no response. "Natsu still loves you," he told the ice wizard, "and I hope you still love him." That was all he could say, deliver that one message; the rest was up to Gray and Natsu. Happy turned away, sad he could not do more.
Inside, Gray stood by the window, looking out at the stars, not realizing how the moon reflected on his tear-stained cheeks.
"Of course I feel that way about him," he whispered miserably to himself, "but I can't be around him. I…" Below, he saw Happy leaving out of the apartment and flying off toward the guild. "Love. Why am I so scared to say the word
love
? Every other word, I can say, but … that one word, the one emotion I truly feel … I can't say it." His head rested against the glass window. "Just knowing I feel it scares the hell out of me. I can't lose him, even if … if that means … pushing him away. He'll be safe. That's all that matters. He won't die … because of me."
Gray's eyes closed as more tears fell.
"I'm sorry, Natsu. I can't lose you. Not to an illness, and not to my own cursed feelings. You fell for a fucked-up man like me." He slumped down and gazed at the stars. "I'm sorry, Natsu. I'm sorry."
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
ㅤ
And the last type of Wielder, of power unmatched and danger unthinkable, which all good people should know and beware—
Nami turned the page, never minding the dull ache in her wrist from a day's worth of weaving work. The book was old, and the pages were yellow and fragile, so she had to be very careful. Teacher had only lent her his copy of
The Supreme Mysteries of Magic
because he knew she would never ruin any book, much less one so rare and precious. Unlike a certain dumb—
A whirlwind of long, loose black hair and skinny limbs flew over her windowsill and straight in her face. She screeched, snatching the book away from the desk the very moment before a dirty palm landed on it, and pressed the tome to her chest with one hand, like a mother hen over a chick.
"Luffy! I told you not to do this!"
"Heh."
With her free hand, Nami delivered her retribution.
"Ow. Bookworming again?" he judged her.
"Go away," she waved him off.
She was finished with her day's work, she did her chores, she took care of her garden and checked on her roses, and now, she wanted to take her time enjoying a book. She sure hadn't been getting many chances for that while she had still been apprenticing—thank the Twelve that her weaving apprenticeship was now over and done with. The book she was reading now was informative, if not too exciting, and rather useful. Especially interesting was the extensive consideration of how a mage's physical and spiritual body could gradually grow its magical capability for greater throughput and better contr—
"Forget that dumb book! Quick, Nami, come, Sanji's manifesting!"
"Took him long enough," Nami snorted, very gently putting the book down, far away from where Luffy's dirty hands had briefly rested. It seemed like the old tome would have to wait some: her friend manifesting was
big.
She had to be there.
Then, a sweaty, sticky hand seized hers, and pulled her towards the window.
"Luffy! Doors exist!"
"Meh," and he jumped right out of the window, straight into her prized crimson roses, leaving her with no choice but to follow suit.
Honestly, it was about time Sanji manifested. While Luffy was definitely an anomaly when it came to his magic, Sanji simply turned out to be a
very
late bloomer, giving old man Zeff a lot of grief. For several years of doom and gloom, he had suspected that Sanji had no power at all. Eventually, Zeff seemed to have come to terms with the thought that his nephew was as good as deformed, and let go.
(Well, somewhat. And Nami could understand that—no one wanted their loved one to be a magicless cripple.)
Maybe now that, at last, Sanji'd have manifested like a normal person, Zoro would finally stop making fun of his lack of a power, and start making fun of something else, because Nami was frankly sick of their regular squabbles at this point.
On the porch, her sister was embroidering a large shirt with a big, ornate pattern in all black and red. Her golden bracelet gleamed in the warm golden rays of the evening sun as her hand went back and forth, back and forth, deft and practiced, a dull brass thimble on her middle finger; and, unsurprisingly, she was humming that song she liked.
ㅤ
Blackthorn eyes, my love, my life,
When will I become your wife?
ㅤ
Heh, so she was thinking of that man again. Nami sniggered. Nojiko stuck out her tongue.
Her eyes were laughing, and Nami couldn't help but grin at her sister. She looked so lovely and happy like that, caught in the sunny glow of her lovesick thoughts, her deft hands making beauty. From the design, from the care her sister was putting into every stitch, from the way her fingers caressed the fabric like it had a man underneath, Nami knew that it wasn't for a client: her sister was making this shirt for the man she loved.
"Don't forget, supper's on you tonight!" she called after them.
Damn, Nami forgot completely. It was a good thing her sister reminded her—
"Sure!" Luffy promised carelessly.
"She wasn't saying you could join for supper," Nami groused. Honestly, that freeloader.
Luffy looked at her, his eyes heartbreakingly wide and innocent.
"All right, fine! Whatever, eat us out of our house, I don't care."
Luffy always ate at Dadan's, then at Nami's, then came to Zeff's place to wolf down the leftovers of whatever Sanji's uncle made for supper. He claimed that in all of the town, old Zeff was the best cook by far. And Luffy would know: there was not a single house in the town that he didn't pillage with his wide easy smiles and demands of,
Food!
He was simply lucky that no one could ever say no to those eyes—and whenever someone did try, Luffy wouldn't listen anyway. He didn't normally steal things, but he seemed to sincerely believe that all the food in the town belonged to him.
Where did it all even go, that glut of food he devoured? He was as thin as a stick, and as nimble as one of those rare monkeys in traveling circuses. Maybe he burned it all off running around, because he seemed physically incapable of walking like a normal person.
Alas, he insisted on all his friends keeping pace with him. Maybe that was why Luffy only had three.
His hand pulling her by the wrist, Nami stumbled on the dirt road, and went flying face down into the dust.
"Oi, be careful, girl!" Makino cried after her, worried. Little Gigi squealed, laughed, and clapped—oh, so he was amused by Nami's clumsiness, how very nice.
But a hot lean hand wrapped around her waist the second she tottered, and steadied her. For someone so stick-thin, her friend was unthinkably strong.
"Thanks," she gasped as they ran.
Why were they even in such a rush? Manifesting always took ages. Honestly, Luffy was so dumb… and she was even dumber for getting sucked into his pace. But oh well, she was sweaty and breathless now—might as well keep running, and box Luffy's ears when they were there.
"Where's your ribbon?"
"Huh?"
"Why is your hair down?"
He was a man now, not a little child. He was supposed to wear his hair tied back. It was unseemly to let it loose.
Not that he cared.
"Dunno," he declared, unbothered. "Probs lost it somewhere."
Of course he would. Now Nami would have to get him another ribbon, only for Luffy to lose it too. Ugh, that idiot.
All along the street she could see the commotion the two of them were creating was drawing looks. People were snickering, shaking their heads, and children were pointing fingers. She stuck out her tongue as she ran past them, and they laughed.
She was not behaving like a maiden should. Ah well, not like she had a mother at home to scold her.
As they ran past Dadan's house, the stocky woman yelled:
"You still have chores to do, you damn rascal!"
"Don't wanna!" Luffy yelled back at her with a wide, shameless grin.
"Irresponsible brat!"
Luffy just laughed.
He
was
irresponsible, Nami judged him silently—but there was something about his laughter that made her laugh along.
They rushed past the ancient temple where she had studied reading and writing along with the other children in town. The carvings all over the old wood looked gilded in the honeyed sun of the late Goldmoon afternoon, and the doors were open for the evening prayer. From her early childhood, she still vaguely remembered the time when the inside of the temple had looked modest and slightly shabby—but it was splendidly rich now that Luffy's grandfather's money had paid for grand renovations and new books and teachers.
She heard Luffy's grandfather was a very big man in the capital, rich and noble and in a place of power. All the more surprising it was that Luffy grew up with commoners, doing a servant's work—when he could be bothered, which was exceedingly rare—and learning nothing a highborn man should know. No one properly taught him fighting, and etiquette was as foreign to him as spice to a pauper. He didn't know the three arts or four sciences, but he did know what made a good stick or how to catch a frog.
Nami's grandma had wondered what his grandfather was even thinking. But it was old Monkey's money that funded the temple with its new big charity house, and its school where everyone, even the poorest orphans, could learn to read and write. Maybe Luffy's grandpa thought that with this, he fulfilled his parental duty.
Well, he should have come here and dragged Luffy to that school himself, because Nami was the one who had had to do that for years, with varying success. The priest who taught them would always say Nami devoured books like fire did brushwood—but Luffy claimed books were stupid and school was boring, and kept whining he wanted to stay with Zoro.
"Annoying him while he's doing honest work, you mean," Nami would snap.
There was a reason why Dadan always called him Loafy: her best friend was a terrible, thoroughgoing, unrepentant loafer.
She wished Zoro could come study too. But he did have to work to earn his keep, and—and no one would want their children to share a classroom with a soiled woman's son.
And it was fair and reasonable, and Nami understood, really, but—he wasn't just any boy. He was
Zoro.
Sometimes she thought of the looks people would throw at him, of the way the mothers of Windmills would pull back their children and hiss or yell at them to
stay away from him, don't you know what his mother was?
—and she wanted to cry, or set their tongues on fire.
But crying was weak and foolish, a thing only wimps did. So she gnashed her teeth and glared at those idiots, and she taught Zoro reading and writing in the evenings when they all got together. He didn't want to study, but she beat some sense into his dumb green noggin, and it turned out to be not so dumb when he grudgingly gave up and applied himself. He could have been one of the better students if he was allowed in the school—surely better than Luffy, who didn't even want to be there. But Luffy wasn't a bastard child, so he got to attend school; and Zoro didn't.
Those stupid, stuffy old gossips with their stupid, stuffy old ways.
"Oi, girl! Aren't you a little bit too old to be running around with those rascals like that?" one of those old hags called. Luffy dragged her away before she could snap back and stain her good name even more.
Ugh. It was so unfair that just a few years ago, she could play with the boys, prance around, and do whatever she wanted, because she had still been a child. But now that Nami was a grown maiden, she was expected to forget her friends and her ways, and become all coy like a proper girl.
Nami could see: these days, when she ran around with her boys, the adults wouldn't chuckle indulgently. Instead, some would frown and shake their heads, as if she was doing something bad and untoward, and some others—men, older men—well, she did her best to ignore their sleazy gazes.
Luffy dragged her to their usual spot: the steep river cliff outside the town. As they approached, she could see the two male forms on the ground: one man lying still and seemingly resting, the other one wracked with shivers, panting and failing to hold back his whimpers.
Damn. She wished she could help, do something—anything. But disturbing a manifestation was bound to do far more bad than good.
Zoro seemed to be napping, as usual, but Nami could see how his body tensed when he heard them. Almost instantly, it relaxed: he could probably tell by Luffy's loud stomping that it was them. It was good he was free now to keep Sanji company. Nami wondered if he was done with his work, or just ditched it for Sanji's sake. Manifesting was when a mage was at his or her most vulnerable—of course Sanji couldn't be left alone.
Damn. She could see Sanji had a fever, but she didn't even dare wipe the sweat off his forehead. It was a good thing Zoro's magic was milder, unlike her volatile power, and he could get closer to Sanji without setting things off.
Even now, she could feel ripples under her skin—a disturbance from a waking magic. So she kept her distance from Sanji, just in case.
She could see there was a half-full waterskin by his side. Good man Zoro.
She plopped down on the ground, put her cheek in her palm, and pondered. Not much else to do till the transformation was over.
It was unfair that it had to hurt this badly, she mused. It happened to her when she was barely five, and she nearly died. Then she nearly burned the house, six times, because she was little and her control was lacking and her power was fire.
It made sense, she supposed, that it felt so awful: a mage's body needed to change and morph to release the power, like a butterfly emerging from a small pupa to spread its wings and fly free.
Though Nami sincerely doubted Sanji'd become an actual butterfly. When he was around girls, he could surely flit like one, but everyone knew that Sanji would likely be a big cat—a lynx or even some exotic great cat from the bestiaries, like a panther or maybe a lion. The temple healer said so, and the elders agreed. Nami privately thought so too: Sanji could be abnormally strong and swift, with a feline grace to the way he moved. A typical werecat.
He did always say he was a panther. He wanted to be one so desperately he was almost bound to end up as some other cat, but who knew. Having a panther in their company would be fun and useful, so Nami hoped for the same.
More often than not, it wasn't so hard to tell what kind of power a person would wield. Grandma told Nami and Nojiko that she saw right away: Nami'd wield fire, and Nojiko water. Humans who had elemental powers were rare and frowned upon, but Grandma turned out to be right. They were well-matched like that, though not sisters by blood.
They were both very lucky that Grandma didn't kick the two of them out of her house. People never looked kindly on elemental mages. A danger to both themselves and to everyone else, that was what people said about Nami's ilk. Nami read that in ancient times, elemental children were to be killed as soon as they manifested.
A book she read claimed the original reason for that old custom was a little girl born to a silk-and-spice merchant from a now-gone town. She was three when she manifested as a windwielder, and in a week, she threw a tantrum over her mother denying her sweets before dinner.
Her unbridled wind powers raised a terrible hurricane that blew the town off the face of the earth.
The book spoke about many such cases. A firewielder who manifested while still in his crib, and burned down the district, and was crushed by the falling rubble of his burning house. A year-old waterwielder who summoned a flood, and was the only one left alive in her village—they found her merrily spinning eddies, sitting on water among the house roofs barely peeking from under the water and flotsam. And then there was a ten-year-old earthwielder who got angry his father spanked him, and summoned an earthquake that made the Guardrock Peninsula into Guardrock Isles.
That earthquake swallowed the boy, the father, and their entire village. It tore the land asunder, and plunged the capital with the king, queen, and court to the seafloor. The King of Alaun took advantage of the time of trouble when the Guardrock kingdom was rendered headless, invaded Alaun's old foes, and instilled a turncoat as the Prince of the new Guardrock Princedom. The Riku line had been ruling the Guardrock Isles ever since—till eight years ago, when the Empire seized them and forced the Prince into exile, to the capital of Alaun. There, he soon died of grief, leaving no male heir; but it was of little importance, as Guardrock was under the Empire anyway.
The way the Imps stole it made Mother's blood boil—figuratively, of course. Unlike Nami, she had no heat powers. Her magic was fertility.
When Nami thought about it, Mother's life turned out so strange. She was a woman born to charm land and plants into bearing fruit and crops, and she had, as the temple healer put it,
a remarkably fruitful womb.
But Belle from Windmills decided to be a soldier, and never birthed any child of her own—and never regretted it once.
Anyway, it was good Sanji wasn't, after all, deformed like Zeff kept complaining. Of course, he would still be their friend even if he did turn out to be magicless—but it wasn't a good thing, not having magic.
Nami would know. Hers was the most unfortunate there could be, the same as her hair color, but she still preferred wielding fire to wielding no power at all.
Magic made people feel the alivest, and the most
them,
even when one couldn't work it so well yet. Even if it was something impractical, something useless—like weaving rainbows. The blessed, ever-glorious High Commander, who led the Alaunian army during the Liberation Strife seventy years ago along with the gods-sent Alber the Rider, had exactly that power: he wove rainbows out of thin air. It was effectively useless and strength-consuming to boot, so he made war with his sword alone, though he did use his rainbows as signals for troops.
But magic was such an integral part of one's self that Nami was just as afraid for Sanji as Zeff had been. It had long been time for Sanji to manifest—what if he never would? To be born without magic was as tragic as to be born without an arm or leg, and to reject one's magic was to go to war with oneself.
Yet Mother just couldn't live without a war, it seemed—so she waged one against the very core of her soul.
Sometimes, Nami wondered if Mother would just get bored otherwise.
More often still, she asked herself, her blood chilling, if soon enough, there would be a very good reason for Mother to never get bored.
Her Mother was a border force captain, so she always knew what was up with the Imps. And the last time she visited, Nami overheard her tell Gen:
"I have a bad feeling about this. All those Imp troops along the border, they can't be just taking a walk there."
He hummed.
"Do you think it's about to start?" he murmured.
Her breath hitched, and she giggled. Nami heard wet smacking.
"I don't know," she breathed back. "Probably. I hope not. But—"
"Why don't you marry me, then?" he suggested. "If it's really about to start, there isn't much time left for us to enjoy the honeymoon."
"Nope," she laughed. That was the twentieth or so time she told Gen no in Nami's hearing alone, but Gen never despaired. Maybe he should have.
Since the day Mother left the town, he had the time to get married and widowed—but after all these years, he was still a fool about her. And Mother kept mocking him for it, and every time, he replied with a
Marry me
and a kiss.
Well, Gen's choices were of little importance to Nami. What mattered was Mother's ominous words.
Could it be that the thing she had feared the most was really about to start soon…?
How Nami hoped she was wrong.
She shook her head to get rid of the nasty, chilling thought, and went back to her musings.
The children whose magic could level cities and tear apart the earth herself were all extreme cases: few mages in human history wielded powers so great. But no one could know at once just how powerful a wielder would turn out to be—and so people used to call them all
calamities,
and treat them as such.
Nami could see it was reasonable. She nearly burned down their house six times while still getting used to her power. The last time, Grandma Rina said:
"Fire and wind, what a pain you are."
Then, with an embarrassed squeak, Grandma slapped her hand over her wrinkly mouth, and Nami giggled.
Grandma looked so ashamed that she let the swear slip out—in the house and near the hearth, no less. The elders said it was a no-no to call on the elements vainly—
or they might really hear,
they whispered.
But Nami had never paid any mind to the elders. They were supposed to be wise, having lived a life already, but mostly, they were just
old
—and uptight, and stuffy, and ignorant. Nami suspected she read more books than they ever did.
So she laughed, fearless of the wind and her brother the fire, and in a moment or two, Grandma joined her.
"You naughty child," she ruffled Nami's hair. "Thank the Twelve the fire won't touch you."
Fire wouldn't, but people would, had Nami been born a few centuries earlier. Some people in the town—the stupider elders, the nastier bullies—still eyed her with wary resentment, afraid of her power. But whenever they did that, she stuck out her tongue at them, and ran away to her boys: Luffy, Zoro and, later, Sanji. They never cared that she was a
calamity,
and they never cared that Luffy's power was so anomalous no one could make any sense of it, or that Sanji had no power at all.
That was, until today.
He whined, like a kicked dog. His face was all wet with sweat, and he wouldn't stop shivering, lying on the dusty ground, feebly scrabbling his legs, and she couldn't keep watching this, damn it.
She cast around with her eyes for something to stare at, and stumbled upon a stupendous sunset. Her breath hitched in her throat.
Awed, she observed the sunset descend on the town from their remote little cliff.
She watched the narrow gleaming band of the river, like flowing fire; the willows along the shores, dipping their long braids into the liquid flames; the vast gilded forests, alight with the sunset like gold and rubies; the long stretches of peasants' fields, now barren of wheat and rye and ready for the winter rest; and the tall poplar trees all around their town with its white toy houses, like a golden necklace.
So much gold, all around her and in her sight. She wondered if the highborn capital ladies ever felt half as rich as she did right now, watching the dearest sight in the world.
She had seen this view so many times in her life. She knew every tree, every bump in the cobbled streets; she knew where it was safe to swim in the river, and where the evil waterdwellers could grab a careless man by the ankle, and drag him down to the river floor, for his bones to keep them forever company. She knew all the raspberry spots, all the blackberry spots, and she knew every Windmills stork. She waved them hello when they flew in from Yrie, bringing spring on their wings, and she wished them goodbye and whispered,
Fly safely,
when they left for the winter with their children, now grown up. She could close her eyes, and she'd still vividly see every hill, every branch—as
hers
they were as her own toes or fingers. She knew them all like the back of her hand.
All of a sudden, it felt like something clenched Nami's heart and squeezed it, leaving her breathless.
Oh, how she loved her town with it white limed houses and its old, red-brick town hall. How she loved the ancient Windmills temple, older than all its houses and ramparts, with its stone god statues and their solemn faces and the maroon-cloaked priests singing rapturous chants, like an echo of Yrie. How she loved these woods she had scouted with her friends until they could walk there at new moon without stumbling once, and the golden fields where her daily bread came from. How she loved the sunset song of the bells on cows' necks, and the morning chorus of roosters. How she loved the streets lined with cherry trees that looked like young newlyweds in the spring, and put on rich red berry necklaces in the summer. How she loved her home—her grandmother's old ancestral house—and the lush red roses under her window, which were all Nami's own.
"Man, I hate this shithole town," Luffy grumbled, watching Windmills. "It's so damn boring. Can't wait to leave. Eh, Zoro?"
"Mm."
"Yo, Nami. Change your mind yet?"
"No," she snapped. He just had to go and ruin her mood, didn't he? That moron.
"You still have till Grassmoon," he smiled and folded his hands under his head, stretching out by Zoro's side. "C'mon, it's gonna be so much fun."
She loved him, she did. But sometimes she also hated him a little bit. Or a whole lot, depending on how obtuse he was being.
"It's improper," she said, "for a girl to travel like that."
"To three hells with propriety," Luffy mumbled, "it's so boring anyway. You're not boring. You don't need to be proper."
He had never cared what people said. In that, like in many things, he was an infuriating exception out of any rule.
"I don't think Windmills is boring," she said. "I want to live here. I want to die here when I'm old. Who will come to my grave if I die in some strange distant land or at sea? Who will say my name on the Night of Remembrance and share a meal with my spirit? Will I not see my nieces and nephews when my sister marries? Will I never see home again? I don't want that, Luffy. I told you so, many times."
"Blegh," he stuck out his tongue. "What fun is there to living in one place all the time?"
"You're so selfish," she sighed. "You only care that you get your way, don't you?"
"Yep!" Luffy grinned.
"Well, you won't. I'm not going."
"Sure are."
She looked away from his smug mug to hold back from breaking his stupid face, and checked on Sanji again. He was still shivering, eyes scrunched tight as if in great pain.
She wished she could help, do something without endangering him, but tough luck. All newly-awakened magic was always unstable, prone to wild accidents from any contact with another mage. People died that way, and Nami didn't want Sanji or herself to die.
She looked at the sky, watched the moon in the sunset clouds, hiding behind their veil in the ethereal blue, and wished it was over soon and Sanji stopped hurting.
She didn't even care what power he turned out to have. Sure, it would be nice if it was something useful or at least impressive, but it could be even something stupid, like weaving rainbows. (Eternal glory be to the great High Commander and his sworn brother the Rider. It was just that—the blessed High Commander did really have the stupidest power.)
The most important thing was for Sanji to suffer no more, and to not be magicless.
Any
magic was good: it wasn't like he'd have to rely on it to survive or to earn a living. And people would finally stop with the gossip and jeers.
Sanji whimpered under his breath, and curled up into an even tighter, shivering ball of pain. Never before had she felt so helpless and useless.
She couldn't even bring him water, because at some point, Zoro had taken the almost-empty waterskin, and disappeared in the woods.
Ah, there he was.
"Yo, Curly," he drawled, dropping the waterskin near Sanji's head, "you dead yet?"
As miserable as Sanji was, he still managed to give him a spiteful glare, and fold his fingers into the fig sign. Zoro snorted. Ugh, boys.
Sanji's bright, fair curly hair was now all damp and dark with sweat—and he, too, lost his ribbon somewhere, so now it was all loose, getting dirty on the dusty ground. Did manifesting have to take so damn long? Nami clenched her teeth and looked away again, angrily staring at the burning sky.
Slowly, dark ink spread all through the heavenly fire, diluting the brightness and taking over. The bright moon hung high in the sky like a half of a cheese wheel. Today had been a good day, fair and warm.
Soon, the balmy days would be over, along with the last of the gold on the trees, she thought. Bitter winter was coming.
Then, she heard the panting slow down and the whimpers quiet.
Then, she saw Sanji's whole-body cramps subside.
Then, Sanji slowly, laboriously sat up.
"Is that it…?" he asked, his voice weak, raspy, and lost. "Where—"
The very next moment, there was a very confused,
very
big cat sitting in Sanji's place.
ㅤ
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Jaskier wasn’t a stupid man.
He knew people, he knew the damage they could do and the pain they could cause. At this point in his life he knew the worst that people were capable of. It was a point of sick pride that he could look at a person and tell what they would command him to do in case they found out about the curse.
The busty barmaid behind the counter?
Pay twice the cost for the ale.
The stablehand who eyed Roach.
Give me the horse.
The drunkard in the tavern who grabbed at him…well, he didn’t have to imagine that one.
“Come here love,” he slurred out and Jaskier’s feet moved on their own. “Sit in my lap and do that little dance again.”
“Jaskier don’t go to him,” Geralt growled out from where he was lingering nearby. Then the Witcher turned to the man and glowered, making him shrink back. “You go home.”
The man slunk out and Jaskier gave Geralt a small smile before continuing his performance. The Witcher settled back down and watched him carefully, looking out for another sketchy individual who could take advantage.
It was nice, feeling protected for the first time ever.
But it still put him on edge. Jaskier wasn’t…quite sure what Geralt wanted. How could helping him serve him? That was all people wanted by the way, something for themselves. Once they found out that he couldn’t refuse they would start thinking of how it would help them.
Geralt hadn’t cashed in, so to speak. He hadn’t commanded Jaskier to do anything but the bard knew it would come. It always did.
“Why do you insist on sharing a room?” Jaskier blurted as they climbed the stairs, pockets heavier with coin and stomach’s full.
“Cheaper.”
Jaskier raised an eyebrow at the grunt. “We have the coin for it. Maybe then you can take one of those lovely ladies upstairs. You know, the ones who had their corsets so tight their tits were practically at their chins?”
Geralt rolled his eyes and walked into the room, barely holding the door open long enough for Jaskier to slip through.
“It doesn’t matter the man, mutations or not, everyone needs release every so often,” Jaskier rambled. “Especially if you are constantly swinging that huge sword around which is a overcompensation if I’ve ever seen one.”
“Do you want me to take a whore?” Geralt asked, sitting on the bed and taking his boots off.
“Well…I’m just saying you don’t have much of a chance with me in here. Unless…don’t you dare bring a lady back if I’m in here. I am a light sleeper on the best of days and I don’t need to hear you grunting away.”
“That’s all I do then?” Geralt’s eyes sparkled. “Tell me then, what should I do?”
It was clearly meant to be a jest but the curse didn’t exactly recognize sarcasm.
“You do what they tell you to do,” the words tumbled out. “You touch them right and make them writhe with pleasure. You lose yourself and just follow directions and-“
“Stop Jaskier,” Geralt seemed to recognize what he had said and his face went stony.
Jaskier’s mouth clicked shut and he pressed a hand to it, eyes wide. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Geralt huffed and looked down for a moment. “Has…have people taken advantage of you in that way?”
“Well, I didn’t exactly say no,” Jaskier tried to joke but it fell unbelievably flat. “It’s fine. It’s in the past.”
“Who?”
“Geralt…”
“Who commanded you to do
that
?”
Jaskier hesitated but Geralt’s command never came. He would allow Jaskier to keep this to himself if he wanted. “The Countess de Stael was the first…when I was sixteen. I think she was spoiled and bored with courtly life and wanted something to play with.”
“You told me about her, about how she was your greatest love,” Geralt’s brow furrowed.
“Not my words unfortunately,” Jaskier grumbled and there was a long silence. Finally, the bard gave Geralt a teasing smile. “Why? Are you going to go defend my honor? Slay the beast for taking my virtue?”
“Yes.”
Silence again.
“Oh,” Jaskier blinked, unsure of what to say.
“I would very much like to separate her head from her body but only if you want it to,” Geralt shrugged. “Maybe not today or tomorrow but…someday I would like her to pay for her sins.”
Jaskier was oddly…touched.
“I’ll let you know if I ever want her murdered,” Jaskier mumbled.
“Not murdered. I don’t murder monsters, I slay them,” Geralt’s eyes flashed and for a moment Jaskier could see the animal that so many people were convinced he was.
Jaskier sighed and sat down on his bed, stretching his legs out. “I could make a list you know; of monsters you should consider slaying.”
Geralt grimaced at that. Another awkward silence followed where Jaskier tapped the tips of his boots together, just wanting to fill the silence with
something
.
“You asked why I get us a room together?” Geralt spoke up. “It’s because I imagine all the ways you can get hurt. Anyone can go to your room and you wouldn’t be able to do anything. You nearly died once because I stupidly told you to do something. I don’t want it to happen again because I wasn’t there to tell you to stop.”
Something warm blossomed in Jaskier’s chest.
“No one has ever tried to
help
before,” he whispered. “They either use it or they ignore it until…they use it.”
“I can’t promise that I’ll never slip up again but…I couldn’t do that,” Geralt shook his head.
Jaskier kicked off his boots and tried to ignore the way his heart pounded in his chest. The survivor in him tried desperately to think of how this could be a lie, a way to get him to let his guard down, but hope burned bright.
Maybe he found someone he could trust. Maybe he didn’t have to worry about being hurt anymore.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
“Don’t tha- I mean, you don’t have to thank me for being decent,” Geralt shrugged lightly and started laying his weapons out on the table next to him.
“I haven’t met many decent people, I think it is something to be appreciative for,” Jaskier smiled, watching carefully as Geralt ducked his head slightly.
“Just go to sleep,” the Witcher snapped, dropping his dagger with a clatter on the table.
Jaskier grinned and plopped down on the uncomfortable mattress before falling into the most restful sleep he had ever had.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
The only thing keeping Percy in the here and now is Finnick’s grip steadying him. Off to the side he can see Cressida gesturing wildly at the mayor to keep talking, giving Percy time to recuperate.
To say he feels off-center is an understatement.
“Are you okay?” Finnick whispers, just loud enough for Percy to hear him over the cheering crowd.
“Just… give me a minute.” Percy says, trying to reorient himself.
He breathes in and out and in and out before finally patting Finnick’s hand where it’s still wrapped around him, ready to catch him if he faints again.
Slowly Finnick lets go, and Percy shuffles to the front of the stage.
Unlike their other stops, Finnick follows a step behind him like a shadow. Percy must’ve really spooked him, and he guesses it makes sense. From Finnick’s point of view, Percy had no reason to collapse like he did.
Percy pushes those thoughts aside and does his best to compartmentalize. He checks out emotionally, paying only enough attention to read the card.
It’ll be over soon
, he tells himself, repeating it like a mantra.
At some point, he finishes talking, and goes to leave the stage. He can tell the exact moment the cameras stop focusing on him because Finnick reaches out to grab his arm, supporting him down the steps and off the stage.
Percy doesn’t need the physical support, but he doesn’t push him away.
People gather by the edge of the stage, trying to meet him or otherwise get his attention. The mayor goes to direct him towards a group of wealthy looking people, but Finnick cuts in telling him they’re running behind schedule.
“We really need to leave,” he says. “We’re supposed to be in District 1 in time for dinner tonight. You know how the Victory Tours are. Barely even time for bathroom breaks.”
The mayor looks down at Percy, and though he didn’t—couldn’t—have seen Percy’s collapse since he was facing the crowd, he sees the way Finnick holds him and can make an assumption. His eyes are judgmental. Percy can practically hear him sneer about how Nero and Andromeda lost to
him
.
The train ride to District 1 almost feels like a gift.
District 1, in contrast to 2, is actually fairly tame.
The district itself is absolutely crazy, with the tourist section having streets covered in rhinestones and faux gold, and the people seem just as Capitol loving as District 2 did, but the mayor isn’t aggressive towards Percy and his speech is pretty similar to the speeches Percy heard in Districts 3-12. The only gesture he makes at the end of his speech is a brief wave.
Percy feels stupid for how grateful he is. Afterall, that mayor does the Capitol’s bidding just like the one from 2 does. None of these people are his friends, he reminds himself.
They join the mayor for dinner, and Percy fills up on beef stew and buttery bread. Finnick is still sticking close to his side, and when offered some whiskey, he politely turns it down.
Percy side-eyes him, wondering if he genuinely doesn’t want anything to drink or if he’s still worried Percy might collapse again. Percy wants to reassure him, but he can’t do that without saying what happened to make him collapse, which involves a history lesson the District 4 schools (probably) never taught.
Finnick had already warned him about saying things that make him stick out, and there was no way to explain how he grew up watching black-and-white videos of World War II for class and was stunned to see it play out directly in front of him.
They socialize with the upper class of District 1, who practically drip diamonds, for a couple hours after dinner before finally being released.
Percy finds the sight of the train and the promise of his own room enchanting until he remembers he’s out of sleeping pills. At first, he only worries about what nightmares he’s going to have, worried he might see his family and friends as zombies or something, but as he lies in bed with his eyes closed he realizes something else.
He’s grown dependent on his sleeping pills. Without them, he’s wide awake, and with his ADHD it’s hard for him to sit still. He wishes he had bought some of his crocheting supplies.
He’s pacing around his room for long enough he worries the carpet might begin to show wear and tear when he finally decides to leave his room.
The train is dead in the early hours of the morning, and he doesn’t see anyone on his way to the main compartment, which is a good thing. He’d be embarrassed if someone saw how frantically he dug through the cabinets looking for supplies to make his mom’s blue cookies. He finds some chocolate easy enough, but there’s nothing else in the cabinets that he needs.
Where are they cooking all the food they serve them? Where do they keep their supplies? He wonders. Not here, obviously.
He grabs one of the chocolate bars and slinks over to a nearby couch in defeat. He eats the chocolate bar as slowly as he can, needing it as something to occupy him more than to satisfy any hunger or sweet tooth.
When he finishes, he folds his arms over his chest and stares at the ceiling. It’s got golden engraving on it, a total waste of money when all the buildings in the far-out districts seemed to be an inch away from collapse.
At some point, he must manage to doze off at least a little bit because the next thing Percy knows, he’s underwater. He’s deep enough that no sunlight shines through the water, and he has to rely on his natural ability to see even in the darkest depths of the ocean and the small amounts of bioluminescence around him for light.
He stretches out his senses as far as he can, trying to figure out why he’s here instead of on the train, and almost immediately, he feels her.
Her half-human half-fish form sticks out to him like a beacon, and he swims towards it. He’s almost close enough to touch her by the time she spots him—she wasn’t made for deep waters, and likely can’t see very well this far down.
“Annie,” Percy says. She startles and squints in his direction. “It’s me, Percy.”
She looks briefly baffled, twin tails flicking behind her, before her face lights up. “Percy!” She screams, “is that really you? How are you here?”
“I’m dreaming. I’m not really here, not physically at least,” he explains. Annie’s brows furrow, but Percy pushes onward. “Are you okay? Did you escape the arena all right?”
Annie is right up next to him, studying him as carefully as she can with what little light she has.
“Yeah, it was the craziest thing. I grew these fish tails, and then I was just gone.” She looks up from where she was examining Percy’s bare feet. “It was just like that story you told me. Only in reverse.”
Percy rubs the back of his neck, a gesture that feels far too human out in the middle of the ocean. “Well, it’s not as fictional as I made it sound.”
“I figured,” Annie says. “I’m guessing you won then?”
Percy swallows. “As much as anyone ever wins.”
Percy regrets it as soon as he says it, Annie’s eyes turn dark and sad, any joy she had earlier at seeing him is gone.
“Is Finnick doing okay? Are my parents?” Annie asks.
Fuck, Percy still hadn’t talked to Annie’s parents. He had stopped by their restaurant once about a month ago, but he hadn’t gone inside, too scared to talk to them. He was afraid of what they’d say to him. That they’d blame him for Annie’s death.
There had been a man who looked a lot like Annie waiting on tables, and when he looked out the front window where Percy was, instead of saying hi, Percy left. Like a coward.
“Finnick is doing okay,” Percy says. “And your parents' restaurant seems busy. I’m planning to talk to them soon…”
Instead of asking why he hasn’t talked to them already, Annie guffaws. “I’ll bet all those Capitol tourists love to visit a restaurant owned by a dead tribute’s family.”
Percy doesn’t fully know how to respond to that. Annie, it seems, has gotten over whatever career brainwashing was left, and is openly bitter towards the Capitol now. And she’s not wrong, Percy thinks.
“Annie, listen,” Percy starts. “Where are you? Do you think we could meet up somewhere? Like somewhere off-shore from District 4?”
Annie bites her lip, thinking. “I don’t know; the Peacekeepers patrol the District 4 shoreline pretty brutally.”
“Yeah, but they’re probably looking for boats, aren’t they? Not mermaids like you.”
“I mean, yeah.” Annie blinks. “But there’s still loads of fishermen. Plus you’ll be in a boat.”
Percy grins. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine, but can you get there? Like if we planned to meet up about a mile or two out from the Victor’s beach, could you do it?”
The doubt melts off Annie’s face. “If you can get there without being caught I can. What day?”
“I’m on the Victory Tour right now, heading to the Capitol. I should be back in District 4 two days from now; we can meet that night, after the sun sets.” Percy says, smiling just slightly.
“It’s already the Victory Tour,” Annie mumbles under her breath. Percy wonders if she’s been having trouble keeping track of time in the ocean.
“I can do that, but you have to promise me that if it's too dangerous, you won’t go.” Annie sounds worried, and for a second, Percy feels like he’s back in the arena: Annie at his side, worried for both their survivals.
“Only if you promise the same. You know, watch out for those fishermen and Peacekeeper patrols.”
Annie reaches out to grab his hand, but she slips right through him and Percy feels the tell-tale sign of waking up. This demigod dream, he knows, is over. And in between one blink and the next, he’s staring back up at the golden engraved ceiling, Finnick standing off to the side.
“Why are you out in the common room?” he asks. He hasn’t had a chance to be made-up yet this morning. He’s wearing an old baggy t-shirt, and his hair is a mess. When he leans in towards Percy, he even swears Finnick still has morning breath.
“Oh, I just fell asleep out here by accident.” Percy smacks his mouth, imagining he can still faintly taste the ocean. He’s already got a headache from withdrawal from his sleeping pills. “You need to brush your teeth.”
Daphne and Percy’s prep team pull him into the hair and makeup room an hour earlier than they had for all of the other districts.
“You have to look a lot nicer for the Capitol than you can for the districts, Perseus.” Daphne informs him primly. “That means we need more time to do our magic.”
I wouldn’t call it magic,
Percy thinks but wisely doesn’t say. They’re no children of Aphrodite.
But he sits through the make-up and the hair curler, and puts on his blue velvet suit without complaint. It’s got golden embroidery running all the way down it in beautiful swirls, and he’s even wearing a normal dress shirt under it. It’s the least offensive outfit the Capitol has put him in for one of their events to date.
When they finally unleash him, he finds Finnick already waiting for him in the main car. He, like Percy, is wearing a suit, though Pompey wasn’t kind enough to give him a dress shirt.
Percy makes a mental note to thank Daphne later.
“We’re heading straight to the President’s Manor,” Finnick tells Percy, quickly debriefing him on what to expect. “The President will give a speech, but you don’t have to. Everyone in the Capitol has already watched your last eleven speeches, and they’ll watch the one you’ll give in 4. After the President’s speech, there’ll be a dinner party. It’s going to suck, but just stick it out.”
Percy side eyes him, as they move in front of the train door, getting ready to disembark. “I thought you liked Capitol parties?”
Finnick swallows, and doesn’t look at him when he says, “some of them aren’t so bad.”
Percy wants to ask more about that—he feels like there’s a story there—but he doesn’t get the chance.
The train doors open, and he’s met by bright flashes from the paparazzi and screaming from fans. It’s all he can do to not frown as his headache rages against his skull. He, once again, feels grateful that he immediately established a straight-faced persona when he had his Victor interview, even if he did it accidentally.
There’s security here. They’re not Peacekeepers like they were at the district events, Percy notices. Peacekeepers are armed, and these security guards aren’t. They’re holding the Capitolites back with just their arms and some weak metal barriers, and honestly they’re not doing a very good job of it.
Some of the Capitolites are bent all the way past the security guards to hold out pens towards him, hopeful Percy will give them an autograph, while others cry for his attention, and yet more hold signs that Percy refuses to read. One of them manages to touch him, and Percy gives her his most scathing glare. She shrinks away, scolded like a child.
Finnick, once again, paves the way forward, and Percy follows him without complaint. Behind them, their entourage of Capitol employees basks in the attention. Percy is pretty sure he sees Augustus blow a kiss out to the crowd.
President Snow’s speech is boring. He stands off the balcony of his manor and looks down at Percy and the other Capitolites standing on the lawn with him.
Somehow, the old man looks even more frail now than he did the last time Percy saw him. He doesn’t even look in Percy’s direction. Percy doesn’t know if he’s scared of him or if Snow just genuinely doesn’t care about the latest Victor.
He’s not sure which option he’d prefer.
From there, Percy is led inside the manor, where the party seems to already be in full swing. There’s tables upon tables stacked high with food. Percy spots some sort of blue covered dessert and makes a b-line towards it, only to be stopped by a hand on his arm.
He stiffens up immediately, all too aware he’s in enemy territory, but he looks back and sees it’s just Finnick leaning towards him to whisper, “I have to get going. I’m meeting with someone privately, and you probably won’t see me until after the party is over. Daphne and Augustus are in charge of getting you back to the hotel for the night, and if they’re too drunk to do that, the Avoxes will take care of you.”
Finnick closes his mouth as if thinking about what he’s going to say next. “Don’t say anything stupid. I’m sorry I can’t be here to fend off questions.”
And just like that, he’s off. Percy is too stunned to ask anything before he’s completely out of sight, and Percy is left to the wolves.
A private meeting?
Percy thinks.
More like an excuse to dip.
He feels annoyed and almost betrayed, but he forces it down. There’s already multiple people approaching him. He wants to compare them to sharks but he shakes off the thought.
If anyone here is a shark, it’s me
, Percy thinks.
The next hour flies in a wave of artificially colored hair, couture gowns, and insensitive questions Percy doesn’t bother answering. There’s a single girl pushing her way through the crowd towards him. Percy only notices her because her hair is a golden blond and her dress is a pristine white color with a simple cut. It stands out starkly amongst the loud colors.
Percy spends half a second admiring the Capitolite who disregarded the latest fashion trends before he places who she is.
It’s old money herself, Snow’s granddaughter. Percy doesn’t remember her name.
The other Capitolites move out of her way as if she’s royalty—further proof the whole presidency is a scam—and when she finally reaches Percy she shoots him her best smile. If she were anyone else, Percy would think she was cute.
As it is, her grandfather shoved him and twenty-three other children into a death match, so he doesn’t much care for her.
Her eyes are just as vibrant of a blue as they were the last time he had seen her, and they’re focused entirely on him. “Hi,” she practically gushes. Percy isn’t sure how she can put so much emotion behind one syllable. “I’m Coriolania Snow. The President’s granddaughter.”
She tucks her hands behind her back when she’s done speaking, like she’s been trained to do it. Percy just nods at her ever so slightly. “I’m Perseus,” he says uselessly. She already knows his name.
“I know! I’m a big fan. I would’ve bought a poster for you to sign but my parents said that was tacky.”
Percy coughs, more so to give him something to do than anything else. “Well, it’s good to listen to your parents, I guess.”
“Yeah,” Coriolania says unsurely. It’s clear she isn’t usually the one who has to try to make conversation. “Have you tried any of the food yet?”
“A little bit,” Percy answers. He ignores the urge to rub his temples in an attempt to alleviate the pounding in his head.
“I tried some of the miniature sandwiches from that table over there,” he gestures off to his right. The sandwiches had been pretty good, but not worth the experience of getting cornered against the table by a crowd of middle-age men dead-set on congratulating him on his combat skills.
“Only the sandwiches?” Coriolania sounds aghast. “You have to try way more stuff, then. My favorite are the desserts over there,” she points to the blue cookies.
“They’re cotton-candy flavored cookies. That’s why they’re blue. I’ve been obsessed with them ever since I was a little kid.” She looks at him through her lashes, batting her eyes.
Percy swallows a sudden knot in his throat at the mention of the blue cookies he spotted earlier. “Aren’t you still a kid?”
There could not have more obviously been something Coriolania wanted to hear less from him, and irrationally, Percy kind of feels bad for her. It’s very obvious she has a crush on him.
“I’m sixteen.”
Percy doesn’t grace that with a response. “Are all the drinks here alcoholic?” He asks instead.
“All the drinks in gold cups are alcoholic, everything else is non-alcoholic,” she says before briskly moving on, “and, in the Capitol, sixteen is the age of adulthood. I’ll be starting University this upcoming fall. I know the law in the districts is that you have to be eighteen before you can make any of your own legal decisions, but it’s different here.”
Percy just grunts because he actually hadn’t known that, and it was probably good information to have.
One of the servers walks by, holding a tray of silver champagne glasses. Thirsty, Percy grabs on and downs it without a second thought.
“You shouldn’t drink that in here—” Coriolania starts, too little, too late.
Percy just barely manages to avoid vomiting on her.
“You vomited on the President’s granddaughter?” Finnick asks him disbelievingly the next morning as they board the train.
They’re joined once again by their Capitol team, but more importantly, Mags. Her recovery was good, though according to her doctor, she would likely have speech problems for the rest of her life.
“I didn’t vomit on her.” Percy corrects him, holding his new pack of sleeping pills. “I just vomited in front of her. And frankly it was probably for the best. She was acting like she had a crush on me, and I bet that’s gone now. Besides, how was I supposed to know they had drinks specifically meant to make you throw up?”
Finnick just laughs, and when Percy asks him how his night was, Finnick waves him off, explaining what he can expect at the final stop of the Victory Tour: District 4.
According to Finnick, District 4 will not only be hosting an assembly for Percy but also a party, full of free food provided by the Capitol, entertainers, and lots of cameras. The only upside Percy sees in it is that there’s no way it can be as bad as the Capitol party was.
Though, the end of the party was better than the beginning. People gave him some space after he threw chunks.
For one last time, Percy gives the speech Augustus gave him, and strangely enough, it’s the hardest speech he’s had to give so far. Because the female tribute’s family he’s expressing his condolences to are Annie’s parents. The ones he told her he’d check in on.
The only thing getting him through it is the fact that, where the Victor’s family normally stood is Marlin, Marina, and Mags. Mags gives him a smile, with one side of her lips a little lower than the other.
That, combined with the albatrosses he can see flying overhead, gives Percy the strength he needs to finish his speech. And when he’s done, he does something he should’ve done months ago—he seeks out Annie’s parents.
Her mom is easy enough to spot in the crowd, with bright red, short hair and a light blue dress. Percy dodges some well-wishers and some people he vaguely recognizes from the Academy before finally reaching her.
“Mrs. Cresta,” he says. He sounds out of breath, but it’s more to do with nerves than any strenuous activity.
Annie’s mom's face pinches, and she looks like she’s about to cry.
Percy reflexively takes a step back, and Mr. Cresta takes one forward. “Look,” he starts, and Percy shrinks down inwardly. “Congratulations on your win, but my wife and I really don’t want to talk to you.” His voice is gruff and harsh. “Nothing personal, you understand.”
“Right, of course,” he says. They retreat into the crowd, and Percy watches them go. “Sorry Annie,” he mutters under his breath. “I tried.”
That night, when the moon is high in the sky, Zach whines pitifully from his spot on the shore, and Cody tries his best to follow Percy into the water. But Percy brushes him off, making the waves wash him gently back to shore.
He needs to see Annie alone, and his dogs only increase the chances he’ll get caught.
The water is cold, but Percy doesn’t mind, and he hopes Annie won’t either. He wonders if she’s been following the migration patterns so many other aquatic predators take.
He swims out, further and further into the ocean, but he still can’t feel Annie anywhere nearby. He remembers cautioning her only to come if it’s safe. Were the Peacekeepers patrolling the nearby water? Was it too dangerous for her to come?
Was the dream not even real?
It’s a question Percy hasn’t been allowing himself to ask, but as the moon crosses the sky, it burns deep in his throat.
He floats in the water listlessly, near where Annie had told him to meet her, and he tries not to let his worry overtake him. He submerges himself and breathes in the water. Deep breathing had always been a hit or miss relaxation technique for him on land, but the feeling of seawater in his lungs calmed him immediately. He drifts in and out, feeling the ocean water move around him.
That’s when he feels the boat coming.
It’s gotten far too close, far too fast. If he hadn’t been trying to calm his anxiety, he would’ve noticed it coming ages ago.
He’s getting ready to sink further down in the water when he hears familiar barking coming from the boat. He freezes.
The boat stalls, and someone jumps in without wasting a second. It’s too dark to see any colors properly, but Percy just knows the man swimming towards him has copper hair. Percy doesn’t try to swim away, knowing Annie isn’t coming today, and when Finnick finally gets to him, he lets him pull him upwards, towards the boat.
Their heads break the water and Finnick splutters, “What the fuck did you do that for?”
He sounds angry. He sounds worried. For a long moment Percy wonders why before he realizes what this must look like for Finnick.
Oh no.
One of his dogs—Zach, from the looks of it—somehow fetched Finnick from his house in Victor’s Village and got him to go out on his boat into the ocean in the middle of the night in the freezing cold, where he found Percy, completely submerged and not even trying to swim towards shore.
He must think—
“I’m fine,” Percy tells him quickly, trying to sound reassuring. “I wasn’t trying to…” He trails off, unable to say it. Not when he had thought about it for so long.
At Percy’s words, Finnick doesn’t calm down; if anything, he seems angrier. “What were you trying to do, then?”
Percy can’t answer that. There are no lies that sound convincing, and the truth is absurd. “
Yeah I was trying to visit your girlfriend you think is dead because I’m pretty sure I turned her into a mermaid and she’s living her best life free in the ocean now.
”
That’d be a quick way to find out if Panem has mental institutions.
Percy swallows, tasting salt water on his tongue. It keeps him grounded. “I was just… trying to go for a swim.”
“In the middle of the night, miles from shore.” Percy doesn’t respond. Finnick doesn’t believe him, and Percy can’t blame him. It was a shitty lie.
“Unbelievable,” Finnick mutters under his breath.
Finnick pulls them both through the water so they’re right up next to the boat. Zach looks down at them with his big puppy dog eyes. “Get on the boat,” Finnick says, pushing him forward and up so Percy can grab the edge and pull himself aboard.
Zach, who is really a much smarter dog than Percy thought, realizes what Finnick is trying to do and reaches overboard to gently clamp his jaw down on Percy’s shirt and pull upward with all his might. Percy hears a light tearing sound and internally mourns for the sweatshirt he’s wearing. He pulls himself up, turning around to offer Finnick a hand.
Finnick ignores him though, pulling himself onto the boat easily. Once he’s aboard, they both stand and stare at each other. Finnick is still breathing harshly, and Percy can’t tell if it’s from exertion or anger. Maybe both.
Finnick breaks the silence first. “Listen Perseus,” he says, voice heavy. “I know it’s hard, and I can’t lie to you, it’s going to stay hard. The first couple of years after I won were rough.” His voice breaks on the word rough, but he pushes onward. “But we have to keep going. We don’t have a choice.”
He runs a hand down his face, exhaustion shining in his eyes. “Us Victors, we’re a family. And I know we’re a pretty shitty one, but when Riptide died…” Finnick shakes his head and starts again. “The point is, living on is the best thing we can do. Because if we don’t, they win. In a lot of ways our existence is...”
Finnick’s eyes flicker all around the boat, and Percy gets the feeling that there’s some kind of recording device on the boat. Whatever Finnick was going to say is something that shouldn’t be overheard.
Finnick runs out of steam, and his speech was honestly kind of sad, but it touched Percy nonetheless.
And Percy wants to tell Finnick that he’s got this all wrong. He
should
tell Finnick that he's got it all wrong, that he misunderstood what Percy was doing out here. It’s selfish to not correct him. But as Finnick takes a slow step forward, like Percy is some kind of frightened animal, he doesn’t say anything.
And he doesn’t say anything when Finnick puts his arms around him and pulls him into the tightest hug Percy has had since Annabeth and him fell into Tartarus together.
Instead, he wraps his arms around Finnick in return, squeezing with all the emotions he’s held back ever since he was twelve and thrown into a new, deadly world for the first time.
The once calm sea rattles underneath them, rocking their tiny boat like Percy’s emotions rattle around inside his chest. Percy clamps down on them again, scared the unruly ocean will cause Finnick to pull away from the hug too soon.
He buries his head into Finnick’s shoulder and cries, thankful they’re both still wet from the ocean. Finnick won’t feel his tears, and Percy’s always been a quiet crier.
“I don’t want to die,” he whispers. For so long, he had wanted to join Annabeth, had longed for it—if only so he wouldn't be alone anymore. But it felt good to want to live.
Finnick just holds him tighter, tucking Percy’s head under his chin.
“Good.”
In the Woods Somewhere
Hozier
My head was warm
My skin was soaked
I called your name 'til the fever broke
When I awoke
The moon still hung
The night so black that the darkness hummed
I raised myself
My legs were weak
I prayed my mind be good to me
An awful noise
Filled the air
I heard a scream in the woods somewhere
A woman's voice!
I quickly ran
Into the trees with empty hands
A fox it was
He shook, afraid
I spoke no words, no sound he made
His bone exposed
His hind was lame
I raised a stone to end his pain
What caused the wound?
How large the teeth?
I saw new eyes were watching me
The creature lunged
I turned and ran
To save a life I didn't have
Deer in the chase
There as I flew
Forgot all prayers of joining you
I clutched my life
And wished it kept
My dearest love, I'm not done yet
How many years
I know I'll bear
I found something in the woods somewhere
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
She'd known something was wrong when he'd failed to text back.
During her lunchbreak, trying to savour the taste of her microwaved stew, Nurse Everdeen could barely contain her worries as she stared at her blank phone screen.
12:58
. According to the original flight plan, they would have landed in Orlando about half an hour ago, greeting the blistering heat of Florida's sunshiny city. By now Katniss or Burdock would have sent some kind of confirmation - a grinning selfie as the father-daughter duo posed in their signature thumbs up. But there's nothing.
For a moment, Asterid simply scrolled. Countless pictures passed: plump and happy babies, cosy celebrations, Hazelle's latest attempt at making a birthday cake for Posy. Small things, trivial things. Mundane and normal clutter to distract the mind from its thoughts, from the doubts and theories that began to sprout when her husband forgot to text her back.
Picking up her spoon, letting the warm liquid of the stew dribble into her mouth, Asterid continued to stare. Tasteless, she didn't even register what kind it was. Too preoccupied, her mind had better things to ponder about. Like her husband.
Tapping on his name once more, refreshing their chat, she hoped to see a change. But again there was nothing. Not even a pending text. Biting her lip, the nurse frowned. Now she was worried.
As silent and stoic as her husband and eldest daughter could be, outright radio static has never been their style. But perhaps, just maybe, there had been a delay. Perhaps, just maybe, they had landed in Orlando and gotten carried away, whisked up in the light-hearted magic of excitement as they planned their next week testing out different rides. Maybe Haymitch had managed to lure Burdock into a lengthy chat. Maybe Katniss was finally settling in, making friends. Just maybe.
Sipping at her lunch, Asterid didn't realise that her break was over until another code went off. Blaring alarms, urging for all available staff to respond, she knew that one of her patients urgently required her care. Code blues weren't for nothing. Even for an experience nurse, seasoned and well-trained like her, the code still sent a thrill of panic down her spine. Time was always of the essence. That person was someone's partner, someone's sibling, someone's child.
"Asterid!" Really, it was no surprise when her colleague popped her head into the room, requesting for her help, "Mr Smith. Again."
Dropping her spoon and abandoning her phone, Asterid hurried out of the staffroom. Shuffling in her squeaky nursing shoes, adjusting her soft blue scrubs, she ensured that she looked presentable, professional - not scattered and bothered like she truly was. Right now Nurse Everdeen was needed; her own personal concerns would have to wait.
Besides, Burdock and Katniss would text back soon.
.....
Now she was really worried. As tired as she felt, dark circles rimming the bright blue of her bloodshot eyes, Asterid couldn't help but rush her way out of work tonight. Stripping off her scrubs, undoing the tight bun, she barely wished her colleagues the usual cheery goodnight before grabbing her handbag, jacket and keys. Within record time she'd been in her car. Buckled up, phone connected to the bluetooth speaker, her thoughts could only revolve around one thing.
They still haven't texted back.
Twelve hours. Nearly twelve hours had passed since she'd last heard from her daughter and husband. At first, when it was just an hour, she'd found herself making the typical excuses: oh, they were simply having fun; Burdock must've forgotten to charge his phone again; Haymitch had probably coerced the pair into a lengthy brunch. Normal stuff. Typical things. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing extreme.
Only, an hour was long since gone. So had two. And three. Four. Ten.
Twitchy and anxious, the nurse found herself tapping at her phone screen, trying one of the two names she'd been endlessly calling ever since this afternoon.
Burdock. Katniss. Burdock. Katniss. Burdo-
"Hello this is Burdock,"
Cheery, bright, her husband's voice would usually be such a relief to hear. But this wasn't his voice. Recorded on a device, played back to her like a teasing taunt, this lifeless imitation of her husband's voice kept answering her. Voicemail. Scowling - the kind that her daughter would usually wear - Asterid found herself balling her fist.
"I'm a little busy right now, but I'll be back as soon as I can."
In her mind, Asterid hoped that this 'soon' would come much quicker than the agonisingly long wait for later. Twelve hours. Half a day. Never before had she gone this long without hearing from either of them - even when they trekked out into the middle of nowhere, sharing a single game bag and a pair of matching bows. Within a couple of hours one of them always sent a text. One of them always soothed her nerves.
But not today. Not now. And Asterid didn't like the horrible feeling it left in her bones.
Pressing on a different name, hoping that it too would pick up, the blonde woman pulled out of her parking space. Perhaps Primrose had heard from them. Perhaps this worry was all for nothing, just her mind being silly and paranoid as always. Overthinking. Yes, maybe it was all just that. Overthinking.
"Mum?" Answering the call, her youngest's voice was awfully groggy. No doubt the poor girl had been fast asleep, devoted to a strict regime whenever it came to school nights. Studious, dedicated, her Prim wanted to be a doctor. In order to get into medical school, to achieve the high grades needed for such an honour, she needed to be self-disciplined; she needed to be stress-free. "Is everything ok? Why are you calling so late?"
"I'm just checking up on you," Attempting to sound casual, as if her mind hadn't been set into panic mode for over an hour straight, Asterid sighed. Stopped at a red light, watching the drunken people stagger across the crossing, her gut just wouldn't settle. At all. She hoped her husband and daughter were safe. "It's pretty late and you're all by yourself. Usually Katniss or your father is with you whenever I take a full shift."
"I'm fine, mum. Promise," Groaning, there was a note of exasperation to her fourteen-year-old's voice in response to her pestering. Nothing Asterid hadn't experienced before. Compared to Katniss' snark and sass at Prim's age, it felt like a match attempting to be a sparkler, a weak imitation of a blazing, spitting fire. But then, soft and innocent, she asked, "Have you heard from either of them? Katniss said she'd tell me when they landed but I haven't heard from her all day."
Well drat. Primrose hadn't heard from them either.
"No, I haven't," Answering her daughter, feeling the tight knots curl even tighter, Asterid thickly swallowed. Something was wrong. She could feel it. She just knew. "But we shouldn't worry yet."
Oh, they should.
"They might just be tired from the journey."
She highly doubted that
.
"Or are having so much fun that they've forgotten about us."
As if they'd ever do that.
"You know how they are, two peas in a pod."
"I suppose," Humming, Primrose didn't bother to argue. Like her mother, she tended to worry. Putting on a brave face, sporting a lovely smile, the mother and daughter duo were alike in their awful habit of festering and fussing over the smallest of hiccups, the most tiniest of changes.
Most likely, this was all nothing. Tomorrow, bright and early, there would be a text from Burdock - loving and apologetic and grovelling for her forgiveness. Just as guilt-ridden, Katniss would also send a flurry of apologies, offering to make amends through chores or gifts or some kind of video call. Relaxing slightly, just barely, Asterid smiled. Yes, she could see it now. Father and daughter, riddled with shame, begging with all they had for forgiveness.
Stepping on the gas, leaving her workplace and her worries behind, Asterid let herself hope. She'd hear from them tomorrow.
.....
Police crews were the first point of contact about their whereabouts. They'd arrived on a Monday, just as Asterid had been returning from a grocery shop, paper bags bundled into her arms as she walked up the cracked concrete drive. Sheriff Cray and Deputy Darius: waiting on the front porch, sat on the wooden steps, they'd looked a right pair in their brown uniforms and shiny metal badges. Smoking a cigarette, the sheriff himself only sniffed in acknowledgement.
"Asterid," Nodding at her, a strange look to his beady eyes, the man had stepped out of her way. As she slipped her keys into the lock, tried to beat down the squirming anxiety in her gut, she knew he only had bad news to give. Burdock and Katniss had been silent for two days. Others around town had also expressed concern, remarked how no-one had heard from the bunch headed for Florida. "We have some news."
"I figured," Opening the front door, stepping inside, she didn't bother to invite the pair to follow her. Instead, kicking off her shoes, she simply made her way to the kitchen to pack away her shopping. Keep busy.
Making himself at home, Cray easily settled at the dining table. Taking a seat - Burdock's seat - he replaced his smelly cigarette with a pack of shelled sunflower seeds. For chewing. Because some people, especially smokers, liked to use the things as a distraction. Chewing stimulated the mind, kept it ticking. Infamous around town, everyone knew that Cray was a heavy smoker. But for him to pull out the sunflower seeds? That meant business. Serious business.
Stiffening, Asterid felt her breath hitch. This could only mean one thing. Something she refused to even consider a possibility.
"We don't mean to intrude, Mrs Everdeen," Speaking up from the doorway, Darius wasn't as bold as his senior. Having removed his hat and shoes, he had an almost youthful and bashful edge to him as he carefully eyed the woman. But perhaps that was because he was only around Katniss' age, a true youngster to an ageing wife like herself. A baby. "We've just come to do our jobs. You see, we heard back from the airport this morning."
"And?" Digging into her grocery bags, the woman kept her voice neutral as she placed two tins of chopped tomatoes onto the counter. Tonight she was planning on making something nice, something special. Katniss and Burdock would need it if they were coming back home.
"And they said that Flight 74 never made it to Florida," Finishing for his deputy, Cray sucked on the shell of a sunflower seed. Spitting it out, getting it to land perfectly in the empty fruit bowl sat in front of him, the man continued, "No-one's heard from anyone onboard in the last forty-eight hours. A search for the black box data concluded that there'd been a crash."
"So?" More than one word at a time was dangerous. Even she knew that.
Keeping her back turned to the pair, Asterid continued to unpack her shopping. Bread. Milk. Oranges. Bananas. Flour for making dumplings. Carrots to go with the rabbit stew that Burdock always made when he returned home. Their favourite.
"So we're treating it as a missing person's case," Refusing to polish the truth, letting her hear the harsh reality of the solid facts, Cray's voice didn't waver. Not one bit. Heated, poking, she knew that he was staring at her. Oh, she knew that he was watching her reaction, waiting for her to collapse into a ball of raw emotion. But she wouldn't do that in front of Cray. Slimy, horrible Cray. "As we speak there's search crews being sent towards the last known location. I've been told to relay that there's a good chance of finding survivors. The first forty-eight are crucial."
Didn't she know it. As a nurse, Asterid had heard all too well about how important the first forty-eight hours were when responding to an emergency. That was why she'd been so on edge. That was why she couldn't rest properly, couldn't eat or sleep or think properly, until she knew for certain. Convincing the Mellarks to go to Cray had been the right decision; telling the Cartwrights that they weren't wrong to worry had been the right call. Even Mayor Undersee had become bothered by the prolonged silence of his daughter, usually so punctual with her daily check ins and dutiful questions about her mother. Not a single passenger had posted about their landing. Not a single picture of the Yellowjackets placed them in Florida.
Something had gone wrong. There was a reason why Burdock hadn't texted her back. She just knew it.
"They're missing," Was all she said. Holding two cans of milky butterbeans, unable to focus on what she was doing, Asterid tried to keep the tears from her eyes, "They're out there and they're missing."
"Yes... but likely to be found!" Butting in, Darius provided the positive twist. Rambling, fast, she almost missed his next words as he spoke, "It's very likely that they've landed in some kind of reserve. The black box indicated as such. Knowing your Katniss, they'll be fine."
Pausing, the nurse didn't dare to breath. Wilderness? They'd landed in some kind of reserve?
Overwhelming, the unexpected relief was almost crushing as Asterid let her shoulders deflate. If that was the case, then Burdock would keep her safe. Katniss would keep him healthy. Together they'd both return. Yes, they'd return. They'd both return.
Katniss and Burdock. Burdock and Katniss.
Burdock.
"You're right," Again, she didn't trust herself to say more than a few words. Turning to the two cops, a strange twinkle to her eye, Asterid smiled, "She'll make sure they're fine."
.....
"Katniss?"
Part of her couldn't recognise her own daughter as she sat in front of her, overgrown and untamed like a wild plant left to run errant in an abandoned garden. Skin covered in dirt, nails lined with grit, the girl that slumped her figure in the chair wasn't the same Katniss who had so giddily dragged her father out of the front door, already making plans about what they would do as soon as they'd landed. Beaming, that Katniss had shone golden with the hope of tomorrow. Glowing, that Katniss had a spark to her eye, a softness to her smile, that spoke of innocence and love and joy. This Katniss, sharp and jagged around the edges, did not. If anything, she seemed to spit in the face of her memory.
"I'm not her," Low, ragged, the words left her daughter's chapped lips in a warning tone. Threatening. Piercing through her veil of dark and tangled hair, the sharp grey of Katniss' eyes - Burdock's eyes - all but pinned Asterid to the ground. "You can't call me by that name because I'm not her. Katniss is dead."
Dead? Her Katniss? Oh, but that couldn't be so.
Sitting right in this room, wild and frazzled - yes - but not dead, her daughter looked to be entirely alive. Thumping, her heart beat in her chest. Rising and falling, her lungs still filled with precious oxygen to colour her cheeks and nourish her cells. Movement still captured her skinny, bony limbs. Life still buzzed around her body, pulsed with every blink and swift inhale taken by her nose. Katniss was alive. She was here.
But, at the same time, she wasn't. Undeniably, there'd been a change. A shift.
Hands tight around the armrests, this new Katniss wasn't entirely at ease in this room. Even with her mother, someone whose presence had once meant safety, the girl still curled within herself and bore a menacing snarl. Threatening, snarling, the pointed tip of her canines glinted vividly in the fluorescent lights. Closing her eyes, Asterid had to take a deep breath. This wasn't her Katniss; this was a wild, savage creature. A beast. A damaged, broken girl.
"I understand," Keeping her distance, Asterid made no attempt to move. Even if she wanted to wrap her arms around her girl, welcome her back, she knew that was the wrong thing to do. Instead, staring at the girl, watching her with burning eyes, she whispered, "But I would like to hope that she still lingers. Still thrums within the memory of her mind."
"Maybe," Turning away, the beast-girl avoided showing her face. Picking at the chair, chipping at her nails, she didn't even notice her nervous habits: tucking tail, curling inward, growing defensive. Avoidant. Although she might have changed, Asterid was still a mother; she could pick up on her child's nerves with little more than a blink. "But she's failed you. She couldn't bring him home. She only thought about herself."
"W-who?" Asterid didn't mean for her voice to sound so desperate, so brittle. It did anyway. "Who couldn't she bring home?"
"Burdock," Was all the beast-girl said, his name like a stab from a heated dagger. Balling her fists, digging her nails into her palms, she scowled, "Burdock Everdeen. Your husband."
Your father,
was what Asterid burned to say in response. That man, the name with which she so callously spat, was also her father. A lovely man. A soulful man. The kind of man who could only do good. But having such a caring soul, being such a lovely person, came with its cruxes. If there was ever a choice between himself and Katniss, Asterid knew what her husband would have chosen. Instant. Without hesitation. Without a single second thought about
her.
Katniss.
Every time.
Katniss.
"He left us," Feeling her knees weaken, grabbing onto the door handle for support, Asterid's voice could raise no higher than a whisper as she glanced at the girl, "He left us."
He left me.
Silent, the beast-girl said nothing. Didn't even try to defend herself. Perhaps, in all her shame and guilt, there wasn't anything left to say - not anything worthwhile at least. Which Asterid could understand. Could empathise with. Because it wasn't Katniss' fault. Yet, deep inside her, she felt like it was.
Just as she was about to voice that thought, yell out why she didn't try to save him, bring him home, the woman paused. Solid, she felt a vibration. Like a bell tolling a funeral, a cymbal calling for the final curtain, the woman felt her phone buzz in her pocket. Suddenly, her lungs tightened. Suddenly, she didn't want to own a phone anymore, even look at the device. But she had to. For Katniss, for Prim, she had to.
*New Message -
Sent: 550 Days Ago 7:30AM
*
Burdock: We're boarding now, my love. I'll speak to you soon x
Ragged, all the air left her lungs. He wouldn't. Not now. He'd left them. He'd left her. Like a bird, a wild thing, her husband had flown off for migration and failed to return with the sun. The glorious, burning sun.
Shrieking, piercing, a sound left Asterid's lips that felt more birdlike than human. Seagull than songlike. A groan. A scream. A cry of grief. In the chaos of that sound, in the storm of her thoughts, she didn't even notice her phone dropping to the ground, sharing the image of the man who'd ripped her heart out and never returned. The father of the awful, wretched creature staring at her, silently judging her grief.
Burdock.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Blaidd panted as he circled the arena; clad only in breeches, his fur was damp with sweat which dripped onto the stone floor below. His arms, raised in a grappler’s stance, remained rock-steady as he paced, waiting for an opening.
Maria, on the other hand, remained in place, rotating as she tracked the wolfman; wearing tights and a simple breast-band, her feet beat out a steady rhythm as she presented her right side forward, hands at a low ready and her muscles loose.
With a roar of exertion, Blaidd charged forward, almost managing to grab hold of Maria’s torso - yet in the instant before he could close his grasp, Maria focused inward, reaching for the sensation of transient smoke Iji had called the Bloodhound’s Step-
-and yelped with both joy and shock as she, in one moment, thought about standing two steps to the right, and found herself in her desired position. Blaidd wasted no time adjusting, swinging his left arm around for a furious backhand. Maria twisted to the side and extended a push-kick straight into his groin. The wolfman gasped in pain, reeling from the blow, and yet Maria continued her assault - a flurry of punches and kicks all aimed straight at Blaidd’s stomach and midsection, thrown without pause even as she ducked and weaved to avoid Blaidd’s attempts to grapple the smaller woman or batter her blows away.
Eventually, something gave. There was a loud
crunch
as one of Maria’s kicks found their target - Blaidd’s left kneecap - and as he let out a throaty howl, Maria rushed forward, dug both her nails deep into the wolfman’s stomach, and hurled him into the floor. Spittle flew from Blaidd’s mouth as a cloud of chalk flew into the air from the impact, and with a furious cry Maria slid beside Blaidd’s head and mimed a heavy elbow strike straight against his throat.
They remained locked in that position for a moment before Blaidd, audibly gasping for breath, pushed Maria away with a shaking hand. “Yield! I yield! Moon and dark, you’ve bested me!”
The strain of the fight which Maria had pushed through hit her all at once; she fell to her knees, groaning with pain as her body protested with a symphony of aches. “I’d not…expected…that…to work,” she managed, slowly crawling over to her pack in the corner of the room.
“What…a load…of shite,” Blaidd gasped, hissing in pain as he gingerly poked at the bruised skin and torn fur around his midsection. “Why’s it only you - piss, that hurts - that can drink those Crimson Tears, and be right as rain?”
Maria, for her part, fished a flask of Crimson Tears from her bag, popped the cork, and eagerly gulped it down; she sighed with relief as the strange elixir worked its healing magic, the panoply of bruises and cuts which littered her body simply vanishing. With renewed vigour she leapt to her feet, and marched back over to the scowling wolfman. “I fear, Sir Blaidd, you’ll have to ask the Greater Will,” she laughed, tossing the flask back into her pouch and offering her arm. “Need a hand up?”
“Oh, fuck off,” Blaidd grunted, swatting Maria’s hand away; with a throaty growl, he managed to get himself upright, wincing the entire way. “It’s my pride that’s wounded more than anything. Godfrey’s golden tackle, wherever you come from, it must be a real shitehole, if they had to train courtly women like yourself to fistfight like that.” He made a show of dusting his fur off and spat on the floor. “Stars above, you’re a gods-damned menace. We feed you proper food for a week or two, let you play with the weapons in the armoury, and all of a sudden you’re able to best me in single combat?”
“I fear you overestimate my skills,” Maria mused. “Even bereft of my memories, I think it plain to see you and I chose to focus our martial skills in opposing niches - and besides, had you been wearing full plate as you normally do, my light feet and fine bladework would have achieved little, to say nothing of that behemoth of a sword you wield.”
“So you say. Still, it was bad enough that you nearly carved me apart when we first met - when you get your memories back? Stop fighting on instinct, re-learn all those skills properly?” The wolfman let out a huff, shaking his head. “If the war was still on, General Radahn would’ve given his left nut to buy your services! And let me tell you, it’s really not exaggeration to say the old General’s a walking mountain, so his ballsack’s gods-damned enormou-”
“-if it pleases you,” Maria groaned with a hefty rolling of her eyes, “I’d rather not hear about any man’s trinkets, demigod or not. I swear,” she scoffed, “men. The same, everywhere. Always bragging about their prodigious members and the like.”
Blaidd, roaring with laughter, walked over to the bench by the entrance of the room, sat down on it with enough force that the stone construction rattled, and grabbed two jugs of water; the first, he doused himself with, the second, he drank in a long, unbroken gulp before letting out a hearty belch. “Seriously, mate. I know, your memories remain broken, but allow me to bellyache for a moment, eh? What sort of martial style were you practising just now? Wrestling, I’m no slouch at - you’ve got elements of that, what with the throw. Your hands - that’s boxing, aye. The kicks, though - I’ve never seen the like,” Blaidd mused, “nor the use of elbows for both offence and defence. And especially not some madcap combination of all of the above.”
Maria staggered, clutching at her skull as some unbidden memory threatened to erupt from the back of her mind; she focused on the dull, obsidian-silver talisman Iji had forged for her, and felt a bracing, clarifying chill sweep through her body which beat the coming madness away. Even so, a faint whisper snuck its way into her conscious mind, and Maria grasped it, certain such a fragment would do her no harm. “I believe what you witnessed was not one single form of combat,” Maria began, her speech halting and staccato as she let the words flow into her throat. “Many styles, some taught to me, others merely observed and replicated to the best of my ability, all mixed together to suit my needs during my lifetime - my previous one, that is.
Ringen
- that is the name for the wrestling I was schooled in…perhaps as a child? The boxing, that was…sourced from many places. The kicks and elbows-strikes, those primarily draw on
savate
, though I cannot tell you what the word means, or from where it draws origin. All these, combined - I want to say that it is not so much a formal style as it is a refined form of…street fighting?”
“Street fighting.” Blaidd stared at Maria, eyes blinking with visible incredulity. “You’re joking. Forgive me, fair lady, it’s just difficult to imagine you - clearly trained in courtly etiquette and noble speech -honing your skills in the noble art of back-alley brawling.”
Maria scowled. “You are the one who asked, Sir Blaidd, and I provided an answer. I see no reason for you to complain - and I should think it unreasonable to be scolded by a knight who more closely resembles a dog left out in the rain.”
The wolfman gave himself a vigorous shake, sending water flying from his fur which Maria mostly managed to avoid. “And I should think it unreasonable,” Blaidd replied with a grunt as he got back to his feet, “to be scolded by my junior!” He gave Maria a hearty slap on the back and jerked his head at the door leading out of the duelling room. “Come, Knight-Errant! Cleanse thy body and make thyself presentable,” Blaidd shouted in what Maria thought was, at best, a rather poor imitation of Dame Adula. “War Councilor Iji and her Royal Highness no doubeth wisheth to hear of thine progress in healing.”
“Do be cautious, Sir Blaidd,” Maria grumbled as she followed Blaidd down the manor’s halls towards the nearest bathing room. “I fear you may overtax your mind, using such large words.”
After a quick rinse and changing into her Carian garb, Maria made for Ranni’s Rise; despite the gentle weather, she did not linger, and so found herself entering the Princess’ tower in short order. Blaidd, who had once again donned his armour and greatsword and had her pack slung across his shoulders, waved to Maria as she approached the entrance.
“Good afternoon, Sir Blaidd,” Maria said with a smile. “I hope I did not take too long.”
“Ho there, Lady Maria,” Blaidd answered, thumping his chestplate in salutation. “Her Royal Highness and Sir Iji have been busy with their plots and schemes, so I’d not worry about running behind schedule. So? Refreshed and ready for council?”
Maria nodded. “I am. Let us be about it.”
The pair entered the tower to find Princess Ranni, Iji, and a man wearing an enormous hat and full-face mask huddled over the map Maria had previously seen the Princess and Melina studying; Blaidd leaned up against a nearby bookshelf near Iji, while Maria knelt several paces away, bowing her head. “Your Royal Highness, Sir Iji, good afternoon. Ah - my sincerest apologies, for I believe we have only seen one another on the manor grounds - would you be Preceptor Seluvis, aide to her Royal Highness?” Maria glanced up at the masked man and nodded slightly. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
“Ahhh, yes, of course. The Knight-Errant Maria herself, up and about,” Seluvis answered, looking down at Maria; she could not help but feel a sense of irritation at being in the man’s presence, despite his polite tone. “Well, it is good to see that you are in better spirits. I’d heard - secondhand, of course - that your…fragile mind was the source of many a problem.”
“We thank thee,” Ranni interjected before Maria could protest, “for thine assistance, Preceptor. Thy presence is no longer required. Return to thy post and continue thy work, as discussed.”
“Of course,” Seluvis answered with an elaborate bow. “Your wish is my command, your Royal Highness.” The Preceptor strolled out of the tower with a lazy gait, either ignorant or uncaring that Blaidd watched him go with a visible glare of open disgust.
Maria’s questions were, again, interrupted by Ranni. “Knight-Errant Maria,” the Princess said, “rise, and seat thyself as thou seest fit.” The doll waited as Maria pulled up a nearby chair from one of the many desks nearby, then nodded at Iji. “War Councilor, let the floor be thine own.”
“Ah. Good afternoon, Knight-Errant,” Iji began with a nod at Maria. “It has been, by my timekeeping, nearly three weeks since Her Royal Highness ordered you to strengthen yourself in mind, body and soul, such that you might be better equipped to face the challenges ahead. In lieu of hovering over your shoulder like an overbearing schoolmaster, I figured it would be best to allow you some freedom; Sir Blaidd and Dame Adula have given me steady updates on your progress, but I would hear your thoughts.”
“I am doing…well, I think,” Maria replied with a smile. “Sir Blaidd’s cooking has not been opulent, to say the least, but the meals provided have done much to restore this - my - body’s fullness, and the regimen of conditioning and sparring devised by Sir Blaidd and Dame Adula has restored some degree of sharpness to my martial prowess.”
“Mmm. That is good to hear,” Iji rumbled; Maria had no doubt that the ageing troll was returning her smile from beneath his mirrored helm. “And do tell me - has the Dark Moon talisman I provided helped your mental state at all?”
Maria fished out the black-on-silver disc hanging from her neck out of her tunic and rubbed at it, even now marvelling at the soothing chill which radiated from its core. “It has, if you will allow me the chance to say so, exceeded every hope and expectation I had. Even today, upon the onset of some memory threatening to overwhelm my mind, it beat back the coming spell of madness, blunting its danger while still allowing me to glean a little of its contents.”
“Oh? Excellent, very excellent, indeed,” Iji mused, hunching forward to gaze at the necklace. “The enchantment holds, and the talisman itself is no worse for wear. Still, I would advise caution - it is, at the end of the day a simple charm, nothing more. Should your mental landscape deteriorate in an extreme manner, it absolutely will not be able to match the restorative power of, say, a direct intercession from Her Royal Highness. I fear that even with its help, your best bet will be to marshal your emotions and remain calm, no matter the circumstances. I apologise, Knight-Errant, but it was the best I could do with the tools at hand.”
“Please, Sir Iji - it is I who owes you an apology for imposing upon you. Just knowing that your totem sits around my neck lifts a great burden from my shoulders,” Maria protested.
“We insist all the same,” Princess Ranni added, “that thou shouldst exercise the utmost caution going forward. All the same, we, too, hath heard a multitude of praise from Sir Blaidd and Dame Adula - thus, let us tarry no longer. To keep ye locked within the manor grounds would be but to delay that which must be faced - open confrontation with our many foes across the Lands Between. Let death be the test of things.”
“Mmm. I think she’s more than ready. Is it time, then?” Blaidd eased himself off the bookshelf and knelt over the map laid out across the floor. “Have you changed your plans at all, Princess?”
“We have,” Ranni answered. “Knight-Errant Maria, though thou may recall nothing of the matter, know this - in the midst of our meeting in the manor’s libraries, a boon most useful was granted unto thee. Once taken by madness, thine eyes couldst perceive the strings which connecteth me to my prey. Alas, such powers shattered thy mind, and ‘tis clear thou seeth not these strings when safely ensconced in sanity. Thus do we proclaim - for now - thy purpose: strengthen thy soul and mind.”
“I…I shall endeavour to do so,” Maria answered, bowing from her seat. “Do you have, your Royal Highness, a specific plan in mind that would guide me to this strength?”
The doll looked up at Maria from the floor, a sombre, grave look upon both her faces. “Indeed, we do. A common Tarnished wouldst by the taking of runes become emboldened. Lady Melina, however, hath had such powers sealed - yet, in private conversation, so too hath my half-sister in me confided words shared ‘twixt her, and the doll who wouldst speak for thy would-be patron.”
“Blood,” Maria whispered, feeling her innards begin to writhe in anticipation; she tried, but could not stop herself from licking her lips, and it was only with the grounding presence of the talisman around her neck that she remained still and calm. “The doll Lady Melina spoke of spoke of blood, no? That it would ‘make whole the broken,’ yes?”
Ranni’s eyes narrowed, her royal tone growing frosty. “Just so. Even speaking such words unsettles thee, ‘tis plain to see. Know this - our plan, in its form before thine arrival, would have thee seek the Eternal City of Nokron, in search of the treasure hidden within its depths. Thy presence, however, gives us reason to adopt caution. The treasure we seek is…let us describe it as, perchance, entwined with the fates of deities, and so we shall not risk introducing the chaotic element that is thy person and the foul Third-Moon which lurketh in thy shadow.”
“Hold on. The hunt for the bl - the item of interest,” Blaidd said, correcting himself at the last moment, “is that on hold for now?”
“Time is not of the essence,” Iji answered, shifting his bulk to face the wolfman. “Our plans, at this time, remain unhindered by those who would serve the Golden Order, or, as far as we have been able to devise, any other deity, for that matter - Knight-Errant Maria’s unwanted patron excluded, of course. Your lunar patron, Knight-Errant Maria, proclaimed itself - we think - our ally, or at the very least, not to be our enemy, but I think I speak for everyone here when I say that we’d rather not just take this Third Moon and the doll which has your face at face value.”
“Certainly,” Maria muttered, “I wouldn’t do so. Even if that…that thing speaks true, even if it has returned me from death, or granted me some sort of blessed sight at times, it has done so at my expense, and, if I understand the situation, Lady Melina’s and yours as well, your Royal Highness.”
Ranni’s tone dropped into a glacial chill. “Intended or otherwise, hands hath been raised in violence. Against my sister. Against my knights. Against us. We do not tolerate such unwarranted behaviour. Thus, a change in our plans. Lady Maria, thou must seek power - if not in runes, then in blood, though we fear neither we nor Lady Melina can to thee provide clarity on how such a thing can be accomplished.”
“What,” Blaidd snorted, “did Seluvis not have anything of value to share? If only our questions could be answered by finding a toy for him to stick his co-”
“-pup,” Iji snapped, his voice echoing throughout the tower. “Watch. Your. Mouth.”
Blaidd let out a huff and rolled his eyes. “Oh, sorry. Slip of the old tongue. Did our most esteemed colleague Preceptor Selivus not have any insight on the matter, despite his great and prodigious knowledge of all things mystic, arcane and mundane?”
Despite the helm, Maria could almost see the wizened troll staring daggers at the wolfman; a low, rumbling noise rumbled from deep within Iji’s chest, his displeasure audibly evident. “He did not, Sir Blaidd. This is new for all of us, Knight-Errant Maria included, so perhaps a little etiquette might be in order.” The wolfman muttered something beneath his breath in response; ignoring him, Iji returned his attention to Maria. “Lady Melina, if you recall, also mentioned that this ‘Plain Doll’ she faced claimed to be something akin to a Finger Maiden herself. If we follow that train of logic, perhaps this…stasis, let us call it, that prevents Lady Melina from catalysing runes might also grant her the ability to transmute blood as an alternative.”
“We fear that at this time, no other reasonable theory hath revealed itself,” Ranni added, scowling. “Thus, Knight-Errant Maria, we propose the following: thou shalt sally into the Lands Between, and in confronting a foe of suitable challenge, test thyself and provide explication in the same breath.” The doll gestured with two left hands at a spot some distance south from what Maria recognized to be their present location; the circled location lit up with a dull blue shine as she did so. “In any case, ‘tis akin to a rite of passage that a Tarnished should, in slaying foes of demigod status, take their Great Runes. At the appointed location, thou shalt find one such enemy who we believe would be within thy grasp to best.”
“That’s Stormveil Castle,” Maria said, recalling the condensed lectures Adula had given her over the past few weeks. “You’d desire that I face and defeat Godrick the Grafted, then?”
“No. We would command it,” Ranni corrected; her doll’s lips remained flat, but Maria saw a wry smile play about her ghostly features. “Seek Lady Melina, and see if she can strengthen thy spirit - that, too, we demand, a task of equal import to thine assault of Castle Stormveil. Of course, we would not thrust thee headlong into peril without some small form of assistance. Sir Blaidd shall accompany you, though, of course, we must ask that he be thine ally, a comrade-in-arms - not a pack-mule to shoulder all thy burdens.”
Blaidd walked over to Maria and laid a gauntleted hand upon her shoulder. “Would you look at that! We get to wipe that shitestain off the face of the Lands Between, and you get to spend time with your old mate, Blaidd! It’ll be a grand adventure, I say.”
“Oh, be silent, you cad.” Maria gently pushed his hand away from her person, got to her feet, and knelt before Ranni. “Your Royal Highness. Thank you for all the help and support you have given me thus far. I shall endeavour to repay it with service - if it pleases you, Princess, I shall make ready to depart forthwith.”
Ranni inclined her head ever-so-slightly. “Then do so at once. See Dame Adula before thy departure - we would grant thee a gift upon this most auspicious day. Otherwise return, in time, bearing the Great Rune of Godrick the Grafted - we anticipate thy success with great fervour.”
Maria and Blaidd both bowed once more, then marched out of the tower side by side; they walked together, sharing silence, until at last they returned to Iji’s campsite. Maria was about to ask if Blaidd wanted to ride Torrent back towards Limgrave when an enormous shadow passed overhead; with a cry of surprise she could not hold back, Maria attempted to draw her blade on instinct, only to find Blaidd grasping her right arm.
“Easy, Lady Maria, there’s nothing to fear,” Blaidd said with a grin; he pointed at the sky even as the shadow resolved into an enormous, crystal-covered dragon. Maria, jaw slack in awe, watched as the gargantuan beast landed before Ranni’s in the nearest clearing with an earth-shattering
thud
, sending dust, grass and leaves billowing in its wake - and her eyes widened as she, calming her instinctual fear in the face of such a beast, examined the dragon in detail: crystalline growths erupting from its eyes to its brow, curled horns, a thick tail spiked with glintstone-
“-is…is that you, Dame Adula?” Maria’s voice was shrill, her heart pounding in her chest as she approached the towering figure of the dragon. She stopped mere paces away from the dragon, looking up at its scaly visage with wide eyes. “It is, isn’t it?”
Adula - and it was the dragon-woman, for her voice, spoken as though piped directly into Maria’s skull, was unmistakable - began to open and close her maw, tree-sized teeth clacking against one another in time with the words Maria heard in her mind.
It is I, Knight-Errant Maria. Fear not. Here and now, thou seeth mine nature true - no longer cloaked in the skin of the frail human, that which stands before thee is the draconic made manifest.
“I…I simply…I am at a loss,” Maria whispered, reaching out with one shaking hand to touch Adula’s scaly maw. “You are - you are awesome. Terrifying, even. Yet all the same, I…I…that…beautiful. Such beauty. Your human form could not compare, not in the slightest,” she breathed, marvelling at the intricate, swirling patterns formed by Adula’s scales.
Thou art correct. Rejoice, Knight-Errant. Recall ye not my words? Consider thyself blessed. Rare are those who may claim the right to lay hands upon a dragon in friendship
, Adula boasted,
and yet now may thou proclaim thyself one amongst those hallowed few - though our time together hath been short thus far, know that ‘tis my pleasure to share my grandeur with thee, for in thee I sense potential unmatched by any Tarnished I hath encountered.
“Okay, that’s wonderful,” Blaidd shouted, leaning against Iji’s massive anvil; he made a show of looking up at the sky. “Whenever you two ladies are done brushing each others' hair and preening over one another, I think Her Royal Highness wanted us to get on with our work?”
As usual, thou wouldst conduct thyself like the mongrel thou art,
Adula grumbled; she let out a deep, throaty growl, wisps of gleaming sapphire smoke discharging from her mouth and nostrils.
One must feel pity for Her Royal Highness, that She hath suffered the companionship of such a scoundrel mutt since youth. Ignore Sir Blaidd’s barking, Knight-Errant. For thee, a gift - forged in partnership ‘twixt Sir Iji and myself.
Maria watched, dumbfounded, as Adula took several enormous paces backwards before opening her jaws slightly; a thin stream of sapphire magic short forth from deep within the dragon’s throat, coalescing into a glintstone-lined wooden case which hung suspended in mid-air.
In thine duels, ‘twas simple observation that thou shouldst employ an armament far superior in craftsmanship and elegance than some longsword, pilfered from the filthy hands of Godrick’s mindless servants. This, Knight-Errant, shall be the first true mark of thy service to Her Royal Highness.
Maria reached up and took ahold of the case, pulling it free of the sapphire cloud; she laid it upon the ground and popped its latches open-
-and within, lay a twinblade.
It was not exactly like the ones she’d found in the manor’s armoury and sparred against Blaidd with; rather than being two blades of equal length and width sharing a single grip, this was something different.
The top blade, combining the slender blade of a katana with the dome-shaped guard and curved knucklebow of a rapier decorated with gold filigree; the bottom blade, a stout shortsword, laced with veins of gleaming glintstone.
The two blades, connected grip-to-grip, by an intricately-crafted twist-lock.
Maria was aware - dimly - that Adula was speaking, but her words, even spoken directly into her mind, found no purchase.
She took up the weapon in her hands, closed her eyes, and with a twist-and-pull movement carved deep within her muscles, twirled the two weapons in an elegant flourish before moving through a series of practice forms-
-and, returning the weapon into its joined form, she cradled the blades as she fell to her knees, crying tears of joy at its return.
“-hey, are you - Maria? Lady Maria! What’s the matter?” Blaidd knelt in front of Maria, one hand gently resting upon her shoulder as he gave her a soft shake. “Hey! Come on, snap out of it - what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Maria said, setting the blade back in its case and smiling up at Adula and Blaidd despite the tears which flowed freely down her face. “Nothing’s wrong..”
Is…is the blade not to thy liking? Even if rendered hazy and incomplete by means of thy half-forgotten memories, Sir Iji and I did endeavour to construct the twinblade thou didst describe,
Adula offered, her fangs grinding with unease.
Indeed, knowing thy words might not yield results thou wouldst desire, we didst consult much with Sir Blaidd, hoping that in his sparring he might in some manner provide adjustments to our work. Forgive us, Knight-Errant-”
“-no, no, please, don’t be sorry,” Maria laughed, first embracing Blaidd, then rushing over to do the same to Adula’s neck; she returned to the weapon, removed the accompanying scabbards from the case and with expert ease separated and sheathed each blade before strapping the weapons to her belt. “It’s just - it’s perfect. My beloved Rakuyo, once again in my hands.”
“Ra-ku-yo,” Blaidd said, testing the word slowly. “That’s…that’s a name from the Land of Reeds. Hrm. You never said it had a name.”
Maria, wiping the tears from her face, cocked her head in thought. “No, I did not. But it’s returned to me now - and I am certain, yes, that I once treasured a weapon just like this - but…perhaps, like me, it, too, has been remade. Reforged. Given a second chance.” She bowed deeply towards Adula. “My most sincere thanks, Dame Adula - and please, will you not pass along my gratitude to Sir Iji and Her Royal Highness?”
No. That, you shall do yourself,
Adula responded with a dip of her head,
when thy Rakuyo hath been bloodied and a Great Rune resteth within thy grasp. Fare thee well, Knight-Errant - we shall await thy return with bated breath.
Spreading her wings, Adula once more took to the skies, and soon was little more than a shrinking shadow in the distance.
“Nobody ever gets me anything,” Blaidd chuckled, tossing Maria’s pack over to the Knight-Errant; she caught it, slung it over her shoulders with a smirk, and gestured at the road ahead.
“Oh, wipe the pout from your face, my wolfish friend. Perhaps we’ll find something that suits you along the way,” Maria replied; with a hearty whistle, she called forth Torrent from his spectral slumber, and after resting her head against the horse’s side for a moment, she leapt atop her steed’s back. “I’m in high spirits, Sir Blaidd. Come on, then! Let us see how Godrick the Grafted fares against my blades renewed.”
(BELOVED) KNIGHT-ERRANT MARIA, THE FORGIVEN
Class: Wayward Hunter → Carian Knight-Errant
The Carian Knights of eld counted fewer than twenty amongst their esteemed ranks; though their power rivalled - even surpassed, depending on who one spoke to - the champions of gold upon the battlefield, Queen Renalla knew from the beginning that wars could not be won by a mere handful of elite warriors. Thus, the Carian Knight-Errants - rarely did these warriors ever wield even a fraction of the power their superiors could, but Renalla, a tactician in her own right, knew well that sometimes quantity is a quality all its own.
When Lunar Princess Ranni offered Maria the choice to serve as a Carian Knight-Errant, she felt her stomach churn with fear and anticipation. Who would accept such a thing? Who would desire to be the first Carian Knight-Errant - itself a title of little renown, all its meagre lustre faded across the ages - since time immemorial? When Maria swore a partial vow of fealty - a promise to, even in some small capacity, serve - it took all her willpower to not cry out in elation at the promise of a loyal, principled woman joining her court.
Rakuyo Kintsugi
A Hunter weapon, similar in style to the one once wielded by Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower.
Described to the Carian blacksmith Iji as a “trick” weapon, drawing elements from armaments hailing from both the Lands Between and the Land of Reeds.
Maria, despite abandoning her title as Lady of the Astral Clocktower, could not forget her love of the twinned blades - even if she has forgotten why she grew to love the Rakuyo in place of the Chikage she once carried.
Dark Moon Talisman
A silver disc-shaped talisman inlaid with obsidian, fashioned in the image of Ranni's Dark Moon.
When held, emits a curious chill which promotes clarity of mind.
The Dark Moon represents an Order without Order. Those who cry out to it for salvation hear nothing - a fact that provides comfort.
"One should be wary of an uncaring god," the snowy crone once taught Ranni, "but be terrified of a god which does."
Carian Duellist's Set
Light armour consisting of a caped waistcoat, silken tunic, padded trousers and leather riding boots.
A style of clothing once made famous by the Carian Knight, Dame Arianwen Gwynne of the Celeritous Saber.
Arianwen, unlike her fellow Knights, spurned the protection of plate, preferring her legendary speed to serve as her protection.
She was, ultimately, proven correct - no arrow ever found its mark, no blade ever managed to do more than graze her, and no magic ever wound its way past her wards.
In the end, what killed was her Queen's orders - no fleetness of foot could save her from being exiled from her homeland.
No amount of running could save her from a broken heart.
STATS: LEVEL 9
Vigor: 11 → 20
Endurance: 11 → 20
Strength: 11 → 20
The body of Mair, now home to Maria, benefited greatly from Carian hospitality. Nourished for nearly a month on the kind of hearty, toothsome meals beloved by Blaidd, the late Arianwen Gwynne’s clothing no longer hangs loose upon Maria’s frame.
Mind: 5 → 15
Intelligence: 5 → 15
Maria is not healed; perhaps, she fears, she never will be made whole. Still, the circumstances of her arrival in the Lands Between has been, to some degree, illuminated; between the soothing hands of Lunar Princess Ranni, the stern lessons of Dame Adula, and the calming presence of Sir Iji’s talisman, Maria now walks the long, winding road to recovery.
Dexterity: 56 → 70
Even at her lowest, Maria was a swordswoman capable of bringing Blaidd, the Half-Wolf servant of Lunar Princess Ranni, dangerously close to defeat - an incredible feat of swordsmanship, by any standard. With the aid of a month’s worth of constant sparring, access to fine Carian armaments and a body no longer suffering the ill-effects of privation, she who was once the Lady of the Astral Clocktower stands tall, blades ready to meet any who would dare challenge her.
Bloodtinge: 99 → 99?
Those who saw Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower duel without restraint spoke in whispers of her terrible powers - gifts, or curses, depending on to whom one spoke, bestowed upon her by the lineage of Cainhurst.
SUCH AN UGLY NAME.
HOW CAN BLOOD BE VILE?
THOUGH YOUR EARS ARE CLOSED TO YOUR MOTHER, FEAR NOT
ALL WHO KNOW THE NAME OF MY BELOVED ANNALISE KNOW SHE IS VILEBLOOD NO MORE
SING PRAISE TO THE QUEEN OF THE BLOODKIN
SING PRAISE, O MARIA
BE NOT AFRAID, FOR YOUR BLOOD IS A MOTHER’S LOVE MADE MANIFEST
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
“Where is he?” Karma frowned. He didn’t have a watch so he couldn’t check the time but it had to be getting late.
An eruption of laughter came from the corner as a final winner was determined in the makeshift tournament they had put on.
“Great job Isogai!”
“I really wasn’t banking on him to win…”
“It’s a win for the guys!” Okajima cheered.
“Hey, we didn’t even divide the tournament brackets into guys versus girls!” snapped Okano.
“Doesn’t matter, the guys still won!”
“That’s not how this works!”
“Alright, alright… let’s go sleep already. You’re all making too much of a racket,” Karma said, turning to them.
“You’re not the boss of us,” Rio said, throwing her arms behind her head.
“You’d listen if Nagisa told you to go to bed.”
“Yeah, well… that’s Nagisa… he’s the one who organized all of this. I say another round. This time we actually do boys versus girls to determine the true winners!”
“No. You’re all going to bed,” it was Nagisa’s voice coming from up above. He was sitting in the open window, looking down at them. For an entire class of highly skilled children, both in the art of killing as well as infiltration. None of them had heard him coming.
“And how long have you been up there?” Rio asked smiling.
“About five minutes. Just watching you all make fools of yourselves.”
He tossed the duffle bag down to them.
“Open them up and get out of your dirty clothes. Then we’re going to bed, because tomorrow, we’re leaving.”
“We are!” Kaede smiled.
“I got us a ship,” Nagisa told them.
“Eee!” Okuda cheered.
“I wonder if it’ll have bedrooms for all of us,” Kanzaki said, imagining the best-case scenario.
“Do you honestly think he got us a hotel cruise liner?” Rio frowned. “Be realistic. It’s going to be a wrecker…”
“Who cares!” Maehara admitted. “We’re getting off this planet and farther away from that school.”
Karma walked up the metal stairs to stand with Nagisa at the open window as they all took out an outfit from the bag.
“I told you that I would find us a ship,” Karma said, frowning.
“Yeah, well, I found one first,” Nagisa stared out the window his arms folded. He looked tired.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You just—”
“Oh no, you get out!” Okano snapped.
“Oh c’mon,” Muramatsu frowned. “It’s cold outside. And there are mosquitoes.”
“I don’t care, you boys are not watching the girl’s undress. Leave!” Okano looked really upset.
“I agree with Muramatsu… we’ll all turn around and we won’t peep. Promise!”
“We don’t trust any of you!” a few of the girl’s snapped in unison.
Nagisa got to his feet walking over to the railing. “The girls will change in here. The guys will change outside. Go…”
“Nagisa c’mon!”
“Out,” he said as he also started walking, making his way to the door too.
“You heard the man,” Karma said. “C’mon all of you out.”
The guys groaned, grabbing a uniform as they went. Once all the guys were outside. Nagisa who was already dressed, stood at the door.
“Man this sucks,” Sugaya complained, slapping at a mosquito as he was unbuttoning his shirt.
“Calm down, we’re only out here for a few minutes,” Karma said as he pulled off his shirt. “Suck it up, be a man about it.”
Nagisa watched him. Unintentionally at first, but once he realized what he was doing, he shook his head and stared at his shoes.
Karma was his type physically. Tall, fit. The red hair wasn’t really a thing for him, but he liked the color nonetheless. And he had had a crush on him as long as he could remember. But Karma only realized he existed about a year ago, and that time was mostly spent teasing and making fun of him. He made fun of everyone, but picking on him had quickly become his beloved pastime. Nagisa never minded too much. When you’re trapped, being tortured and beaten almost daily at their Academy, everyone had to blow off steam somehow, and if making fun of him helped Karma’s nerves at all then he didn’t mind bearing the brunt of it.
“Okay… we’re done…” Kimura frowned. “Can we go back in now?”
Nagisa opened the door a crack. “Ladies are you finished?”
He heard whispering inside. But none of them responded.
It had to have been more than enough time for them to get dressed though so he opened the door slowly to find them all, dressed, but huddled in a circle.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
They looked up at him. “These outfits are disgusting…”
“I look like a boy!” Kurahashi frowned.
“It’s not even black… it’s more grey,” Hazama sighed.
Nagisa smiled. “Oh, is that all…”
“Is that all?” Rio snapped. “This is a serious offense, Nagisa! You’re purposely trying to make a group of beautiful women like us look like factory floozies!”
“Factory floozies?” Itona repeated, seemingly trying to wrap his head around what that meant.
He laughed nervously as they all seemed to surround him. “Sorry… It’s not like there were a lot of choices.”
“Besides,” Karma stepped forward, so he was standing between Nagisa and the enraged girls. “This isn’t a fashion show, ladies, we’re on the run. Or did you forget?”
“We’re just saying, our uniforms were a lot cuter than—” Kurahashi began, but was quickly cut off.
“Then put them back on and head back to school. If you think being poked and prodded like a lab rat is worth getting to wear a cute uniform, then be my guest. No one is keeping you here,” Karma pointed out. “That goes for anyone else who doesn’t want to follow the rules we set. We can’t have anyone standing out and giving us away.”
“…I didn’t say that…” Kurahasi mumbled, frowning slightly.
“Look… things will calm down eventually,” Nagisa said, trying to dispel the tension that seemed to be building. “As soon as I can get some money together, I’ll get you all better clothes, I promise.”
“Wait just a minute… the rules we set?” Terasaka spoke up. “I don’t remember putting you or Nagisa in charge of this operation.”
“Nagisa got us out of there, so he’s in charge. And I’m second in command when and if he can’t make decisions,” Karma explained bluntly.
“Yeah I don’t think that flies with me. We should be voting on things like this. I mean sure, he got us out. Great. I’m thankful… but now that we’ve escaped, we should democratically decide who’s in charge.”
“We already have a chain of command here,” Karma explained.
“Chain of command?” Itona frowned, attempting to wrap his head around that phrasing.
“Don’t overwork your two brain cells Itona,” Karma said, patting his head as if he were a small child. “It’s the chain I'll go get and beat you all with until you understand whose in command.” **
“Hey!” Terasaka moved forward, looking like he very much wanted to punch Karma.
Nagisa rushed forward to separate them.
“Both of you stop!” he snapped. “I’ve been calling the shots lately because I’m the one who stepped up to try to keep everything organized. And until we’re off this planet, I’m going to keep us in line. But we decide on things together, as a team. None of us are going to get through this without us all working together and being on the same page.”
“Tsk…”
“We’ll worry about who's in charge once we’re on the ship,” Nagisa said. “For now, everyone should go to bed. We have a long day tomorrow.”
They all slowly started moving to their respective sleeping spots around the warehouse.
“Karma.”
Karma turned back to him.
“I want a word.”
“Oh Captain, my Captain,” he teased, following him back outside.
Nagisa made sure the door clicked shut behind him, turning to face Karma with an intensity he didn’t normally show.
“You need to stop doing that,” he said, his voice low and almost pleading.
“Doing what?” Karma replied with a challenging smirk.
“You know exactly what. Saying things that get everyone riled up. You’re doing it on purpose.”
“And?” Karma replied bluntly his voice thick with arrogance.
“This whole situation is hard enough without you pushing everyone apart,” Nagisa continued. "I’m telling you to stop it. Now."
He turned to go back inside. He had only gotten the door open a crack before Karma’s limb shot forward cracking at the metal door closing it with a loud crack. Nagisa spun around as Karma walked close to him. His eyes glowing his hair swaying slightly despite their being now wind. Something about them using their limbs seemed to do that. He walked up so close Nagisa had to press himself into the door.
"Part of leading is knowing how to control those around you," Karma whispered. “So, how are you going to make me stop?”
“I’m not going to fight you, Karma," Nagisa said quietly. Everything from his limbs being out to his stance told him Kama was looking for a fight. The limbs from his neck matched the color of his hair and they moved at his side as though waiting for Nagisa to act first.
“I’d win, you know," he murmured. "But that’s not what I want. I’m trying to get you to see how serious this is.”
“I
am
serious.”
“No, you’re not!” Karma snapped. “If you’re going to command people, you have to be able to make them listen and not just because you’re right, but because them not doing so could cost all of us our lives. And you also have to know how to punish those who don’t listen. That’s what makes a leader, that is what makes an army.”
Nagisa took a steadying breath, trying to ignore the unsettling feeling in his chest. He couldn’t look Karma in the eye, and he knew Karma was satisfied with this show of weakness. “I’m not trying to command an army, Karma.”
The redhead’s jaw tightened, standing there looming over Nagisa like a monster over prey.
“Then what’s your plan, huh?” His voice dropped to a dangerous whisper. “We’ve escaped. So, you’re telling me we’re just supposed to run forever? Hide forever?”
“That’s the plan,” Nagisa said bluntly.
“Are you out of your mind?”
“You know it as well as I do. We were going to sold off to who knows what sort of client… That or they’d experiment on us until it inevitably kills us. I don’t think Itona would have lived another week in there... We
had
to leave Karma.”
The Academy was training them to be Heartbreakers. Which was the codename for their job. Technically, it came down to them being bodyguards for whoever paid the most to have them. But it came with a catch. The Academy would literally link your heart to your client. Meaning if their heart ever stops, it would break yours, literally. The concept behind this is that the Academy believed no one fights to live harder than someone fighting for their own life. It ensured you would never leave your client’s side and that you would risk life and limb to ensure their safety. Most importantly, it ensured their secrets and crimes also died with their bodyguards.
It was usually rich men and women who deal in shady affairs who hired Heartbreakers to protect them. But much of the time it was also people who just wanted slaves to commit crimes for them as well so they didn’t have to get their hands dirty.
Some of them had sponsors. People who specifically paid them to be trained at the school and they returned to them as their Heartbreaker upon graduation. But most of them had no clue who they would be sold to when all is said and done.
Karma’s expression faltered for a brief moment and then he moved even closer, his body pressing into Nagisa's personal space like he needed to make his point known, not with words, but with proximity. “So that’s it then? That’s all? We just run and hide for the rest of our lives?”
Nagisa sighed. “We all deserve a chance to have a life.”
Karma didn’t respond immediately. He took a deep breath in, “...Why do I smell blood?”
Nagisa froze, his heart leapt into his throat as Karma lifted the collar of his coverall to his nose. “I know you didn’t get us the cleanest clothes, but this—this is different. You’re bleeding, aren’t you?”
He laughed, but it was obviously forced, "Maybe the ship we’re stealing tomorrow will have a washing machine..."
His gaze locked onto Nagisa’s, and he couldn’t help but avoid it. Choosing to look at the ground instead. "Cut the shit, Nagisa. Are you hurt?"
Nagisa tensed, a spark of irritation flaring in his expression. His voice was sharp, almost desperate, as he snapped, "Drop it, Karma."
But Karma’s gaze softened, the intensity in his eyes flickering with concern, though his tone remained fiercely commanding. "What happened while you were gone?"
"Nothing... just forget it…" Nagisa’s voice wavered, but his continued attempts to dismiss it only fueled Karma’s determination.
He reached out to the top button on Nagisa’s coverall. He jerked back, swatting his hand away, a flare of panic rising in his chest.
"What are you doing?" Nagisa frowned.
"If you're hurt, I need to see to it," Karma murmured. "It could get infected."
"It wasn’t bad… just forget it," Nagisa insisted. Shit… He couldn’t let Karma know the truth of how he’d gotten the injury, or how they had really escaped the school.
Karma’s limbs brushed against his fingers lightly, a touch so gentle and uncharacteristic that it made Nagisa look up. Nagisa’s heart raced, caught in the intensity of Karma’s gaze.
“Okay…” Karma’s voice softened, “I guess I’ll drop it. But if it were me, or anyone else for that matter... you’d make them get treated. Wouldn’t you?”
"Sure… if it was bad," he muttered. "But this was nothing. I just fell is all. So don’t—"
He was cut off when Karma’s limbs tightened around his wrists, pinning his arms at his side.
"Heh… tricked you," Karma chuckled darkly. "Now… let me see it."
Nagisa pulled, trying to break free, but he knew it was pointless. Karma’s limbs were far too strong—capable of cutting through steel, and slicing through metal like it was paper.
"If you keep fighting it like that," Karma pointed out coldly as he started unbuttoning his coverall, "my limbs will slice your wrist open."
"Fuck you Karma" He exhaled exasperatedly. For a second, he felt like Karma was being genuinely nice. And he felt a little betrayed that he had done it only to distract Nagisa from the fact his limbs were planning to grab hold of him.
"Maybe later," Karma teased, the playful voice making Nagisa’s stomach tighten with embarrassment. He finished unbuttoning the coverall, and the fabric fell to his waist, revealing the sleeveless tank beneath, and the bandage on Nagisa’s arm, which was soaked through with blood. He hadn’t realized it was bleeding that badly.
"Well, well…" he murmured, his fingers trailing up Nagisa’s arm with a reverence that made Nagisa’s heart skip a beat. Softly, he touched the bloodied bandage.
"You didn’t get this from falling,” Karma said upon inspecting it. “Unless you’re going to tell me you fell off a cliff, and you’d have more injuries than just this if you had.”
“Does it matter?” Nagisa asked.
“It matters to me,” he growled back.
“Look… I just… ran into some trouble. It was nothing serious; I handled it. We have bigger things to focus on. So let me go.”
The words barely registered. He reached out, his thumb pressing lightly against the injury as if to feel its depth without disturbing the bandage.
Nagisa winced at the touch, his breath catching, he instinctively tried to pull free again but felt his wrist burn from the effort. “Damn it, Karma, just let me go.”
Ignoring the plea he kept examining the injury.
"You know, this is exactly why I wanted to be with you."
“Karma, I don’t need a babysitter!”
"Well I’m making a new rule: Anyone going out to get supplies has to be accompanied by someone else."
“Ugh,” he rolled his eyes. “Whatever fine. Now let go of me.”
“This bandage has to get changed.”
“Well, you can let go of me before we change it.”
“That’s not nearly as fun,” he pointed out, smirking at his discomfort. “So tell me… are you embarrassed that you got captured so easily? Or are you upset you’re not able to get away?”
Nagisa felt his face grow red. He probably could get away if he really tried. But while Karma was fine with using his limbs on Nagisa, Nagisa didn’t want to do the same. Their limbs were not toys, they were weapons, and they should be used like the weapons they were. And he didn’t ever want to turn a weapon on Karma. It wasn’t worth the risk that he could accidentally injure him. But it seemed Karma had no such reservations. So, he did his best to just keep his wrists still so he didn’t injure himself.
“Just hurry up…”
“I’ll be honest, you look like a little plague mouse that got caught in a trap,” he joked as he ripped the sleeve off his own coverall. He threw it over his shoulder while he removed the bandage.
Nagisa clenched his teeth, looking away, trying not to show how much it hurt. The moment the bandage was removed he felt blood pour down his arm. “This really should be stitched up.”
“It doesn’t matter just tie it tight. It’ll be fine.”
“I don’t think it will…” Karma explained.
“Well it’s not like we can sew it up right now. Just hurry up.”
He wrapped it around and pulled it tight as Nagisa asked.
Nagisa winced when the pain shot up his arm.
“All done.”
Karma let his wrists go, the limbs retracting back into his neck. His eyes also stopped glowing. Nagisa quickly pulled the coverall back over his shoulders.
“I’ll find out what happened eventually,” Karma said. “I gotta admit, kinda hope it was embarrassing. You’re supposed to be one of our best fighters so if someone was able to get you… Well, you’re not really living up to the reputation.”
He smirked as he went back into the warehouse.
Nagisa stood there. Face flushed, feeling slightly humiliated. Karma was right about that at least… the fact he got injured so easily was kind of embarrassing. He just needed to keep his head in the game and focus on the tasks at hand.
He couldn’t let Karma distract him. Despite his making every effort to be distracting.
“You’re telling me none of you find any of this strange?” Karasuma asked his new colleagues the following day over breakfast that was hand-prepared by the chefs on staff.
“Yum, it’s delicious!” Irina said cheerfully.
“We’re the best of the best!” Takaoka pointed out to him. “Why wouldn’t they treat us well. We’re about to save them so much money after all.”
He frowned, turning back to his meal. The Reaper who sat beside him spoke up while balancing a fork on one finger.
“They’re buying our silence…”
They all turned to him and the maids who were standing against the wall exchanged nervous glances.
“Think about it… Through the process of reacquiring these children, we are bound to learn more than a few secrets they don’t want made public. So, their kindness as well as the reward money is their way of saying whatever you see, whatever you hear. Keep it to yourself.”
He finished his omelet and held the plate out to the maid nearest to him. “More please, madam.”
“Hell I know how to keep my mouth shut!” Takaoka exclaimed cheerfully.
“…” Karasuma folded his arms.
“Karasuma Sir, would you prefer something else?” asked one of the maids.
“No,” he answered. “I’m just not hungry.”
“Then can I have your—” the Reaper piped up, eyeing his dish.
“Here,” he said, pushing his plate over before his inquiry had finished.
He got up and left the room and Takaoka laughed. “What’s got him so upset. Its nice here. This is possibly the best job I’ve ever had. Good pay. Good food.”
“He’s too serious,” Irina said she turned to the Reaper watching him eat Karasuma’s portion. “You really want us to walk around calling you a name that’s as widely known as “the Reaper.”
“I suppose you’re right…”
“So what’s your real name then?” she asked in a tone as though she didn’t actually care about the answer.
“I’d rather not say…”
“Oh c’mon. Everyone is using their real names but you…” Irina pointed out. “That doesn’t really promote camaraderie.”
“Hhmm… I suppose so… I guess you can call me Korosensei if you wish.”
“Korosensei? Why?”
“I used to be a teacher back in the day,” he explained.
“So you’re the “Reaper” and a teacher? That makes no sense.”
“Well… I was a teacher first, and I went by my actual name back in the day. But after, I became the “Reaper.” And the reaper is known for being unkillable so… you can call me an unkillable teacher. Thus, Korosensei.”
“Uh-huh… I still don’t believe you’re the Reaper. But fine… I’ll call you by that stupid name if you insist,” she said, downing the rest of her drink.
“Why do you still believe I’m not the Reaper?” he asked, frowning.
“'Cause you don’t look threatening, and you picked the absolute least likely career for a “Reaper” to ever have had.”
“Maybe being a teacher made me the Reaper,” Korosensei said softly not looking up from his the last few bites on his plate. He was eating quickly.
She scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Seriously? How does teaching turn someone into
that
?”
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he calmly dabbed the corner of his mouth with a napkin, then placed it neatly on the table. He rose from his seat and walked to her side, leaning close, too close, and though he hadn’t touched her, she felt threatened, like a knife was to her throat, even though he held no weapon. There was a sudden drop in temperature, as if the air itself recoiled from him.
Then he whispered, his voice cold and heavy with an emotion buried in the syllables that she couldn’t place, “Because maybe… my entire class of children died. And maybe I wasn’t the kind of man who could turn my back on that.”
He paused, looking at the absolute terror on her face.
“Believe me now?”
“Yes Sir!” she stammered.
“Well good,” he said cheerfully, smiling brightly, and the air returned to normal. “I’m going to go get ready. We got some missing children to find after all.”
Takaoka had been looking at a tablet before him and hadn’t looked up during their exchange. Breathing heavily, she watched Korosensei leave the room.
Breathing heavily, she felt like she had been holding her breath during that exchange. Yeah okay… she believed him now.
“It’s um… Well its definitely a ship,” Rio admitted when they stood before it. While she hadn't been expecting a luxury vessel, she also hadn't pictured one this run down...
“There isn’t going to be enough room for all of us to have a bedroom, is there…” Kurahashi sighed.
“There are a good few,” Nagisa said. He had just gotten done inspecting the ship. He wanted to check it for traps as he didn’t trust the Reaper. But seeing as it just appeared to be a normal ship he fell content with letting them enter. “But most of us will have to pair off. So everyone find someone you want to bunk with.”
Most of them started trying to find pairings. But Nagisa and Terasaka were focused on loading the ship.
Nagisa had just picked up a rather heavy crate of medicine when Karma walked up, throwing his arm around Nagisa’s shoulders. “You’re paired with me.”
“Wha… Karma you almost made me drop this!”
“Well you shouldn’t be lifting heavy things with your arm anyway,” he said, grabbing the box from him and putting it on one shoulder as though to show off how much easier it was for him.
“Fine… you load the ship. I’m going to go to town and see if I can steal a bit more food for the trip.”
“I’m coming too.”
“No, help the load the ship since you’re so much stronger than me…”
“Hey, what about our new rule… no going for supplies without—”
“I’ll take Kayano.”
He chuckled, “Anything to not go with me I guess. Fine.”
Nagisa walked over to Kayano who was talking with Kanzaki about pairing up for room assignments. “Kayano, I need to go to town. Do you mind coming with me?”
“Oh sure!” she said. “Talk to you later Kanzaki.”
She rushed over to keep up as he had already started walking to town. “What are we getting?”
“A little more food,” Nagisa pointed out. “I want to make sure we have enough to make it to the next planet we stop at.”
“Are we going anywhere in particular?”
“No, we just got to keep moving so the Academy doesn’t find us.”
“Hmmm… for how long?”
Nagisa frowned at that. Both Karma and Kayano were worried about that, it seems. And it was a fair question. But he couldn’t give her a satisfactory answer without lying. The reality of everything is that they would likely be running for the rest of their lives.
“Karma,” Okuda approached him while he was loading the ship.
“What’s up?”
“So there are a few more rooms than necessary. Could some of us have our own room?”
“Nagisa wants to keep some rooms open for travelers,” Karma explained. “He thinks we can make good money offering cheap means of travel for guests we pick up. So we need as many rooms open as possible.”
“Well… that still leaves an odd number of students. And I’d like to start working on experiments, and that requires as much room as possible. So, since someone is going to have to have a room to themselves anyway, could it be me?”
“Hhmm…” Karma mentally counted the students in his head. And it was true that someone would have to have a room to themselves. “Sure I don’t mind. Just don’t do anything that’s going to blow the ship up.”
She cheered excitedly, “Thanks, Karma!”
“This does kind of suck, though…” Kataoka spoke up, frowning. “Have you actually seen the rooms yet, Okuda? They’re really small. I wouldn’t consider any of those rooms big enough for even one person to live in comfortably. Let alone two.”
“Well, we all have to make sacrifices,” Karma said. “There are common areas, so you don’t have to spend all day in your rooms anyway. Let’s finish loading. When Nagisa and Kaede get back, we’ll need to take off immediately, so it needs to be done sooner rather than later.”
They all picked up the pace.
They moved through the city with ease. Blending in now that they wore their coveralls. This was the main port city on Atlas. It was filled with workers and beggars. And port ships refueling. They were master of the five-finger discount. Knowing how to distract the shop owners and take things they wanted was actually one of the first skills the school taught them. It wasn’t long before their bag was full of various odds and ends foods.
They kept wandering around town. Everyone you looked at had some degree of dirt on them. It certainly wasn’t the place you’d expect to see anyone dressed as fancy as the woman they watched disembark from a nearby ship. Long blonde hair. A white business uniform. Makeup and hair made her look like a model, and her breasts were practically spilling out of her top. She instantly drew stares from the men around her. Three other men walked off it with her. And while they didn’t stand out as much as she did. They all wore clean clothes and had combed hair and that was enough to draw attention on Atlas.
“She’s pretty,” Nagisa mentioned offhandedly.
“Yeah well… Anyone would be pretty with a rack that big!” she snapped, he wasn’t sure why she sounded so personally offended but he tried to have her laugh it off. “C’mon. Let’s hurry up.”
They headed the opposite direction, preparing to steal a bit more.
“What a dump,” Irina said, frowning.
“Should we divide and conquer?” Takaoka asked.
“That would likely be best,” Karasuma said. “What was that name you said you want to go by again?”
“He wants to be called Korosensei. Get it right!” Irina snapped, sounding nervous.
“What’s got you so uptight?”
“Uh… just… We should show the man formerly known as the Reaper some respect,” she said.
“Right… then Korosensei and Takaoka, you stay in town,” he ordered. “Miss. Jelavić, you and I will start on the outskirts. We’ll expand from there as soon as we determine none of the kids are here.”
They immediately headed in opposite directions.
“So… Korosensei huh… Seems like a ridiculous name if you ask me,” Takaoka pointed out.
“Well I like it.”
“So what do you recommend for finding these kids?”
“I intend to just use my eyes,” Korosensei admitted as he scanned over the crowd.
“I was thinking we could set a trap,” Takaoka pointed out. “Though, admittedly, they didn’t give us a likes and dislikes list, so it’s hard to set traps when you don’t have that intel. What do kids their age usually like?”
“Couldn’t say. Children aren’t monoliths after all, they’re all different.”
“Nah… they’re all snot-nosed punks at the end of the day. But if there is anything everyone likes it’s going to be money. Maybe we should set out a stack of fake cash and see—”
“There.” Korosensei nodded in the direction he was looking. And Takaoka saw them too. They had turned down an abandoned alleyway.
“This will be easy.”
“For kids who were supposedly kidnapped, they’re sure walking around with a lot of freedom.”
“Maybe the kidnapper let them out to get supplies. Who knows. Maybe he's here watching them, and we can't see him. Either way…” he cracked his knuckles. “Watch and learn.”
Takaoka walked up to them. Nagisa’s head turned in his direction before he had even gotten close.
“Well hello!” Takaoka said, smiling. “Nice day we’re having, isn’t it?”
“Uh, sure…” Kayano answered, looking leery.
He walked up close and threw his arms around each of them. “Don’t be afraid, keep your eyes straight ahead. Is your kindapper watching right now?”
“Our what?”
"My associates and I are here to save you kids. Where are they hiding the others?”
“Save us?” Nagisa frowned he had seen him before with that beautiful girl earlier. So these were the talented people the Reaper warned him about. “I… I think you have the wrong people.”
Nagisa removed Takaoka’s arm from his shoulder. “Sorry, I have to take my sister home. Mom and Dad will be worried if we’re any later. C’mon.”
He grabbed Kayano’s hand and started walking away with her. She immediately pretended to be apart of the ruse. “Big brother when we get home can we have steamed rice?”
“If you’re good and get your chores done in time.”
“I see…” Takaoka said. “You kid’s can’t speak freely. Did he bug you, is he listening?”
Nagisa exhaled slowly, turning to face him, eyes unreadable.
“Who is he talking about?” Kayano whispered, her brows knitting together.
“I don’t know, but take the bag.” He slipped it off his shoulder and handed it to her. His voice dropped low. “Get back to the ship. If I’m not there in five minutes… leave.”
She blinked, “But—”
“I’ve got Ritsu. She’s already connected to the ship’s network. I’ll find you at the next stop, if—”
“If?” she asked quietly.
“Just
go
,” he hissed.
Kayano hesitated; eyes locked on his face. He was so serious, so she nodded and leapt up to the roof of the nearest building, using a stack of crates to get up ther. She vanished from site.
Nagisa turned back. His smiled. “Wait— so you reallyare you here to save us?” He pitched his voice just right, shaky and grateful was the tone he was going for.
Takaoka tilted his head slightly, amused. “Of course. Your school hired us. Where is she off to?”
“She’s letting my friends know we’re safe,” Nagisa said smoothly. “We were terrified. I can’t thank you enough.”
Takaoka’s grin widened. “So, where’s this kidnapper?”
“Back at the hideout.” Nagisa started walking towards him, calmly. “Said he’d kill us if we tried to leave. I really hope you’re strong enough to stop him.”
“Don’t you worry,” Takaoka said, reaching out, voice syrupy with a false sweetness that Nagisa picked up on right away. “You’re safe now—”
The flash of steel cut his words short.
A knife whistled through the air, fast and deadly. It missed his throat by a breath—just enough to
scare
. Takaoka staggered back, eyes wide.
“What the hell—”
Nagisa was already moving. Calm. Silent. Like a snake uncoiling.
Another slash. Controlled. Not reckless, he was clearly trained.
“You talk too much,” Nagisa murmured.
Takaoka fell back on the next swing. “Hey, we’re supposed to be saving you kids…”
“We don’t need saving,” he said. Limbs grew from his neck, his eyes started glowing adding to the fear on Takaoka’s face. He looked like a literal monster. Nagisa handed the knife off to one of the limbs. They could move far faster than his hands ever good. It was time to kill him, “Goodbye.”
The kill strike was next. He was going to die. Takaoka could sense it. “No wait! Stop!”
*CLAP*
Nagisa gasped. A sharp, piercing pain lanced through his skull, so intense it sent stars bursting behind his eyes. His legs buckled slightly beneath him. His whole body tingled with numbness, as if the air itself had turned thick and drugged.
"Wha..." He exhaled.
His lungs wouldn’t cooperate. Each breath was shallow, strained. A tremor ran through him. Blinking hard, trying to force the world to stay in focus. Everything was tilting, the edges of his vision bleeding to black.
His opponent hadn’t moved. He was still collapsed on the ground, looking up at Nagisa in wide-eyed panic. This wasn’t his doing.
Nagisa blinked again. His knees buckled. He stumbled forward a step, chest heaving. He tried to will himself upright, but his thoughts were growing slow—his awareness dimming like a flickering light. He fell, caught by someone his vision was too blurred to see.
He blinked again. And again. Each time, it took longer to reopen his eyes.
Korosensei had caught Nagisa before he hit the ground. “That move isn’t really meant to be used on children. But it was the quickest way to subdue him…”
“What the hell were those things coming out of him?” Takaoka barked, his voice cracking with rage. His fists clenched at his sides, knuckles white, veins bulging in his neck. “What kind of freak
is
that kid?!”
“Not sure,” Korosensei said calmly. The strange blue tendrils had already receded back into Nagisa’s neck. “Anyway… best bring him back.”
As he lifted Nagisa’s limp body and turned toward the ship, he paused beside Takaoka. “Are you alright?”
Takaoka’s eyes were wild, his chest heaving. He looked down at his trembling hands, then back at the boy he’d just lost to. “That kid… he’s a
monster
!” he spat, each word laced with venom and disbelief.
“No,” Korosensei replied, his tone pointed. “He’s just more skilled than you.”
Takaoka flinched as if struck by the words. Korosensei walked off with the boy, leaving him on the ground, fists still shaking—not from pain, but from humiliation.
Korosensei looked down at the kid he was holding. He was small for his age. Part of that might have been contributed to malnutrition. He felt bad for him.
Well anyway... that's one down.
One of the Doctors hurried out upon seeing Korosensei and Takaoka approach.
“Put him on the stretcher,” the Doctor demanded. Three of the servants had rolled out a stretcher for the kid, and he laid Nagisa down on it.
“Fear not, he’s just unconscious,” Korosensei pointed out, reassuring them as all but the doctor and servants looked fearful and nervous.
“Wonderful, but I’ll still need to check him over,” the Dr. said. He pulled something from his pocket, handing it to one of the servants, and then he turned back to the two of them and deliberately positioned himself to block Nagisa from their view.
“I’m Shiro by the way,” the Doctor said, holding out his hand to greet each of them in turn.
“Nice to meet you, you can call me Korosensei,” he said, moving subtly to the side to see what the servants were doing. It appeared that what the Doctor had handed them was a metal collar, which they attached to Nagisa’s neck with a small beep. A nurse moved swiftly to strap the boy’s wrists with velcro bindings, as if preparing him for something far worse than just a check-up. What was going on here?
"Takaoka, please to meet you."
"Well... thank you both very much for-" Shiro had continued talking but it melted to background noise in Korosensei’s thoughts. Why the restraints? Why the collar? If there had still been any doubt in his mind about what was really going on, it was gone in this moment. There was no way they had been kidnapped. They ran away. Clearly trying to escape whatever was going on here…
"You should see to the others before the kidnapper can get them off planet,” Shiro said, encouraging them to leave.
"Wait a sec, how many of these other kids are freaks like him!?!?!" Takaoka snapped.
"Freaks, I don't know what you-" Shiro was cut off quickly.
"The things coming out of his neck. We saw them! What's going on," Takaoka snapped.
"As you were informed, they're highly elite students, and that topic is classified. You need not concern yourself. But you can be assured the other children are just the same. So be careful bringing them in. Now, I implore you not to waste any more time in fetching the rest of them. Getting them back will be significantly more difficult if they make it off planet." With that, he turned walking away. Korosensei saw him flip his collar around, speaking into a small pin located there, he had to read his lips he was speaking so softly but he said, “Student E-11 has been acquired.”
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Fizz admits he and Baar’ur had a rocky start, but there is no one he trusts more than his fellow medic. They understand each other. War is hell, too many hurt and not enough hands or supplies to hold them together.
Baar’ur understands. He fights as hard as any of them to keep the vode living, and he says the Remembrances for the ones they can’t save, and, on the very bad nights, he adds a shot of liquor to his caf.
When he isn’t with his squad, bringing back survivors or on-shift, he’s in his lab. What had first appeared to be a special privilege given to a Jedi medic has turned out to be something more than Fizz ever could have imagined.
Fizz is one of the few read into Baar’ur’s side mission. Of the 212th, only Commander Cody also knows. And the only other person Fizz has been told he can discuss this with is General Koon, the one who assisted Baar’ur in gaining the space and equipment he needed.
The secrecy is so no one can tell Baar’ur to stop. It’s also because Baar’ur doesn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up. He told Fizz, when Fizz was first read in, that hope can inspire, but it also can kill.
Fizz knows how to keep a secret, and he keeps this one.
Whenever they have spare time, they spend it in the labs, studying blood samples and console readouts and trying to determine the source of the double-aging and how to reverse it.
Baar’ur cares. Not only about the war but about the vode. He learns their names and their favorite foods and where they want to visit once the war is over. He keeps them alive now and he researches how to keep them alive after the war.
It isn’t that the other Jedi don’t care but they’re cold. Fizz thinks it’s to do with their rules about attachment. Baar’ur is warmth. He is fire, starting at the top of his head and spreading all the way down.
Fizz doesn’t care about lightsabers. All anyone could talk about after Baar’ur’s spar with Skywalker was about how none of them knew. And then some footage circulated of a shiny Baar’ur fighting Master Dooku. Fizz still doesn’t care. Baar’ur can fight, of course he can fight, he’s Mandalorian. But he can also heal, and Fizz cares more about that than anything else.
And that’s the other thing. Baar’ur speaks Mando’a. And he wears beskar. Cody frowns at him sometimes, as if he’s trying to figure out why Baar’ur looks bigger sometimes and smaller at others. Fizz figured it out first, but he hasn’t told anyone.
Baar’ur has armor.
It isn’t a full set like the vode. And it isn’t mass-produced, either. He has a few pieces of beskar’gam. Fizz wants to know why. And how. And when. He hasn’t asked. Baar’ur wears his armor under his robes. A Mandalorian in Jedi robes.
Is he trying to fool himself?
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
Fizz is pulled out of his thoughts at the cursing on his comm. He whirls around the med-tent as if expecting a deluge of vode to pour in.
Nothing.
“Emergency Protocol 2.1.12,” a new, measured voice says. It’s Boil. “Code: CC-2224. Authorization: CT-2313.”
Fizz feels a rock lodge itself in his stomach. He sits behind the console in the med-tent. The screen flickers and then he sees the barren rock and scraggly scrub that marks this Manda-forsaken planet.
Emergency Protocol 2.1.12 activates the camera and recorder on a trooper’s helmet and provides the feed to command and medical. It’s done in extreme cases, and Fizz doesn’t want to know why it’s Commander Cody’s helmet being activated.
“Did I hear what I thought I heard?” Baar’ur hurries over. He looks over Fizz’s shoulder and swears in a combination of Basic and Mando’a as if one language isn’t enough.
Commander Cody’s helmet is not on Commander Cody’s head. Fizz knows this, because the helmet is now pointing at Commander Cody, who is slumped against a tent pole, restrained even though the bit of metal piping through his stomach would keep him from moving.
He’s surrounded by droids who titter over their good fortune.
“Boil has eyes on him,” Fizz says.
Baar’ur activates his comm. “Boil, this is Kenobi. Send me your coordinates and hold your position until I’m there.”
“Sir—” Boil begins.
“That’s an order,” Baar’ur says. He looks at Fizz. “Be ready. I’m bringing him home.”
“I know, sir,” Fizz says.
#
Fizz doesn’t believe in the Force the way the Jedi do. He knows they can do things with it, but it’s invisible to him. Fizz believes in Baar’ur, though. He sits by the console and watches the droids taunt Commander Cody. Baar’ur will rescue him. Will bring him here and Fizz will save him.
And then Boil and the rest of vode with him will blow those droids back to the scrapyard they came from.
It feels like an interminable wait until the helmet picks up on movement.
Baar’ur jumps down into the droids’ camp. “Hello, there,” he greets. He holds his hands up as if droids care about gestures of peace. Fizz wonders if he’s about to witness the death of a Jedi. “I’m here for my commander. Would you mind handing him over?”
“He is our hostage,” one of the droids says.
“He won’t be if he bleeds out,” Baar’ur says. “Will you let me treat him at least?”
“If we have you, we don’t need him,” the droid says.
“We can do this peacefully,” Baar’ur says as if it’s possible to negotiate with fucking droids. “Or, I can fight you.”
The droids chitter as if they’re amused. The spokesdroid speaks again. “Those colors mean you’re a medic.”
The video is clear enough for Fizz to see the way Baar’ur draws in on himself, preparing to fight. The tension in his body is belied by the easy tone of his voice. “Yes, I am a medic. And you’re standing between me and my patient.” Baar’ur’s smile is too sharp to be friendly. “Commander, you have beskar in your veins. You are the foundation that holds strong.”
Commander Cody blinks blearily.
“Focus, Commander Cody,” Baar’ur says. “You have beskar in your veins. You are the foundation that holds strong.”
Fizz can barely make out the shape of Commander Cody’s mouth as he moves around the syllables of beskar. And then Baar’ur throws out his hands, and the camp flies backwards. Droids, tents, charging stations, cannons, they’re thrown backward with the strongest show of the Force that Fizz has ever seen Baar’ur use.
Tent poles are ripped from the ground, maps scatter, and droids beep in alarm as they go head over foot.
Commander Cody doesn’t budge.
Fizz releases a breath he didn’t know he was holding. And then he leans closer to the screen as the droids regain their footing. Baar’ur charges forward, and he ignites his saber, as he stands over Commander Cody.
“Now, Boil!”
Boil and the vode with him fire on the droids. The droids fire back. And in the center, Baar’ur deflects any stray blasterfire away from Commander Cody. Fizz hadn’t been impressed by the spar with Skywalker or the one against Dooku. But this. This holds Fizz’s attention.
The droids are smarter than Fizz wants them to be. Most of them return fire at Boil and his men, but a few aim at Baar’ur and Commander Cody as if they don’t care about hostages anymore, only dealing the most damage to the GAR as they can.
None of the shots make it through. Baar’ur’s lightsaber is a blur of motion, quick, sweeping arcs which deflect the blasterfire away from himself and Cody even as the droids do their best to slip a shot through his guard.
Five minutes stretch into ten, into thirty and then sixty. Fizz is glued to his chair as a battle rages between his vode and the clankers. And in the center, holding strong, is Baar’ur.
Finally, it ends. Fizz sees Boil and the others fan out to make sure the area is clear. But Fizz is certain it is, because Baar’ur powers down his saber and kneels at Commander Cody’s side. He wouldn’t do that if the Force told him there’s still danger nearby.
There are no witnesses to Baar’ur and Commander Cody except for the helmet. Fizz feels as though he’s intruding on a private moment as Baar’ur calls Commander Cody’s helmet to where they are, but he doesn’t turn off the transmission. There is protocol to follow.
“Commander, stay with me,” Baar’ur says.
Commander Cody’s skin is unnaturally pale from blood loss. His gaze lands on Baar’ur and then slides away. The rock in Fizz’s stomach grows heavier. He knows these signs. And he knows how far Baar’ur is from camp.
“Stay with me,” Baar’ur repeats, but his voice isn’t firm anymore. He almost sounds like he’s pleading.
“That an order, sir?” Commander Cody slurs.
“That’s right,” Baar’ur says. He runs his hands from Commander Cody’s head to his toes, doing the Force scan that Jedi healers can do. “It’s an order. And I’m the Chief Healer of the Galactic Army of the Republic. Do you know what that means?”
Commander Cody mumbles something unintelligible.
“I outrank everyone,” Baar’ur answers. “That includes you. So, you’re going to stay with me. I’m going to bring you home.”
“Yes, sir,” Commander Cody says.
Fizz has a hard time swallowing. His throat feels too thick. He turns away from his screen. When he processes the video from Commander Cody’s helmet, he’ll cut the last few minutes. There is protocol, but protocol can go fuck itself.
#
Commander Cody becomes a grumpy, semi-permanent resident of med-bay. And, because he doesn’t want Baar’ur to think he’s grumpy with him, Commander Cody saves all his asshole behavior for Fizz.
Fortunately, medics go through tougher training than even the CCs. Commander Cody can be an asshole, but Fizz can dish it right back.
Currently, Fizz is perched in view of Commander Cody but out of Baar’ur’s line of vision. He watches, eyebrows raised in judgement, as Commander Cody sifts through the jar of lollipops until he finds the one he wants.
When Baar’ur brought this practice to the med-bay, Fizz understood. The burst of sugar helps with recovery, whether it’s physical recovery or getting over the jitters of being in med-bay. And then Baar’ur shook his head and said the lollipops were for
spiritual
healing.
Which is bantha shit. Fizz told him that then, and he still believes it now.
The fact that Baar’ur and Commander Cody now have a daily ritual of lollipop selection is nausea inducing.
Fizz isn’t paid enough for this shit.
#
The war is…going. No one is certain whether they’re winning or not. They’re on their way to rendezvous with the 501st and have a bit of downtime. If recovering from one campaign and preparing for the next can be considered downtime.
Fizz’s med-bay is nearly empty which isn’t as good as completely empty but is better than full. He skims the latest report Chin-up from the 104th submitted to the medic group chat. They found a plant that can be pressed for a salve which shares a lot of properties with bacta. It’s a natural and much less expensive way to treat wounds. There will be on-ship cultivation centers soon as well as planets dedicated to growing it for the GAR.
Alderaan and Naboo have both volunteered land and labor to grow the plant. It’s a reminder that they have allies.
Fizz flips to the next report.
“Fizz?” Baar’ur sticks his head out of his labs. His voice is even, perfectly controlled, which means he’s hiding some kind of reaction. “Could I trouble you for a moment?”
“Trix, the med-bay is yours,” Fizz says, delegating, before he joins Baar’ur in his labs.
As soon as the doors close, Baar’ur ushers Fizz toward the console. “I found something.”
Fizz scans the information. “You figured out how to reverse the advanced aging.”
“Yes, yes,” Baar’ur says, almost dismissive.
Rather than growing offended, Fizz worries. “What else did you find?” Because if Baar’ur isn’t throwing a party over reversing the advanced aging, he must have found something bad.
“We’ve talked about how even-keeled the vode are,” Baar’ur says. “How it was odd.”
“Yes.”
“Almost like you’re taking mood stabilizers. But you’re not. Not consciously, at least.”
“What?” Fizz looks back at the console.
Baar’ur taps a few keys and new information pops up. Chips. There are chips inside the vode’s heads. He heard the longnecks talk about behavior modification and insurance, but he didn’t understand. Now he does. From Baar’ur’s research, these chips release hormones and neurotransmitters to regulate the vode’s behavior and their emotions.
No, more than that. Fizz knows his anatomy and physiology. It’s how he got his name after all. Phys looked odd so he chose Fizz. Neurophysiology is its own beast, but Fizz was bred to be the best. He knows. He
knows
.
Hormones, neurotransmitters, they affect thought, memory, emotion, touch, motor skills, vision, breathing, temperature, hunger, the whole fucking body. The vode were cloned, they were altered, and then they were grown, and they were trained. Horrifying but it happened.
The thought of these
chips
which continue to alter and control them? No. They’re supposed to be their own people now.
“Fizz!” Baar’ur’s voice is sharp and it cuts through Fizz’s panic. “We discovered the chips. We’re going to get them out.”
“Are we?” Fizz asks. Someone put them there. The longnecks? Obviously, they put them there but on whose orders?
“We are going to gather all the medics and show them how to reverse the rapid aging. And, quietly, we’re going to tell them about the chips. Both procedures will be done at the same time. But this doesn’t go beyond the medics. And we may limit the number of medics who know.”
“Sir?” Wouldn’t having more hands on this be better?
Baar’ur takes a deep breath. He looks troubled as he glances at the console again. “We still don’t know who was behind creating you and the vode. And now there are control chips? Something is very, very wrong here. Maybe, it’s the evil of slavery and nonconsensual body modification I’m feeling. But maybe, it’s something else. If someone is controlling you and your brothers for their own reasons, we don’t want to tip our hand.”
Fizz nods. “We keep it quiet, but we take the chips out.”
“Taking them out was never in question,” Baar’ur says.
“If I may make a suggestion? Read Commander Cody into this.” Fizz presses on even as Baar’ur doesn’t look persuaded. “He deserves to know, and he’ll be able to help us coordinate. This will be difficult to pull off.”
Baar’ur shakes his head. “At best, I’d be asking him to lie to his commanding officer. At worst, I’d be asking him to commit treason.”
“It’s his choice to make,” Fizz says.
Baar’ur blanches, no doubt thinking of how many choices the vode haven’t been able to make. How many these chips are preventing them from making. “Alright. Tomorrow evening. Have him meet us in here.”
#
Baar’ur looks like shit. His hair is limp and greasy like it hasn’t been washed days. There are dark circles under his eyes like he isn’t sleeping either. He paces the lab like a caged animal, just waiting until it can spring free.
If Fizz looks in a mirror, he’d probably see that he doesn’t look like a holostar either.
Commander Cody clears his throat. “Before we begin, I would like to clear something up. General Jinn is not my commanding officer. As of Zygerria, I outrank him.”
And wasn’t that hell in a fucking handbasket. Is it bad that Fizz is glad Commander Cody can override General Jinn’s orders? Looking over at Baar’ur, Fizz decides he’s at least in good company. He remembers Baar’ur’s fury that Skywalker, a former slave, was being forced undercover as a slave master.
Fizz wishes Baar’ur saved some of that fury for his own behalf. Baar’ur hasn’t talked about his own experience on the mission. As far as Fizz knows, Rex hasn’t either. And that’s telling in itself.
“Was the Council going to tell us?” Baar’ur asks.
Commander Cody offers a small shrug. “When it became relevant, I assume.”
Baar’ur sighs. “Congratulations, Commander. And, apologies. It is a large responsibility, but I can think of no one better.”
“What is it that you brought me here for?” Commander Cody asks.
“We can reverse the accelerated aging,” Baar’ur answers. “We plan to gather the medics of the other battalions and share our findings and begin the process as soon as possible.”
“We may have to do it in groups but yes.” Commander Cody looks at Baar’ur and then Fizz. “And the bad thing you have to tell me?”
“In the process of my research—”
Fizz cuts Baar’ur off. “There are chips in our heads.”
Commander Cody’s face goes terrifying blank. “What?”
Baar’ur takes over again. “From what I can tell, they release hormones or neurotransmitters in order to regulate; well, a hell of a lot. Emotions and behavior, primarily. The Kaminoans mentioned something about curbing aggression, but we never looked deeply into it. I think this is what they were referring to.”
“Chips,” Commander Cody says. He rubs his forehead and then drops his hand to his side. “Are they dangerous?”
“Yes,” Fizz answers but Commander Cody is looking at Baar’ur, not him.
“We use hormone treatments and neurotransmitters as part of healing,” Baar’ur says. “Serotonin is a neurotransmitter. But these chips—we don’t know who placed them in your heads, we don’t know how they control what is administered and in what doses. In my professional opinion, yes, they are dangerous.”
“Can you remove them without arousing suspicion?”
Of course, Commander Cody jumps to this question. He listens as Baar’ur gives the same answer he gave Fizz last night. The two of them, Commander Cody and Baar’ur, they understand each other.
“Secrecy is paramount,” Commander Cody says. “I want the list of medics you plan to meet with. We review and clear them together. I also want reports on when the procedures begin and their progress until they’re completed.”
“You’ll have them,” Baar’ur promises. He seems to dither for a moment before he reaches out to rest his hand on Commander Cody’s shoulder.
Commander Cody’s eyes close and he leans into the touch.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Avoidance. It was one of the possible symptoms of an adult child of an alcoholic and one that had caught Ed’s eye, for it was a symptom he’d seen from Greg in the past. Although, honestly, he couldn’t be sure if Greg’s occasional habit of withdrawing came from surviving his childhood or surviving losing every single friend he’d
ever
had – twice.
Either way, the sniper wasn’t about to let it happen again – not on
their
watch. And neither was his team.
* * * * *
The first day, they left Greg alone. After briefing his team as much as he dared, Ed admitted that he’d had to read their lieutenant’s old psych eval and push him right to the edge of his comfort zone. He refused to go into details, forcing his teammates to accept his assessment that their boss needed space. And time.
On day two, Ed and Wordy searched Greg’s office while Sam and Lou searched his locker. Ed tried to reassure his friend by clasping his shoulder before he and Wordy left, but when Greg wouldn’t even
look
at him, warning bells clanged loudly in his head. He couldn’t do anything right away – the kids needed to be briefed and on board first – but he cast a significant look at his team leader, earning a nod in reply.
* * * * *
Perfectionism. Ed wearily rubbed his head, surveying the paperwork that Kira had brought to him. Not a dot was out of place – hardly surprising since this was apparently Greg’s
third
time filling out this
exact
same paperwork, even though the first two had been just
fine
according to the dispatcher.
“How much paperwork has he gotten to Holleran today?”
“Just enough to break even.”
Blast. “But not enough to cut into his backlog?” Ed pressed, sagging at Kira’s nod.
Not good – not good at
all
; they’d had to take a hot call with only
five
members the day before because Greg had been studiously hiding behind his
paperwork
excuse.
“I’ll talk to him,” Wordy volunteered, already moving past his Sergeant and the startled dispatcher.
Ed opened his mouth, then closed it again. He’d pulled the team in for a reason, after all. Had to let them help
sometime
, didn’t he?
* * * * *
Kevin Wordsworth was many things, but blind wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t
stupid
, either –
something
had rattled both Sarge
and
Ed. On the
same
day. He had a funny feeling one of the kids was in on it, too – ‘Lanna and Dean had been utterly bewildered by the lengths Ed was going to and confused that Sarge had
agreed
to let his teammates and his kids invade his privacy on a daily basis. Lance, though…he’d put on a pretty good act, but there was a
knowing
gleam in his eyes that he couldn’t quite hide.
So.
Something
was up, but Sarge, Ed, and Lance weren’t talking.
Whatever
it was, though, it
had
to be taken seriously; Ed didn’t spook easily and neither did Lance. Sarge… If it was a member of the SRU or one of his kids, he was rock solid. But when it came to
himself
… He was
trying
. Trying as hard as he knew how; even with this latest setback, he was much better than he’d been right before his undercover stint. But Sarge knew self-doubt intimately; whenever he sought to escape, striving to build his self-esteem up to where it
should be
, self-doubt inevitably pursued, ravaging him like a scorned lover when it finally recaptured him.
Not bothering to knock, Wordy pushed into Sarge’s office, gray taking in the whole room at a glance. The way Sarge’s knick-knacks were suddenly in perfectly straight lines on his desk and the cabinets. Atop the inbox and outbox, the paperwork piles were as straight as any human could make them, wobbling a bit due to the lack of support that a slightly messy pile might’ve offered. The guest chairs were rigidly aligned with the desk and spaced evenly apart – Wordy had a feeling if he checked the closet, he would find that everything inside it had been organized to within an inch of the closet’s life.
From behind the desk, wary brown lifted. Met his gaze for an instant before Sarge shifted, jaw twitching as his negotiator mask slammed into place. “Wordy?”
The big man frowned back, stepping far enough into the office to close the door behind him. “You know, Holleran’s not going to take it out of your pay if you mess up the paperwork a little bit.”
Sarge blinked. Then he sighed, mask slipping as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Kira went to Eddie.” No anger; just shame and frustration.
“Well, when you’re redoing all your paperwork over a couple mistakes…” Wordy trailed off, shrugging, deliberately reaching out to turn a few of Sarge’s photos and pull one out of line. “We’ll let you hide in here another day, Sarge, but tomorrow, you’re back with us in the afternoons.”
The stocky man jerked, surprise telegraphing before he locked himself down again. “I
do
need to get caught up, Wordy.”
“We get that, Sarge,” Wordy countered. “But being in here all day isn’t good for you.” He rolled his shoulders. “ ‘Sides, I could use your help; think maybe my Animagus form is acting up again.”
Another startled blink, then Sarge frowned. “Even after…?”
“Yeah,” the big man replied. “Even after we spent a couple days at Commander Locksley’s place.”
One eyebrow quirked up – Commander Locksley’s
place
was a large family estate that put all of their homes
combined
to shame, but Sarge stuck to the point. “How badly?”
Wordy squirmed. “Not sure,” he admitted. “I’m not jumping if someone slams a door, but I feel…” He trailed off, searching for the words. “Cooped up… Even when I’m outside.”
“Like there’s a part of you that’s being smothered?” Sarge offered.
He nodded, relieved that his boss understood.
Sarge considered. “Anyone else feeling like that?”
“Not sure.”
The lieutenant drummed his fingers. “Find out. I’ll need to talk to
mio nipotes
.”
“Copy that, Sarge,” Wordy acknowledged. Then he grinned, adopting an
Ed
tone. “Tomorrow. Afternoon. Workout room.”
Sarge’s mask broke apart as he chuckled, though the sound was a bit sad. Wistful. Wordy cocked his head to the side, but nodded when Sarge shook his head. “I’ll be there, Mister Wordsworth.”
“You’d better be or we’re comin’ for you, Sarge.”
Sarge laughed again, still wistful, but glittering with recognition. “I don’t doubt that.”
* * * * *
Distrust. Ed had half-expected it, but it still hurt to see the wariness in Greg’s eyes as he entered the workout room. Whatever Word had said to him, it had worked – that morning, Kira had happily reported that their lieutenant had taken advantage of the prior afternoon to make a
significant
dent in his backlog of paperwork.
Still… Hadn’t Aslan
fixed
that trust problem? Much as Ed was
still
wary of the powerful – possibly divine – creature, the sniper
did
have to concede that Aslan was
very
good at
fixing
problems.
Supernaturally
good.
So why did Greg have that wary, watchful
look
in his eyes? One that kinda looked familiar… Oh.
The sniper signaled his team leader to stand down, tossing a stern glance in Jules’ direction as well for good measure. Moving to his best friend’s side, Ed dropped his voice lower. “At least you didn’t forget where the workout room is.”
Parker winced.
Ignoring the wince, Ed turned his head. “Word.”
“Yeah, Boss?”
“Team Two still have that hoop set up on the other side?”
The brunet blinked, but replied, “Sure do, Boss.”
Blue flicked towards Sam, but the blond spoke first. “Basketball.”
“Three-on-three?” Jules suggested, a lilt in her tone.
The Sergeant nodded, a wry smirk appearing.
* * * * *
He wasn’t surprised when a member of his team slipped back into the locker room after shift. He
was
surprised to look up and see Sam – he’d expected Word, maybe Jules.
The blond fidgeted at his boss’s expression, but asked, “What’d you mean?”
He could play dumb, but that would make a mockery of the team’s trust in each other. “When I said Greg hadn’t forgotten where the workout room was?”
Sam nodded.
Ed sighed and pulled out his two oldest uniforms – they needed to come home for a run through Sophie’s washing machine. Once he’d slid them in a duffle bag and zipped it up, he closed the locker and leaned against it, meeting Sam’s gaze.
“He was still working the beat when I graduated from the Academy. We had a rocky start, but we hit it off pretty well.” The sniper paused, thinking of those days and how much time he’d spent wondering at Greg’s…eccentricities. Those had drawn him in almost as much as the way they’d
clicked
, as if their friendship had always been meant to be.
“Wasn’t too long before we started playing a little one-on-one basketball on Saturdays.” Ed shrugged. “Nothing serious; I won most of our games, but sometimes he’d surprise me with how
scrappy
he can be.”
Sam snickered – their boss had always been good at catching them off guard, even before the whole magic gig.
Ed smiled briefly before he sobered again. “Then, there was one Saturday, I couldn’t go. Had something going on with Wordy that weekend.” Serious blue locked on Sam, waiting until his fellow sniper was expressionless, waiting for the worst. “All of sudden, he stopped showing up. Didn’t even
say
anything, just stopped showing up.”
Sam whistled low. “That’s not like him.”
Even now, Ed wasn’t sure
what
had made him keep fighting. Keep trying. He’d never liked it when people backed out of things – liked it even
less
when they didn’t have the decency to even call or explain. But something had told him not to quit. To try – one last time.
“So I go talk to him, get after him for skipping Saturdays, and he stares at me like he can’t believe I came back.” Ed stopped, swallowing hard. “Brought up Wordy, like… Like I could only have
one
friend, not two.”
“And Wordy was the better one,” Sam whispered, earning a nod. “You tried for another Saturday?”
“Yeah. Told him to show up – and he did. Just not at the place we’d been going.”
Sam’s eyes widened. “Didn’t he
want
a friend?”
“He did,” Ed replied. “But Sam, he was so twisted up that he honestly thought he didn’t deserve any friends. Wanted a friend bad enough to keep his word, but still found a way to sabotage himself.”
“How’d you find out?”
The lean sniper shrugged. “I was ticked he didn’t show, so I went to the station. Was gonna request a different locker so I wouldn’t end up punching him out. Was walkin’ in the back way when I saw him sittin’ by the station’s court with a brand-new basketball.”
He trailed off, remembering the utter
shock
on Greg’s face when he’d stormed up to him. The cringe away, even before he could yell, a cringe that had dumped a bucket of cold water down his back and iced his anger over. Then he’d looked down at the brand-new basketball, still in its box next to Greg’s sneakers; he’d picked it up, not sure what it was for, and found his name written in black marker on the cardboard, but no
from
. An apology, but not one Greg had intended him to understand.
“How’d you guys get past that?”
Distant blue sharpened, shifting to meet a similar shade. “We played all afternoon that day. I ran him hard, wouldn’t let up. Greg didn’t win a single match, not even after I called him on it.” He hesitated. “Didn’t miss a single Saturday after that, but he’d never let himself win. Finally stopped after he started dating Catherine.”
His fellow sniper whistled again, shaking his head in dismay.
“Sam.” Ed waited a beat for Sam to look up. “He’s not that bad anymore; hasn’t been that bad in
years
, even before the drinking.”
“Because he finally had one friend who believed in him?” Sam ventured.
Ed considered, then laughed. “No. More like I wouldn’t let him run off. He tried a couple more times – I’d track him down and drag him back. Ran him hard as I could every Saturday after he’d pull that.” The sniper twitched a self-satisfied smirk. “Finally wore ‘im down.”
* * * * *
Greg stood in the dimming light of evening, rolling a basketball between his hands as he gazed up at the single hoop that defined the SRU’s makeshift half-court. It had been
years
since he’d even
touched
a basketball; his
nipotes
had been curious about techie sports, but were content to play in clubs or at school, accepting their uncle’s claim that he wasn’t the best sportsman. Not even
Dean
had asked him about sports, too starry-eyed over magic and his father’s career in law enforcement to consider anything so…
mundane
.
He gazed down at the leather ball in his hands, not pausing its motion. How
fitting
, that right in the middle of his
childish
temper tantrum, Ed had dragged him back into
basketball
. Another one of his regrets – after the way he’d treated his
friend
, he mostly certainly hadn’t deserved the second, third, and fourth chances Eddie had so readily given him.
That wasn’t to say he wasn’t grateful – he
was
. So very, very grateful, almost shamefully so. But he would never deny that his friendship with Eddie was one that existed by pure grace – almost
in spite
of his best efforts.
Why couldn’t he
learn
? Why couldn’t he
change
? Leave behind the bad behavior that only led to grief. The ball halted, pressed between his palms. He’d been doing
good
– his latest recovery was right on schedule and he’d been catching up on the stacks of paperwork. Regaining his confidence and stealing a few moments here and there to work on the
project
he and Holleran were hoping to get City Hall approval for.
And then… The Dream. Throwing him back into the childhood he’d left behind when he’d turned eighteen and moved out. Throwing him back into emotions and feelings and
guilt
that he’d spent a
lifetime
working through.
Lance thought it was a warning and maybe it was, but
why
?
Why
had it had to happen? Right as he’d been moving
forward
, why had he been yanked so far backwards that he hardly knew himself anymore? He wasn’t a child and yet…his soul was screaming,
It’s not fair!
Someone whistled and he looked up, seeing a dark shadow on the court, holding up its hands. Without hesitation, he thrust his hands forward; the basketball bounced sharply on the pavement and up into the figure’s waiting grip.
The figure twirled the ball a moment, then sent it back towards the lieutenant with another decisive bounce. As Greg caught it, the figure called, “You know, Sarge, sometimes Shelley gets like that.”
One brow rose. “Like what?” he asked, bouncing the ball towards Wordy.
Wordy caught the ball and moved closer, enough for Greg to see him clearly. “She never thinks about it, but sometimes, she’ll go visit her folks and when she comes back home, she flinches for a couple hours.”
His breath hitched. “Like she’s expecting to get hit.”
“Yep,” Wordy confirmed, sending the basketball back to his boss. “It’s weird; her folks aren’t
like that
. Had to sit on her Dad to keep him from gettin’ himself in trouble way back when I got her outta there.”
“They were angry at her first husband,” Greg concluded softly, earning a nod from his constable right before he passed the basketball again.
Wordy caught the basketball, but didn’t bounce it back as he moved in even closer. “Sometimes, the next morning, Shel’s real quiet. And I hafta remind her that I’m not mad. She just had a bad night, that’s it.” Rolling the ball to his left arm, Wordy reached out, gripping his boss’s arm in a warrior’s forearm hold. “Sarge, just ‘cause you had a scare that knocked you
back
, that doesn’t mean you lost all the progress you made.”
Greg swallowed down the plaintive, childish,
it doesn’t?
As if hearing his unspoken question, Wordy quirked a grin at him and pulled back far enough to toss the basketball right at his chest; he caught it reflexively.
“Now come on, Sarge. I wanna see how good you
really
are.”
He stared down at the ball a moment. Flicked his gaze back up towards Wordy.
Then he launched himself to the side, dribbling as he drove towards the hoop with Wordy scrambling to keep up behind him. A swift leap carried him up and he
dunked
the ball. For the
first
time in his
life
. He grabbed onto the hoop, dragging it down for a split second before he let go and landed, catching the basketball on its rebound almost without realizing it as scarlet-dappled hazel widened behind brown contacts.
His gryphon form was coming back.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
The fifth year and the seventh year Slytherins ran into one another at the entrance to the common room as they returned from their respective Samhain celebrations.
“Potter,” Warrington greeted, his eyebrows shooting upwards when he spotted Harry. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Uh, hi,” Harry said as he stepped through the door.
“Did you go out for Samhain, then?” Yaxley asked as she came in behind him.
“Yeah,” Harry said hesitantly.
“Did you have fun?”
Harry wasn’t sure he wanted all of Slytherin to know that he had a dark affinity, but the memory of his affinity rite came back to him and he couldn’t help it - he grinned. “Definitely.”
Yaxley raised her eyebrows and a hint of a smile formed on her face. Pansy giggled.
“Congratulations, Pansy,” Warrington said. “I heard it was the night of your final declaration.”
“Thank you, Cass,” she said, smiling brilliantly.
“First Quidditch match of the year in two days, Potter,” Warrington said. “You ready to play your old team?”
Harry grinned. “Sure am.”
They slowly dispersed throughout the dungeons. Blaise, Draco, and Theo went up to the dorm, but Harry didn’t feel the least bit tired. Pansy also seemed amped and alert, and he and the rest of the girls settled onto the couches by the fire.
“Will you really be okay playing against Gryffindor, Harry?” Daphne asked. “After the way Weasley -”
“I’ll be fine,” he said. “Fred and George would be the ones to worry about, and I’m pretty sure they’re still okay with me.” He shrugged. “Even if they aren’t, they’ll be playing to win, not to come after me. They’re not going to try to knock me off my broom or anything.” He shook his head. “I’m honestly more worried about
us
playing fair. Having been on the other side of Slytherin-Gryffindor matches, they’ve been a little… rough.”
“It’s nothing you don’t see in pro matches, though,” Pansy said reasonably. “Those can get terribly violent.”
“We’re not pros, though, so -”
“Harry!” Theo came bounding back into the common room. “We need you up in our room immediately.” He had a somewhat uncharacteristic grin on his face.
“What?” Harry asked, confused. “Why?”
“Because,” Theo said, obviously holding back laughter, “Vince is stuck under your bed.”
“Why is he - oh!” Harry’s eyes widened in horrified realization. “Oh,
no!
”
Theo immediately started laughing his head off as Harry took off out of the common room and up to the dorm.
He entered the room to find Blaise face-down on the floor, howling with laughter. He pounded the floor with one hand and rested his head on his other arm, and his shoulders were shaking uncontrollably. “I can’t… I can’t…” he seemed to be saying, but Harry found it hard to understand what the words actually were. Draco was also doubled over, nearly roaring.
Vince's legs were sticking out uselessly from underneath Harry’s bed. One foot had lost its sock. Greg sat on the floor near him, also laughing uproariously.
“Shit!” Harry exclaimed. “I’m sorry, Vince! Hang on, I need to…” He threw open his trunk and started dumping its contents in every direction, desperately trying to find
All The Wards You’ll Ever Need
.
“Sure. No problem,” Vince said, and although his voice was muffled Harry could tell how unhappy he was. “I’m not going anywhere, after all.”
Harry found the book and flipped through the pages until he found the one he was looking for. He grabbed his knife and made a quick gash on his palm. “
Conlidite!
” He slammed his palm on the frame of the bed so hard that it hurt. The ward fell.
He and Greg each grabbed one of Vince’s legs and dragged him out from underneath the bed and helped him into a sitting position. “I’m so,
so
sorry, Vince,” Harry said pleadingly. “I didn’t… how long were you under there?”
“Just over half an hour,” Greg said, grinning.
Vince leaned against the wardrobe door and glared up at Harry.
Blaise rolled over onto his back and pressed his palms into his eyes. He was still howling.
“What… what were you doing under there, anyway?” Draco asked after he’d managed to calm down.
“I dropped my orange,” Vince said unhappily. “It rolled.”
“I’m
really
sorry,” Harry said again. He then realized that Vince didn’t have an orange in his hand, so Harry dropped to the floor and shimmied under the bed. He found the orange, pushed himself back out, and held the orange out to Vince. “Here. I’m sorry.”
Vince took it and glowered at Harry.
“Why did you have a blood ward on your bed, anyway?” Theo asked from behind him. “Draco said you’d mentioned it the other day-”
“But I thought you meant you’d removed it!” Draco said, laughing again.
“I…” Harry paused. He hadn’t exactly forgotten about it; he’d just grown so used to the magic of the ward pulsing through the bed each night that it had become somewhat soothing.
“I believe he put it up the first night he was here,” Draco said, still chortling. “Just in case one of us decided to carry out some secret orders from the Dark Lord and try to murder him while he slept.”
“You don’t still think that, do you, Harry?” Theo asked, concerned.
“No!” Harry said, shaking his head. “I just kinda… got used to it being there.” He sighed. “I really am sorry, Vince.”
Vince sighed and rolled his eyes. “I know. You can stop apologizing.” He pushed himself up from the floor and trudged over to his bed.
Blaise had finally deflated, but he was still snickering. He managed to sit up and he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “You know we’re not going to hurt you, right?” he finally managed to say.
“Yeah,” Harry said. “I just didn’t know what to expect when I first got here, you know?”
Draco walked over to Harry and grabbed his hand, holding it up as if it to inspect it, and Harry realized it was still bleeding. He’d forgotten. “
Episkey,
” Draco said, pointing his wand at Harry’s hand. His hand felt warm and then cool, and the skin knitted up before his eyes.
Harry blinked, astounded. “Uh,” he said. “Thank you.”
“I was tired of waiting for you to do it,” Draco said, releasing Harry’s hand.
“I… don’t know that spell,” Harry said. He flexed his fingers up and down. His hand felt perfectly normal now.
“
Merlin
, Harry,” Blaise said, exasperated. “How do you get injured as often as you do and still not know any basic healing spells?”
***
Breakfast the next day was unusually cheerful; everyone in Slytherin seemed to be in high spirits. It was the day after Samhain, the last day of the school week, and the first Quidditch match of the season was to take place the following day. Even Theo managed to start forming complete sentences ten minutes earlier than he usually did.
“I have something special planned for the match tomorrow,” Pansy mentioned. “I’m really looking forward to it.”
“What is it?” Harry asked, curious.
“Not telling. It’s a surprise,” Pansy replied with a smirk.
Harry might have considered Pansy a friend now, but he was sure he wasn’t going to be a fan of whatever plot she’d come up with.
Blaise was trying to tell the girls what had happened the night before with Vince getting stuck under Harry’s bed, but he kept laughing and couldn’t get through the whole story. At one point he put his head down on the table and completely lost it again.
Daphne rolled her eyes. “Theo already told us last night,” she said.
“But… but…” Blaise said, nearly howling again.
“Blaise, quit it,” Tracey said, smacking him in the arm. “Snape’s coming over, probably to see why you’re losing your mind.”
Harry’s eyes widened and he glanced down the table, and sure enough - Snape was headed their way. “Say nothing about the ward,” he hissed at Blaise.
Blaise managed to get himself under control and he peered at Harry. “What?” he asked.
“Nothing!” Harry hissed again just before Snape reached the fifth years.
“Hello, Professor Snape,” Draco said. “Is that what I think it is?”
Harry turned in his seat to spy a small potion in Snape’s hands.
“It is what you think it is,” Snape said. “Here, Potter.” He held the bottle out towards Harry, who blinked.
“Uh… what is it?” Harry asked, tentatively taking the bottle from Snape’s hand. He held it up to inspect, observing that it was a gentle, milky orange color.
Snape sighed. “Did you not tell him, Mr. Malfoy?”
“Well, I wasn’t certain that it would be approved,” Draco said, and Harry thought he sounded slightly more posh than usual.
“It was. Madames Pomfrey and Hooch both just finished their inspection,” Snape said.
“Madame Hooch?” Harry asked curiously. “What is this, and what does it have to do with Quidditch?”
“That, Potter, is a basic vision potion,” Snape said. “It will improve your eyesight to 20/20 for approximately twelve hours.”
Harry’s eyes widened. “What? Really?” He looked back down at the bottle in amazement.
“It was suggested to me after you made the Quidditch team,” Snape said, his eyes flickering over to Draco.
Draco grinned. “Pansy’s the one who gave me the idea.”
“I brewed it last week,” Snape added. “Madame Pomfrey and Madame Hooch had to test it to make sure it was what I said it was, and they’ve cleared it for use in tomorrow’s match.”
Harry was completely unable to hide his shock. Snape had brewed a potion - a
good
potion - for him. Severus Snape, renowned hater of Harry Potter, had actually given him something incredibly beneficial, and it wasn’t a minor gift, either. From what he remembered Draco saying at the beginning of the year, fixing someone’s vision was incredibly expensive, and he was sure even a ‘basic’ vision potion couldn’t have been easy to concoct. “Uh… wow,” he said. “Thank you, Professor Snape.” He felt immensely strange saying the words.
Snape looked just as uncomfortable to be accepting a ‘thank you’ from Harry Potter as Harry was in saying it. “Indeed,” he said, sneering.
“Now you won’t have to worry about losing or breaking your glasses,” Draco said. “When you played for Gryffindor I’d always secretly hoped a Bludger would smash into your face.” He smirked. “When you started to play for Slytherin, I instead became extremely concerned for your well-being.”
Harry laughed. “Thank you, too.” He was still concerned about one thing, though. “I know Hooch approved it, but aren’t the Gryffindors still going to accuse me of… ” He frowned. Even Fred and George wouldn’t approve of him if they suspected he was using an illegal potion.
“Johnson has already been informed by Madame Hooch. She should pass on the news to the team,” Snape said. “I expect a victory for Slytherin tomorrow, Potter.” Then he turned back to the head table, robes billowing behind him. Harry was left feeling like he would get the sole blame from Snape if Slytherin wound up losing.
Harry immediately snuck a look over towards the Gryffindor table. Sure enough, Angelina did not look very happy at all. She glowered at Harry from across the room, having watched the exchange with Snape.
Harry sighed and tucked the bottle away in his bag.
“What was that about not talking to Snape about the ward?” Blaise whispered. “You know he’s a dark wizard, right?”
“No, but I suspected,” Harry whispered back. “Thanks for the confirmation.
“He’s not going to discipline you for doing dark magic, Harry,” Blaise said. “He’s a Slytherin, and -”
“I’m pretty sure that above all else, he still completely hates me and he loves getting me in trouble,” Harry hissed back. “If he has the opportunity to make me look bad to Dumbledore, he will.”
Blaise still looked doubtful, but he agreed not to say a word.
***
Transfiguration filled the last block of the day, and everyone was eager for the end of class and the start of the weekend.
“You assignment for next week is an essay on Switching Spells,” McGonagall said. “The essay must be no shorter than three feet and no longer than five feet. If you tend to write in letters that are unusually large, you will write ten feet.” She paused and gave Greg a pointed look before continuing. “Considering the variety of applications for Switching Spells, it should not be a problem to complete the essay within the required length.”
Harry saw Draco roll his eyes. “I bet you didn’t assign
Gryffindor
an essay on Quidditch weekend,” he muttered darkly.
“Five points from Slytherin, Mr. Malfoy,” McGonagall said. “Gryffindor has the same assignment. Switching Spells will almost certainly be on your O.W.L. no matter what house you are from.” She peered around the classroom with her customary stern demeanor. “Any questions?”
“No, ma’am,” the class murmured.
“Very good. Dismissed.”
They were starting to gather up their things when McGonagall suddenly called out, “Oh, Mr. Zabini?”
Blaise paused in adjusting the strap on his bag and looked up. “Yes, Professor?”
“Ten points to Slytherin for showing up on time with both shoes tied.” Blaise gawked at McGonagall and Harry laughed.
“Hey, can you wait for me outside?” Harry quickly asked Blaise as they turned to leave. “I wanted to talk to McGonagall right quick.”
Blaise raised an eyebrow, but nodded. “I’ll grab Theo. We’ll meet you in the hall.”
Harry waited for the rest of the classroom to completely empty out before approaching McGonagall’s desk. “Professor?”
McGonagall didn’t even look up from the stack of papers she’d been shuffling through. “Yes, Potter?”
“I wanted to ask you something,” Harry said. He took a breath. “About my father.”
McGonagall put the papers down and turned around, giving Harry her full attention. “What is it?”
“When he was a student here... “ Harry paused, then sighed. “Look, I’ll just… cut right to it. Slytherins tend to get attacked. We get cornered. We get hexed. It’s apparently been going on for years.”
McGonagall frowned. “I have heard of a few isolated incidents, but I hadn’t heard it was… widespread.”
“It is,” Harry said. “People hate us. I suppose I can even understand the reason for that hate, but…” He shook his head. “The younger kids, getting bullied and attacked by older students. Hexes and jinxes that never get solved. Someone cast a tripping jinx on me on my second day in Slytherin, and that’s not even the worst of it.”
McGonagall looked alarmed. “The tripping jinx was brought up in one of our staff meetings. I believe it is still under investigation. But Potter…” she said, full of concern, “are you saying that this is a regular pattern?”
“It is.”
McGonagall studied him for a moment. “Are you asking me about this as Deputy Headmistress or as someone who knew your father?”
“Someone who knew my father,” he said. “Although if we could somehow put a stop to the attacks…”
“I can assure you that I will be investigating these claims quite thoroughly, Potter,” she said. “Now, then - what does this have to do with your father?”
Harry sighed. If McGonagall wasn’t aware of the attacks on Slytherins, she likely wouldn’t have been aware if her father had been a perpetrator of those attacks.
“I’ve just… put together comments about my father. Some things that Snape said, and some that… friends of my father said.” Harry paused, swallowing. “I heard that he liked… using a curse on my father that flipped Snape up in the air and upside down. And then there was the ‘prank’ that Siri…
Snuffles
played on Snape involving Professor Lupin…”
McGonagall’s mouth was set in a grim line. “You’re wondering if your father may have been behind some of these attacks on Slytherins.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
McGonagall studied Harry for a moment, and then she walked over to one of the student desks and pulled out a chair, sitting down. “Have a seat, Potter.”
The invitation only served to give Harry a sinking feeling in his stomach, but he still took the seat across the aisle from her.
“Your father and Professor Snape never did see eye to eye. As I’m sure you are aware, the rivalry between Gryffindor and Slytherin is storied and rough, and those two took the rivalry to extreme measures. In fact, their relationship was not unlike you and Mr. Malfoy once were, at least up until this year,” she said. “Although I do suspect that in their case, it may have had something to do with your mother.”
“What?” Harry asked. A chill ran down his spine. He felt like he could deal with finding out
one
of his parents was a bully, but not both. “She wasn’t… involved, was she? In the attacks?”
McGonagall shook her head. “No. She was once friends with Professor Snape,” she said. “I would often see them talking or studying together in their younger years.”
“What?!” Harry was completely blindsided. His mother and Professor
Snape
had actually been friends? How had no one ever mentioned that to him?
“I believe that James may not have… well, to put it bluntly, I believe he was jealous,” McGonagall said.
Harry’s eyes widened. “My mom and Snape… they didn’t…” He didn’t even want to
picture
it, much less say it.
McGonagall let out a laugh. “I don’t believe Lily and Severus were ever…
romantically
involved,” she said. “And whatever friendship they had, it must have dissolved when they were around your age. I did not see them speaking for the last few years they were at school.
“Now, as for your
father
and Snape,” she continued, “they did indeed have an incredibly turbulent rivalry. They were quite often hexing or cursing one another.” She paused, and then sighed. “But I suspect that James may have taken it too far more than once.”
Harry swallowed hard. It wasn’t as clear of an answer as he wanted, but now that he had a partial answer, he was unsure if he actually wanted to know more. Even so, he looked down at his toes and asked quietly, “Was he… was he cruel?”
McGonagall didn’t answer for a moment, and Harry glanced up at her to see her looking at him with a somber expression. “Children are often cruel, Harry,” she said gently.
That was the only answer Harry needed. He nodded once and got to his feet, an icy cold winding its way through his heart.
“I’m not done, Potter,” McGonagall said. “Please stay.”
Harry stared at her for a moment. The more they spoke the worse he felt, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to hear anything else.
“Your father may have been a nitwitted child,” McGonagall said, “but he grew up into a decent man.” She smiled sadly. “Much more than decent, in fact. He was one of the kindest, bravest souls I have ever had the privilege of knowing. The man he grew up to be was your father, not the child he was in the past.”
That only made Harry feel marginally better, but he still appreciated McGonagall saying it. “Thank you.” He turned to leave, but McGonagall stopped him once more.
“If you have managed to find a way to forgive Mr. Malfoy for all of his cruelness and misdeeds towards you and your friends,” she said, “I am certain you will eventually find it within yourself to forgive your father for his own misdeeds.”
***
Harry found Blaise and Theo just outside the door.
“Ah, Harry!” Blaise said. “I was just telling Theo that it’s likely time I reassess my approach with Umbridge. The detentions aren’t getting me results. But it’s
clear
that she’s hiding something. I’m beginning to wonder if her obvious Slytherin bias is affecting how…”
Harry unintentionally started tuning Blaise out. After his rather depressing conversation with McGonagall, he was finding it difficult to switch tracks in his head. “Um… okay,” he mumbled.
“Are you all right, Harry?” Theo asked.
“Yeah.”
“No, you’re not,” Blaise said, studying Harry’s face. “What’s wrong?”
“I…” Harry sighed. “I don’t really want to talk about it.”
Blaise studied Harry for a moment, then shrugged. “Okay. Let us know if we can do anything to help, though.”
Harry looked over at Blaise suddenly found himself overcome with gratitude. Blaise didn’t pressure him or try prying into Harry’s mood or even try to make him feel better; it was as if he had just accepted Harry’s melancholy and offered help for when Harry was ready.
Blaise was a good friend to have, Harry realized.
“Shall we drop our things off and go to dinner?” Theo asked after a moment.
Harry nodded, and they set off down the Transfiguration corridor.
“Umbridge was a Slytherin, too,” Blaise said, continuing his earlier train of thought. “Perhaps she knows that I’m looking for dirt, so she’s being extra cautious with me.”
“If she knew that you were looking for dirt, do you really think she would be so calm about it?” Theo asked.
“Yes, I do,” Blaise said. “Especially if she thinks it’s well-hidden. She also knows how we Slytherins think, and she knows not to underestimate us. I may not have Draco’s level of well-connectedness through his father, but she knows that I would not remain quiet about it if she did anything truly… untoward.”
“So what’s your next -” Theo cut himself off when they spied Ron, Dean, and Seamus ascending the stairs they were about to go down.
Harry knew that they were likely only headed for Gryffindor tower, but he instinctively tensed up.
“What are you doing up here?” Dean asked rather darkly when they spotted the Slytherins at the top of the stairs.
“Leaving class, obviously,” Blaise said dryly.
“Class has been over for a while,” Ron said.
“I had to talk to Professor McGonagall about something,” Harry said. He felt drained.
“Don’t worry, we’re leaving now,” Blaise said. “I’ll do anything to get away from the horrific stench of Gryffindors.”
Harry didn’t want to do this.
He didn’t want to take any part in the ancient Gryffindor-Slytherin rivalry. He’d played at it for years, but now that he was on the Slytherin side of it, he just felt
tired.
More than anything, he just wanted to keep walking, and so he did. He took a few steps to the side and then forward, trying to avoid the Gryffindors in front of him.
Seamus stepped directly into his path, and Harry met Seamus’s hard gaze with a fatigued eye.
“Heard something interesting about you, Potter,” Seamus said nastily.
Harry sighed. “What did you hear, Seamus?” he asked.
“That you went out with a bunch of dark wizards for
Samhain
last night,” Seamus said, his eyes flicking over to Blaise and Theo and then back to Harry.
Harry, meanwhile, looked directly at Ron. Obviously, Ron had been talking about him in Gryffindor tower.
“You sacrifice anyone to Crom Cruoch?” Seamus demanded. “Or maybe the Fomorians?”
Harry’s face screwed up in confusion. “What?”
“Or maybe you just called up the dead,” Seamus spat. “Samhain is when the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest. Made any Inferi lately, Potter?”
“What are you even talking about?” Harry said.
Seamus’s nostrils flared, and he took another step towards Harry, invading his personal space. “Where I’m from, we don’t like dark wizards, Potter. They’ve done too many awful things o’er the years.” He’d known Seamus was already angry with him, but apparently hearing even a hint that Harry was involved in something dark had set off something that was rooted much deeper than the lies being printed in the Prophet. Seamus never used to get involved in the Gryffindor-Slytherin fights if he could help it before, but apparently something about Harry was making Seamus take it personally.
“I’m not a da-”
“You’re hangin’ out with
them
now
,
aren’t you?” Seamus shouted, nodding towards Blaise and Theo. As his voice got louder his accent became thicker. “You’re going with them to their… dark orgies or whatever?”
Harry’s mouth dropped open. “
What?
”
“Oh, I
wish,
” Blaise commented loudly, and Seamus’s gaze instantly snapped towards him.
“So you admit that you’re dark?” Seamus spat. “You dark wizards have done so much damage -”
“I admitted nothing,” Blaise said, sounding bored. “It was a joke. You’ve heard of those, right?”
“Can’t help but notice that you’re not denying it, either,” Dean said, and Blaise’s disinterested expression immediately turned irritated as he moved his gaze from Seamus to Dean.
Harry sighed.
“Oh, yes,” Blaise said, rolling his eyes dramatically. “We’re
so
evil. We have wild, evil, dark orgies every night of the week.” He smirked. “Except Sundays. That’s the day of recovery.”
“You’re Zabini, aren’t you?” Seamus asked.
“At your service,” Blaise said, sneering.
“We heard about you, too,” Dean said. “Some of the upper years were talking about you.”
Blaise smiled sardonically, and Harry thought he looked a bit like a predator. “And what did they have to say about me, hmm?”
“What in the world is going on here?!” Hermione came marching up the stairs behind the other Gryffindors with a pinched, stern expression, and Harry was forcibly reminded of McGonagall. “I heard shouting. You’re not fighting, are you?”
“Just having a conversation, Granger,” Blaise said, never taking his eyes off Dean. “Thomas here was just about to inform me of a rumor he’d heard. So what did you hear?”
“That if anyone in Slytherin is a dark wizard, it’s definitely you,” Dean spat. “Your mum’s been married seven times, and every single one of her husbands mysteriously died. You’re apparently only rich because you’re living off all of her dead husbands’ fortunes. Not much of a 'mystery' when it comes to what's going on in
your
family."
Blaise’s expression immediately lit up with fury.
“This is outrageous!” Hermione snapped. “Stop this immediately! Dean, how dare you say such terrible things!” She rounded on Ron. “And you! You are a
prefect
! Why weren’t you putting a stop to all this?”
Neither boy said anything back to her, so Hermione turned back to Blaise with a sigh. “I’m quite sorry, Zabini. Rest assured it will be report-”
“Shut up,” Blaise snapped, and Harry’s eyes snapped back to his friend. Blaise looked angrier than Harry had ever seen him.
Hermione looked taken aback. “Well, I -”
“I said shut your
filthy
mouth,” Blaise spat. “I don’t need a Mudblood to protect me from a Mudblood!”
Harry’s breath caught in his throat and his entire body went cold.
Hermione drew back, gasping, and Dean’s face twisted up in rage. Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Theo put his palm to his face and let out a sigh.
“You nasty little
snake!
” Ron shouted, and his wand was in his hand and pointed at Blaise in an instant.
Harry's scar blazed hot.
Harry reached out and grabbed Ron’s wand right out of his hand. He was not in the mood for curses. “What the
fuck,
Blaise?” Harry hissed, tossing the wand up against the wall where it clattered to the ground.
Blaise’s gaze swiveled towards Harry, and his furious expression into morphed into something that resembled embarrassment. “Harry, I’m sorry -”
“I’m not the one you should be apologizing to!” Harry shouted.
He’d begun to think of Blaise as a friend - a potentially great friend, in fact. He really had.
Blaise had never even mentioned his thoughts on blood purity to Harry, even though he and Draco had been openly discussing it just a few nights ago.
Hearing Blaise spit out such a hateful word without a second thought made Harry’s stomach do somersaults. He’d insulted not only a former friend, but also one of the only friends Harry had left in Gryffindor.
He’d honestly expected it from Draco, but Draco hadn’t even said anything to Hermione all year. He also had at least offered to engage in discourse about such a sticky topic. Blaise had made no such offer.
Not only that, but Harry knew to be on guard around Draco. Blaise, on the other hand, had almost started to feel
safe
.
Harry had obviously grossly misjudged who Blaise actually was, and Harry wasn’t sure if he could stomach the person Blaise turned out to be.
Harry didn’t want to be there anymore. He needed to get away.
A wave of anger rushing through him, he pushed past Seamus and started marching down the stairs.
“Harry, wait,” Blaise said, jogging down after him. He reached out and grabbed Harry by the arm.
“Don’t touch me, Zabini,” Harry spat viciously. He yanked his arm out of Blaise’s grasp and took off running across the castle.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Tiffany sait bien que les bleus et les verts qu'elle aimait porter enfant sont déjà en train de pâlir. Elle redoute le jour prochain où elle devra porter du gris tout triste. Sa propre Mémé portait ce qui lui chantait, ce qui lui allait et lui tenait chaud les longues nuits sur le Causse. Tout le monde savait que Granny Aching faisait de la magie moutonnière, même si les "vraies" sorcières ne la connaissaient pas personnellement, et qu'elle n'avait pas besoin d'un chapeau pointu pour que les gens concernés le sachent.
Tiffany pourrait suivre son exemple et continuer à s'habiller comme la fille de paysans qu'elle est, mais... elle a promis, il y a un bout de temps déjà,
Je m'habillerai de nuit.
Quand je serai vielle je m'habillerai de nuit.
Pas tout de suite mais un de ces jours.
Et une exploitation demande un certain decorum. Granny Weatherwax, pour ne citer qu'elle, portait du noir. Du noir fané, pas un noir profond tape-à-l'œil. Tiffany a entendu des contes concernant Black Alyss et ils dépeignaient exactement ce qu'elle ne veut pas devenir.
Sa Mémé, elle se souvient encore, en portant ce qu'elle voulait, ce qu'elle avait, portait surtout de la laine. Évidemment. Avec toute une variété de teintures. (Mais jamais de froufrous.)
Elle a entendu causer également de la Reine Magrat, et elle voit comment la Baronne Letitia se porte – une sorcière qui ne peut pas se permettre le chapeau pointu à cause de son autre position, et pourtant bel et bien une sorcière.
Petulia porte du gris et du marron, sinon. En tant que Sorcière à Cochons, à s'occuper de bétail de ferme en sus des humains, son travail est bien souvent salissant et elle ne peut pas se permettre trop de gueulamour – malgré ça, les paysans lui présentent tout le respect dû.
Finalement le moment arrive, plus vite qu'elle n'aurait cru. Voilà le noir, professionnel et respectable et sévère... mais elle en éclaire la nuit de quelques étoiles : le petit cheval d'argent et le lièvre d'or. Elle ne va pas se laisser crouler sous les babioles occultes comme l'a fait Petulia autrefois ! Ça n'a jamais été son genre. Mais ces deux petits bijoux sont des souvenirs, et des symboles de ce qu'elle est tout autant que le chapeau pointu. Elle n'y renoncera pas.
D'ailleurs, la nuit ne signifie pas forcément le noir absolu. Minuit n'est pas l'heure la plus sombre, en tout cas.
Sauf les nuits de tempête où les nuées bloquent toute lueur, mais ce sont des exceptions, la plupart du temps même à minuit brillent les étoiles, la lune, et même les feux entretenus par les humains – tout ça qui aide à guider des moutons égarés. Peut-être pas les meilleures sources de lumière, mais de la lumière suffisante quand même.
Ah, elle se rappelle encore Tonnerre et Éclair avec nostalgie ; comment pourrait-elle oublier les bons vieux familiers de Mémé ? Oublier, ce n'est pas son genre. Déjà, elle est "assez" vieille pour porter du noir, mais elle n'est pas
vieille
.
Alors, une paire de pendentifs, l'un or l'autre argent, met un peu de clarté contrastant avec le noir de sa robe.
Granny Weatherwax l'a aidée à devenir qui elle est tout autant que Granny Aching, plus que Miss Treason auprès de qui elle a fait son apprentissage. Elle reconnaît pour ce qu'elles ont fait pour elle chacune d'entre elles. Et elle reconnaît également qu'elle est avant tout sa propre personne - ça aussi c'est important. Comme ses expériences personnelles, sa personnalité propre font aussi d'elle qui elle est. Elle-même.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
It feels melodramatic, but Castiel finds himself wandering up to the guest bathroom to wait for the first check-in. Even though he knows it’s an illusion, the place feels safe, like it’s somewhere he can be close to Dean — a privilege he’s sure is unearned.
He stands in the doorway and admires how Dean’s steady work has left every line true. The plank seams are tight, the grain warm, the corners mitred clean. He touches the floor and thinks about how easy it is to ruin something someone built with their hands: one tide of water, one man with a grudge.
His phone buzzes. The group chat again.
First Balthazar:
First check-in window opens in 5
Castiel responds:
Ready.
The typing bubbles barely have time to materialise before Charlie sends:
Watching the rails. Dirty parcels still ticking. I swear, one of these shells bought a horse last week
Better a horse than a judge
And then — nothing. The minutes (because even though it
feels
like it’s taking years off Castiel’s life, it
is
truly only about two and a half minutes) drag by, then finally in a new message thread:
Got gum on my shoe
Castiel lets out a breath he hadn’t been aware he’d been holding. As instructed, he doesn’t reply. Instead, he pockets his phone, takes one final look at Dean’s hard work, and turns to begin what promises to be one of the longest days of his life.
The drive into Angel Radio’s headquarters is a blur of early-morning brake lights, impatient drivers refusing to yield the right of way, and far too many people talking illegally on their cell phones.
(Castiel hates them even more than he normally does — not just because of the selfish hazard they pose to themselves and everyone around them, but because they
can
talk to their loved ones on the phone. They know that the person on the other end of the line is safe and isn’t at risk of disappearing into thin air at any moment, which is a luxury Castiel promises himself he will never take for granted again.)
Somehow, he makes it into work, and goes about his morning as though on autopilot. He greets Hael at reception, asks her about her weekend plans. He putters around the break room, refilling the K-Cups and picking up discarded magazines and napkins. He opens his laptop half a dozen times and tries to scan his emails for
any
sort of worthy distraction, but comes up miserably short.
Angel Radio will run whether he responds to his messages or not, whether he takes a meeting this morning or not, whether he spends an hour reminding an ambitious twenty-six year old on the Meta case that ‘disruption’ is not a synonym for ‘burn it down and hope we can bill it later’. The cogs will keep turning, the clock will keep ticking, whether or not Castiel does a damn thing.
He forwards two appointments to his assistant, Samandriel, anyway, and blocks off the second half of his day with a note that reads:
Off-site: facilities
, and hopes it will be true before the day is out.
At 9:21 AM, he makes the mistake of pulling up the local news on his phone, the headline: REGIONAL LABOR COMMISSION WARNS ABOUT SITE SAFETY. It’s a one paragraph blurb about a mention of a recent fatal accident at a construction project — Dean’s friend, Lee. They do not mention his name. They never do, with workers. ‘A man’, the journalist says.
A man
fell.
A man
died.
A company
will review.
Castiel closes out of the tab and presses his thumb between his eyes.
His phone pings again.
Got gum on my shoe
Back in the group chat:
Pattern holds. Good
I’ll drink to that once this is all over
Castiel says nothing at all.
The clock creeps towards 11:00 like it’s trying to stalk its prey. Castiel watches the slow tick of changing numbers in the corner of his computer screen, feeling as though he could climb the damn walls out of frustration.
(He even considers — for the briefest of insane moments — calling his mother, then comes to his senses. Naomi Novak would sense the turmoil in his voice from the first syllable, extract every secret from it, then berate him for not having called earlier so she could have prevented his mistake. She would be furious at him for fear. )
He paces across the same stretch of floor so furiously that it’s something of a miracle he hasn’t worn away the carpet by the time the phone pings again. He rushes over to where it sits on the desk and reads:
Headed to funky town
Castiel doesn’t realise he’s collapsed back into his chair until he hears it groan in protest from how hard he’s gripping the armrests. He stares at the four words and feels them open like a trapdoor under his ribs.
He does not reply. It damn near kills him, but it damn near might kill Dean more, so he sits on his hands and waits for further instruction.
It comes in the group chat a moment later.
Clock accelerates. Charlie?
I’m on it. Parcel A settled. B and C in transit hold. Freezing at your mark
Cassie, we need you to disappear for the next hour in case Roman’s people swing by AR or your place to ‘help’ with your project. You have a lunch scheduled with an ad buyer who can confirm it.
Understood.
He wants nothing more than to begin pacing again, but instead he sits and forces his hands to make themselves useful. He prints the cover story that Balthazar sent and signs where he must sign. He emails his attorney a bland request to review a new facilities contract. He even schedules the haircut Balthazar and Charlie had been teasing him about earlier and smiles despite himself when the confirmation text comes back with a cheerful gender-neutral haircut emoji. He will go to the appointment if only to prove he can be trusted to venture out on his own without imploding.
Even so… ‘Headed to funky town’ means eyes on Dean. It might mean the driver, Edgar, has glued himself to Dean’s shoulder, or that Michael, the former friend, is making sport of him in front of the crew with the precise tone that is always just shy of the type of cruelty someone could report. Or worst of all, it might mean
Nick
.
That
is a cold, straight line through Castiel’s chest at the thought of that man’s oily smile and knowing tone. The memory of the way Dean looked at the Fairmont — clean-shaven, collared… diminished — rises to the surface of his memories. It climbs, like bile, up his throat, burns on the way out.
He chokes on it.
Noon breaks over the mountains, and with it, the friction-static sense of an impending storm. Castiel puts on his coat, tells Samandriel to forward his calls, says goodbye to Hael and tells her that he hopes her son wins his hockey game this weekend. Then he walks straight out the front door, ensuring his every move is caught on camera.
He drives through a fast food restaurant for lunch, but his burger tastes like ash in his mouth, and he tosses the half-eaten sandwich back into the paper sack and lets the whole thing sit, untouched, in the passenger seat. It’s almost time for his haircut, anyway.
On the way to the barbershop, he stops at a red light and catches himself scanning every black SUV, every reflective pane.
It is ridiculous.
It is not ridiculous at all.
He drives to his haircut appointment and sits obediently, tilting his head this way and that when instructed, smiling at the barber’s chatter about his grandson’s plans to dress their dogs up for Halloween. He lets the barber convince him to get too much taken off the top and ends up looking like a cockatiel, but he couldn’t care less, especially when the next check window lands just as he’s shoving his card into the reader.
Headed to funky town
There’s a response in the new chat this time. Balthazar. Just a single word:
Understood
Then in the group chat:
Got eyes on the rails. I’m tensing to freeze
Castiel pockets his phone and takes his card out of the machine. He adds a hefty tip, then exits the barbershop. Outside, the sky has settled into that peculiar flat Colorado blue that makes the mountains look like a painting hung at the end of the street. He could drive toward them and never arrive.
He goes home instead.
The house feels colder when he opens the door, like a room someone you love has just left. He hangs up his coat and checks his phone.
No new messages.
He does not allow himself to even attempt to interpret what the silence might mean — that way lies madness.
Instead, he, again, uselessly putters. He takes out the recycling, loads the dishwasher. Arranges, then rearranges his coffee mugs, and pointedly does
not
look at the Star Wars one that Charlie had given him that had delighted Dean. He sorts his mail, then dumps it all into the (now empty) recycling bin anyway.
‘Oh, shut up,’ he tells the ficus as he waters it. ‘I wasn’t going to say anything about Roman anyway.’
By 2:15, when the next message comes in, he is well and truly losing it.
Got gum on my shoe
He lets out a breath that feels like a bruise blossoming beneath the skin. He types nothing. Charlie tosses a string of confetti emojis into the group chat, then deletes them with an apology.
My bad. Fingers got ahead of brain
Save the confetti for the part with the handcuffs
Kinky
The hour between three and four stretches like taffy being pulled at both ends. Like gum. Like gum… stuck to the bottom of someone’s shoe on a hot day.
Castiel moves through his house the way one might when they’re trying not to wake someone at night, only… there’s no one here to wake, not yet. He wanders into the guest room anyway, then feels foolish for doing so, so he changes the sheets on the bed so he can pretend — even to himself — that he has a reason for being here.
It gives his hands something to do that doesn’t involve breaking his phone into a million pieces, at the very least.
At 3:40, Charlie drops a screenshot into the group chat: a tangle of transactions halfway through their hopscotch — midair, vulnerable.
They’re committed. Any hiccup on their end now, and they lose that money, which means they’re going to be trying very hard not to hiccup. Which also means that now is when they get mean if anything looks off. Bal, tell your people to keep their arms and legs inside the ride at all times — it’s about to get bumpy
Already tucked
Castiel’s phone vibrates again. He flinches. Steels himself. Then looks.
Headed to funky town
He closes his eyes. The phone pings again before he can reopen them.
The group chat. Three words.
Finally.
Cassie, it’s time
He straightens, his spine doing the thing it does in boardrooms, where he becomes someone else, someone who navigates billion dollar projects and billionaire egos with the same unflappable confidence.
Tell me what to do.
The relief of the imperative, of at long last being able to
do
something calms his chest. Balthazar replies with a list — simple. Ruthless.
Phones off at the top of the hour. Park your car in the driveway facing out. Front door locked, back door unlocked. Lights on downstairs, off upstairs. If anyone from Roman knocks, you are not home. If anyone from my side knocks, they will come to the back door and use the word “invoice”. You will ask them if they brought biscotti. If they did not, slam and lock the door
“Biscotti”… Very “Italian Job” of us
Don’t make me turn this op around
Castiel does what he’s told. Then, he lays a towel out on the kitchen island, as if he’s preparing to oil a hinge. He fills the kettle again. He looks at the clock and, for the first time all day, feels like something steady. The top of the hour is kind of a mercy; you are allowed to know what it is and when it will arrive. You can stand in a doorway and wait for it.
His phone buzzes one last time before he turns it off.
It is not the group chat.
It is a single line in a brand new thread, unsaved number. Ordinary words that land like a prayer.
Out for delivery
He stares at the message for a heartbeat longer than he should, then powers down his phone and sets it next to the kettle. Outside, the light tips towards evening.
Somewhere on a highway that spans the distance between two men who have not yet had a chance to say the simplest thing, a car changes lanes.
Castiel stands very still and waits for the knock that will begin the rest of their story.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
The leaves are changing, September transitioning to October, and it’s a perfect time to break out my watercolors. I’d like to see them up in New York or Vermont where the colors are bright, dramatic oranges and reds and golds. I will. Soon.
I set up on a towel in the park with my paints and brushes. It’s a cool day so I have overalls and a long-sleeved thermal on; things that I can stain with my paints. The ground is a bit damp. I move around a couple times until I find a dry spot under a weeping willow.
The park has a huge grassy field next to the jungle gym and slides for the little kids. Squealing and laughter float across the breeze as I begin painting a cluster on the tree line that leads into deep, foreboding dark woods. It’s peaceful out here, though: rustling dry leaves, the petrichor from last night’s storm; no one will—
“Bit cold to be outside painting.”
I stiffen and scowl.
Ben sits beside me on my towel, this time dressed in green scrubs with his hair pulled back. He drapes his coat around my shoulders before I can protest. It’s heavy and warm, thick with Alpha musk and cologne. I shudder as it swallows me up.
He scratches his jaw and eyes my painting. “You paint, too?”
“Yes.” I ignore him as best I can. “How did you find me?”
“Coincidence, surprisingly. The hospital is down the street and I’m done with work for the day. Brain surgery, if you care to know.”
“I don’t.”
Ben leans forward, draping his hands in his lap. Heat creeps up the back of my neck.
“I enjoyed our outing the other night,” he says. “Women are typically happy to do whatever I please… but not you.”
“Yeah, well, I have self-respect. I don’t care about your money or status. I don’t need it.”
He brushes my hair back from my neck. “Why not? I can provide for you, little one—I’d be happy to.” His hand rests behind my butt and I swear he touches me. “You’ll have a simple, easy life with me; the way an Omega’s life should be.”
Kaydel and Rose
seem
to have it easy, sure—but they don’t. I know how confusing and weird it is for them to be married to much older men. I know how terrified Rose is about giving birth and how Kaydel had a forty-eight hour birth with Shara. She shit on the table. Her vagina had to be sewn back together and she wore a diaper to collect the blood post-partum.
I’m petrified. I don’t know how to run tea parties or collect gossip and I don’t want to. I don’t want a baby clinging to my leg or rolling in my belly. I don’t want to scream for hours in agony.
Ben watches me paint without saying another word. He breathes on my shoulder—not touching—just in and out, in and out. I sneak a glance at his big hand on his thigh and imagine him making me pregnant and changing my life forever.
It’s too much.
“I’m going to college,” I blurt. “I’m—I’m not having a baby.” I snap my watercolors closed and take down my canvas. “Kaydel had to wear a diaper, you know. They gave her Percocet.”
Ben grabs my hand as I reach for my bag. I stare at it, trembling, as he gently guides my wrist back to my watercolors. He presses my palm to the closed kit and strokes his thumb along the side of my hand. He can break my fingers if he wants to.
“Paint, little one,” he murmurs. “Don’t worry about those things yet.”
“I have a year until I’m a broodmare like all my friends. Excuse me for worrying about it.”
He cups a warm palm on my cheek and guides my face to the side, trying to make me look him in the eyes. Stubborn, I glare away from him to the jungle gym, determined not to meet his gaze. Ben sighs and cradles my face in both hands like I’m a poorly-behaved porcelain doll. I grab his wrists and squeeze my eyes shut.
“Rey.” He runs his thumbs across my cheek bones. “What happened to your friend isn’t the norm.”
“I don’t care. I still don’t want to do it.”
“You’ll feel differently when heat begins.” His lips move across my forehead while he speaks and I start to wilt, shrinking back under his looming presence. “Did Kaydel tell you about that?”
“…Not really,” I mutter.
Ben hums, pleased. “No? I suppose you’ll find out when your suppressants are stopped on your next birthday.” He kisses the tip of my nose. I shiver. “Then you’ll change your tune about having babies—and about me.”
“Doubt it.”
He tugs, I taste minty breath, then soft lips press to mine.
My eyes pop open in shock. Ben’s are closed and he’s actually
kissing me
, skin-to-skin, cradling my face in his huge hands. He tugs again, gentle, and I have to catch myself on his knees to keep from falling in his lap. I try to pull away and he growls low in his throat. It makes my neck itch. I dig my nails into his knees.
I’ve never actually kissed anyone before. It makes my head spin—what do I do next?
How do I make this Alpha happy?
Ben keeps pulling until I have to paw over his lap and then I’m sitting there with my legs around his hips. The willow rustles around us; kids shriek with laughter across the park. His hands roam down to my waist and he shuffles me around like I weigh nothing.
I cling to his shoulder blades as he nudges my chin. My jaw moves on instinct, exposing my throat and sleepy mating gland, but I feel another tingle and itch from his breath on my skin.
“Good girl,” Ben whispers. He kisses under my jaw. “Don’t you want someone to take care of you, little Omega? No more worrying about where your next meal comes from…” His nose traces a line down my jugular. “No more cold nights alone.” He licks a wet line back up my jugular to my mating gland and I whimper.
“Don’t… don’t…”
“You have to be in heat for that, kitten.” Ben toys with the clasps on my overalls, then pushes them up to release the hinge. “Aren’t these sweet? Why don’t we take them off and see what’s underneath?”
The front falls open. Thankfully I’m wearing a black and white striped shirt but it’s a crop top that ends just before my belly button. Ben nuzzles into the crook of my neck, staring down at my stomach, and he groans in a weird way I’ve never heard before.
“Beautiful.” He kisses my neck, fumbling with my overalls. “Let’s take these off.”
No—NO!
Ignoring instinct, I squirm out of Ben’s lap and collapse on my blanket on my back. He has a weird look in his eyes, hazy and hungry, and he immediately kneels between my thighs. I stare up at him in terror and claw at his scrubs. Please don’t—please don’t—
He licks his lips. “What? Hm?” His dark eyes stay on mine as he leans back on his calves and brushes his fingertips across my knees. “I just want to take a look, little one. Please?”
“Rey?!”
The spell is broken.
Rose is approaching with Finn close behind. She’s waving, clearly already aware of Ben crouched over me, and I know she’s trying it save me. I scramble from under Ben and twist on my stomach.
Finn’s in his scrubs, too, but they’re blue. He laughs and shakes hands with Ben and Rose crouches beside me. We gather my paints. I’m trembling, terrified of how my body is betraying me and the control Ben has over me. Fuck. FUCK.
Rose touches my shoulder. “Kaydel let it slip he was coming here. I knew you’d need help.” She touches her swelling belly. “I didn’t have help when we conceived.”
Oh god. Tears well up and I nod and want to scream. But if Finn senses Rose is upset, he’ll take her away from me like Poe took Kaydel, so we both have to swallow back our fear.
I do sneak a nuzzle on Rose’s temple. She hugs me around the waist until Finn growls and summons her. I cling to her fingers until I can’t, then I ignore Ben while I gather the rest of my things. Fuck Alphas. I’m not waiting another day in this hellhole.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Heat
- Chapter VIII:
It was loud when Cato was killed.
Clover screamed in a manner so
anguished
, Foxface wondered if Clover really thought one of them would've gotten out of this alive without killing the other-
Or be killed by others- as Cato had been not even five minutes since the game started.
Foxface wondered-
Did Clover scream in grief?
In anger?
(Or perhaps was it in shame? Resources, time and effort spent on a tribute that didn't even last the
initial
bloodbath-)
(Killed by someone who promised they would kill him
first
.)
Foxface inhaled, trying to regain her bearings in the cave she found to rest in temporarily, willing herself to calm down and adjust based on the information she's privy to.
Clover wasn't incorrect in being confident.
After all, it was true that more often than not, seed players win. Careers, tributes from District 1 and 2, duke it out and the strongest of the bunch get fame, wealth and glory. The training in favored districts gave them an edge that the measly 11 days other tributes had as 'training' before the game started, couldn't make up for.
It wasn't as if Cato wasn't
strong
, because Foxface knew he was.
He really was.
After all, aside from going to booths related to survival, she had spent the rest of her time relentlessly observing -
profiling
notable tributes and well-
He probably didn't expect it.
To be fair, no one did.
Foxface fought to swallow the nearly hysterical laugh bursting from her chest, until only an aborted sound that could barely be called a whimper fell from her lips.
Solanum Everdeen.
(What kind of monster did District 12 raise?)
.
When the gong that signaled the start of the game sounded, Foxface's feet felt like lead.
She was running, Foxface could feel herself running - the sound of her beating heart too loud for comfort - however-
Too slow.
She's too
slow
.
Foxface couldn't help but think that as she sees from the corner of her eyes how Solanum Everdeen reached the mouth of the Cornucopia, easily keeping up no, surpassing Career tributes in terms of how fast she was.
Solanum was several seconds ahead of them. Not enough time to actually enter Cornucopia and get out, but plenty of time to snatch a good enough pack and still have leeway to leave.
Foxface grimaced, trying to stamp down the jealousy and lay off the panic attack threatening to swallow her whole.
(The only one that could probably match Solanum's speed was that girl from District 11, Rue. However, Rue was more cautious and much like Foxface aimed for supplies that weren't as contested, nearer the edge.)
It would be useless to
compare
, Foxface pursed her lips, relieved, as she got the pack she wanted without a fight.
Not to mention, the measly seconds that Solanum managed to buy for herself most likely wouldn't save her enough.
(Considering how the girl put forward a bet with little chance of winning - the odds stacked against her so much, Foxface thought what Solanum was thinking when she put that forward.)
(It failed to endear her to sponsors who would have supported her, if not for being too brash-)
Not to mention, the Careers she threatened to kill would most likely target and kill her instead.
That's what Foxface thought.
Then, Foxface witnessed the moment Cato was killed.
..
.
At that time, Foxface wasn't keen on running wildly and before covering her tracks, she wanted to get a feel of how the Careers would move after they set the Cornucopia as their base, so she chose to wait.
She hid nearby and waited, eyes watchful,
cautious
.
Taking note of key players currently in place.
District 11's Thresh have chosen to fight within the Cornucopia, getting what he needed then quickly taking off after, unconcerned with District 1's Marvel's offer for a temporary truce.
District 1's Glimmer was surprisingly proactive, picking off tributes who were too timid - too scared to use the weapons they managed to snatch from the clearing, laughing gaily all the while as she did so.
(Foxface didn't expect her to be the unhinged one. She expected something like this from Clover but
her-
)
(No.)
District 12's Gale was methodical and like the tribute from District 11, didn't hesitate to kill people on the way to getting the supplies he deemed necessary. He seemed to look for around before his gaze stopped on his fellow tribute, Solanum, who at this point in time, was being chased by Clover who appeared set on taking her down.
(The two were nearing her hiding place but not close enough that Foxface could hear what they were saying.)
Foxface fought the urge to tense to avoid giving away her position.
She was hidden enough, Foxface comforted herself.
(Relax.)
Gale pursed his lips, but he didn't interfere choosing to leave on his own as well.
District 2's Cato was brutal as he fought to secure the Cornucopia vicinity. Relying on his huge build, he was tearing through bodies as if they were paper. He appeared high on adrenaline, smile manic as he raised his sword on someone from District 6 before-
He crumpled like paper, dead as from far away as Solanum Everdeen put down her bow and smiled as Clover looked at her in enraged shock.
Cato was
dead
just like that.
How on earth did she land that shot?
It didn't come from Solanum's direction, no. Most likely why Cato didn't account for it.
It came from
above
-
Bouncing off the dome currently on their head.
How in the world did Solanum Everdeen
do
that?
Foxface pursed her lips. For a shot as fantastical as what happened just now to occur, one would have to take into account not only the force required to have the arrow maintain its speed after bouncing of the dome but also the angle, distance and trajectory changes after that bounce.
It was a highly improbable shot that shouldn't have
hit
anyone or if it did, it shouldn't have been able to
kill
, considering the factors required to make it work were too arbitrary, too demanding that a human
shouldn't
have been able to do it.
But it did kill.
And it killed the person it was
meant
to kill.
Then-
A sidelong look in her general direction.
(Solanum knew she was there.)
Foxface ran.
They were supposed to kill Solanum Everdeen together, Clover remembered.
They were supposed to kill her first.
There were plans to target her from the start. Cato was so angry at that time. It didn't take much for the other tributes within their alliance to agree.
He was so offended by the remarks of a slip of a girl, wearing a dress that somehow didn't swallow her up considering Solanum Everdeen was smaller than she was.
(Like her sister, Clover thought at that time.)
(But her sister was too soft and contrary to what Solanum Everdeen looked like, she was anything but that.)
Clover agreed all the same, because she can never say no to Cato.
But Cato was killed first.
She should have done better.
Clover
could have-
She could have-
(What?)
(How could she have blocked that shot?)
They underestimated Solanum Everdeen far too much.
For that arrow shot alone, she deserved her 11.
No, not 11 but
12
. If anything, that girl should have gotten higher.
The Gamemakers shouldn't have taken off a point.
Now look, they thought they had a chance against someone who can, in little time, figure out Cato's movement pattern enough that she was able calculate the angle and force required to kill him in one shot leveraging the arena's dome structure to ensure he wouldn't be watching for it.
Whilst evading Clover's attacks to boot.
She barked out a laugh, the taste in her mouth unbearably bitter as trudged on trying to stick to the plan, ignoring the wary look from Glimmer.
Look at that, glancing at her in disgust too.
Clover would have
skinned
her for that before, but-
Does it even
matter
?
Clover loathed feeling like this, but the feeling of inadequacy itched.
(It scratched just below the surface, making Clover want to peel her skin back in the hopes that it would help-)
(It would alleviate fuck up after
fuck up after fuck up
.)
She wished Everdeen just killed her instead of letting her go.
Instead of leaving her with regrets.
Clover overestimated herself again.
Too weak to protect her sister from volunteering herself.
(Volunteering to protect wayward
brash
Clover who so wanted to prove herself to their parents.)
Too weak to even avenge Cato.
(What was she to him anyway that she has to avenge him?)
(They weren't
anything
.)
Clover faltered a step.
(He
volunteered
for her-)
He didn't.
She couldn't go down that rabbit hole and entertain the thought that-
(Cato sneered. 'Don't think I volunteered to keep you alive. Stop being delusional.')
(He always was a terrible liar.)
Fuck.
Clover's nails drew blood, but she dug harder.
(If she didn't, she'll break down and she couldn't afford that.)
Clover couldn't afford sweet,
venomous
Glimmer seeing any sign of her breaking down- of holding up their little party of killing easy-to-kill survivors.
(Not to say that they wouldn't kill her eventually now that she was alone, but as long as she's still useful, she'll be kept around.)
She needed pain to keep her conscious.
Solanum Everdeen let her go.
Clover just had to make sure she survived long enough to fight back.
To strike once Everdeen's
weaker
.
(Please let her get at least one hit in before Clover dies.)
...
..
.
Perhaps one might think, when did Clover became so unconfident.
She got a 10.
She was a Career tribute trained from a young age to kill and win to give the district more honor.
Clover was raised to be a weapon.
If anything, rather than getting at least one hit in, her goal should be to
kill
.
But she can't.
It wasn't that Clover didn't
try
.
With grief and rage fueling her strikes, Clover hadn't fought as hard as she did then at that time. She tried her best to go with close combat once she saw her knife throws which should have
hit
were evaded in an infuriatingly easy manner.
However, initiating close combat was worse. It felt like the blonde girl was several steps ahead and Everdeen was just playing with her -
humoring
her
.
All her
training -
They were nothing in front of Solanum Everdeen.
(Clover felt like a joke.)
All it got her was a broken nose, sprained wrists and-
Everdeen patting Clover in the face cooing that she would let her go this time because she exceeded her kill quota for today and it would be too boring without her here.
Then the girl hijacked her screen to advertise herself to sponsors, offering once again a 'bet'.
Hah.
What a bitch.
"Isn't this a bit too easy?" Clover heard Everdeen ask. "I could finish the game now-"
(Right.)
(Ignoring the other Career tributes as if they were fodder. Not to mention the tributes from District 11 and Hawthorne from District 12 weren't pushovers either.)
"But then our poor hardworking, balding Gamemakers wouldn't be able to prove themselves now and nobody wants that." Her voice a singsong. "To make it interesting, wouldn't our dearest sponsors start betting on me?" The blonde girl coaxed, smiling gently. "Let's play a game."
A pause. "But what game?" she replied to herself.
Everdeen tapped her chin thoughtfully. The silence loud even as the other tributes continued fighting each other in the Cornucopia, Clover's allies more focused on securing the immediate parameter rather than coming to her help.
"Ahh. I thought of a good one." She finally said, gray eyes gleaming with something that made Clover's skin crawl. "How about a magic show?"
A beat.
"Tributes will die, and these cameras" she gestured. 'won't catch a thing."
Clover could almost imagine the spit-take the audience let out at that. Though, some might laugh at the sheer
audacity
of that challenge.
One of the Capitol's core strengths relied on their advanced surveillance system. It was the key reason why
they,
the districts, lost the war.
Night vision, motion-detectors, not to mention all the tributes were implanted trackers before the game even started.
Hell, the whole dome was
controlled
by the Gamemakers.
Clover thought-
Their district's sponsors must be
pissed
, since their favored tribute's death was apparently caused by a stupid girl with more luck than sense - her feat from earlier being overshadowed by what appeared to be as misplaced confidence.
After all, Cato was a very strong tribute, but for all that he was strong, he was nothing more than a
pawn
.
Her new 'bet' was against the Capitol's capabilities or in this case, a challenge for the Gamemakers, provoking them into taking action-
It was a very ballsy taunt that wouldn't do anything to endear most of the sponsors to her cause, as these sponsors weren't spending their money for nothing.
They want their tribute to win and make their investment worthwhile.
(Playing with Gamemakers was similar to playing with fire and Everdeen was dancing far too
close
with this stunt.)
(Even if she does manage to
pull
it off somehow, the slap in the face wasn't something the Capitol can tolerate.)
A tribute who made herself standout in this manner would keep their attention on her, but it wouldn't net her any substantial gifts, aside from those who most likely covet her beauty.
(Because Solanum Everdeen might be stupid, but if she had a saving grace, it was her pretty face.)
Clover wondered-
What was this for?
Doesn't she want to
win
?
As if answering what Clover was thinking, Everdeen looked at her, then said with unprecedented confidence. "I'll win."
Clover scowled.
Did she say that out loud?
"You didn't, but it's written on your face."
Fuck she's annoying.
Solanum Everdeen just laughed, patted Clover's head before waving goodbye to the camera.
Clover wanted to scratch her head until it bleeds.
(The feeling of the blonde's touch lingering on her head in a way that made her want to
puke
.)
"Pay attention to me, okay?" The girl requested offhandedly, as if she didn't know she already had everyone's attention on her from the get-go. "Keep your eyes peeled... or
don't
." She laughed. "It won't make a difference."
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
This was vastly easier said than done.
Apart from the simple logistical problems of trying to carve time for himself while taking care of a miserable, colicky baby, there was the guilt. Geralt trying to make himself more comfortable, while being unable to do the same for his daughter, was horribly selfish, and just served to push him closer to the edge.
It wasn’t that nobody warned him.
“Love, you seem overstimulated. Have you been wearing your noise cancelling headphones?”
No, because I can’t bear to feel like I’m trying to ignore her.
“Wolf, when was the last time you got more than two consecutive hours of sleep? I know it’s hard, but is there any way you can carve out the time? I know how much you need it.”
Geralt knew what Vesemir was getting at—he could remember all of the childhood problems Vesemir had dealt with because of the way Geralt got sometimes when he needed sleep. They learned early on how vital it was for everyone’s wellbeing that Geralt stayed rested. Unfortunately, getting enough rest as a high schooler was much easier than getting enough sleep as a new dad.
“I’ll bring you over some groceries after I run errands this evening,” Eskel told him after a brief update on Geralt’s current state. “You shouldn’t have to go into the store right now.”
Geralt wasn’t able to tell if they were intentionally avoiding saying the word meltdown, or if they really thought they were being subtle. He couldn’t blame them though. It was like just saying the word might trigger one. He worried keeping one at bay might not be something he was up for right now.
Geralt was afraid it was inevitable.
There had been too many harsh awakenings just after he got to sleep, and too many nights with no sleep at all. Ciri’s cries were heartbreaking, yes, but they were also shrill and piercing. They made Geralt’s head hurt, like every cry was a physical blow.
Everyone knew it was only a matter of time.
The real question was: how bad would it be?
Of course, it happened during one of the rare times Geralt was alone with Ciri at the apartment. Jaskier was on campus meeting with his academic advisor to discuss how he was feeling about their current tentative plans for his eventual return to school now that he’d been a stay at home dad for more than a month. All Geralt had to do was watch Ciri until he came home.
Knowing Jaskier had a meeting this morning, Geralt had taken the majority of the overnight feedings (and rockings, and comfortings, and shushings) so Jask would be well rested. He was utterly exhausted, and ready for his turn to sleep. All Geralt had to do was hold out until Jaskier returned. It wouldn’t be long now.
But Ciri didn’t make it easy.
Geralt had caved and put his headphones in, and he was debating whether the guilt or the pain was harder to endure. Would he feel better if he took them off? It was doubtful. The only way he was going to feel better was if he could get some good sleep in a quiet room. He would never feel good while his daughter was this miserable.
“You’re okay, baby. I’m here. I’ve got you.” Geralt sat in the nursery, rocking Ciri and rubbing her belly. “I know you don’t feel good, but I’m begging you to please take your nap,” he pleaded. “You’ll feel so much better.”
Ciri looked up at him, her lower lip quivering, staring at Geralt with red rimmed and shining eyes. He willed them to shut
.
Well, he got his wish, but instead of drifting shut, a second later Ciri’s face screwed up in the tiniest pained expression Geralt could imagine. Then she started screaming again.
“Baby girl,” Geralt whined, “don’t do this to me.”
Ciri replied with another shriek.
“Alright, changing tactics.”
Geralt stood up, switching Ciri so she was no longer cradled in his arms, but instead upright against his chest, head on his shoulder. For a moment, she quieted.
“There you go.” Geralt gently swayed side to side.
Ciri hiccupped.
“You’re okay.”
Then, to prove him wrong, Ciri vomited onto Geralt’s neck and all down his front. Not just a little spit up either, but what looked like her entire last bottle.
“Ciri.” This time it was a whimper.
In response though, instead of resuming her shrieks, she shut her eyes, put her fingers in her mouth, and nestled into Geralt’s shoulder. That solved the mystery of why Ciri was so extra fussy this morning. It also backed Geralt up into a very unpleasant corner.
She was quiet, and well on her way to falling asleep, and if he set her down now the crying would certainly resume, probably even louder than before. But if Geralt stood for too much longer with the vomit on his skin and soaking into his clothes, he was going to lose it.
He held out for as long as he could, but as soon as it happened, Geralt had felt the hot, uncomfortable meltdown energy start to build in his chest.
Sure enough, the moment Geralt shifted Ciri she started to wail, but this didn’t stop him from laying her down in her crib. I’m allowed to step away, he told himself, repeating what others had been saying to him for weeks. I’m allowed to look after myself.
But it was already too late for this to be enough to pull himself together. He couldn’t be talked down from this meltdown. It had begun, and Geralt was afraid that already the situation was getting completely out of hand.
He pulled his shirt off and threw it in the hamper, despite knowing he ought to have rinsed it out first. Already the room was starting to smell strongly of sour milk, although Geralt wasn’t totally sure that wasn’t in his head.
Jogging across to the bathroom, he wiped himself down with a wet cloth, but even that just served to make him feel worse. The cold, rough fibers irritated him, and stung on the bare skin of his neck and chest. There were too many Bad Sensations happening, and Geralt had no control over any of it.
Ciri wailed from her nursery, needing Geralt. He was letting her down.
She needed more than what he could give her. And that broke him.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Hari looked around her, her eyes widening at the desolate landscape in front of her. Ice. Snow. Three… no… Four trees. Lots of rocks lined with cold snow. No home. No cities. No towns. A cold breeze tore her breath away, making her cough at the coldest air that she had ever been in. She reached into her trunk, stepped into it and put on warmer clothes, throwing on a black cloak, a long-sleeve shirt and sturdy boots. She cast a warming charm on herself before she ventured back out into the country that she had appeared in, took a deep, chilling breath and walked up and out of the trunk.
“Of all the places that I landed in, it had to be a frozen wasteland,” Hari muttered, pulling her hair back into a tail when another cold gust of wind bracketed her. “Must be the Potter luck.”
She snorted at the thought, thankful that at least there was a sun in the sky, however ineffective it was. Her fingers wrapped around her holly wand as she continued to look around, looking for any sign of civilization. Howls started up in the distance and she stilled, imagining a ferocious pack of wolves running throughout the snow. She was fairly sure she could defend herself against a pack of wolves but better safe than sorry. Hari drew out her quidditch goggles, strapped them on, before taking out her Firebolt and mounting.
She could have just shifted into her other form and traveled that way but she didn’t know how her form would be accepted here. It was a form that would be uniquely suited to this area but… Flying on a broomstick would probably be less threatening. Probably. She sighed and flew into the air and kept under the few clouds in the sky as she looked for homes or buildings that meant people lived here.
It took several hours for her to reach any town or village and she slowed down when she saw children walking between small one story homes. One of the kids was a boy, his head of ginger hair a bright spot amongst the snow and ice. There was a big fire pit in the middle of the five or six small wooden homes and two women tending it.
The men that Hari could see were clothed in thick winter clothing that did not leave any skin showing. They held spears and axes in their hands and the look in their eyes was threatening, intimidating. There was a woman with a sword in her hands as well and Hari grinned slightly as she lowered down to the ground.
The kids yelled at her appearance and the ginger haired boy’s eyes widened.
“What the fuck are you?” The warrior woman turned to look at her, her blue eyes widening.
Hari’s eyes widened a little at the language but then again… She should have expected it. Anyone who lived here, in this climate and landscape, were hard people. The woman’s hand went to her sword as Hari put away her broom, miniaturizing it and tucking it away.
“Hari. I’m Hari. I’m not going to harm you.”
Their words and the shouting of the children had drawn more people to her, crowding around her in a half circle. Her magic sparked at the potential threat and she took a deep breath again, aiming for no instinctual magic getting loose.
“What’s with the broom? And how the fuck were you flying?”
“Who’s the leader of this village?” Hari questioned, peering down at the boy with ginger hair. He had snuck up on her as she was talking with the warrior woman. The boy stared up at her with wide blue eyes and she grinned at him.
“I’m going to steal you when I get older,” the boy said, smiling widely at her. “We’re going to have beautiful babies.”
Hari blinked. “Alright… How old are you?”
“I’m ten and two. Mother said I should steal a strong woman.”
“Tormund, get over here!”
“Aye, mother! I found my girl!”
Hari watched in bemusement as the ginger-haired boy, Tormund, ran off, back through the crowd. His mother stood at the corner home and tugged him inside when he reached her.
“Are you a witch woman?”
Hari turned back to the first warrior, a woman who looked to be ten or twenty years older than herself. “Yes? You’re the leader of the village?”
“Name’s Joanna. What are you doing here?”
“I just landed here myself. Where is… here?”
The woman stared at her, her dark blonde hair pulled back in a tight braid, and Hari stared back. They were both of the same height, around six feet tall.
“You’re in the Frostfangs,” Joanna answered finally, gesturing to the homes around them and to the great hall at the north end of it. “That’s Ruddy Hall.”
Hari nodded, pulling her cloak tighter around her shoulders. More howling filled the air and a few of the men cursed under their breath.
“Direwolves, again. Thought they stayed away last time.”
“Might be one of Haggon’s,” Joanna called over to the person speaking. “You have a home around here?”
Hari shook her head. “Direwolves?”
“You’re not from around here.”
“No.”
“Come. I shall introduce you to the folk around here,” Joanna offered, gesturing around the small village. “It’s not usual to not know where one is. Be mindful of the wolves, snow bears and shadowcats.”
Hari’s eyes widened as she followed the woman, passing through the crowd as they walked through the snow. She could feel everyone’s eyes on her and shrugged it off, as used to the Ministry and the whole population of the wizarding world looking at her. At least these people weren’t staring at her scar, like they knew her. She wasn’t the Girl-Who-Lived here.
“Torik and I offer you a bed,” Joanna said as they walked back into her home an hour later. “You’re not a kneeler so no one will look down on you for that.”
“Kneeler?”
“Folk who kneel to kings and lords,” Joanna explained in a quiet but firm voice. “Those are south of the Wall.”
“You spoke of the Night’s Watch. What’s that?” Hari questioned, as Joanna closed the door behind them. Two kids ran about the hall and stopped to look at her, their eyes widening.
“Men who guard the Wall. They forbid us from passing through it,” Joanna offered. “Hari, I would not recommend joining them. They do not allow women to fight unlike us free folk.”
Joanna grinned, showing off a toothy smile.
“People like us don’t need dragons to tell us what to do,” Torik called out, from the far corner of the home. It was a small thing, a small cabin, but Hari wasn’t going to complain. It wasn’t like it was smaller than the cupboard.
“Did you say dragons?” Hari echoed, her heart skipping a beat at the thought of it.
“Aye. The kneelers have the dragons as their king,” Torik said, grimacing.
“Dragons… as in fire breathing creatures?” Hari asked.
“They like to call themselves that but no one’s become a dragon. Or so I’ve heard,” Joanna said, rolling her eyes. “Few have tried, drinking wildfire and the like. They all died stupidly.”
“Huh.”
Hari stayed at Joanna and Torik’s home for a week, helping out whenever possible. She met the villagers, none of whom stared at her awkwardly. Tormund, the ginger haired boy, stuck to her like glue, always joining her when she helped the women and three of the men get water from the nearest stream.
The first time she used her magic everyone’s eyes widened in awe. There had been a rockslide a month after she had arrived, three miles away from Ruddy Hall. The cliff that bordered the village to the north had been set off by something, no one knew. A few of the spearwives had gone hunting and had taken her, on Joanna’s suggestion, and Hari had caught the rocks in the air.
Lennora, one of the spearwives, had been the first to see what Hari was doing, her brown eyes widening so much. The rocks were suspended in the air above them, with Hari glaring at them like they had done her wrong. Her green eyes were glowing and that stick of hers was in held tightly in her hand. Snow flakes threaded through the witch girl’s black hair as it spread out against her back.
Lennora and the other spearwomen of the village all moved out from under the rocks, letting Hari have space for her craft. They watched her tap the wand against her leg, her fingers curling around it, and the rocks moved in the air, slowly floating to the left.
When all was done, Hari stood amongst the snow and trees alone. The witch girl wasn’t even breathing heavily, her shoulders lose under the fur cloak that she had been granted by Joanna.
“Hariel Winterscar.”
Hari startled a little at the words, turning to look at Lennora and then rolled her eyes. “I told you folk my name. I don’t need another.”
“Aye, you did. We wildlings give each other names,” Lennora remarked, grinning and wrapping her fingers around her spear again. “That’s yours.”
“Fine. I’ll be Hariel Potter, the Girl-Who-Lived, the Woman Who Conquered and Lady Gryffindor. I’ll be Hariel Winterscar. That’s enough names for me,” Hari muttered, dropping her hand to the blade at her waist. None of the wildlings had seen her use the sword but everyone knew Hari could defend herself just as well with her craft.
The first attack on Ruddy Hall came not four months later while Hari had gone off with Tormund and the younger children on a hunt. Hari had learned about where the other clans were over the last few months but she supposed word had spread of her talents. Just like Tormund had said when she had first arrived, men wanted to steal her away to be their bride. Others just wanted a look at her, their eyes widening as they saw her do magic.
Tormund had turned 13 just a few days ago and was the eldest of them, fighting with an axe. Tormund gathered the children together, keeping them between him and Hari as they fought off the men. Hari whispered spell after spell, a few blasting charms and a hex or two, casting to injure, not to kill.
“Where are these men and women from?” Hari shouted over the icy winds of the day, snatching the arm of one of the kids as they ventured too far out of their tiny circle. The boy looked up at her with a chagrined expression and then kept close to her for the rest of the fight. Tormund grinned as he hit the last man standing, his axe pushing through the man’s body and going out the other side.
“They’re of the Frozen shore,” Tormund replied, checking over his friends. “Everyone good?”
“Aye. We’re fine,” Dorrell said, a boy of eight. He lived next door to Tormund. “We should get home. This could have been…”
Hari stared at the boy and then nodded. “A diversion.”
Tormund’s eyes widened before shouting to the others to get going. Hari took up the rear, magic curling around her as she looked around for any other men or women that were still standing. They quickened their pace as they came upon their home, seeing a dead reindeer at the first home. Tormund raced away, heading to his home while the children did the same.
The little village was surrounded by trees, unlike where she had first landed, and further south was the Frozen Shore, where another clan of free folk lived. And then there was the cannibal clan of the ice river. A few of the ice-river clansmen had ambushed the spearwives of Ruddy Hall and the warrior men, leaving three injured and two dead.
A fourth, younger woman was taken, dragged away unconscious to be a wife for one of their own men.
Tormund refused to leave Hari’s side as she drew her wand and began to heal the injured men and women, his blue eyes wide as he looked on. His hand was on his axe, with a white knuckled grip.
“Tormund, I’m too old for you,” Hari muttered, spelling her hair into a tight braid and pressing her hands down on the arrow wound in the man’s thigh. The man, a friend of Torik’s, grimaced but stayed still, having seen her heal others before.
“Aye. But we don’t want you taken or hurt.”
Hari glanced at her little shadow, seeing the 13 year old boy stare at her in determination. All of the children learned to fight at a young age and learned survival skills north of the Wall. Though Hari had yet to see this Wall, she imagined something big, some big stone thing covered in snow.
“I’m the only warrior who isn’t injured,” Tormund added, glaring at her like she was going to argue with him.
“Fine. Stay.” Hari sighed and whispered spells to clean the wound and knit the skin together under her hands. “Where does this ice-river clan live?”
“South. But not too south, Hari.”
Hari blinked again. “Who was killed?”
“Joanna.”
Her eyes widened, her heart aching at the thought of losing the blunt warrior woman. “She was the leader of this village! Who… The ice-river clans are cannibals, aren’t they?”
“Aye. The men of the Frozen Shore are at the deep south while the ice-river clans are between us and them. Before you came, I always wanted to steal a girl from the Frozen shore clan. They have reindeer there and dogs as big as direwolves!”
Hari laughed shakily under her breath, finishing up with Orlaf and seeing him dip his head in thanks. “Who’s the next leader? Is anyone going after the woman who was taken?”
“I am.” Tormund looked out over the big hall, seeing the many people crowded into the main room. “We must burn the bodies.”
Nods of assent were given and people filed out, their heads bowed. Hari could see no tears though, no long expressions of grief on these people’s faces. It was the way of the world for these people, the wildlings. No one grieved long for lost people.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
(July 2)
Having cleared the Palace, secured the infiltration route, and sent the calling card. The plan with the card was a thing of brilliance from Hermione; she and Blitzø ran up and down Central Street the night prior, posting calling cards displaying Giovanni’s name and his connection to Team Rocket everywhere. There was no way that he could escape the eye of the public for long, so the Phantom Thieves knew that he would receive word any minute now, so they waited within the Palace until the heat inside turned up dramatically.
“That’s our cue!” Riku called out. “It’s showtime!”
“Right!” the others agreed in unison.
The team ran forward, making their way to the Treasure Room, only to find the Treasure locked behind a vault and Giovanni standing in the way, a smug grin on his face.
“You really thought I would just let you steal from me?” Giovanni scoffed. “How pathetic!”
“The only pathetic one I see here is you!” Link yelled.
“Believe what you will,” Giovanni glared. “You won’t defeat me on my own turf!”
The vault opened, revealing a massive mechanical monstrosity behind the doors. The Phantom Thieves all took a half-step backward in shock as Giovanni was lifted into it by the machine itself.
“How do you like my NidoTron?” Giovanni asked with menace in his voice.
“It’s big,” Riku huffed, “but I’ve fought bigger!”
“There’s no way this thing can beat all six of us!” Rocket snarled.
“Let’s blow this bitch up!” Blitzø shouted as he began firing upon the NidoTron.
The NidoTron was a formidable foe, having the ability to cause minor earthquakes around the team. The Phantom Thieves managed to keep their footing regardless and lit up the metallic monster. They kept their distance, with Riku opting for Dark Firaga, Blitzø and Rocket firing their guns, Link switching between his bow and his boomerang, and Hermione casting spells from the wand she obtained in her awakening. Eowyn, having no ranged weaponry, acted defensively for the team, providing her shield when needed. In the end, the NidoTron fell apart and Giovanni was defenseless.
“I’ll give you all credit where it’s due,” Giovanni grinned, though this time it seemed genuine, “you know how to put up a fight! Reminds me of when I was younger, not yet corrupted.”
“Go back to yourself in reality,” Eowyn urged him. “Confess everything. You can make things right.”
“She’s right,” Riku seconded.
“A good plan,” Giovanni mused. “But a word of warning before I go. Beware the other one, the one with the black mask.”
“There’s that other one talk again,” Rocket pointed out.
“And they have a black mask?” Link pondered.
“Farewell,” Giovanni said, departing from his Palace, which began to crumble.
“Worry about what he said later!” Rocket yelled. “Grab that Treasure and run!”
And so they barely managed to escape Giovanni’s Palace, taking with them the Treasure, revealed to be a golden briefcase. Within it, once they managed to open it back at Leblanc, was a ball with a small white button on the front. Clicking it opened it, revealing nothing inside. The ball itself was white on the bottom half and purple with two pink accent marks. A white ‘M’ adorned the ball just above the button.
“Well, the ball thing looks useless,” Hermione stated, “but maybe the briefcase is worth something?”
“I know a guy who might buy it,” Riku chimed in.
“Oh yeah, Mando!” Blitzø exclaimed.
“Who?” Hermione questioned.
“He owns the model weapons shop on Central Street,” Rocket explained.
“Think he’ll actually buy this?” Link asked.
“If I’m offering to sell it, then maybe,” Riku shrugged. “He did buy the medal from before.”
“True,” Eowyn nodded.
“So, sell it first, victory celebration later?” Blitzø offered.
Everyone nodded in agreement.
***
(July 9)
News of Giovanni, leader of Team Rocket, turning himself in and outing his entire organization travelled quickly across the city of Tokyo. While he was in police custody, there was no denying that this was the handiwork of the Phantom Thieves. This irritated Jennifer Walters, who had been slowly building a case against Team Rocket to bring them down in a move to gain a promotion at her job. With no one able to take credit beyond the fabled heart-stealing thieves, there was no hope of that promotion now. At least the city is a little safer now for Hermione, she justified in her mind as she still let her thoughts dwell on the other case she had slowly started to build.
A case to connect the so-called justice-dealing Phantom Thieves to the psychotic breakdowns and mental shutdowns happening across the country.
***
(July 10)
Locked away in a dark room, where the only light source was a computer screen, a girl with long brown hair and emerald green eyes listened in on some teenagers chatting away in Leblanc. She had bugged the place to listen in on her caretaker, the Doctor, to ensure that business was good. As her fingers tapped away on the keyboard, she overheard one of them mention that they were the Phantom Thieves.
“Hm?” she hummed to herself.
***
(July 11)
Another school day had passed, and Riku sighed half in relief and half in worry. Final exams were in two days, and he was not really feeling up to doing them. At least the study session the night prior helped him somewhat with preparing for them. He told himself to remember to thank Hermione for the assistance later.
“Riku!” called the voice of Caulifla from behind.
“Oh hey, Caulifla,” Riku turned and said. “What’s up?”
“I was wondering if you had a free moment to talk. I have great news!”
Before Riku could respond, another girl approached them.
“Fancy seeing you again, Riku,” Miranda stated. “And you…I’ve seen you before!”
“Oh! A friend of mine’s dad runs a TV station,” Caulifla explained as she extended her hand, “so we must have met that way! I’m Caulifla!”
“Miranda Tate, but I’m guessing you already knew that,” Miranda replied, shaking Caulifla’s hand.
“Why don’t the three of us go somewhere?” Riku suggested. “Caulifla was mentioning that she had great news.”
And so the three of them went to a cafe, where Caulifla shared that she was chosen among a set of Shujin students to participate in an upcoming martial arts tournament. Riku and Miranda congratulated her and wished her the best. Miranda then followed up with explaining how she and Riku met, then posed a question for Caulifla.
“What do you think of the Phantom Thieves?” Miranda questioned the martial artist.
“Honestly? I don’t think of them,” Caulifla shrugged. “But if I had to ponder them…well, they do some good, but the public shouldn’t rely solely on them to solve problems.”
“A fair stance to take,” Miranda mused. “Riku’s an avid supporter.”
“You are?” Caulifla gasped.
“Guilty as charged,” Riku smirked. “Don’t worry, though. Everyone’s allowed to have an opinion on them as they please.”
“Well said,” Miranda smirked.
Not long after, Caulifla had to excuse herself, leaving just Riku and Miranda alone. Per a suggestion from the detective princess, the two of them headed off to Kichijoji, where Riku was introduced to an establishment called the Jazz Jin. There, they continued chatting with each other while the singer of the night, a woman in a red hat and red dress, sang something about superstars and one-up girls and boys. Overall, Riku found the whole situation relaxing, just what he needed after the school day.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
They slept that night upon a flet high in the branches of a mallorn-tree, and the Elves that accompanied Haldir all hid superior smiles at the sight of Gimli struggling to climb it.
"You could try helping, rather than standin' there an' sniggering!" Gimli burst out eventually, and the Elves laughed aloud.
"Here," Legolas said in a neutral voice, and passed Gimli a rope. Then the wood-elf sent a flat look to the Galadhrim and turned away.
Only Frís' warning hand on Thorin's arm prevented a furious tirade from descending upon the heads of the Lórien Elves.
"Thorin," she said quietly. "You must sleep. Twenty hours is too long. Come back when they rise again: you do not help Gimli or yourself by witnessing this."
"He'd be furious if he knew I'd seen it," Lóni agreed ruefully. "Come on, Frár. Náli, we'll come back in a little while. They will be safe in this wood."
"I doubt that," Thorin snarled, but he allowed his mother to lead him from the deep blue night of Arda into the drowned stars of
Gimlîn-zâram
.
"Eat!" Hrera barked, putting a bowl in front of Thorin the next morning. "Ah, Thorin darling, your face is being swallowed up by the black rings beneath your eyes! Soon there will be no face left and only black rings and everyone will wonder where you have gone."
"That was not amusing the first time I heard it, Grandmother," Thorin grumbled, but he sat at the table and picked up the spoon. The bowl was full of Hrera's traditional Broadbeam dumpling stew, and he brightened. It had been
centuries
since he'd tasted it.
"Thought that might get your attention." She snorted and turned to rap Frerin's knuckles with a spoon. "No touching! That is for your brother."
"That is entirely unfair," Frerin complained. "How come Thorin gets Grandmother's stew and I don't?"
"Because Thorin has been working himself to the very bedrock," Hrera snapped back. "Keep your sticky fingers out of it, and there might be some left for you."
Frerin's hand shot back so fast it might have been springloaded.
Hrera and her young grandsons, by
Jeza-red
"This is somewhat familiar," Thrór said humorously. "I am having flashbacks to Erebor before the Dragon came."
Thorin looked up with a cautious expression. His grandfather did not normally speak so calmly of that time. "I can remember very little of those early years," he said. "I can remember the pageantry, and the stew of course..."
"Thank you," Hrera said with dignity, and then rapped Fíli and Kíli over the heads with her spoon. "Don't you start as well! That belongs to your uncle."
"But it smells so good!" Kíli whined.
Thorin, prompted by some long-dormant imp of mischief, took a large spoonful of his stew and made a satisfied noise.
"I cannot believe you," Kíli said and he slid down in his chair and began to work on a very impressive sulk.
"All right, maybe Frerin's stories of your pranks aren't complete hogwash," Fíli said, and he folded his arms and gave Thorin a long and level look.
"
Uncle
Frerin?" Frerin prompted hopefully, and Fíli and Kíli gave identical snorts of derision.
"Keep dreaming, youngster," Fíli said, and grinned.
Hrera waved her spoon at them. "Stay out of trouble today, great-grandsons, and I will make you a potful of your own," she said sweetly.
"All
day
?" Kíli said.
Hrera nodded solemnly. "All day."
"Strength, brother, we can do this," Fíli said, and he picked up his own spoon and began to eat his porridge with the determined air of a Dwarf going into battle. "I'm going to get that soup."
"It is very good," Thorin said innocently.
"I hate you," Kíli grumped. Hrera smacked his head again with her spoon, and he let out a moan. "Augh, why is every Dwarrowdam who is related to us utterly terrifying?"
"Oh, I'm sorry – I thought you knew something of the history of our family," said Frís calmly. "Pass the sugar, Thráin dear."
Fris and her boys, before the Dragon, by
injureddreams
"Don't argue," Thrór advised the two young Dwarrows. "It makes it worse."
"Augh," Kíli said again, and his face landed on the table with a thump.
"Do you go back straight away?" Frerin asked Thorin, snatching the sugar on its way to his mother and liberally coating the surface of his porridge. Thorin swallowed a mouthful of his soup and nodded.
"The Fellowship is in Lothlórien," he said, and from the sudden dark looks around the table he knew he would have no argument.
"What d'you want us to do?" Frerin nudged him. Thorin raised an eyebrow at his brother.
"You can take a day, if you wish, unless Father would like company when he checks upon Glóin later."
"That old Dwarrow can move like the wind when he wants to," Thráin said, and he shook his head. "Unfortunately, he keeps getting distracted by likely iron deposits. Has he ever stopped being a financier?"
"Glóin? No," Thorin said, and smiled. No doubt Glóin was tallying up the likelihood of these deposits bearing useable ore, the profit and the cost involved in extracting it, and the margins between the two.
"I'll be with that Dori fellow today," Thrór said. "The defences of Erebor proceed apace. I'll keep you posted."
Thorin yawned, and then he rubbed at his eyes. "Thank you, grandfather."
"I intend to keep an eye on your sister and Dáin," Frís said, and then she tutted. "And please cover your mouth,
inùdoy
."
Frerin snickered until Thorin kicked him under the table.
"Hullo, boss," said Nori as Thorin shook off the clinging starlight. "They're on the move again."
"How long have you been watching?" Thorin said, and he rubbed at his eye again. Sweet Mahal, but he was tired.
"Couple of hours," Nori said, and he turned to gesture at the line of blindfolded folk all stumbling through the golden morning light. "Right bunch o' wallies they look, don't they?"
Thorin's lips pressed together. "Indeed."
Aragorn was leading their blind procession, guided by Haldir and two other Elves. Behind him came Gimli, then Boromir, Frodo, Sam, Pippin and Merry. At the rear was Legolas, his face smooth under his blindfold but with an unhappy curl to his mouth. "At least the ground is flat and even," Thorin grunted.
"There's that," Nori said. "I'm just a little put-out at missin' such a golden opportunity thanks to the small inconvenience of bein' dead."
"You would rifle through their pockets?" Thorin sent his companion an amused look, and Nori shrugged.
"No better time, wouldn't you say?"
"You do not change, my friend," Thorin said, and he shook his head in amusement.
Nori's look was puzzled. "Should I?"
At that moment, a new host of Elves met them, and Haldir exchanged a few quiet words with them before turning back to the Fellowship. "It seems a strange creature has been turned back at the borders," he told them. "A crouching thing that ran with a bent back. It was no orc and so they did not kill it, and it vanished down the Silverlode."
"Elves," Thorin growled. "They cannot get anything right!"
"That's the geezer our Burglar met under the Goblin King's caves, right?" Nori said, and scratched his head. "He's got to be gettin' on in years."
"He bore the Ring," Thorin said. "Who knows how long he has endured?"
"Shame they didn't shoot him," Nori said.
Abruptly Thorin remembered Gandalf's words, and a pang shot through him. "Aye, perhaps."
"They also bring me a message from the Lady of the Galadhrim," Haldir continued. "You are all to walk free, even the Dwarf Gimli. It seems the Lady knows your purpose."
He bent and untied the bandage first from Gimli's eyes. "Your pardon!" he said, and gave an elegant bow. "Look upon us now with friendly eyes! For you are the first Dwarf to behold the trees of the Naith of Lórien since Durin himself."
Gimli held his tongue, but his dark eyes spoke volumes.
Thorin cast his eyes over the great hill crowned with trees that stood, glowing and shifting, in the light of the sun and the sweet breeze. They were crowned with the golden leaves of the mallorn, and mighty trunks of silver shone between. Upon the grass grew small yellow flowers, star-shaped and fragrant and interspersed with more blooms of white and nodding green. The whole vista felt somehow as ancient as Khazad-dûm and yet living, a relic of far-gone times brought to the present day, a window into a vanished world.
"That," said Nori with profound dislike, "is the most Elvish thing I've ever seen."
Thorin only grunted. It was beautiful, yes – but Nori was correct. The power of the Elves radiated from the sight, and he could not help but feel small, misshapen and lumpen in the face of it.
"Caras Galadhon," Haldir said proudly. "The heart of Elvendom on earth, realm of the Lord Celeborn and Galadriel, Lady of Light."
"Beautiful," said Frodo softly, and he was echoed by Sam, Aragorn and to Thorin's horror, Gimli.
"Do you jest, Master Dwarf?" said Haldir, his brow arching.
Gimli shook his head. "Nay, it is beautiful. See how the leaves glisten like pale gold! Truly, this place is lovely beyond compare." He looked troubled at the admission.
"All right, but don't
tell
them, their heads are big enough as it is!" Nori snapped, and Thorin rubbed at the bridge of his nose.
"My star, you are being obscure again," he groaned. "Remember who you are, Durin's child!"
Gimli's eyes tightened, and he turned to look out over the trees again in silence as the rest of the blindfolds were removed.
Aragorn's face was full of yearning. "Here my heart dwells forever," he murmured. "Oh, Undómiel, why were you so fair in the evening light with the silvery niphredil twined in your hair?"
"That's the face of a fellow in love, or I'm a Hobbit," said Nori, and Thorin frowned.
"Indeed," he said slowly. "This... Undómiel, I suppose. But what would a mortal be doing here in this timeless place?"
"Who knows?" Nori shrugged. "I don't bother myself much with the doings of the Men. Unless they've got something I want, of course."
"Come," said Haldir. "I will take you to the Lord and Lady."
They climbed the hill through the day, passing under the boughs of the great trees, each thicker than iron girders and clad in that same silvery-white bark. Here and there a
talan,
or platform, could be spied in the branches, and they became more numerous as they made their way to the peak of the hill.
A road paved with white stone came snaking between the huge trunks, and Haldir led them onto it. The Hobbits looked around with wonder as the sun began to set and small lights began to rise up into the canopy, blue and silver and shining like earthly spirits.
Finally the road came to the mightiest tree yet, with a trunk so broad it could be mistaken for a thing made and not grown. Graceful stairs clung to its silvery skin, circling around and around like a caress.
"Here dwell Celeborn and Galadriel," Haldir said. "It is their wish that you should ascend and speak with them."
"What, make weary travellers climb up all those stairs?" Nori exclaimed. "I don't call that very welcoming."
Gimli eyed the delicate structure with some trepidation, but he followed Frodo up the stairs without a word. His heavy footsteps clanged and clattered against them, and he winced and cursed in Khuzdul. Thorin realised that Gimli must be feeling twice as cumbersome, puny and lumpen than he himself.
"Gimli," he murmured, keeping pace with the younger Dwarf. "You are a fine Dwarrow and a mighty warrior and a good soul. Do not let yourself be intimidated by this place!"
"Who could not feel small when faced with such living beauty?" Gimli murmured, and he trailed his fingertips against the smooth bark of the Mallorn tree.
"How tall
is
this thing?" puffed Pippin from near the rear of the party. "Ostentatious, to my mind!"
Gimli's lips twitched, and he resumed the climb with renewed vigour.
Finally the stairs opened out to a wide talan like the deck of a great ship. Gimli shuffled backwards until he was near the back of the Fellowship, allowing Legolas and Aragorn to hold the front with Frodo. Merry and Boromir gave him a sympathetic look and Sam patted his shoulder in clumsy comfort, but before the Hobbit could speak two Elves, tall and glorious, began the descent from the higher platform to where they stood.
The lights that swirled around them became almost too bright, and Thorin squinted into it to see these newcomers more clearly. Hand in hand they came, and the woman was as tall as the man. His hair was long and silver, but hers was glory undimmed: mingled silver and gold and shining like a memory of mithril; like the unrestrained soul of the sun.
"Ach!" Gimli breathed, and he bowed his ruddy head. Aragorn touched his forehead in greeting, and Legolas stepped forward to incline his head to the man with some familiarity. Ah, so that was the kinsman he had spoken of before, Thorin realised.
"The Enemy knows you have entered here," the Lord said, and his voice was low and musical. "What hope you had in secrecy is now gone."
Thorin's heart sank. "Well, that's bollocksed it," Nori muttered.
"Eight there are here, yet nine there were, set out from Rivendell. Tell me, where is Gandalf?" the Lord continued. Yet as he spoke, the Lady's eyes flickered to Aragorn.
"He has fallen into shadow," she breathed, and if the man's voice was musical then hers was the pure sound of birdsong and flowing water, beautiful and melodious.
Aragorn nodded as he returned her strange and starlit gaze, his grief dancing in his eyes. The assembled Elves all cried out in horror and amazement.
"He was taken by both shadow and flame," Legolas said harshly. "A Balrog of Morgoth."
"I saw it, there upon the Bridge," Gimli choked, and his great sorrow was once more in his face. "I saw Durin's Bane."
"Alas," Celeborn said. "We long feared the Dwarves had stirred up that evil again. Had I known, I would have forbidden you to come here. And Gandalf chose this path? One would say that at the last he fell from wisdom into folly, going needlessly into the net of Moria."
Gimli's head lowered, and he squeezed his eyes shut.
"He would be rash indeed that said that thing," Galadriel said, and her voice was cool as glass.
Thorin's brow furrowed, and he snapped up his head to stare at the slender Elf-woman.
"Did she just...?" Nori said in confusion.
"She just defended a Dwarf," Thorin breathed.
The Lady, all aglow, moved closer to where Gimli stood glowering and sad. "Needless were none of the deeds of Gandalf in life, and none here knew his full purpose," she murmured. "Do not repent of your welcome to the Dwarf. If our folk had been exiled long and far from Lothlórien, who amongst us could pass close by and not wish to look upon our ancient home, even if it had become an abode of dragons?"
Celeborn looked rather taken aback – and so did Legolas.
"Sweet merciful Mahal," Thorin said in utter shock.
"She understands!" Nori said blankly. "She
understands –
but she's an Elf!"
The Lady Galadriel smiled down at Gimli, and her eyes were wells of deep memory. "Dark is the water of
Kheled-zâram,
and cold are the springs of
Kibil-nâla
, and fair were the many-pillared halls of
Khazad-dûm
in Elder Days before the fall of mighty kings beneath the stone."
Thorin reeled, his mind awhirl. "She knows Khuzdul!"
"She knows Khuzdul!" Nori echoed, his mouth gaping open. His jaw shut with a snap, and he swallowed. His eyes were wild and wide. "
Really
glad Balin ain't here right now. He'd find a way t' die twice."
"She... she did not call it by that foul Elvish slur," Thorin said, and he threaded his fingers in his hair and stared and stared and stared. "She did not call it
Moria...
she calls it by its name..."
Gimli's face slowly turned up, and wonder dawned upon it. His eyes met those of the Lady, and then he smiled so suddenly and so brilliantly that Thorin gasped at the sight. He had thought Gimli's smiles lost for good.
With that bright and fierce joy in his face, Gimli clumsily bowed in dwarf-fashion, saying: `Yet more fair is the living land of Lórien, and the Lady Galadriel is above all the jewels that lie beneath the earth! '
The Lady's smile broadened and she inclined her head to Gimli in respect and welcome.
"I cannot believe what I see," Thorin managed.
Celeborn stepped forward and held out his hands. "Let Gimli forget my harsh words," he said a little stiffly. "I spoke in the trouble of my heart."
Gimli only kept gazing upon the Lady in utter awe.
"But what now becomes of this Fellowship?" Celeborn continued. "Without Gandalf, all hope is lost."
The Lady Galadriel looked up from Gimli to meet the eyes of Boromir. "The quest stands upon the edge of a knife," she said softly. "Stray but a little, and it will fail to the ruin of all."
Boromir shook, and then he turned away. Through his stunned shock, Thorin managed to wonder why. What was so important about the Elf-woman's eyes?
"Yet hope remains while a company is true," she said, and turned her gaze upon Sam. He bore under it unflinchingly, his honest face resolute, though his cheeks began to redden.
"Do not let your hearts be troubled," she said, turning to Legolas. He trembled, but kept his gaze upon hers. "Go now and rest, for you are weary with sorrow and much toil."
Her eyes travelled over the Hobbits as she continued. "Tonight, you will sleep in peace." Then her gaze fixed upon Frodo, and he shuddered and rocked back as though something had pierced him through.
Celeborn raised his hand and gestured to the Elves around them, and the Fellowship was led back towards the stairs.
"What, all the way up and back down again, just for five minutes of talk?" Nori cried in indignation. "Well, I like that!"
Nori left after the evening meal, grumbling about the (in his words), truly unnecessary amount of Elves everwhere he looked. Thorin stayed, his mind still cut adrift at the Lady Galadriel's response to both the Lord and to Gimli.
Singing floated between the trees, and Thorin floated too, reeling and stunned, glancing at the Fellowship as though they were unfamiliar to him.
[
Elvish Lament, performed by notanightlight
]
"A lament for Gandalf," Legolas murmured, and he closed his eyes in sorrow.
"What do they say about him?" Merry asked, but Legolas shook his head.
"I have not the heart to tell you," he said.
"Well, you could join in, couldn't you?" Sam suggested.
"Nay," Legolas lifted his chin and opened his eyes to look up at the starlit trees. "For me the grief is still too near."
"Here, why did you blush before, Sam?" Pippin asked. "You turned red as a beet and no mistake."
"Ah, well," Sam said, embarrassed. "When the Lady looked on me, it... it was like she was looking right inside my head. Like she was askin' what I'd do if she gave me the chance to go home to the Shire to a nice little hole with-with a bit of garden of my own."
"Well, that's funny," Merry said. "Almost exactly what I felt myself; only, only well, I don't think I'll say any more," he finished lamely.
"Strange," Gimli said in his deep voice and his brow was furrowed, though his eyes were still alight with that strange joy. "I saw my people, my ancient home, my friends, and. And, no, I will not say either. It seemed that my choice would remain secret and known only to myself."
Boromir frowned. "Well, have a care! I do not feel too sure of this Elvish lady and her tests."
"Speak no evil of the Lady Galadriel!" Aragorn said sternly. "There is in her and in this land no evil, unless one brings it here themself."
Boromir bit down on his lip, and Thorin shook himself from his shock to turn in disbelief to Aragorn. "You call that reassurance!" he bit out. "This Man needs your friendship, not your censure!"
Aragorn, of course, could not hear him.
"That song ought to have something in there about old Gandalf's fireworks," Sam said suddenly, and Thorin could have blessed the Hobbit for changing the subject. "Be a crime if they got left out. Here, what about this?" And he stood and began to declaim as around them, the Elvish singing soared up into the night sky.
The next morning came too soon. His head aching from too little sleep and his eyes scratchy, Thorin made his way to the Chamber of
Sansûkhul
alone.
The stars gathered him up and released him into a sunlit glen. He blinked in the warm golden light that filtered through the canopy of the mammoth trees, bathing all in its path in a glimmering dappled glow. The sound of the rushing Silverlode could be heard clearly. It was a peculiarly peaceful scene, and he regarded it suspiciously. He turned around and around before spying a small huddled figure by the edge of the stream.
"Gimli," he murmured, and stepped forward before halting as if struck.
Gimli was bent over the stream, gazing sightlessly into the water. He held his travelling knife in his hand, and his lips were nearly white where they were pressed together tightly. His unfocused eyes were glimmering.
"What do you do here, my son?" Thorin breathed, before forcing himself to take another step.
Gimli's beard was unbound and flowed over his chest, and his other hand was curling through it absently. Seemingly by feel alone, he separated a lock of his long, thick red beard. His other hand drifted upwards, and with a sudden sharp jerk he cut through the lock and cast it into the water.
"Óin," he murmured.
"No!
'Ikhuzh!
" Thorin said, and he made to move towards Gimli to – to what? To stop his mourning? What could Thorin do? Did he even have the right?
"Why do you do that?" came a light Elven voice, and he span on his heel to see Legolas enter the peaceful glade. The Elf's head was cocked, and his eyes were wide.
Gimli did not answer, but instead cut through another lock of his beard. The cut ends poked through the long strands of the remainder and curled around his chin, silky and short like a child's first growth. Thorin ached to see his fine beard so butchered.
"Cousin Balin," Gimli whispered.
"My star, please do not mourn so," Thorin said, and he threw his dignity aside and implored him shamelessly. "You need not make the rituals. You need not cut a lock for each of them: keep your honour and your beard!"
Gimli did not hear him. He sighed and cut another one, before murmuring Lóni's name and casting it into the water.
"Is it some sort of custom?" Legolas asked, fascinated. Thorin growled at him.
"This is not for your eyes, Elf!" he snarled. Then he span back to Gimli and said, "nor is it necessary! My star, there are better ways to mourn. Do not make my mistakes! A shorn beard is not a shorn grief!"
Gimli finally looked up, his hand still threaded through the long mass of his unbraided beard and his knife clutched so tightly in the other that Thorin could clearly see the tendons stretched over the knuckles. "You have no business here," Gimli said, and his voice rumbled and rasped like an avalanche. "Leave me be."
"I would know what you do here," Legolas said, holding his hands up unthreateningly. "Why do you cut your beard? I thought a Dwarf never cut his beard."
"There are two reasons a Dwarf would cut their beard, and this is the first," Gimli said, turning back to the water. His voice became slower and duller as he cut another lock. "Náli," he said, and his voice cracked.
"Is it a mourning ritual?" Legolas said, his eyes widening.
Gimli sighed again, and gave the Elf a steady, sad look. "I am mourning my kin and my friends and the Grey Wizard. I have no ink or needle and cannot tattoo their marks in this place, and so I give a lock for each, more precious to me than my pride. Now go."
"Few things are more precious than a Dwarf's pride," Legolas said. "I may walk where I choose."
Gimli again did not answer, but cut yet another lock and cast it into the waters. The bright hairs swirled and shone upon the white stream like fallen leaves of autumn.
"Tell me that is the last!" Thorin said, and he turned his face from the sight. "You will have stray hairs escaping your braids for a year or more,
inùdoy
," he groaned. "Why do this?"
"Do you choose to stay and mock me?" Gimli said, looking up with red-rimmed eyes.
Legolas' face softened. "Nay, Master Dw- Master Gimli," he said. "I do not mock."
"Then leave. My grief is no performance for Elves to gawk at!"
"
Ra shândabi!
" Thorin snapped, and he folded his arms and glowered at the Elf.
"I do not," Legolas began, and then he sighed in aggravation and ran a hand through his own silky blond hair. "I do not mean to make you feel that way," he said in a calmer tone. "I am sorry."
At this, Gimli blinked. Then his face grew suspicious. "This is a new tale."
"Yes, and for that I am sorry as well." Legolas folded his long legs beneath him, and he sat down several feet from the Dwarf, turning his face to the rushing waters of Kibil-nâla. "I did not understand. I
do
not understand."
"But you wish to," Gimli said blankly. His eyes grew hard. "And how many of your brethren hide in secret around us, laughing at the
Naugrim
in his misery and solitude? Did you draw lots to go and prod it to make it entertain you? Have you a blindfold ready?"
Legolas' head snapped up, and his eyes flashed. "No! There are no others!" he cried. "I would not do that to you!"
Gimli glared at him.
Legolas' shoulders drooped, and he winced. "It was ill-done of them," he said. "You should be treated with more respect than that."
"Then leave me alone!"
"Go, you damned cursed Elf!" Thorin bellowed.
Thorin, Gimli and Legolas, by
christmashippo
"I will not," Legolas said breathlessly. "Gimli, I cannot understand! I saw you with the Lady... I saw that
she
could understand, where I... You confuse me at every turn."
"Here is a direction even
you
cannot confuse," Gimli snarled. "Go. Away."
Legolas stared at him, his chest heaving. Then he clutched at the green sod with his long fingers and raised his chin stubbornly. "No."
Gimli returned the stare angrily for a long moment, and the threat of violence hung in the air like the ringing echoes of a struck bell.
Then Gimli made a defeated noise, and he slumped and wrenched his gaze away. "I have no heart to argue with you further," he muttered. "Stay and be silent!"
"You will not hear me," Legolas promised.
"What in Durin's name, Gimli!" Thorin practically roared. "Get him gone! If you must do this, do not have this damned Elf as witness!"
Gimli ignored him, and combed out his uneven beard with his fingers once more, before murmuring, "Ori." Then he cut off a lock and cast it into the water.
It took seven more locks before Gimli stopped, his knife falling from his lax hand and his head bowed. His shoulders shook with weeping as he choked out Gandalf's ancient Dwarven name, and cast the long red hair into the water with a muffled sound.
Legolas was utterly silent, and he watched with shining eyes.
Finally Gimli raised his head and ran a hand over his thinned beard. "Enough," he murmured, his eyes reddened but dry.
"May..." Legolas leaned forward, and his slender fingers reached for the knife. "May I?"
Gimli simply looked at him, wrung out and hollow.
Thorin looked on with growing suspicion and shock as the Elf brought the knife to his own pale hair and cut off a lock. "There," he said quietly, and threw it into the waters. "For Mithrandir."
A moment of calm descended upon the glade. Legolas inhaled slowly, and upon the exhale a certain tension bled from his shoulders and he sat up a little straighter. His face, which before had been drawn and anxious, grew smooth and calm as he looked upon the golden hairs swirling in the waters of the icy Silverlode.
"Yes," he said to himself. "Yes, that."
"Why would you do that?" Gimli asked, his voice listless and dull. "My customs can mean nothing to you in this land of Elves untouched by time. If you do not mock me, what are you doing here?"
Legolas fingered the ends of the shorter piece left in his hair, and then he reversed Gimli's broad-bladed knife with an elegant and practised flip to hold the handle towards the Dwarf. "This is a land of Elves, yes," he said cryptically. Then he gave Gimli a look from under his brows, as though what he had just said was somehow significant.
"Speak plainly!" Thorin burst out. "Ah, Gimli, do not stay to listen to such foolishness!"
"Will you never answer a question plainly?" Gimli said in exasperation, a touch of his old fire in his voice. Thorin nearly cheered to hear it.
"You heard me! Ah, my star, you are back with me!" he said, and he wished he could hold Gimli's wild head close, to press their brows together. It seemed the cruellest mockery that he could never hold or touch this Dwarf, closer than a son to him.
The Elf stayed where he was, holding out Gimli's knife to him. "I see I must be clearer," he said to himself. "You seem a most straightforward type."
"I see no need to dissemble," Gimli said, lifting one massive shoulder and dropping it. "I am Gimli, and that is all. Why would I pretend to be otherwise?"
"That is not all though, is it?" Legolas shook the knife slightly, and Gimli leaned forward very, very slowly and took it. "You are more than you appear, Master Dwarf."
"I wish you would not call me that." Gimli resheathed his knife in his boot with a slightly-more-forceful-than-necessary shove. "I have a use-name, and it is a fine one."
"I apologise," Legolas said quickly.
"That is the third time. What am I, then, that you should apologise to me?"
"Honest," Legolas said, and he smiled the faint, inscrutable smile of Elvenkind. "Brave. Kind. Passionate. Loyal. Well-spoken. Generous. You surprise me at every turn, Master Gimli. I thought I knew what and who you were, and I find that nearly everything I know is lies and half-truths misshapen by old hatreds. In all my summers under leaf and bough, I have never been so wrong."
Thorin jerked backwards, and his mouth dropped open.
That almost sounded like-
"It cannot be," he breathed.
Gimli was staring at the Elf, his lips parted with surprise. "No, wait," he said roughly. "This is. I. No, this is not how things are. Now I am the one confused! Back up a bit and answer some of my questions. Why are you here?"
Legolas inclined his head, and the cut section of his hair fanned out against his cheek in the light breeze. "I wish to become your friend," he said.
Gimli's eyes dropped. "You think on what he said too, then?"
"Yes." Legolas' bright gaze fell upon the water, and in them was all the endless sorrow of Elvenkind. "He asked us, before we stepped into Moria..."
"To be friends, aye." Gimli sighed, and rubbed at his leg with one broad and powerful hand. "I wish I had listened then."
"So do I," Legolas said quietly.
"So. Gandalf asked. No other reasons?" Gimli looked up, and the sunlight glinted from the beads woven into his hair and the cuff wrapped around his ear.
"For yourself alone," Legolas said. "You must understand, I have been given a picture of Dwarves that..."
"Ah," Gimli said, bitterness flooding his face. "No doubt."
"No, do not turn away before I am finished!" Legolas said with sudden and unexpected heat. "You ever react this way, and I have not even said anything!"
"You do not need to," Gimli said with a sarcastic lilt. "Let me guess, for I can probably supply a few of the more choice slanders against us: I am greedy, grasping, soulless, treacherous, and have no finer feelings. Does that cover it?"
Legolas fell silent, and then he burst out, "no it does not! For my father is Thranduil of Eryn Lasgalen now, but once he was Thranduil of
Doriath,
Gimli. Can you now think of the tales I was told? Can you now think of the words I was fed along with my milk and bread?"
Gimli looked at him with wide eyes. "Aye," he faltered, and then he put his head in his hands. "Aye, I can."
"But no, that is all wrong, I wish I had not said that now," Legolas moaned and he stood swiftly and his hands fisted in the green-grey tunic he wore. "I do not hold your people accountable, Gimli. The madness of that age felled many, Elf and Dwarf alike, all over three gems and a blood oath..."
"My grandmother was a Firebeard," Gimli mumbled.
Legolas choked over his next words, and he span to stare at Gimli with mottled cheeks.
Gimli took his hands from his face and clasped them tightly together. "They are a disappearing people," he said to the grass. "They were almost wiped out after their foul deed; the revenge of the Lackhand was swift and terrible. But a few survived, though Nogrod was never what it was before. Most of those fled to Khazad-dûm after Ered Luin was lost."
"Your hair," Legolas said, faint and thready.
Gimli nodded wordlessly.
"You... you have Firebeard blood," Legolas said, and he turned on the spot to cry to the trees, "
Ai, amarth faeg!"
"Nothing is ever simple," Gimli said in a whisper. "So, that's that then. Your idea of friendship was a very noble one, lad. I think it kind of you to try. But there is too much between us. My grandmother's people butchered yours, your father imprisoned mine and besieged our home, the Elves hunted down and slaughtered our cousins, and countless other atrocities besides, back into the very dawn of days. The Lady may not look upon me with hatred and distaste, but surely you do."
Legolas stood very still for a long, long moment, his breath coming fast and his hands trembling. Then he forced his eyes up to look at Gimli where he sat, sad and still, at the banks of the rushing river.
"No, I do not," Legolas said eventually. "Your grandmother's people are gone. You are here, and you have been both brave and good."
Gimli's brow furrowed in confusion, and he slowly looked up.
"I promise I tell you the truth," said Legolas, and he stepped closer. He was tall and proud, a spear of pale gold in the dappled light, but he no longer seemed so cold and remote.
"This makes no sense," Gimli croaked. "First the Lady. Now this. My head is spinning, and I find I do not know what is true or false anymore. Elves do not look upon my kind as equals. We are the unwanted ones and you are the favoured ones, and that is how it has always been. Elves do not defend Dwarves against their own, and yet the Lady did so - and to her Lord before all of her people! Elves do not apologise to Dwarves, and you have done so three times now! Elves do not
care
for the short lives of mortals, and yet you speak to me gently and will not leave! What do you mean to gain from all this?"
"I will gain a friend," Legolas said, and he took three light quick steps to sit down opposite Gimli once more, his long legs folding beneath him. They made a strange sight: the sturdy, fiery Dwarf and the slender, moon-pale Elf.
"Who told you that Elves care nothing for mortals?" Legolas frowned.
Gimli blinked. Then he said, "I do not know. It seems I have always known it. It is wrong, then?"
Legolas nodded, and his nostrils flared in banked irritation. "It appears that you have also swallowed lies whole."
"Aye," Gimli said wonderingly. "For I thought ill of the Lady ere I met her. Now I know she is the wisest and kindest of beings in the world, to understand a Dwarf's grief."
"It was magnificent, Gimli," Legolas said in a quiet, muted voice. "I am sorry I did not say. Mor... Khazad-dûm was glorious even in its ruin."
Gimli closed his eyes. "Aye. It was." Then he rumbled out a sad chuckle. "And your accent is atrocious."
"I am sorry about your kin also."
"Well." Gimli's eyes flickered open and he seemed a little abashed. "I... I thank you for pulling me away from my madness and sorrow at Balin's tomb."
"You need not thank me," Legolas said gently.
"That an Elf should save the life of a mortal?" Gimli softly snorted. "Aye, I believe I should be thanking you."
"Why do they say such things of us?" Legolas did not ask the question with any anger. Rather, he seemed drained and weary.
Gimli huffed. "For much the same reasons your people speak such evils about mine, no doubt. It is said that we will always be discarded. Dwarves may be considered as friends for as long as we are useful to Elves, and then we are cast aside and the works of our hands, dearer to us than aught else, withheld for long ages. Then too, Elves depart this land and all its troubles to their safe havens over the sundering seas, leaving all grief and woe to mortals. Little wonder such tales came about."
Legolas cried aloud. "No! That is not true at all! We leave this land because we
must.
Our great ones dwindle, and we must depart or become a shadow of what we were. Many of us still love Middle-Earth and all its beauties, but grief becomes too great to bear and only Elvenhome may wash it clean. For mortals break our hearts: you are so bright, and so fleeting. We cannot help but care, and we are left desolate when you die and depart to that place where we may not go."
Gimli let out a long breath and glanced up at Legolas from under his brows. "All lies, then."
Legolas nodded firmly.
"I wonder how much else is lies," Gimli wondered. "Perhaps Gandalf would have known."
"No doubt," Legolas said, and he cocked his head. "For Gandalf, then?"
"No," Gimli said, and shook his head, his beads swinging in his wild hair. "Gandalf may have wished us to be friends, but I will not make a friendship in the name of the dead. That is no friendship at all." Then he squinted up at the Elf. "Do you not consider what these Lothlórien Elves may think of all this?"
The Elf's face darkened. "They can hardly refute the words of the Lady Galadriel, and all saw her greet you with courtesy and respect. Besides, there have been friendships between Elf and Dwarf before. We would hardly be unusual."
"Aye, but consider how those friendships ended," Gimli said, and he slumped. "You will be mocked."
"I do not care," Legolas said quickly. "You saw the Doors as clearly as I –
more
clearly, possibly, as it was night! Celebrimbor's name stood upon those doors, made by Dwarvish hands."
"Narvi," Gimli remembered. Then his eyebrows rose. "Khelebrimbur, as he was known amongst my folk, and doors were not all he crafted."
Legolas winced. "No. And the curse of his family followed him."
"No curse on your family that I should know about, is there?" Gimli said, forcing a wan smile.
"Nay," Legolas said. "Upon yours?"
"Several," Gimli said with wry humour. "I am of Durin's line, after all."
Thorin scowled.
"My people will not understand," Gimli continued, and worry briefly crossed his face. "
Your
people will not understand."
"The Lady will," Legolas said.
"Ah." Gimli breathed out, and then he slowly nodded his wild head once. "Yes. The Lady understands everything."
Legolas swallowed, before he leaned towards the Dwarf and held out his hand. "May we do this again?" he said softly.
Gimli glanced down at his hand, and then his lip twisted. "But – those Elves out there – Doriath – the slaughter of the
nûlukhkhazâd
– the siege of Erebor – my father -
your father!"
he cried roughly. "Why?"
"Because in this land of Elves, I cannot sing. I must find a Dwarf to give me the way to grieve," Legolas said, and though his breath still came quite fast, he was smiling. "Besides, I find I cannot watch the Galadhrim here treat you in such a manner without wishing to punish them soundly! As for the rest, Doriath is gone, a memory of Elder days. I do not know what that word means, my friend. I would you would tell me more of your people's ways: they are harsh to me, but beautiful, like a mountain standing tall and proud in the cruellest of winds. Erebor belongs to the Dwarves again and no Elf threatens it, and my father has all my love and duty in everything but this. I ask you, Gimli – may we try again?"
Gimli looked at Legolas' outstretched hand as though it were full of live snakes.
"Gimli," Thorin said in shock and dismay. Then in desperation he said that secret name he had only heard once, spoken in the closeness of Glóin's quarters in Rivendell.
The silence stretched and stretched, and it seemed that all the world seemed to fade into the background. Thorin's breath caught behind his teeth.
Then Gimli's broad hand firmly landed in Legolas' palm. "My name is Gimli, son of Glóin, of the Line of Durin and the Lonely Mountain," he said, and he looked up. Grief lingered in the corners of his eyes, but he was returning the smile. "I am, I'm afraid, quite definitely a Dwarf an' there's little I can do about it. Still, I hope you don't find it too offensive, laddie."
Legolas laughed. "And I am Legolas Thranduilion, and I regret to inform you that I am an Elf, and a Wood-elf of Mirkwood at that; a Sinda by birth and Silvan by upbringing, and I cannot change that any more than I can the setting of the sun or the falling of the leaves. I do hope it is not too much of an aggravation."
Gimli chuckled. "Ah, but Elves are always aggravating!"
Legolas laughed again, a light ripple like the wavelets of the Silverlode. "And Dwarves are always offensive!"
Gimli grinned in return. "Well met, Legolas."
The Elf smiled warmly. "
This
time."
Gimli's resulting laugh frightened the birds from the trees, booming and pealing with merriment and joy. Their hands remained clasped firmly together, the long fingers of the Elf pale as milk against Gimli's broad brown hand. So unlike, so utterly unlike, but they held together as easily as a key fitting a lock.
Thorin stared at the two in mounting disbelief.
"Will you show me more of this wood?" Gimli said, breaking the warm silence. His face was still creased in a grin.
"It would be my honour," Legolas said, smiling. "I have found a place where the mallorn grow close to a strange greyish stone, shot through with glossy black. Perhaps you can tell me what it is?"
"Hmm, sounds like some sort of obsidian," mused Gimli, and he rose to his feet and used his clasp on Legolas' hand to bring the Elf upright to his. "I do like the mallorn. They are like great pillars of silver and gold, but they move and breathe!"
"Ah, they are wonderful, are they not?" Legolas said, and he finally released Gimli's hand to gesture towards the East. "It is this way."
"Lead on, Master Legolas," Gimli said with a little bow, and the pair laughed together more softly and side by side they left the clearing.
"Perhaps you will also tell me about your kin as we walk?"
"If I can find the words, aye. But I wouldn't push your luck, laddie."
"What in Durin's name?" Thorin cried into the silence. Then he tore from the waking world to storm through the corridors of the Halls to his chamber, where he sat and fumed for hours.
His grandmother was the one to come to him, in the small hours of the night.
Hrera, by
Jeza-Red
"Ah, what did I tell you, my treasure?" she said gently, sitting down on the bed beside him and turning his face towards her. He allowed her to, his mind stripped and fogged with shock and anger. "Eaten up by dark circles. Look at that."
He endured her cosseting for a few seconds more, before pulling his head from her hands. "Enough," he said low. "I am no child."
She paused, and then she put her hands on her hips. "No, that you are not, but you are doing a fine impression," she said. "I've not seen such a display since your father was seventeen and demanded that everyone call him by his title at all times."
The notion was so preposterous that Thorin snorted. "Father did that?"
Hrera smiled. "He was very young."
"He would have skinned me or Frerin or Dís for such behaviour," Thorin said.
"Ah, well, you had your own brand of trouble, you three," she said, and smoothed her hand along the back of his. "Now, tell me what it is that has you storming through the Halls like a great angry thundercloud, frightening everyone with your scowl and your great black rings where eyes should be."
He shot her a sardonic look, but she simply waited. Then he turned his hand over and gripped hers. "Gimli has befriended the Elf," he said bluntly.
Hrera's soft intake of breath was very loud in the closeness of the chamber.
"That is enough to make any Dwarrow angry, let alone one who..." Thorin broke off and set his teeth together grimly.
Hrera was still and silent for a moment, and then she sat back with a huff, primly cocking her head and pinning him with her glare. "Say it," she commanded. "I am done and through with all of your emotional censorship, Thorin. Say it!"
He glared. She glared back.
"Say it!" she snapped again, and her hand squeezed his in warning. "You stubborn Durin men and your damned obstinacy! Stoic to the point of sickness, you are! What will it take for you to admit that you love that boy like a son?"
"Enough!" Thorin roared, and he threw her hand away. "Yes, I love him! He is my star!"
She nodded proudly. "Better. Well done,
nidoyel.
"
Thorin glowered at her. She ignored it blithely and patted his hand again. "I'll train you all out of it, one by one," she muttered to herself, before giving him a benevolent, grandmotherly smile. "Now, your son has made a friend in the Elf. Why does this bother you so?"
"Why?" Thorin bellowed, and she winced and pinched the back of his hand sharply.
"I can hear you quite well, there is no need to shout," she said irritably. "And yes, that was what I asked. Why does it bother you?"
"Because..." Thorin carded his hand through his hair. "Because he is an Elf! He will only disappoint Gimli – it is unnatural! They are enemies, for Mahal's sake; Legolas is Thranduil's son! They
hate
each other!"
Hrera's eyebrow jumped upwards. "Hmm," she said absently, and then she fixed him with a look again. "You know, I utterly hated your grandfather when I met him."
Thorin didn't even get the chance to gape in shock at yet
another
revelation, because Hrera continued. "Oh yes! Despised him - right down to the ridiculous way he braided his beard in those days. It was a shameful sight, I'm glad I managed to persuade him to change it. At any rate, there I was, eighty years old and taken from my home and thrust into the brand new court of Erebor by the will of my father and the Council of Advisors. And this great bristling lout who never spoke to me properly is to be my husband? Pah! King or no, I wasn't touching that with a ten-foot hammer."
"Is there a point to all this?" Thorin said weakly.
"I'm getting to it, dearest," she said consolingly. "A bit of patience on your part, please. Now where was I...
"Oh yes. So, I wanted less than nothing to do with Erebor, Longbeards, your grandfather or any of it. But where else was I to go? I was at the Mountain and winter was drawing in, and I would not be able to get back home until spring broke and snows of the passes melted. I was stuck.
"Day after day I endured the court, and day after day I was forced into proximity of more and more of you stone-faced Longbeards. And then the strangest thing happened: I began to understand them."
"Familiarity, you mean?" Thorin rubbed at his eyes. "You think that is what has happened with Gimli and the Elf? They have become friends because of their enforced companionship on the Quest?"
"Great Telphor, no," Hrera said, snorting. "If that were the case I would have ended up married to my silverwork. I mean that time helped me see underneath all of your stony scowls and stoic faces and love of incomprehensible tradition, and - frankly - appalling beard choices to see who the Longbeards truly were.
Time,
Thorin."
"But an Elf?" Thorin said, and shook his head helplessly.
Hrera rolled her eyes. "Ignoring your elders when they have just told you a very insightful story is extremely rude,
akhûnîth
. Now, be practical for a moment and think with your
brain
, not your overdeveloped sense of injustice and history. Your boy and the Elf were eventually going to recognise the good traits in each other, given enough time. No-one is so blind as all that." She gave him a sidelong glance. "Although you Longbeards live to prove me wrong."
"Ah, but by your grace, my lady grandmother, I have Broadbeam ancestry as well," he said, and she folded her arms.
"Then there isn't an excuse, is there?"
"What happened next?" he asked, interested despite himself.
"What?"
"With the court, and you, and grandfather."
"Oh, that," Hrera yawned, and daintily covered her mouth. "Do excuse me, it's very early. I ended up throwing a silver set of clasps I was working on at your grandfather one day, and they hit him square in the face. He came to court the next day wearing them." She smiled fondly. "They looked particularly fetching with his bruised eye."
Thorin could not even find it in himself to be surprised at anything anymore.
"Too many shocks today," he muttered.
"There, there," she cooed.
She kissed his forehead, and then pushed it back down upon his pillow with one finger. "Sleep," she said firmly. "Or I shall sit here and reminisce about your babyhood until you do."
He shut his eyes hurriedly, and then he scowled as he heard her soft laughter. "You are a tremendously cruel Dwarrowdam, grandmother," he grated.
She blew out the candles and stood. Her hand rested on his brow comfortingly for a moment. "Yes, dear. I know," she said gently.
TBC...
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Тьма.
Она была знакома Нике.
Она была противоположностью ему, и он пробыл в ней много лет? Десятилетия? Столетия? Или, может, тысячелетия?
Он не мог ответить.
Время для него никогда не играло важности, он просто плыл по течению в бесконечном потоке жизни и смерти.
Наблюдая, как множество живых существ начинают и заканчивают свою жизнь.
Иногда он сам помогал душам прийти к новой жизни, а иногда сам отнимал эти жизни.
Ника в такие моменты не чувствовал, что он жив. Он просто существовал.
Он делал то, что ему положено делать, и это было…
Луффи зажмурился, в груди было неприятное давление, будто кто-то давит, давит, давит и давит на его грудь. И от этого так тошно.
Медленно он открыл глаза. В них тоже было странное давление и как будто щиплет.
Он увидел свет, и это не принесло счастья, а лишь пробудило в голове бога какие-то оттенки прошлого.
— Ооо! Ты проснулся! — слишком уж радостно кто-то прокричал сбоку.
Луффи не узнал голос, впрочем, это было неудивительно.
Луффи спал очень долго, и для людей это время слишком огромное, чтобы прожить столько, из‑за чего знакомые, которые у него раньше были, теперь, наверное, лежат где-то под землёй.
Луффи прикрыл глаза, пытаясь уравновесить себя и игнорируя какой-то спор вокруг него.
Другими людьми, которых он знал, были, конечно, революционеры, но их он встретить не мог, значит, он где-то…
Открыв глаза вновь, он увидел потолок из досок и чувствовал, как его качает.
Он на корабле.
А почему он на корабле? Разве он не должен был очнуться на дне морском?
Луффи моргнул в замешательстве. Нахмурившись, он попытался вспомнить.
Дрейфовал в лодке…
Слушал истории ветра…
Чайка хотела съесть его еду… Точно! Это всё из‑за чёртовой чайки! Из‑за неё он использовал Хаки и пошёл ко дну.
Сломал лодку…
Луффи застонал от досады. В лодке же было столько еды!
— Эй, Бен, ну почему он не отвечает? — сказал грустно, надутый голос.
Послышался долгий, усталый вздох. — Дай ему время, — голос говорил спокойно, но с ноткой раздражения и смятения.
Луффи посмотрел в сторону голосов и увидел, что недалеко от него стоит крупный мужчина с чёрными волосами и сигаретой во рту, а рядом с ним на стуле сидел красноволосый парень с соломенной шляпой…
Соломенная шляпа!?
Луффи резко сел и внимательно своими чёрными глазами смотрел на соломенную шляпу на голове у парня.
Парень выглядел удивлённым, но с приветливой улыбкой развёл руки, а его глаза засияли радостью:
— Эй, эй, ты только проснулся, осторожнее.
Луффи не отрывал взгляда от шляпы.
— Это шляпа…
Лицо красноволосого мужчины потемнело и стало серьёзным, вся прежняя доброжелательность исчезла, другой парень потянулся за ружьём сзади него.
Красноволосый парень с обманчивым спокойствием сказал:
— А что не так со шляпой?
Луффи моргнул и просто тупо смотрел красноволосому парню со шрамом в виде трёх полос через глаз прямо в глаза, игнорируя враждебность и насторожённость второго парня.
Он молчал. В его глазах пробежал красный с золотым блеском окрас, когда он оценивал парня.
Хм. Всё, что он понял от этой оценки, — это то, что он ничего не понял.
У рыжеволосого парня было Хаки, и, как он видел, все виды, но Луффи просто не мог понять: с тем уровнем Хаки, что у парня, это считается сильный или слабый?
Чёрт, Луффи мог сказать, что он силён. Он даже как бог занимает сильнейший ранг. А человек? Он просто не знает, как оценивают уровень силы людей!
Луффи покачал головой, чувствуя, как она у него кипит от мыслей. Он решил не думать об этом и, просто улыбнувшись, ответил:
— Ничего.
Красноволосый напрягся, когда увидел этот блеск золота и красного в его глазах, но ничего не сказал, продолжая сверлить Луффи взглядом.
Он немного расслабился, когда увидел ухмылку мальчика, и на его губах тоже расцвела улыбка. (Он не хотел думать, как знакома ему казалась эта ухмылка.)
— Меня зовут Шанкс. Я капитан этого пиратского корабля.
Луффи просиял, и звёзды появились в его глазах:
— Ооо!! Ты пират!?
Шанкс был удивлён таким возбуждением от темы пиратов, но улыбнулся и с гордостью сказал:
— Да. Я пират, а ты?
Луффи ёрзал на месте от волнения, его улыбка стала ещё ярче — хотя куда уж ярче.
Он поднял руки вверх.
— Я тоже пират!
Бен хмыкнул в недоверии и приподнял бровь, с подозрением спросил:
— Один?
Луффи кивнул.
Он знал, что люди считают пиратство в одиночку невозможным или очень сложным, но лично он этого не понимал. Если у него есть маршрут — море его туда доставит (он обязательно помирился с богиней воды Лилиан), а ветер добавит скорости.
А ещё… сейчас Луффи просто не хочет вспоминать, как его команда погибла.
Шанкс рассмеялся. Ему очень нравился этот подросток. Он с улыбкой похлопал себя по коленке:
— Малыш, опасно одному, да ещё и на маленькой лодке, плавать по Новому Свету.
Луффи надулся, когда его назвали малышом, и скрестил руки на груди, отвернувшись от пиратов.
— Я не малыш! И всё нормально.
Шанкс не смог остановить новую волну смеха — этот парень был таким забавным.
Бен вздохнул:
— Меня зовут Бен Бекман. Я первый помощник этого идиота, — он кивнул на Шанкса, который перестал смеяться и фальшиво обиделся. — А кто ты?
Луффи повернулся к нему и ахнул, будто только что понял, что не представился.
— Я Н… — Луффи прикусил язык раньше, чем успел сболтнуть глупость, и резко покачал головой. — Монки Д. Луффи.
Бен прищурился на такую заминку. По его скромному мнению, парень был подозрителен и ему есть что скрывать. Как первый помощник, он не мог допустить, чтобы Шанкс пострадал, если этот странный парень замышляет что-то плохое.
— Что ты тут делаешь?
Луффи проигнорировал его вопрос и заскулил, положив руки на живот:
— Есть хочу…
Шанкс посмеялся и встал со своего места:
— Пойдём, я думаю, Лаки Ру накормит тебя чем-нибудь.
Луффи просиял (в который уже раз?) и спрыгнул с кровати, идя за ним следом.
— Мясо! Я хочу мясо!
Шанкс снова рассмеялся. Он думал, какие перемены в его жизнь принесёт этот парень, и будут ли они в лучшую сторону или в худшую…
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Шанкс сидел за столом рядом с парнем и смотрел, как он ест. Это было что-то необычное, и Шанкс посчитал это забавным. Луффи ел так, будто завтра не наступит, а его руки тянулись к другим тарелкам.
Но в этом всём было что-то не так. Казалось, мальчику чего-то не хватало, и это больше всего сказывалось на нём самом.
Шанкс видел, как тот потянулся к дальнему краю стола, но рука просто зависла в воздухе. Луффи посмотрел на свою руку с таким разочарованием и печалью, что Шанкс мог только гадать, что это значит.
Он сидел спокойно, с любопытством рассматривая парня, но у него было чувство, что парень — знаком, но незнаком. Будто он упустил какой-то очень важный факт.
Луффи, с полным животом, откинулся на спинку стула и удовлетворённо вздохнул, положив руки на живот:
— Вкусно! Спасибо!
Среди команды послышались удивлённые крики и вздохи. Особенно был шокирован Лаки Ру, который всё это готовил — и теперь придётся готовить снова. Где-то сзади пираты передавали друг другу проигранные деньги по ставкам.
Лаки Ру откусил кусок мяса на кости, мысленно думая о чёрной дыре, которой казался этот тощий паренёк. Он покачал головой: для него было удивительно, что Шанкс, из всех людей, именно он помог незнакомому парню, который к тому же вырубил почти половину команды.
Нет, Шанкс, конечно, не был тираном и мог помочь с бандитами в деревнях или с какими-то людьми, но это происходило только в самом хорошем его настроении. Они были пиратами. И даже если Шанкс не «злой» пират и всё ради приключений, он также не воин справедливости и добра. Шанкс считался самым уравновешенным и спокойным Йонко, обычно всегда нейтральным к людям и их проблемам.
Поэтому Лаки Ру был удивлён, что его капитан спас паренька, который нанёс (пусть и не серьёзный) вред команде, а сейчас так тепло улыбался ему. Лаки Ру покачал головой и со вздохом посмотрел на Ясоппа. Он мог видеть в чертах своего друга волнение из‑за кого-то нового. Лаки Ру мысленно отметил держаться подальше от Ясоппа и его историй.
Луффи посмеялся над общей реакцией, его настроение было очень хорошим, и ему очень понравились эти пираты.
Еда была очень вкусной, и ему нравилось, что он ел в компании пиратов.
В Революционной армии он почти всегда ел только с Драгоном, Кумой и Ивой, а с остальными — редко (он даже не хотел думать о том, как там всё было серо и скучно).
А здесь всё было таким живым, весёлым, классным! И люди тоже были классные!
Ясопп сел напротив него, с улыбкой на губах и озорным блеском в глазах. Он просто не мог упустить возможность поболтать с парнем, которого лично спас капитан.
— Привет! Меня зовут Ясопп, я снайпер пиратов Рыжеволосых.
Луффи глубоко вдохнул, а потом шумно выдохнул. Его тело, с раздутым животом от еды, вдруг стало снова обычным — худым, но с крепкими мышцами. Он облокотился на спинку стула, чуть покачиваясь, и одарил Ясоппа яркой улыбкой:
— Меня зовут Монки Д. Луффи.
Шанкс прищурился, глядя на него. Он всё ещё улыбался, но улыбка казалась натянутой, фальшивой. И так оно и было.
Шанкс не мог не думать о «Д» в его имени… о «Д» в имени его капитана. Раньше он не обратил внимания, занятой другими мыслями, но сейчас…
Шанкс откинулся на спинку стула, вертя в руке стакан с алкоголем, но не отрывая глаз от Луффи, который болтал с Ясоппом и другими.
Монки Д… Шанкс не мог не вспомнить о Гарпе с такой же фамилией.
Связаны ли они как‑то? Может, этот парень — его сын? Или внук?
Ответов он не знал, но собирался их получить.
Он криво усмехнулся, прикрыв глаза и отпив из стакана.
Ах, нас ждут весёлые деньки… так ли?
Но за всей этой весёлой атмосферой, за шумом и разговорами, Шанкс всё равно не мог оторвать взгляд от Луффи. Его не покидало чувство, что он что‑то упускает. Он слушал чистый, радостный смех парня и видел, как тот задумчиво постукивает пальцами по животу.
Я что-то упускаю… но что?
Когда он видел нечто подобное?
Шанкс не из тех, кто забывает важное (и нет, Бен ошибается, говоря, что он всё время всё забывает). Обычно он всё помнит и лишь притворяется.
Но глядя на Луффи, он чувствовал странное: он его как будто знает… но не помнит.
В голове всплыла картина: капитан Роджер говорит с ним серьёзно, без обычной улыбки. Шанкс тогда был шокирован, рот приоткрыт от множества вопросов, но капитан не давал времени на вопросы — опустился перед ним на одно колено, положил руки ему на плечи и тихо попросил запомнить, сказал, насколько важна эта информация…
— Твоя лодка ведь потонула, верно? — Ясопп, из любопытства, спросил Луффи. Он не был на палубе, когда капитан спас этого парня, и всё знал только со слов других.
Вопрос вырвал Шанкса из мыслей.
Луффи нахмурился и кивнул.
— Что ты теперь будешь делать? — продолжил Ясопп.
Луффи задумался. Раньше он об этом не думал.
Он мог бы просто нырнуть в море, доверившись течению… но в его нынешнем состоянии это кончилось бы тем, что он застрянет на дне на столетие. Нет.
Он мог бы попросить лодку… но ему совсем не хотелось уходить от этих пиратов.
Хм…
— Эй! Как насчёт поплавать с нами некоторое время? — Шанкс весело ухмыльнулся и обнял Луффи за плечи.
Он не собирался пока отпускать этого парня. Не тогда, когда не мог вспомнить важную вещь, связанную с ним. Не тогда, когда Луффи сам ему понравился.
Разве весельчаки упускают повод для веселья?
Луффи был немного удивлён таким резким жестом, но вовсе не против. Он моргнул, глядя на Шанкса, и расплылся в широкой, яркой улыбке:
— Согласен! Вы мне нравитесь, ребята!
Луффи на самом деле было интересно узнать о соломенной шляпе на голове рыжеволосого. Он помнил, как носил её раньше, и у него было много вопросов о том, как за 800 лет она осталась цела. Ведь он был уверен, что шляпа потеряна или уничтожена, зная Иму…
Луффи видел, как Шанкс смотрит на него — будто не может вспомнить что‑то важное.
Драгон всегда смотрел на него иначе: с уважением и скрытой жадностью, которую он удачно прятал от всех… но не от него.
Революционная армия была организацией, что выступала против Мирового правительства. И, зная это, Луффи мог предположить: они хотели использовать его как оружие против врага.
Он не упускал из виду, как люди шептались о его присоединении — о том, какое величие ждёт революционеров, каких успехов они добьются с ним. Луффи видел и чувствовал разочарование, сожаление в глазах людей, когда он уходил.
Здесь, на корабле пиратов Рыжеволосого, Луффи не чувствовал ничего подобного.
…Может быть, потому что они не знают, кто он на самом деле? Что он — бог?
Хотя… в глазах Шанкса всё равно иногда скользило что-то странное: будто узнавание, но и недоумение вперемешку.
Луффи проводил коротким взглядом уходящую фигуру Шанкса, направлявшегося к Бену.
Он усмехнулся и снова повернулся к Ясоппу, слушая, как тот болтает о каком‑то ребёнке по имени Усопп.
Для него самого это было скучновато.
Но нравилось не содержание рассказа, а то, с какой любовью и счастьем Ясопп говорил о своём сыне.
Луффи тихо хмыкнул, прикрыв глаза, и уголки его губ дрогнули в улыбке:
Это будет забавное приключение.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
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You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Пески Уэко Мундо не менялись: глухая бледная пустошь, лишенная тепла, влаги и границ.
Гриммджо шел без цели.
Направление не имело значения в мире, где все пути ведут в никуда. Пустыня стирала следы, поглощала звуки, убивала само желание найти что-то, кроме смерти.
С тех пор как Айзен покинул Лас Ночес, мир потерял форму. Больше не было номеров, структуры, порядка. Не было смысла становиться еще сильнее, отращивать клыки, точить когти.
Гриммджо это бесило.
Он предпочел бы смерть в битве этому тягучему существованию посреди бесконечных дюн из мертвого песка, поглощающих самих себя — но он шел, потому что лишь движение отличало отличало живых от мертвых.
Пещера возникла внезапно — черный провал в песчаном холме, рана на теле пустыни.
Гриммджо знал пески Уэко Мундо.
Гриммджо обходил их вдоль и поперек, как хищник, запертый в слишком просторной клетке.
Гриммджо знал: здесь не могло быть пещер.
В груди, под застарелым шрамом, заворочалось что-то: предчувствие. Инстинкт.
То, что было до номера и до маски.
Из темноты тянуло забытьем. Едва ощутимо, не запах, а тень запаха. Как последний выдох, который кто-то оставил здесь вечность назад.
— Здесь никого нет, — сказал Гриммджо тьме.
Собственный голос показался чужим — тихим, почти хрупким. Сколько дней — или лет — прошло с тех пор, как он произносил что-то вслух?
— Я здесь, — слабо ответила тьма.
Гриммджо отточенным, резким движением схватился за рукоять Пантеры. Инстинкты не подводили.
— Покажись!
Тьма пролилась на клочок мутного света у самого входа. Колыхнулась, обретая контуры, неясные, размытые, как воспоминание, которое не получается уловить.
— Ты зашел слишком далеко, Пустой.
— Я Эспада номер шесть. Гриммджо Джаггерджак.
Тень дрогнула в беззвучном смехе.
— Номера, имена. В этом нет никакого смысла. Я был здесь до этого. До них. До вас всех.
От тени исходила тихая сила, непохожая ни на одно реяцу, встречавшееся ему ранее. Древняя и неторопливая, как сами пески. Инстинкты говорили бежать. Гриммджо плевать хотел на инстинкты.
— Ты не Пустой.
— Я то, что было, когда Пустые только появились. Я встречал каждого из вас на пороге небытия.
— Никогда не слышал о таких, как ты.
— Потому что ты никогда по-настоящему не умирал.
Гриммджо стоял, увязая носками обуви в выбеленном светом луны песке, окруженном вкрадчивой темнотой пещеры. Тень густела, становясь чуть плотнее остальной тьмы.
— Что ты такое?
— Бог, — ответила тень, — один из первых. Рожденный из страха Пустых, когда они еще помнили, что значит бояться чего-то помимо голода.
— Пустые не создают богов.
Голос тени — Бога — шуршал, как мерно осыпающийся песок.
— Бесконечное повторение одного и того же. Пустота, рождение, голод, одиночество, жестокость, смерть. Затем опять пустота. Предсмертные крики, сливающиеся в хор, снова и снова. Повторение рождает ритуал. Ритуал становится молитвой. А из молитв появляются боги.
Тень сгустилась, принимая очертания. Стала тоньше, изящнее, напоминая кого-то, кого мучительно не хотелось вспоминать. Черты лица проступали медленно, как рисунок на теле песка под порывами ветра. Сначала — лишь намек на острый подбородок, затем — тонкая линия носа, изгиб бровей.
— Мне нужен облик, — продолжила она голосом, от которого сжались кулаки, ногти впились в ладони. Приторно сладким, невыносимо знакомым. — Я возьму тот, что живет в твоей памяти.
Еще до того, как появилось лицо, Гриммджо узнал, кто это. Узнал этот наклон подбородка, надменно вскинутую голову, то, как легла на бедро ладонь и остро вздернулись плечи.
— Луппи.
— Оу. — Луппи растянул губы в язвительной улыбке. — Ты меня помнишь, Гриммджо. Как трогательно.
Гриммджо выхватил клинок. Пантера взревела, вспорола воздух, замерла у горла того, кто не был — не мог быть — Луппи.
— Это не твое лицо. Почему он?
Бог — Луппи — пожал плечами, нисколько не обеспокоенный лезвием у самой шеи. Изящный жест, который Гриммджо тоже слишком хорошо помнил.
— Потому что ты его вспомнил. Я беру только то, что мне дают. — Бог провел пальцем по лезвию. — Из всего, что было в твоей голове, этот образ оказался самым острым. Самым сладким. Тебе его не хватает, Гриммджо Джаггерджак? Его самодовольного голоса? Того, как он выводил тебя из себя?
— Я убил его.
— Да. Это делает его моим. Все что умирает, отчасти принадлежит мне.
Тонкая ладонь обхватила острие меча так, будто оно совсем не было заточено. Отвела в сторону без малейшего усилия.
Гриммджо чувствовал, как в нем нарастает знакомая глухая ярость, распирает изнутри, и в этом было что-то будоражащее. Приятное. Пустыня погребла под своими песками даже поводы для злобы, но теперь она, заново пробужденная, расцветала на языке давно забытой сладостью.
— Зачем ты здесь?
— Ты разбудил меня. — Тот, кто не был Луппи, поднес руку к собственному лицу, разглядывая ее с интересом, будто видел впервые, — Позвал. Принес голод, одиночество, жестокость. Ненависть… — Он поднял на Гриммджо глаза. — Ты ненавидел его?
— Он был слабаком.
— Он был твоим. — Бог — Луппи — скользнул ближе, бесшумно потревожив песок. — Ты убил его. В этом есть что-то от обладания.
— Я сделал это, потому что он много трепал языком.
— И всё же, — прошептал Бог, — ты помнил его голос. Его лицо. Когда ты вошёл в мою могилу, ты дал мне облик, подумав о нём.
— Я о нем не…
— Думал, — мягко, почти игриво, почти как — он — произнес Бог.
Луппи.
Бог.
Провел бледной рукой вниз по груди, по окружью бедра, повторяя жест, который когда-то так же делал и тот, настоящий Луппи:
— Острый маленький язык. Отчаянная злоба. Ты хотел, чтобы он замолчал, и ты его заставил. Ты все еще помнишь звук, который он издал перед тем, как все закончилось.
Гриммджо не ответил. В замершей между ними тишине было больше воспоминаний, чем он хотел бы признавать.
Бог зашелестел голосом едва громче, чем шепот дюн.
— Сначала ты думал о другом. О том, с огнем в волосах и в душе.
Гриммджо стиснул зубы, чтобы не сказать ни слова, но имя соскользнуло с губ само собой:
— Куросаки.
Бог улыбнулся губами Луппи. Улыбкой, которая никогда не принадлежала этому лицу — слишком древней, слишком всеведущей.
— Он живой. Слишком яркий, слишком настоящий. Его помнят слишком многие. Поэтому я не могу носить его лицо. Но ты — можешь. Ты носишь его внутри, словно открытую рану.
Луппи — Бог — вдруг оказался ещё ближе, почти касаясь губами уха Гриммджо.
— Ты тянешься к нему, будто умереть в этом огне — единственное, что имеет смысл.
— Заткнись.
Прозвучало тише, чем хотелось бы.
В ответ Бог рассмеялся смехом, когда-то принадлежавшим Луппи, язвительным и приторно-сладким.
— Мы оба знаем правду. Ты хочешь вернуться. Снова увидеть, как он сражается. Как падает. Как встает еще и еще, бесконечно повторяя цикл, пока один из вас не упадет и больше не поднимется. — Прохладная, мертвая, как пески Уэко Мундо, ладонь огладила шрам на груди. — Ты хочешь, чтобы это был ты.
Молчание пролилось между ними ручейком мертвого песка.
— Это другое, — наконец произнес Гриммджо.
— Это всегда одно и то же. — Бог развел руками. Пещера начинала осыпаться — песчинка за песчинкой, возвращаясь в ничто. — Голод, одиночество, жестокость. Желание, чтобы кто-то смотрел на тебя, а не сквозь.
Гриммджо рванулся вперед, выпуская когти, сжимая их на тонкой белой шее мертвой хваткой. Плоть под пальцами ощущалась зыбкой, щекотала ладонь, протекала сквозь пальцы тонкими песчаными струйками.
— Да что ты вообще о нем знаешь?!
Луппи — Бог — все еще улыбался той самой улыбкой, которую снова и снова хотелось стереть в пыль.
— Всё, что знаешь ты, — он высвободился неуловимым движением. — Он силён. Он жив. Он огонь, который ты не можешь погасить. Он смотрит на тебя и видит что-то большее, чем зверя. Это злит тебя. Заставляет тебя чувствовать себя голым. Незащищенным.
Губы Бога изогнулись в сострадательной гримасе.
— Почти живым.
Гриммджо зарычал. Не как человек — как хищник, загнанный в угол, но все еще смертельно опасный. Бог зашелестел смехом, затерявшимся в шуме осыпающегося песка.
— Не беспокойся, твой секрет умрёт со мной. А я умру очень скоро. — Он провел пальцем по скуле Гриммджо, лёгким движением, оставившим после себя холод. — Этот храм — последнее, что осталось от меня. Бог, которого все забыли. Моё время истекает.
Теперь его голос стал глуше, словно доносился из-под толщи песка.
— Я вечность ждал, пока кто-то придёт в этот храм. Вечность ждал, пока кто-то вспомнит меня в последний раз, и я умру, как умерло всё, что было до меня. Как умрет все, что будет после.
Гриммджо молчал. Внутри клокотала ярость, но в ней было что-то ещё, чему он не мог — или не хотел — давать имени. Он снова неловко ухватил полу одежды Луппи.
Бога.
Рука прошла сквозь, взметнув призрачное облачко песчаной пыли. Она скрипела на крепко сжатых зубах, заметала глаза так, что они начинали слезиться.
— Ты ищешь его. Куросаки. Ты бродишь по пескам, и твоя кровь кричит его имя. Но я скажу тебе кое-что о нём. — Прохладные губы почти касались губ Гриммджо. — Он победил тебя не потому, что он сильнее. Он победил, потому что ему есть ради чего сражаться.
— У меня есть гордость, — прорычал Гриммджо.
— О. — Бог, почти переставший быть Луппи, покачал головой. — Гордость это не то, ради чего стоит сражаться. Это то, ради чего стоит умереть.
И, прежде чем он окончательно рассеялся остатками белого песка, Гриммджо ощутил на губах прикосновение. Холод. Тень поцелуя. А потом луна снова залила мертвенно-белым светом песок, поглотивший храм и Бога, которого больше никто не помнил.
— Ты умер, — произнёс Гриммджо, и это был не вопрос, потому что задавать вопросы было уже некому.
Когда он вернулся туда, откуда начал путь, на окраину Лас Ночес, он увидел фигуру, терпеливо ожидающую у обломков колонны. Полосатая шляпа бросала тень на лицо.
— Что ты здесь делаешь, Урахара?
Урахара улыбнулся, и тень сожрала его улыбку, не дав добраться до глаз.
— Пришел предложить вам сделку, Гриммджо-сан. Война начинается. Яхве собирает армию. Нам нужна ваша сила.
Гриммджо не улыбнулся в ответ. Шрам противно заныл, не то напоминая о прошлом, не то предвкушая будущее. Время сдвинулось с мертвой точки, потекло нерешительной песчаной струйкой.
— Куросаки там будет?
— Конечно.
Где-то далеко, в глубине пустыни, послышался последний отзвук смеха уже исчезнувшего Бога.
— Я согласен, — сказал Гриммджо. — Веди.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
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You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
They exited the water as the sun settled into night. Kagome lifted her right arm with effort, amazed that she could move it at all.
“Wow, these springs really do heal. If we stay a couple more days, I'll be better in no time.”
“You two finally leaving?” Inuyasha asked, although his attitude towards lounging around seems to have dissipated after a long soak.
“Yeah, we're heading back,” Kagome affirmed.
Tokishi bounded out the door, chanting, “dinner!” on repeat.
A whisper in the wind turned Kagome around. She investigated the springs. The whisper faded, and she saw a small doll sitting on a rock in the spring. It wore a black kimono, with colorful intricate strings over the shoulders, adorning detailed male facial features. How did she miss that?
“Mother?” Tokishi called.
“Coming,” Kagome called back.
Upon their return, attendants of the manor brought in individual trays containing their dinner. Rice, fish, udon, and miso soup.
Inuyasha dragged his tray to the corner, eating far away from the two. Probably because Kagome hadn't redressed for the night, still in her kosode to sleep. She's glad he at least didn't dine outside the room.
Kagome paused, chopsticks to her lips, to ask, “Tokishi, when we were soaking, did you see a doll?”
“A doll?” Tokishi asked through a mouthful. “No.” Then her ears fidgeted as her eyes cast elsewhere. “Was it maybe like that one?” She pointed.
Kagome turned around and tumbled back at the sight, her arm drawn up in defense, when she saw it was indeed the exact same doll as before.
Inuyasha jumped to his feet. “What is it?”
“It's just a doll,” Tokishi stated, although it was more of a question.
Suddenly the doll manifested a dagger, lunging at them.
Kagome screamed and scurried away.
Tokishi stepped on it with a stomp, and crossed her arms. “Chill out, Mom,” she admonished. “Look how small it is.”
“That’s freaky!” Kagome yelled, urging them to understand. “It appeared from nowhere just like in the hot springs!”
Inuyasha narrowed his eyes, nonplussed, “you fight hordes of demons...”
She snapped, “it’s not natural! Okay!?” She stood to full height. “Besides, it’s got a weapon! Doesn’t that scare you a little!?”
Tokishi blinked when she dropped slightly, then said, “it’s gone.”
Kagome cupped her face in horror, mouth and eyes opened wide as she searched frantically around the room for it.
“It’s just a silly little toy,” Inuyasha told her as if scolding a child, suppressing his surprise to witness such a capable woman scared of something so simple. “Someone’s probably playing a trick on you.”
Kagome bit back a slew of arguments, chewing her thumbnail instead for fear of him leaving after such a horrific incident. How does one explain that they're in the plot of a horror movie when they have no concept of what a movie even is?
Once dinner concluded, Inuyasha reclaimed his spot outside the door on the engawa overlooking the garden. Just as he closed his eyes for the night Kagome tugged his sleeve, leaning her upper body outside.
“Stay in here,” Kagome requested, pulling slightly harder. “With us?”
The moonlight illuminating her smooth exposed skin took his breath away. He could almost see... He crossed his arms tighter, turning away. “I tried to kill you, and you’re asking to share a room with me? Have you no sense of self preservation?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “When we first met, my husband also tried to kill me, now we have a child.” She tapped a finger to her chin in thought. “Actually most of my friends tried to kill me at first...”
He liked this conversation less and less, and seriously questioned her life choices. “Are you mentally unstable?”
“Please?” She clasped her hands together, closing her eyes tight.
“Fine,” he grumbled, relenting if only to get her to stop.
Although he hadn't gotten his footing before she yanked him in the door and shut it. She then persistently tugged his haori to a spot against the wall, pulling him down.
“Okay okay, I get it.” He gently brushed her off and dropped to sit within arms reach. “Alright?”
She nodded.
Tokishi's soft snores filled the room.
Kagome placed a hand to her chest, breathing a relieved sigh. She then tucked into bed next to Tokishi.
“Promise me you'll destroy any dolls?” She asked, her eyes the only thing above the cover.
He rolled his eyes. “I promise.” After a beat of staring at one another, he said in a clear, even voice, “I could kill you and steal the jewel right now. It would be easy.”
She knew his way of speaking. This was him trying to warn her that her decision making was poor without letting on that he cared one ounce for her safety.
“I'm not fully recovered,” she muttered, petulant, yet falling asleep. “And you said.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he cut her off softly, his own eyes closing. “Get some rest.”
Some time in the night Inuyasha stirred. It's been ages since he'd been allowed in a human dwelling, he'd forgotten what a roof felt like. No need to be on alert for wild demons, or weather changes. Not to mention the hot spring; a luxury which soothed aches he's long since grown accustomed to.
It was nice what she was doing for him.
Inuyasha opened his eyes to gaze upon Kagome. Soaking in her soft parted lips and even breaths. He could admire her like this; without her knowing. The gentle curve of her cheek, so smooth and unblemished. Silky black hair strewn across her pillow and curled over her exposed neck. She saved his life without a second thought in the webs. Was it because he’s a half-demon? Like her daughter? Of course, he mentally scoffed, it takes having a half-demon to even like one.
Although it did morph her mind in a fascinating way. The way she described, not just demons, but humans. They're all potentially dangerous, and she made sure her daughter knew to treat both equally.
Her demon mate really fumbled the ball on this one. Losing both his child and a beautiful wife at the same time?
A tinge of shame lowered his eyes ...she must really love him. He remembered her crying beside the well. He hadn't thought much of it at the time, but now... Her pleading with the father of her child; the sheer sorrow as she claimed she needed him. Who is this demon that he could make someone so powerful become so weak?
Inuyasha’s ears tweaked to a noise at the door. “Hm?” He got up and cracked the door open for a peek.
He blanched. Rows of intricate dolls, all seiza, lined the floor unmoving.
Inuyasha slowly slid the door back to a close. Sweating. Kagome was
not
going to like this. “Uh,” he turned around to wake them, only to find the doll dressed in black from earlier with its hands over Kagome's body.
Inuyasha lunged at it, growling, “you damn—!”
Just then Tokishi got up and bit down on its head, her tiny fangs puncturing an eye.
Kagome woke up to witness this, yelping, yet dragging her daughter away to safety. Only to drag the doll closer with her, and make Kagome yell louder. Tokishi growled at the doll, biting harder. She murmured around it, “what’s up with this doll? It's warm.”
It lifted its hand and Inuyasha recognized that to be how it manifested the dagger last time. He yanked it from her mouth, surprised that a fang came out with it.
Tokishi held her cheek, dumbfounded.
Kagome gasped, “your first baby tooth!!!”
The doll began to disappear.
Kagome yelled, “no!! Get her tooth!!” When he made no move and it vanished she glared at him. “It's the first tooth she's lost! What's the matter with you!?”
“Me!?” he argued. “She's a half-demon, she'll grow back another in about a day.”
“I'll never get her first tooth back!” Angry tears welled up despite herself.
He blinked, mouth agape. “Are you crying?”
Meanwhile Tokishi licked her tongue through the new hole in her mouth.
“Life’s been cruel enough!” Kagome yelled. “Why are you trying to ruin such a beautiful moment!?”
“Excuse me!?” He barked incredulously. “You should be more worried about—”
The door slammed open, revealing dozens of dolls in red and blue kimonos, all wielding daggers.
Kagome threw her arm tight over Inuyasha’s shoulder, her entire body flush against him. He would have blushed if she wasn't annihilating his hearing with her screams.
“Who's doing this?!” Inuyasha yelled at the still dolls. “Ain't no scent on you, so it's gotta be someone else!”
The dolls clattered, a sound eerily similar to laughter. “Only she can undo the seal,” a whisper of a blend of voices young and old divulged.
Kagome fainted.
“Mother?” Tokishi clung to her kimono when Inuyasha swung an arm around to catch her.
“You've got to be kidding me!” Inuyasha growled. “Hey! Get up!” He shook Kagome, her head merely flopped around. When she didn't rouse, he set her onto the bed to turn his claws on the dolls. “You've got five seconds to show your true form or I'm destroying all your toys!”
The dolls bounded at him, weapons pointed forward.
“Iron Reaver Soul Stealer!” Inuyasha easily slashed through dozens of their bodies.
Tiny lights fluttered away from their broken parts.
“Souls!” Tokishi named from Kagome's side.
The remaining dolls clattered frightfully in place at the sight of their fallen comrades, and scattered.
“Souls?” Inuyasha asked.
“The dolls are tiny homes for souls,” Tokishi told him. “Mommy told me stories about clay soldiers just like that.”
A will-o-wisp manifested in the room above Kagome. It popped and Habiki shook her head, disappointed. “Trust a priestess who's scared of ghosts.”
Inuyasha growled until Tokishi happily chimed in, “Habiki!”
“You know this girl?” Inuyasha asked, his claws still tentatively raised at the sight of a Piper behind her.
“It's our friend, Habiki,” Tokishi told him. “She drops in sometimes.”
Habiki sat in midair. “I couldn't find anything specific, but that doll in a black kimono seems to be in charge.”
“So you're all spirits,” Inuyasha huffed. “Tell your friends to back off.”
Habiki leered at him. “Just because we're spirits doesn't mean we all know each other.” She gazed down at Kagome's face. “We're all lost souls wandering where we can, trying to find peace.”
Kagome stirred.
“Good morning,” Habiki greeted her.
“Habiki,” Kagome said.
“I can tell you one thing before I go,” Habiki continued as she began to fade. “Something is keeping their souls trapped. They're lashing out the only way they know how.”
“Souls?” Kagome asked. Then realized, “oh that makes sense, the dolls are earth bound spirits.” She got up to pat Inuyasha encouragingly on the shoulder. “You'll have to destroy their earthly form to release them.”
He held her with a withering glare. “Yeah, seeing as you'll pass out if one so much as looks at you.”
She wanted to be mad. She should be mad. Instead she gave a tiny frown, pleading softly with a hand to his arm, “have mercy.”
He didn't want to admit how cute that was, and turned to leave the room with a “geez.”
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Childe doesn’t waste any time. He opens the box, bringing the chopsticks to light. He’s careful as he does so. He looks at them for a moment before asking quietly, “Why ask me like this?”
Zhongli ponders over how to answer. “...I realized you wouldn’t be able to understand my intention. However, I had my reasons as to why I asked you this way.” He pauses, studying Childe’s reaction. His face completely neutral Zhongli can’t even begin to guess what he’s thinking. “...You’re aware that I’ve lived for a very long time? I… I’m afraid that time passes me quickly. If I didn’t set some kind of time limit, it could take me up to 40 years I make a move. I didn’t want to be… too late.”
“Time limit?” Ajax repeats. “Hmmm, I suppose I could have looked up the meaning of these at one point. It’s pretty difficult to find if you have no idea what you’re looking for. It would have taken me a while.”
“I suppose.” Zhongli agrees. He hadn’t quite thought about that issue, but it resolved itself. “Now - my other reason.” He sits up straighter. “My goal is that by the time you know what the chopsticks mean, you won’t say no.”
“Oh?” There is a pleased glint in Childe’s eyes. “Sure of yourself, I see.”
“Do I have a reason not to be?” Despite his nervousness, Zhongli relaxes slightly and allows himself to smile. “May I hear your answer, Ajax?”
Ajax leans back, quiet. “...Zhongli- no, Rex Lapis. You might be mortal now, but you still were an Archon.” He gestures to his mask. “I can’t accept another contract when I’m bound by another.”
Zhongli tries to act like that sentence didn’t physically strike him. “I see.” His voice comes out even and calm, fortunately. “Is that your decision then?”
“Are you kidding me?” Childe snorts and shakes his head. “I just have to end my previous contract first before I can agree to another.”
The relief Zhongli feels immense. Then the implication of Childe’s words sinks in. Zhongli’s eyes widen.
“With this, I let go of my contract with the Tsaritsa, the Cryo Archon.” Childe smashes his mask. “The delusion might make me stronger - but I can do without. I don’t care for it.” Then, he stands up and walks over to Zhongli. “I don’t need it.” He drops it on the floor and stomps on it, shattering it to pieces.
There is no hesitation as he does so, his eyes are firm - determined. Zhongli finds himself standing up as well. “Then…?”
“I think you should know my answer by now- but don’t think I’ll let you get away that easily.” Childe crosses his arms, a self-confident smile on his lips. “I want to hear you say it.”
“Of course.” Zhongli takes Ajax’s hands in his, squeezing them gently. “Ajax, I love you.” Ajax’s cheeks turn red immediately and Zhongli finds himself encouraged by it. “I’ve wanted to retire from my duties for a while now- but I’ve only truly started enjoying mortal life once I met you. You’ve made this life worth living.”
“Zhongli…” There is a soft look in Childe’s eyes.
Zhongli smiles at him and caresses his cheek. “There is nothing else I want but to stay by your side. Would you engage in a new contract with me? A contract to bind us together, as long as our mortal lives will permit it.”
To his surprise, Childe laughs. “Only if you tweak that last part. Do you think death can keep us apart? Please. I didn’t survive the Abyss for nothing.”
Zhongli has to laugh as well. “If you so desire, I will change that part. A contract that will bind us eternally then. Ajax, would you do me the honor and marry me?”
“Yes, I will.” The answer is instantaneous. Zhongli almost collapses from relief. “But next time if you do something like this, just ask me like a normal person, will you?” Despite his words, Childe looks happy - radiant.
“I will keep that in mind.”
Both move forward, Zhongli pulling Childe closer. Their lips meet and Zhongli has never felt more blessed than he did at that moment. The moment ends all too soon, but the blissful feeling remains.
It’s only then that Zhongli realizes that he neglected to buy rings.
Well, he’ll have to improvise then.
“I’m afraid I don’t have a ring for you.” Zhongli admits, breaking the comfortable silence that has come over them. “We can buy one as soon as we’re able to enter a store.”
“That’s so like you.” Childe lets out a fond chuckle and shakes his head. “I have an idea. Don’t move.” He takes off Zhongli’s earring and then his own. “How about we trade these? I don’t need a ring then.”
That seems more intimate than a ring could ever be - it feels more fitting for them. “Go ahead.”
They exchange earrings, beaming at each other.
“You know, you could have at least asked me out on an official date before marriage.” Childe pokes his chest, a grin on his face. “Did you forget how mortals do this whole dating thing?”
“...That may have not crossed my mind.” Zhongli blushes slightly. He knew he wasn’t being bold enough in the end. “I will make it up to you by taking you on dates now.”
“I look forward to it.” Childe leans forward to kiss him again-
Except they get interrupted by a high pitched scream, “Did we miss the question!? I wanted to see it! Unfair! They should do it again!”
Childe moves away from him as if burned. “Teucer!” His face is burning in embarrassment. “What are you doing here!?”
Zhongli turns around to see Aether, Teucer, and Xiao come out of the surrounding thicket.
Well.
At least they missed the most intimate part. Zhongli coughs into his fist, face bright red.
“Sorry.” Xiao looks incredibly annoyed. It’s not an unusual expression on his friend’s face, but this time he looks especially aggravated. “I couldn’t distract him. Managed to delay him though.”
Childe groans into his hands. “I wanted privacy! Privacy! I can’t do PDA in front of my little brother!” The idea of being physically affectionate in front of other people is immensely embarrassing. Zhongli could never - and Childe seems to share that sentiment.
Teucer runs up to his brother and tugs on his pants. “Are you married now? Do I get to be an uncle now!?”
An… uncle? No, no. That’s much too soon.
“We’re just engaged.” Ajax seemed to have shaken out of his embarrassment as he crouches down in front of Teucer. “No telling our family yet, alright? I want to tell them myself.”
“I can take the letter with me when I go home!” Teucer looks excited at the prospect of having such an important task. “Or even better! You and mister Zhongli come with me back home! I bet Tonia wants to meet him!”
“That… might not be a good idea just yet.” Childe scratches the back of his head. It would be hard for him to enter Snezhnaya when the Tsaritsa believes him dead, that’s true. “Just a letter for now.”
“Maybe I should write one as well?” Suggest Zhongli before Teucer can become upset. “It would be appropriate, I believe.”
Childe nods, looking pleased. “Sure. I don’t see why not - but first let’s go eat breakfast. I’m famished.”
“Am I invited too?” A familiar cheeky voice asks.
Everyone freezes. Zhongli slowly turns around to see Venti at the table they have been sitting on, grinning mischievously, two letters in hand.
Only then Zhongli realizes they never got an answering letter from Childe’s first letter. Of course Venti would be the one to deliver it to them. “...Venti, it’s a surprise to see you here.”
“Not as much as a surprise as seeing you be all sappy!” Venti’s amused laughter rings through the clearing. “I saw the whole thing. Really cute. To be honest, I assumed you don’t have a romantic bone in your body but I was wrong.”
Zhongli sighs heavily. “Venti… Please don’t tease me.”
“I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t!” He jumps up from where he’s seated and approaches Childe. “Here you go, a letter for you- delivered by the Anemo Archon himself!” He whispers the last part in Childe’s ear, whose eyes widen.
The second letter he saw Venti holding is gone now - he must have pocketed it.
“Oh, thanks.” Childe answers and takes the letter from him. “...You want breakfast too?”
“You’ll make my ten servings of almond tofu first.” Xiao cuts in, arms crossed. “I didn’t suffer only to not get paid.”
“Oh Xiao, you never change.” Venti laughs and then walks over to Xiao and Aether. “Good to see you too, Aether! I see you met Zhongli, the blockhead.”
“I sure did.” Aether looks amused by Venti’s antics. “And I’ll be making breakfast while Childe makes your tofu, how about that?”
Xiao nods, pleased. “Good.” He is the first one to leave. “It better be good, Childe, or you will meet the end of my spear.”
“Okay, okay.” Childe pockets his letter, most likely wanting to read it later. “Ten portions of almond tofu right in the morning right in the morning? What’s his stomach made out of?”
Zhongli shakes his head fondly. “Xiao has always been like this. Frankly, I’m surprised he ate the other dishes you made him. I never managed to make him eat anything but almond tofu.”
They both laugh and follow the others back into the house. Teucer occasionally asking him questions about when their wedding is and all kinds of other things Zhongli hadn’t even thought about.
Truly, children are miraculous.
Everyone else entered the house already, only Zhongli and Childe remain standing outside. They’re quiet, simply basking in each other’s presence.
“Zhongli, come to… our room later. So we can read the letter.” Childe tells him. “We still have a lot to talk about.”
“We do.” Zhongli agrees. “I would enjoy having some peace and quiet with you. As much as I enjoy everyone’s company, I’m afraid I simply can’t get enough of you.”
“What, don’t want to share?” Childe asks him jokingly. “But seriously, I get it. Now we even have one more mouth to feed.” He shakes his head in mock exasperation. “On that note- did you really make Barbatos carry my letter to Snezhnaya?”
“He owed me a favor.” Zhongli explains. “He’s been very embarrassing about my way of courting you. It’s the simplest thing he could do for me.” Venti always loved teasing him. The moment he heard why Zhongli was suddenly so interested in a Fatui agent he got teased mercilessly. “Ah, I should look if I still have that bottle of dandelion wine somewhere… Venti is fond of it. It would make a fine present.”
“We’ll buy one for him.” Ajax leans over and kisses his cheek. Zhongli could melt in a puddle right here and now. “Now, let’s go in and feed all these people, mister fiance.”
“That has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?” Referring to Childe as his fiance is something he can do now - wonderful. “Soon it will be husband.”
“What, not wife?” Suddenly, there is a smug smile on Childe’s face. “You know, I heard you confessing some time ago. When you told Xiao you love me.”
“You- you heard that?” Zhongli blinks, surprised. “I didn’t notice you.”
Childe laughs and shakes his head. “I’m sneaky like that- oh, that reminds me.” He moves closer to Zhongli. “I didn’t tell you yet, huh? I love you, Zhongli.”
Zhongli’s heart is beating so hard it might burst out of his chest. “And I you.” They share another kiss, just as wonderful as their first before they finally enter the house.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
I stand up and gather my things.
I give Rue one last kiss on the forehead and give her the salute.
The one that means goodbye to someone you love.
I hope the nation is rioting.
Rue is gone. Just like that. Her body picked up by a helicarrier and is going home in a plain wooden box.
I can’t just stop. Not like last time. I need to get back to Peeta and check on his wound. Plus he is completely out of it because of the sleep syrup, he’s vulnerable and that’s not something I am okay with. Not here.
I start to head towards that direction when a spear comes at me. It misses, but just barely due to my last second side step.
Are you kidding me?!
Marvel has another in his hand and is coming straight for me.
I don’t have time to grab an arrow, that spear would be stuck in me the second I reach my hand up. So, I do the only thing I can do. I run.
I don’t run directly behind me, all too aware this could be a trap. Instead, I chose to run towards my right, the foliage is thicker and while that could be harder to run through, I am more likely to lose him in that direction.
I don’t stop to look over my shoulder, that’ll only slow me down. Instead, I duck and weave randomly, I barely even know where I’ll be going next, but it’ll keep Marvel off balanced and confused so that I can get away, or at least up in a tree or something.
Today has been hell! The sun is more than halfway down already and so far I've blown up the Career’s supplies, tended to an injured Peeta, watched Rue die, and now this?! I get it’s The Hunger Games but it’s like the gamemakers have it out for me.
Oh.
That’s a fair point, they probably do, and it doesn’t help that I had a small memorial for Rue.
There must be uprisings. Riots. In District Eleven, definitely, but I wonder if there are any others. Four or Eight maybe? They were ground zero for the rebellion last time around.
Not important right now Katniss! Marvel is chasing you!
I can hear his loud stomping footsteps following me and while he isn’t gaining, I’m not losing him either. I’m just barely out of his spear throwing length, and I need to keep that up. My bruised side is also not helping with my rushed flee.
That’s when I see what I’m running towards. It's marsh land. I definitely didn’t come through here last time. The ground is sinking beneath my feet and the water definitely has mutts in it. Whether there are snakes or gators or flesh eating fish… I don’t want to know, but it’s my only option. I can’t turn back and if I change directions now, Marvel is likely to catch up with me.
So, I take the chance. I plunge my boots into the soft ground before me and keep moving. The water sloshing and slowing me down, though I hear Marvel struggling behind me and it is slowing him down as well.
I am lighter than the hulking boy, a lifetime of fighting for food and traipsing through the woods compared to his large built up muscle mass and his lifetime of heavy proteins and carbs.
I hear him fall and let out a high pitched yelp. I don’t turn around immediately, wanting to get ahead and away so he can’t reach me.
Once I feel safe enough to look, I am horrified.
He is literally being swallowed up by the ground. His hands clawing to try to pull him out, his spear long forgotten on his quest for safety. His eyes grow more and more panicked as he falls deeper and deeper.
His entire torso is now submerged in the muddy dirt like ground. Only his shoulders, arms, and head remain above ground. He looks at me pleadingly. I can’t pull him out, if I get anywhere near him, I’m also going to get sucked in. I can however save him from suffocating to death. There is enough of that in the mines back home. If I can stop it from happening to someone else, you best be damned sure I will.
So, I take a deep breath and nock my arrow. He looks at me wide eyed but then gives me a single nod, his shoulders below the surface. He understands he doesn’t have a chance and he’d rather not go out like that. I give him a nod back and let the arrow fly. I hit him straight through the eye and it goes into his brain, he is dead immediately.
The close range of the shot and the specific way the arrow entered the eye leaves no room for any other outcome. The cannon blasting confirmed the death.
I look at the sky. Too many kids will be up there tonight. Rue, Marvel, the boys from three and seven. We are now in the top seven. They will have all of our loved ones interviews out by tomorrow. I hope Mom and Prim spread the message I asked them to. I bet they will have, especially after our own interviews and how we are acting in the games.
Speaking of Peeta, I need to get back to him. The sun is almost all the way down and while I do have my night vision goggles, I don’t have my jacket or anything to keep me warm.
I can’t go back the way I came though. I don’t know why the ground didn’t sink before Marvel got stuck, but I’m not about to take that chance, I need to find another way around.
I get as close as I dare to the ground to try to see what Marvel sank in. It is more gritty sand and dirt than the rest of the ground and when I throw a rock on it, it bounces and then when it stops moving, it sinks rapidly. Interesting and terrifying.
At least I know what I’m looking for, so I head off to the left, wanting to head at least sort of in the direction I think Peeta is in.
I quickly surmise the danger I am in. There are pockets of that gritty sand and dirt everywhere. There seems to be a very specific pattern that doesn't have that danger but I am so tired from today and my side hurts so bad I can barely concentrate. Not to mention I hit my head earlier after the explosion and I don’t think it’s entirely back to normal yet. My head seems almost fuzzy, like my thoughts aren’t as clear as they normally would be. I probably have a concussion. Great. That is exactly what I need right now to circumvent this minefield of quicksand or whatever this stuff is.
I don’t have a choice though. It is either move on or freeze to death tonight. Move on or starve. Move on or Peeta dies. It’s really that last reason that actually gets me moving.
It takes me almost all night. I picked up every single rock I could and kept throwing them at different patches of ground. Watching them bounce and then either sit perfectly safe on top of the swamp ground or sink rapidly into the earth.
I am so tired. My side is killing me. The bruising black and purple all up and down my side and the wound itself is itchy and hot, definitely infected. That's not even to mention how my head feels like someone is pounding it with a hammer and how I am wet, cold, and thirsty.
I found a nest of eggs in one of the trees half way through the night, thanking everything for my night vision glasses, so I quickly ate those but I also had packs of dried pears and mixed nuts on me. I need to get back to the cave to get water though. I already finished what was in my bottle and I don’t have the iodide with me. Not to mention this is marsh water. It is definitely not safe to drink.
The sun is just about to come up when I see the edge of the marsh. The only thing between me and this death trap of a biome, is a large bird like creature. This bird is not like any other bird I’ve ever seen though. Regular birds don’t have weird scaly skin on their wings and bright yellow eyes. It honestly reminds me slightly of the mutts that killed Finnick in the sewers, the same creepy way they move and while those didn’t have eyes I can see these ones fitting them perfectly.
I don’t even give it the chance to realize I’m there. It’s hit straight through the eye and no matter what kind of mutt it is, that shot works every time. It falls down dead and I’m free to leave this hell.
Peeta should be waking up any minute and I don’t want him to be panicked about where I am when he does. He’s stubborn enough to crawl out of that cave to find me, leading the careers straight to himself to draw them away from me. I can’t let that happen.
So, I grab my arrow as I pass by the bird , cleaning it as best I can in the marsh water and I head out of the swamp. Finally.
Only, I have no idea where I am. I am back in the forest but even in the last games I have never been here before. It is less pine trees and more like the redwoods we saw in District Seven. They aren’t actually red woods, so I can only assume the gamemakers made the trees grow this large. Taller than any building in twelve and rivaling the tribute center with its twelve floors.
The giant trunks leave me on edge, I still remember how the girl from Ten jumped out from behind one to attack me, and that was just a normal sized tree. Thresh or Cato could easily fit behind one of these trees.
I forcibly stop myself from thinking of that. It’s not going to help me get back to Peeta. He should wake up at any moment.
I start walking towards my left. The maze of quicksand had me so turned around that I can’t even begin to think about which way I came from. I lost track of that hours ago.
So, I pick to go West. I think I should run into the river if I continue this way. It might take me a long time but at least I would have a familiar landmark and can make my way back from there.
I start out at a walk, my lack of sleep catching up to me. I know I will have to find somewhere to rest for a few hours but these tree branches are too high to climb with, well for anyone born outside of Seven. So, I trudge my way through the woods. I was freezing last night, my lack of jacket a huge hindrance, but now the gamemakers are playing with the temperatures and it is sweltering. It is hotter’n blue blazes! I am sweating and I need water, ASAP. I can feel myself dehydrating as I walk.
After three hours of this, I find a tree whose roots are winding in and out of the ground, making pockets that are perfect for subtle camouflage. I find one large enough to house me and my bow and quiver and I take a nap.
I wake up drenched in sweat and slightly dizzy but I know that's from lack of water and not from my concussion so I call that a win, for the moment. I gather myself, sitting up slowly so as to not disturb my headache even more and I see that it is around midday.
Peeta must be beside himself with worry. I hope he doesn’t injure himself even more trying to look for me with his leg but I have a feeling he won't be sitting still.
I have to keep going so I pull my quiver over my shoulder and head off, only getting a few steps when I hear beeping.
The silver parachute comes straight toward me, the black twelve on the canvas like material, a confirmation that it went to the right person.
I opened the bottle immediately, thrilled to find chilled water inside. I must not be anywhere close to water for Haymitch to send this. I think I might even be headed in the wrong direction so I change my course to the South. I don’t get another parachute so I assume that is the right direction back to Peeta at the River.
I drink my water sparingly, knowing that even if the bottle is pretty large, I am not anywhere near water so I need to conserve.
I walk all day. Speeding up when I feel I have the energy but never going slower than a brisk hike speed. I need to get back to Peeta. He won’t know about Rue or Marvel or the boy from Three, he slept through the anthem last night and there hasn’t been a kill yet today.
At around five in the evening I reach familiar woods. The fake red woods intermixing with the pines before they disappear completely. I feel much more comfortable here but I also know I am closer to where the careers hunt and as night starts to fall I will need to be careful.
I shoot a squirrel and quickly roast it over a fire. Stomping out the remains and moving on as quickly as possible just in case someone saw the smoke.
I eat the entire thing, having missed lunch, and I find a bush of berries that I pilfer as well.
When night comes I am reticent to sleep but I know if I want to get all the way back to the cave by tomorrow I will need it. I find a tree and I wrap the parachute around me, blocking some of the wind. I am high enough that the silver won't draw attention in the dark and I get as comfortable as possible when I hear it.
Trumpets ring out throughout the arena.
Claudius Templesmith once more becomes my favorite person with his announcement.
“Congratulations to the remaining six Tributes! I need to announce that there has been a slight rule change… if the final two tributes are
both
from the
same
district, they will
both
be announced as the winners. Good luck Tributes and may the odds be ever in your favor.” Then he repeats himself.
I almost fall out of the tree in excitement.
Peeta's name falls off my lips at a whisper, growing louder and louder as I make my way down the tree.
When I get to the bottom I know my face shows my determination.
We are BOTH going home.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
My wrists still hurt. My ankles too. The bandages covering them were slightly discoloured, from when they were first applied. That was a week ago, when I awoke from my heat and was informed of my upcoming challenge. The following days were filled with preparation, Chani and I were taken aside by Baba and taught all that he could before we had to face Shai-Hulud. The most impossible of tasks lay ahead of us, and we had to be ready.
Chani was far more level-headed than I. This was her purpose, she was born Fremen, brought up in the desert. She embodied the ideals of a Fedaykin, and I knew that she would one day take her place among them. She was a warrior, though untested, a warrior nonetheless. If I died during this challenge, then it was an honour and privilege to truly get to know her. I would miss her if I died. And when I told her this, in her truest fashion, she pushed me down into the sand, got in my face and spoke with a restrained anger that I had not heard from her before.
“You will not die. You have come so far, far from being abandoned. Do not think of this as proving yourself to us. Prove this to yourself. You deserve this. You deserve to live.”
Though she was my friend, doubt crept into my heart. Did I truly have what it takes to ride Shai-Hulud? Would I succeed and take my place among my people? Or will I fall and be lost to the sands, as I was meant to be?
Who was I to become Fremen? I was not even originally of this world, I come from a world where all this is fiction. Dreamt up in a man’s head and sold as books and had films made of it. What was the purpose of bringing me into this world?
Am I truly a pawn in the game of an otherworldly force?
Why did it have to be me?
A hand touched my shoulder and shocked me out of my musings, and I turned to see Baba, a grim smile on his face. A group of Fedaykin and Chani waited ahead, stillsuits and shawls wrapping their frames. They tried not to look over, but I saw a few furtive glances come our way. My baba sighed deeply, before handing me a shawl of my own. I quickly put it on as he spoke.
“It is time. We will walk for two days, in which the first day is for Chani, as is her right by blood, and then the next day for you.”
“I understand, Baba.”
He smiled at me, the love clear in his eyes. He tried to speak again but was interrupted.
“Oi, Stilgar! Let’s go, we have to get these two initiated!”
Of course it was Shishakli, ever the impatient one. As I looked over to her, she was pushing Chani in jest, the other Fedaykin laughing as well. My Baba let out a cry of exasperation, before trudging up the sand.
Before I joined them, I looked out and gazed at the sands of Arrakis. The deep desert was vast and decimating to the ones who did not respect it, claiming indiscriminately. And if I wasn’t careful, I would become part of that number. Another soul taken in the sands.
But now is not the time to dally, it is time to set out. I turned and faced the group, them patiently waiting, knowing that this is a trying time for me. People I have known for years now, seen me grow as a Fremen, training as hard as I can, are now faced with the fact that I may be dead in two days. Though their faces do not show it, they seem sad at the prospect of my death.
I took a deep breath, the spice in the air filling my lungs, and then walked off. Purpose hastened my steps, determination walked in my wake, as I, along with my Baba, set a brutal pace. Up and down we went, the sand of the dunes disturbed by our presence. It would take hours until we got to worm territory, but when we did, it would be Chani’s turn. The dawn of Arrakis was washed with yellow and orange, the moons shining clearly, the sunlight and moonlight lighting the path for us to take. I followed close behind my Baba, who seemed so calm during this whole process. So deep in my introspection, I did not notice Chani coming behind me before she spoke.
“Are you nervous?”
Chani’s eyes stared into me, and though she did not outwardly show it, I could feel her trepidation.
“I would be a fool not to be. Shai-Hulud is to be respected.”
Seeing the worms in their natural territory reminded me of one of my favourite movies in my previous life. That creatures like this exist to remind us how very small we are.
“Are you?”
“No, not at all.”
This was said very hastily, showing Chani’s nerves. She would never stutter or falter, but her speech pattern would speed up if she was nervous. I looked at her, teasing her with my eyes.
“Liar.”
She lightly nudges me before drawing me in for a hug, both of us content with the comfort we provided to the other.
“But I am not too worried. I have faith.”
At this she looked skeptical.
“In what? In the Lisan al-Gaib? I don’t know how faith in that story will help you in this endeavor.”
Chani was very skeptical of the prophecy, but that is because she has the right of it. She knows that it was spread about as a way to inspire and control a very religious populace. Which it has. Fremen culture revolves around the hope that the Lisan al-Gaib would come and free us from our oppressors. My Baba was one of the ones who hope beyond all hope that the Mahdi would come and the conversation we had a week ago after I came out of my heat only exacerbated the problem. In the days since, I have seen him watching the stars wistfully, waiting patiently for his Messiah. I knew better than to try and persuade him otherwise.
“No, I have faith in us. I have faith that we will do this by our will and determination, and no one else’s. We are Fremen, we help ourselves.”
At this, I saw her eyes crinkle, her smile evident through her mask. I know that my words struck a chord in her, just as I see the way she rolls her eyes at the fundamentalist Fremen warriors. She wants our people to be free, but she doesn’t believe that we need a Mahdi to deliver freedom to us. We just have to take it.
“Chani!”
We both looked ahead, seeing my Baba standing at the crest of the dune. His stance was solemn, and I knew it was time.
“Come, we must begin. Shira, stay with the group.”
The two of them sand-walked a little farther, out of earshot of the rest of us. The group put down their belongings, sat on the sand and waited. We did not move, so that Chani had the sole chance to prove herself. My Baba and Chani talked for a moment before he rested his hand on her shoulder. I could see her steel herself, ready to face the challenge. She sand-walked the rest of the way alone, while my Baba set down next to me.
“She can do it, Shira.”
“I know she can.”
By now Chani had reached her chosen dune, settled the thumper into the sand and started it. Even from where we were, we could feel its percussive beat. Chani knelt at the top patiently, all of us watching her and the horizon for any sign of Shai-Hulud. And then…
We heard it first, the sound of shifting sand, before the wave of sand approached Chani, picking up speed. I saw her figure stand slowly in the distance, slinking like a cat as Shai-Hulud came closer to her position. And then, finally, it reached the dune Chani was perched on. It swallowed the thumper, breaking through the dune, and Chani began to sprint.
She kept going, faster and faster, until I couldn’t see her anymore. She disappeared into the dust, and we all stood up to witness her ceremony. We kept our eyes on Shai-Hulud, staring at its back, hoping to see her on it.
It plowed through the sands, kicking up spice as it went. We were all silent in anticipation…and then I saw her.
She looked magnificent, standing strong as a mountain as she rode Shai-Hulud like she was born doing it. We all burst into cheers, Shishakli and I the loudest amongst us. She pumped her fist in the air, and I felt like I could feel her exhilaration across the sands. She had taken her place and she had done it in style.
Chani rode Shai-Hulud for hours, the sun crossing the sky steadily before the worm finally stopped an hour before sunset. We waited patiently as she approached, and when she came over the dune, I couldn’t help it. I started to run, the downhill slope helping me. She saw me coming to her and started to run as well. I heard Shishakli follow me, our footsteps thundering along the sands. We came together in a crashing heap, our bodies falling to the ground. We were laughing in joy, hugging each other tightly. We were almost crying but knew better than to do that. I pulled away from her, gripping her shoulders tightly, the pride evident on my face.
“I never had any doubt. You have done it, Chani.”
We hugged again, before my Baba spoke to Chani.
“Chani, congratulations! Before we celebrate though, we must move and set up camp for the night. Come, come! We must go you three, we will celebrate later.”
Even hastening us along, I heard the joy and pride in my Baba’s voice, happy in the knowledge that one of his charges was safe and now one of the people.
We walked until sunset and were firmly out of worm territory. We set up the tents, the communal one and the one that all three of us would share tonight. In the communal tent, we all were laughing, food filling our bellies, victory surrounding Chani like a warm blanket. It wasn’t long before my Baba stood up and spoke.
“Quiet! Quiet! Chani, come here.”
Chani walked over to stand before my Baba. He smiled warmly before continuing.
“Sihaya, you have faced Shai-Hulud and have come out on the other side. As you are now of age, you may choose a mate and fight as a Fedaykin, whenever you so choose. You did well today.”
A raucous cheer went up in the tent while I pondered Chani’s hidden name. Desert Spring seemed to suit her, but I could tell by the look on her face that she did not prefer it.
“Tonight, we celebrate your victory! Tomorrow is another day, and it brings another challenger.”
The mood seemed to dim a bit, the others looking at me as they knew that it would be me tomorrow. Even my Baba looked a little sad before he plastered on a smile and toasted.
“But for now, we celebrate Chani. To Chani!”
“To Chani!”
All of us shouted, drinking our water in celebration.
That night as the three of us were in our tent, our joy was still prevalent, our giggles filling the air. Shishakli and I regaled Chani of our point of view, seeing how she tamed Shai-Hulud. And in return she told us how it felt to ride the worm. She was animated as she gestured with her hands.
“…and then my hook caught on the scale, and I had to lean all the way back to pull it up. I straightened my feet and stood up and kept my eyes on the horizon. It was…breathtaking.”
The happiness in her eyes was a sight to behold, lighting up her whole face. Shishakli gave a little shriek before shaking us both in joy.
“You are sure to be Fedaykin! Oh, I can’t wait to go on raids with you! And you, Shira, what will you do after?”
I softened at her question, sadly smiling at her optimism.
“It depends on what happens tomorrow. I haven’t really thought about it.”
They both look at each other, not believing my words. Shishakli shook her head, not accepting my words.
“No, you will be with us! Fighting the outworlders, pushing the Harkonnens back!”
Chani nodded in agreement. But something about that statement rang false in me. I didn’t mind fighting and killing Harkonnens, not when they treat their populace so cruelly, but I didn’t want to fight all the time. Both Chani and Shishakli saw my pensive look, and Chani shook me out of my stupor.
“What is it?”
I stayed silent for a few moments, pondering on what my future may be if I survive tomorrow.
“I don’t want to fight all the time. Not to say that I won’t fight at all, but giving hope to people, inspiring them to act against their oppressors, I want to do that.”
They both looked at me weirdly, not quite understanding my meaning.
“The Harkonnens use fear and pain as motivations for the people in the villages to obey them, but what if someone went into the villages and was simply there to help. Someone to help the people with their struggles, helping the sick, telling stories of courage, giving supplies to the ones who are starving. If someone did that, then the people may get inspired enough to fight for themselves. Someone to sow dissent amongst the population.”
Understanding dawned in Chani’s eyes, and her smile started to grow.
“Someone to inspire hope!”
I nodded quickly.
“It’s not enough to be attacking the harvesters, if it was then we would have already made a difference. But give the people hope, and they will fight for it, as fierce as Shai-Hulud himself!”
I could feel it now, the excitement and purpose filling me. It is not enough for Paul to come and inspire the Fremen, the whole of Arrakis needs to be primed for the spark that lights the flame. They need someone to give them hope to fight for themselves, to have the courage to stand behind the Lisan al-Gaib. Someone to slip in and out of shadows, everywhere and nowhere all at once. A shimmer in the sands. My smile was contagious, and all of us started to laugh, our excitement for the future running through our veins. We giggled for a few more moments until Shishakli looked at the time.
“Oh shit, we have to go to bed! Shira, you must sleep! Can’t have you passing out before you face Shai-Hulud!”
With this we all agree, shutting down the lights and keeping quiet. I lay in the dark, trying my best to fall asleep quickly. I heard Shishakli’s breathing even out, her falling fast asleep. I was almost there myself when I heard Chani speak.
“You are going to do it, Shira. You have to, because you are my friend. I’d be lost without the both of you.”
I lightly grinned before answering her.
“Don’t worry Chani. I have nothing to lose, and everything to gain. I’ll be alright. Now, go to sleep, I’ve got a big day tomorrow.”
I heard her light chuckle before she wished me goodnight.
“Love you, Shira.”
“Love you too, Chani.”
“And I love the both of you but kindly shut the fuck up and go to bed!”
Chani and I laughed at Shishakli’s dour mood at having been woken up. We settled in, and to the sound of the desert, I was lulled to sleep.
And he was waiting for me in my dream.
I was back in that dreamscape again, the soft dark grey stretched across my eyes. I sighed, not really wanting to do this. This had to happen on this night, right before I face my challenge?
There.
I heard his footsteps, stepping towards me with quiet purpose. I was in no mood to run, and he could tell.
“No chasing you this time?” His voice warbled, distorted to the point where I could not recognize him if I heard him awake. I didn’t react to his bait, not interested in engaging him. When he realized this, he scoffed, the sound of it permeating the air. “Come now, little ghost, no talking? You were much chattier earlier.” A fury that was mine and not filled me, like an echo bouncing off the mountains. I was angry at him but had no idea why. Was this a glimpse of what is to come?
“DON’T IGNORE ME.”
“Am I supposed to thank you for ripping my freedom away?” The words came unbidden, torn from me at his command. The fucking Voice?! I whirled around furious, my animosity filling my gaze. I saw his all-seeing eyes look into mine, triumph and satisfaction present in them. “You will not use that on me! If you value me at all, which you say you do, then you will not use the Voice on me again! If you think that I cannot disappear even now, then it would make my day to prove you wrong. You will never see me again!” At my words, his eyes turned cold and began to stalk towards me with the grace of a panther. I backed up, determined not to let him touch me. He was quicker though, his lithe frame grabbing my arms and slamming me against a wall. At his touch, the dreamscape changed, the sleek walls of Arrakeen appearing around us. Even now, with the familiarity of the conversation, of how I apparently know him, and he knows me, I still cannot see his face. The only clear image is his eyes, blue-on-blue, staring at me. They trace my face, starting at the crown of my head, across my brow, looking into my eyes, down the slope of my nose, and settling on my lips. His hazy lips twitch, and I realize what he is about to do. “Don’t even think abou—hmp!” He cut me off by slamming his mouth against mine, my head tilted high, the difference in height stark. His hand gripped the back of my neck firmly, cradling my head in his palm. His mouth pried mine open, tongue plunging inside like I held all the secrets of the universe. I battled against him, not willing to give him an inch, but damn. He was all-consuming, acting like he was starved of my presence. I was gasping for air, dizzy in the sensation of his lips on mine. And against my will, I was enjoying the way that I felt safe in his hands. Just as the need for air became unbearable, he broke away, nipping my bottom lip as he went, his Alpha teeth almost puncturing it with their points. I was panting, eyes lidded while he seemed unaffected by the encounter. His thumb stroked along my lips, my mouth open and our breaths mingling in the air. When he spoke next, though his words seemed teasing, I could tell by the look in his eyes that he meant every fucking word.
“There is no place, not one, where I could not find you. You could run to the edge of the Imperium, take whatever name suits you, hide as much as you want. It would not matter because when I found you? You would never leave me again. I have seen your heart and it is mine, little ghost. So go on, test my patience.” I held his gaze, fury and nerves filling me, keeping me silent. His mouth smirked, taking my silence as submission. “No? Pity, I wanted a chance to chase you again.” He was oppressive, my every sense filled with him. He would break me open and fill the empty spaces with his presence, infecting every part of my being. As he leaned in again, his eyes widened in fear, and the last thing I heard as I fell away was his deep growl of wrath and agony.
I jolted awake, sitting up sharply, the cry from my mouth strangled silent. Chani woke as well and encircled me in her arms when she saw my frightened face. I heaved shuddering breaths, dry sobbing in the aftermath of the dream. She waited for me to speak, knowing that I needed to get this out of my head. The moments passed as I stayed quiet. I did not want to speak of it, didn’t want to make my dream a reality, but the look on Chani’s face prompted me to speak.
“He scares me.”
“Who does?”
“The man in my dreams. He loves me with an intensity that is suffocating. I can feel that he is going to take me and lock me away, his coveted mate, only worthy for his eyes. I can’t stand it, Chani. It feels inevitable and I hate it.”
My words confused her, because in the past four years I had been with the Fremen, no male or Alpha caught my eye.
“Do we know him?”
I shook my head, weary in my body and soul.
“No, his face is obscured. I only saw his eyes, his terrifying blue-on-blue eyes.”
Understanding grows in Chani’s face, a clue for her to look for.
“So, he’s Fremen, then.”
Something about her statement was wrong, incomplete. I gave a noncommittal hum.
“Perhaps.”
I barely got this word out when the entrance to the tent opens and I see my Baba’s face. He looks at me, his face blank in the severity of the situation.
“It’s time.”
I nodded and he left. Chani barely waited before she spoke again.
“I can tell him that we need to wait if you’re not feeling up to it.”
She didn’t even finish before I shook my head in disagreement.
“No, I’m not letting this hold me back. I’m doing it today.”
I proceeded to get ready, determined not to let this dark figure haunt me in the day as he does at night. Chani reluctantly followed, clearly wanting to speak more of my dream, but I was determined not to dwell on it further. We exited and broke down our tent, Shishakli already up and preparing for the march. I could feel her questioning eyes on me, heard her asking what was wrong to Chani, but stopped listening after that. I couldn’t afford to linger on it any longer. I saw my Baba on the top of the dune and walked up to him. He gave a quick call, and we all fell into formation. And then we went deeper into the desert, where the truest test for the faithful still resided for me to complete.
And I was going to do it one way or another.
Our march into the deep desert took a few hours, and I was quiet. Several times, one of the Fedaykin tried to speak to me, along with my Baba, Chani, and Shishakli. I brushed them off every time, not wanting to engage in conversation. I was focused on what is ahead. The spice-filled air caressed me, offering me comfort in my singular focus. Something about this planet comforted me far more than words did at present.
We walked a little further, and I finally stopped at the top of a dune. I stared at the open space before me, a flat compacted valley of sand surrounded by tall dunes. I felt my Baba approach and stand at my side. This is it, I could feel it.
“Here.”
This is the place, something in me cries that this is where I become one with the desert. Baba turned to the rest of the group and motioned them to sit a ways off. He sand-walked towards the tallest dune in our nearest vicinity, me following close behind. We came to the base of the dune, where he turned to stop me.
“Shira, it is time. Here.”
He hands me a thumper, and I grabbed it hesitantly.
“I tuned it for you, little one. Now, don’t be reckless, we all know that you have courage…”
I interrupted, not happy with my description.
“When have I ever been reckless, Baba?”
His eyes admonished me, knowing that I had a tendency to act first before thinking.
“Still, don’t be reckless, or you will shame my teachings.”
“Baba, I would never.”
I laid my hand on his arm, determined to show him that I would not let him down. He looked at me, pride and reluctance shining in his eyes. He pulled back, distancing himself from me before speaking again.
“Shai-Hulud decides today if you become Fremen. Now go.”
He walked away, leaving me to my challenge. I started to sand-walk up the dune, intent on focusing on my challenge before I heard a shout echo across the sands.
“Hey Shira, don’t be too scared to call a big one!”
I turned around and stared at the group, knowing that Shishakli meant well. My baba waved me forward, but I felt the sense of fate in those words. Shishakli better not have just jinxed me.
Shishakli was laughing along with the other Fedaykin, Chani and Stilgar glaring at her. She looked surprised to see their animosity.
“What? Don’t worry Stilgar, you taught her well.”
Chani pushed her, still angry.
“Ass, that’s our friend up there!”
“And she will succeed, Chani! Shira is too stubborn not to ride the Maker.”
Shishakli didn’t know why Chani was so scared, Shira could do anything she set her mind to, this included. Stilgar was not comforted by these words however and sat down in the sand.
“Enough! This is her final test.”
Stilgar watched his little one, his daughter, climb the dune, her cream stillsuit distantly shining in the sun.
Please, by the grace of the Madhi, don’t let his girl die. Let her become one of the Fremen. Let her see the Lisan al-Gaib come and lead us to paradise.
Remembering my Baba’s teachings, I covered my face with my shawl, slipping my visor over my eyes. I stopped twenty meters from the top and knelt in the sands. I dug a well in the sand before pounding my fist in it. I knew I was in the right place by the deep percussive sound that rang in my ears. I grabbed the thumper, pressing the button to release the spike. It sprang out and I carefully inserted it into the sand. I held the top firmly as I twisted the mechanism to activate the thumper. I released it and stood up carefully. I did not have to wait long before it started to beat steadily, the perfect lure for Shai-Hulud. I walked to the top of the dune, hooks in hand, knelt and waited. My breathing slowed, my heart beating in time to the thumper. I was completely focused on the horizon, looking for any sign of Shai-Hulud approaching. Adrenaline ran through my veins, the bitter taste of it flooding my mouth as I waited.
And then I heard it.
The deep groan of Shai-Hulud as it came to the surface, reminiscent of the whale sounds of my old life. And then it appeared over the horizon, the dust cloud enormous. It was big, bigger than I had seen in the four years that I was on Arrakis.
Shishakli just had to fucking say something, huh?
Stilgar’s eyes widened, seeing the large Maker coming towards his little one.
“Not that big, please!”
The muttering of his people filled the air, all of them worried for his girl. She never did realize how loved she was by her people. Over the years, several members of the sietch would come to him and tell him how kind she is. That she was dedicated to helping wherever she could, always lending a hand unprompted. How even on this sunbaked planet, she was a ray of hope. Stilgar could feel the tension amongst the group, wanting to help but knowing that they could not interfere. This was her task, one she must complete alone.
I slowly stood up, keeping my eyes on Shai-Hulud. It came ever closer, the noise of rolling thunder with it. It blew apart the compacted sand, the sparkle of spice shimmering in the air. Closer and closer, picking up speed, the ground vibrating my bones as it went.
And then…
It disappeared. It was almost quiet, except for the sound of the sands, ringing in the air like shimmers.
Where is it?
Where?
Is?
It?
BOOM!
The ground exploded, the dust cloud large enough to fill the sky. It came even faster, plowing through the sands like a comet. Sand trailed in its wake, the sight of it leaving me breathless. I popped my hooks out and held my stance, waiting for it to come to me.
It charged the dune I was on, faster and faster until it plunged and swallowed the thumper. The impact threatened to knock me down, but I held firm. It carved through the dune, leaving a cavern in its wake. I started to walk towards the edge, picking up speed as I began to jog, and then full-on sprint. Running full tilt, I went towards Shai-Hulud, sand kicking up behind me as I ran. I could see the dune collapsing on the other side of Shai-Hulud. I got closer…
And closer…
And fell.
Sand obscured my vision, but I felt my body slide along the sand heading towards the worm. The feeling swiftly changed as the sensation turned hard and I knew I was on Shai-Hulud. I smacked my hooks against it side several times before they gained purchase. When I felt them hook, I planted my feet and pulled with all of my strength. I could barely see the edge of the scale lift, and then Shai-Hulud began to turn. It rotated, the haze of dust slightly clearing as I began to see the sun. So big was Shai-Hulud, that the force of the turn lifted my feet, causing them to scrabble for purchase again. The scale drifted back down, the worm began to turn downwards, and me with it. No! I would not let this defeat me!
I placed my second hook on the same scale as my other, stuck my feet back on the worm, and pulled. I could feel my body lean diagonally backwards, slanted by the weight. Waves of sands rolled over me, but I wasn’t going to let it knock me off. The worm up righted itself, taking me with it. I could see the sun, and the desert in front of me. Not letting my hooks slack, I adjusted my position to a crouching one.
I was firm in my stance and knew it was time. I released one of my hooks and threw it in front of me to gain more leverage. But something happened that I did not intend. My hook did not make contact, instead it came flying back to me. Along the way, it dragged across the scales of Shai-Hulud, gouging a scratch in its side as it went. It slammed into my hand, and I felt more than heard the groan of the worm beneath me.
Oops.
I tried again, this time letting my hook fly further, further—YES! It held firm, catching a scale and pulling it back. I did the same with my other hook, perfect on the first try. I took a deep breath, felt the vibrations from the form under me and then…
I…
stood…
up…
My heel came into contact with the worm beneath me, and my thighs burned with the exertion of pushing myself into a standing form. The entire process took seconds, but it felt like hours to me. Ever so slowly, I rose up, my legs straightened out, and I saw everything.
The expansive desert laid before me, mine to travel and live. I could never tame this wild place, and I found in myself that I did not want to. I wanted to live and breathe in time with this place. I knew in my bones that I would always love this place.
And I never wanted to leave.
I heard faint shouts and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the group standing and jumping in the air, celebrating my victory over Shai-Hulud. Welcoming me home.
I had done it.
I was Fremen.
After hours, the worm finally tired out, slowing to a stop and I slid off the side. I walked far enough away that it could leave freely, with me standing at the top of the dune and it laying in the valley. I don’t know exactly what, but I was compelled to give it a gesture of respect. I swept my leg back, shifted my weight and gave a deep bow. With my respects given, I turned and headed to the group. It took some time, but as I crested the dune, I saw the group waiting patiently. I heard calls of attentions, followed by shouting and whooping. I trudged down, but before I could look up, I was lifted off of my feet. Whoever it was, they hugged me, spinning around. I recognized the frame of my Baba, and gladly encircled my arms around him. I felt more bodies crowding around us, their noises drowning out all thoughts. Baba slowly let me down, took my face in his hands, tears threatening to spill out of his eyes. I could not hear him over the others, but I read the words from his lips.
“I am so proud of you.”
I smiled brightly, feeling myself shake from the grips Chani and Shishakli had on my arms. I did it! I finally did it!!
As I stood in the midst of my people, for the first time, I did not think of my past life.
I only thought of this one.
Just like the previous night, the communal tent was filled with laughter, tales of other first rides, and Chani and Shishakli told me of how mine own looked from afar.
“What happened with that hook?”
Shishakli asked around a mouthful of food.
“I don’t know exactly, but it caused a deep scar in the side of Shai-Hulud. I hope it was okay after I left.”
I never wanted to hurt the creature, and I hoped I did not cause it undue pain.
“Shai-Hulud is strong. You would not have injured him too bad.”
Chani said, happy that the three of us will live to see another day, smile etched on her face.
“Quiet! My daughter, come forth!”
My Baba called me forward, and I stood before him, his eyes shining in pride.
“You have completed your task, and faced Shai-Hulud and came out stronger for it. You are now Fremen, one with the desert, and most importantly, my own beloved daughter.”
Everyone hollered in joy, slapping their knees in excitement. One of the Fedaykin called out.
“She needs a name, Stilgar!”
My Baba slapped his palm to his forehead, like he forgot this important step.
“She does, she does indeed!”
He looked deep into my eyes, searching my very soul, before it came to him.
“Your name when you came to us, was Nashira, one of the brightest stars in one of our beloved constellations. Now you are Shira by your own choice, determined not to bring suspicion upon us.”
I was confused as to why he brought this up, and to what point he was leading to.
“But your name, your hidden name, will be this. When I saw you on Shai-Hulud, gleaming like the light of God, I knew your name.”
“What is my name, Baba?”
His eyes turned strange then, almost reverential, but not quite.
“You are Nura, the light of God. May you light the way for those who live in despair.”
I smiled brightly, emulating my new name. He reached behind him and handed me an object wrapped in cloth. I looked at him questioningly, but he only gestured at me to go ahead. I uncovered the object and saw the hilt of a crysknife glinting in the low light. I looked at him in surprise, and he smiled.
“This knife was my mother’s, while the one I wield is my father’s. I know that she would be proud to have such a strong granddaughter to wield her knife.”
While I was still astonished, he pulled me in close, gripping me tightly.
“Nashira “Nura”, my daughter.”
Cheers rang through the tent, everyone getting up to join the line to welcome me. I went through everyone in the tent before I saw Chani and Shishakli. They hugged me tight, whispering my new name in my ears. My Baba handed me my own tent, tired from today’s festivities, and left for his own. I turned to Chani and Shishakli, exhaustion clear on my face.
“Forgive me, but I am tired, I didn’t sleep well last night.”
Chani nodded in agreement, pulling Shishakli away as she protested. I quickly set up my tent, but not before hearing a few voices from my Baba’s tent.
“…a sign, Stilgar! You said yourself that she mentioned the coming of the Lisan al-Gaib.”
“And what of it?”
“The Mahdi is supposed to be an Alpha leader. Who better than your star-born daughter to be his mate. She is chosen!”
“She is chosen by nothing! We don’t know when the Mahdi will come, and I will not entertain anything of the question until the sure signs of his coming are upon us.”
“The signs are her—”
“Enough! I will hear no more of this.”
At this, the conversation ended, and I slipped into my tent. My mind was whirling at the information I just heard.
They believe me to be the mate of the Lisan al-Gaib. Chosen, just like him.
One problem.
Paul is their Lisan al-Gaib.
Paul is, or will be, in love with Chani.
So why the fuck are they pairing me with him in their heads?! It is not supposed to be me, but Chani. Granted, I have no idea how the secondary sexes play into this timeline but I’m sure that Paul is dreaming of Chani like he is supposed to, and that these few Fremen believers are just that, believers. In no way am I destined to be the mate of the Lisan al-Gaib.
That would be way too fucking much for me to handle.
Chani and Paul will fall in love and become mates.
And I will remain in shadows.
As I always am.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Chapter 295
Who Is Who
It was the next day. Sheila and Hanna were still out. It was a busy night.
"Cameron said she wants us back in a few hours at the Resistance base." Hanna said.
Sheila hoped it wasn't about their actions during the night. She knew sometimes they didn't like the way she did things.
"Everything we did was a righteous termination." Sheila said.
Sheila knew she `'crossed the line' a few times. It was because her earlier interaction with the three men went by so quickly. She felt they were insufficiently punished for what they did to the 'street walker'. She never even got to use her knife on them. She made them suffer some, but it wasn't enough. She should have worked on them a little longer. They needed to go back and check on the female who was dumped in the street.
Hanna watched Sheila take it too far a few times. She didn't really care. She was upset the way the female was dumped in the street earlier as well. The men who picked her up didn't have any right to abuse her and hurt her, just because they wanted to.
"You did push it a little bit." Hanna said. "I don't have a problem with it."
Sheila didn't want to dwell on what was past. What was done, was done.
"We need to move on." Sheila said.
Sheila pulled up and parked on a side street. They already drove by the location twice. Once was last night, and once was earlier this morning. Everything still looked the same.
They expected it to be another soft target. So far all of them were. No one knew what a Terminator was when they encountered one. By the time they realized they were dealing with something which wasn't human, it was too late for them to do anything about it.
Hanna didn't want to get sloppy. There were still a few more things they needed to take care of.
"I'll take the back." Hanna said.
She knew Sheila liked to 'play' with the 'marks' sometimes. Depending upon the situation, it could be quite amusing at times. If the brutality and savagery weren't so extreme, some of the situations were almost funny. She didn't think there was anything funny about death, or termination.
Sheila smiled. She walked up to the front door. She was going to slam it open and walk inside.
The front door opened as she approached. There was a portly man inside wearing only his underwear and a 'wife beater' tee shirt. He looked like a slob. The man looked somewhat indignant.
"It took you long enough." The man said.
Sheila tilted her head slightly. She wanted to know more. She figured she better see who he expected before she terminated him. There could be more targets.
He looked Sheila over for a moment. He seemed very displeased. What he looked at, wasn't what he 'ordered'.
"I told them I wanted a blonde this time." The man said.
Sheila wondered what was going on. There was obviously some elicit behavior on the part of the 'mark'. She was ready to hear a little more.
"Hello, to you too, mate." Sheila said.
The man looked at Sheila for a moment. He was surprised by her accent. It seemed to make it matter a little less she wasn't a blonde. He leaned forward and looked around outside. Sometimes there were two of them.
"Is there anyone else?" The man asked. "Is there a blonde with you?"
Sheila wanted to get Hanna into the mix. It wasn't often the 'mark' invited them inside because he thought they were someone else. He probably didn't even realize he was going to be a victim of his own sick fetishes.
"I have a redhead friend who will work." Sheila said. "She's a natural redhead too."
The man frowned slightly. He wanted a blonde this time. He figured the redhead would work as well. He liked the fact she was a natural redhead.
Sheila moved her top slightly so a breast with a nipple ring popped out.
The man's eyes widened. Right now he didn't care about the blonde. What he viewed turned him on. He wondered what other piercings she might have, and where they were. With his new level of excitement, he felt he was somewhat rude earlier. He wanted to try to explain himself. He didn't want things to start off on the wrong foot.
"I'm sorry." The man said. "You're beautiful. You were just different from what I expected. I was told something different would happen. You'll do just fine. I really love your jewelry."
Sheila smiled. She didn't want the man to dwell on hair color or skin pigmentation. She was aware when someone got down to business, things weren't too much different, even if they were.
"Once you get past the curtains, they're all the same inside anyway." Sheila said. "I know from personal experience"
The man lightly moistened his lips. The thought of what she said excited him immensely. He would like to watch her as she performed some of her 'personal experience'.
Sheila moved past the man and into his house. She wanted to take a look around and see who else was there. She didn't want any surprises when she made her move. She still wanted to see how things were going to play out.
The man took one last look around outside and closed the door. He threw several deadbolts to secure it.
Sheila knew Hanna should be able to pick up her conversation through her com.
The man looked Sheila over again. It didn't appear as if there was anything under her street clothes, nor did she carry some type of backpack or bag.
"Where's your outfit?" The man asked. "Everyone normally wears black leather."
Sheila tilted her head slightly. She was very intrigued now. She wondered what everything was all about. When things got messy, she didn't like to get blood on her clothes if she could avoid it. Sometimes it upset the next person they would visit if her clothes were already bloody. When she wanted to get 'personal' with someone, and leave them with a lasting impression of what was done to them, she took off her clothes. It seemed she would do the same thing here.
"I work naked." Sheila said. "Outfits are for amateurs. I like everyone to see what I have to offer. I believe if you have it, you should flaunt it. I like to flaunt it."
The man's eyes widened. He really regretted being disappointed earlier. Who needed a blonde when the chick who was there now was totally hot.
"Let's get started." The man said.
He led her to a room. There were various forms of restraints and torture devices.
Sheila briefly wondered if he was going to use them on her. It wouldn't matter if he did. She would be able to easily break them and free herself.
The man looked over his collection of restraints.
"Get me tied up first." The man said.
It wasn't what Sheila expected to hear. She viewed images about what was to unfold where they were at right now. She actually liked the idea. She would look into getting a black leather outfit as well. She believed the other girls would find it as intriguing as they did intimidating. She turned her attention to the man.
"Strip…." Sheila said.
The man stripped.
Sheila could see he was very small. She actually thought it looked quite pathetic. Hanna communicated to her she was at the back door.
"Hold on a few seconds." Sheila said.
She looked around the house real quick and came back into the room. The house was clear. She also opened the door so Hanna could enter.
Sheila stripped off her clothes in front of the man. She stepped forwards and slapped him moderately. She watched the way a dominatrix worked. They were usually somewhat cruel and brutal. The pain inflicted was real, even if it was moderate..
"Who said you could look at me?" Sheila asked. "If you want something from me you're going to have to beg for it. As a matter of fact, I think you're going to have to trade something for it."
The man hung his head. He knew his place in front of his 'master'.
"I'm sorry, Mistress." The man said. "I must be punished. I will trade whatever you want."
Sheila slapped his behind hard.
"Get on the table." Sheila said.
The man climbed up on the table. There were restraints on it.
"Hook yourself in." Sheila said.
The man hesitated. He wasn't used to doing it himself.
Sheila moved forward and struck him moderately again.
"Do you want me to break something?" Sheila asked. "Don't lollygag you're given instructions."
The man quickly secured his feet and one of his hands.
She secured his other hand.
She leaned over him. Her nipple rings hung right above his face.
The man swallowed hard.
Sheila looked down at the man's waist.
"Does that pathetic thing work?" Sheila asked.
The man looked somewhat embarrassed. He let things go too far one time.
"No." The man said. "A year ago another Mistress used a 'burdizzo clamp' on me. It was what I asked for. I didn't think she would do it for real. She did. It helped relieve a lot of my frustrations after a couple of months. I'd do it again if I could."
Sheila saw Hanna was in the doorway now into the room. The man couldn't see her.
Hanna heard the conversation and wondered what was going on. She was even more surprised to see it all first hand. It was right up Sheila's alley of perversion. She hoped Sheila didn't set up the equipment somewhere else. She understood the fantasy needed to be in the 'mark's' mind for it all to work.
The mark was a future Gray who tortured Resistance prisoners for information. The strange part was, the described set up is what she looked at right now. There were several age-old devices for restraining people in a public way. There was a pillory and stocks. It was clear the man was mentally deranged. She knew he was a deviant of some form. His behavior in the future was too.
She watched as Sheila teased the man and said things to him. She slapped him often.
It was clear Sheila injured him by the black and blue marks as well as blood from some of the hits.
Strangely enough the man seemed to enjoy it all. He continued to
ask
for more.
Hanna watched Sheila carry out the 'torture'. She wasn't sure exactly what to call it since it was what the man continued to
ask
for.
Sheila was a little surprised at what she saw happen a little lower.
"What's that?" Sheila shouted. "What the Hell is THAT?"
The man tried to look down at his waist. His portly belly was in the way.
"I'm sorry. It still happens sometimes." The man said. "It only lasts for a few seconds."
Sheila looked angry.
"I'll take care of it." Sheila said. "I can guarantee it will never happen again."
The man looked scared but excited.
"Do what you want." The man said. "I should be punished for losing control."
Sheila moved towards him.
The man and Sheila established a 'safe word' before the session started. Sheila picked - 'Gray' for the word."
The man saw her eyes glowed red.
It got him off. It was the first time in eleven months. Not much happened. He was as pleased as he was excited. He understood he needed more physical abuse during the sessions. He wasn't quite sure how she made her eyes glow red though. When he saw the knife in her hand, he thought it was time to wind things down.
"Gray." The man said.
Sheila busted him up instead. The reminder of what he was in the future was all she needed to remember.
He went to scream, but Sheila stuffed his underwear in his mouth so he couldn't. She went to 'work'.
He withered around and thrashed around in the restraints he helped put himself into.
Sheila was satisfied with the way things played out. It was the first time a mark
wanted
to be abused. She was pleased she was able to fulfill his fantasies, even if he didn't want her to. Her work there was done.
"Let's go." Sheila said. "We need to get back to the base."
Sheila dressed while Hanna ripped the gas line loose from the stove. Sheila lit a candle and set it on the pillory. They left the man thrashing about and closed the door to the room. The rest of the house would fill with gas. Eventually enough would seep into his room to be ignited by the burning candle. There should be an explosive fire.
She was a little concerned about the extreme nature of everything which occurred. It wasn't anything she wanted to try to explain to anyone.
"Let's leave this one out of the report." Sheila said.
Hanna already planned to do so.
"I doubt anyone would believe it unless they saw it." Hanna said.
They were a block away when the house exploded.
Cameron sought out Savannah. She always made sure she kept Savannah informed about everything. She was a young adult now. They could discuss
anything
and they often did. She was also aware she didn't lie to Savannah like she did with everyone else. Savannah always wanted the truth no matter what it was. Savannah never got angry at her, or was mean, or rude to her. Savannah accepted her with all of her shortcomings, just as she was, as herself. It was a very reassuring feeling.
She wanted to talk with Savannah. She explained there was going to be another cyborg like her now who would be called Cam. She wanted to be open with Savannah about why it was being done and the fact Vanna was lonely. She explained they considered using the name Cammy at first.
Savannah was a little disturbed by the revelation.
"It's the name I call you." Savannah said. "You're Cammy to me."
Cameron didn't think Savannah needed to worry about anything.
"Vanna said she wanted to save the name for you to use in the future…." Cameron said. "I know you'll be able to tell us apart."
Savannah needed to dwell on what Cameron just said to her and about HER future, HER 'Cammy'. She was lonely too sometimes…. She was older now and her hormones were running wild. She knew what other girls her age were doing…. She was trapped there. She didn't have the same 'opportunities' as they did. She wanted what Vanna shared. She was Vanna, and Vanna was her. She didn't know how to explain it to Cameron about what she felt and what she wanted. No, it was more than that. It was about what she needed….
As they spoke, Ally arrived with Cam. They were both fixed up nicely.
Savannah looked at them for a moment. She extended her right hand out to Cam. She was impressed about how everyone looked.
"I'm pleased to meet you, Cam." Savannah said. "You're very beautiful."
Ally and Cam looked at each other. Savannah correctly identified them.
"How do you know it's not Ally?" Cameron asked. "They look identical. They all look identical to me right now."
Savannah smiled at Ally.
"I know what Ally looks like." Savannah said to Ally. "Hi, Ally."
Ally knew everyone mixed her up with Cameron sometimes, but usually it was with Allison.
"Hi, Savannah." Ally said. "To everyone else we look the same."
Savannah smiled at all three of them.
"I'm not - everyone." Savannah said.
Savannah knew her future. She knew what every 'Allison' or 'Cameron' would look like. She knew what awaited her in the future…. The trouble was, the future would take too long to get there. She needed more now.
Holly and Allison arrived a little later.
Allison looked at Cameron, Cam, and Ally.
"Is this some kind of a joke?" Allison asked.
Allison was unsure if she should laugh or be angry.
Cameron, Ally, and Cam all looked at each other.
Cameron tilted her head slightly. She looked a little uneasy.
"No." Cameron said.
Allison could see they were perplexed by her reaction.
"I get it." Allison said. "It is like the three monkeys - hear no evil, speak no evil, and see no evil."
Holly didn't look very happy to see three of 'Cameron'. She was worried any of them could take Allison from her.
John and Sarah walked up.
They looked at the four nearly identical girls standing side by side.
"I don't even want to know." Sarah said and left.
John was at a loss for words. He wished his mother would have stayed.
Sarah looked back once and continued to walk away.
"I'll let you handle this one." Sarah said.
Holly made Allison look Tight before they left Palmdale. It was what Cameron instructed her to do. She didn't know why at the time, but it all made sense now.
John looked at the four of them. It was obvious he couldn't tell them apart. He figured there was no way out of this one, so he might as well ask it.
"You've got me on this one. Who is who?" John asked.
Savannah wanted to have some fun with John. She knew he couldn't tell who they were.
"Can't you tell, silly?" Savannah asked.
The girls all jumped in on the fun.
"Pick one and start with her." Allison said.
"Or two." Cam added.
"Or all four." Ally said.
John looked at the four of them. Three were very amused, and one wasn't.
"I'll pick the one frowning at all of this." John said. "I'm sure it's not the reaction she intended to happen."
He took Cameron's hand.
Savannah didn't think it was very hard to identify who was who. She thought she should let Cameron play out whatever she was going to do with John. It was probably best if there weren't any outside influences there. She focused her attention on John.
"See, you knew all along, silly." Savannah said as she went off to study.
'You won't have any trouble telling me apart from them.' Savannah thought.
As she passed Allison they shared a long glance. They both 'felt' something. It was something which started a few times but quickly stopped. This time is different. It was clear there was something they both wanted.
Savannah kept going but stole another look at Allison; she felt a 'hunger' within her.
Allison did the same thing…. She saw 'her Savannah' from years ago in Savannah. She could feel her heart pounding.
Savannah knew Vanna and Allison were 'separated', at least for now. She also knew Allison was EVERYTHING she wanted in a friend, a Special Friend. She couldn't think of anyone better for the thing she wanted to try. Well, except for Cameron.
John looked at all four of them. He wasn't sure who the 'new girl' was. They were all Tight, even Allison. He really wished Savannah would have stayed around. He was sure he needed an ally right now.
"So what's the new girl's name?" John asked.
John looked at Ally.
Cam was down a couple.
"My name is Cam." Cam said as she giggled.
John moved his gaze over two girls and held out his hand. It was clear he blew it.
"I'm pleased to meet you." John said.
Cam took his hand.
Allison liked to stir things up.
"How are you going to spell that word?" Allison asked. "Is it as 'meet' or 'meat'?"
Cameron developed an even bigger frown now.
John noticed. For once he was happy to see Cameron's sour face. He knew Cameron's new look as well.
"At least I can tell who Cameron is." John said.
Ally still wanted to mess with him.
"Are you sure?" Ally asked.
John felt he knew something they didn't.
"I think so." John said. "Cameron was 'different' last night."
Allison quickly looked at Holly. She didn't look pleased.
"Oh, brother…." Allison said. "Did you tell them about yesterday…?"
Holly remained silent.
Allison was more upset than embarrassed.
"Did all of you?" Allison asked. "Did you all use a razor last night?"
She was met with three smiles. Cameron, Cam, and Ally all shrugged their shoulders.
"A new look helps keep up everyone's interest." Ally said.
Allison noted John quickly slipped away. She knew he was 'afraid' of the four of them, especially together like they were in the current setting.
Holly felt she protected Allison with the updated information to the others. Cameron previously told her she needed to be able to step in at any point in time to protect Allison, and assume her place if the situation ever arose.
"One of them may need to replace you in an emergency." Holly said. "It's important everyone is identical."
Allison was ready for the next step. She really liked the way Vanna looked.
"Well, girls, why don't we all make it permanent?" Allison asked. "If Holly didn't do it for me, it would be too big of a hassle. She never nicks me either."
Holly looked like she would rather be somewhere else now too.
Ally and Cam both agreed to make it permanent. Cameron said she may need to replace Future Allison at some point.
Allison didn't see it as a problem.
"Just blame it on radiation if anyone asks." Allison said. "I doubt anyone who ever 'saw you' down there would be alive for long afterwards."
Cameron would think about it. It always seemed to please John. She liked when John was happy. If John wasn't happy, he might send her away, again. She noticed her hand started to glitch. She wanted to keep John happy.
"I'm in." Cameron said. "How about you, Holly?"
Holly was thrilled with the prospect. She didn't think Allison was careful enough when she assisted her. She was glad the nicks healed rapidly and left no scars.
"If it's what Allison wants…." Holly said. "I'll do anything for her."
Allison was happy to hear it. There were a few more things she wanted to 'try'.
Cameron thought they were good to go.
"We still have the machine here we used on Hanna." Cameron said. "I 'borrowed' it one night from a local salon…. I did go back later and leave three times what it cost to purchase a new one in cash. I haven't returned it yet. I guess I sort of 'purchased' it from them after the fact. I thought it may come in handy. Jesse, Gail, and Sheila have all used it."
Allison wanted to make it a 'full house'. She thought everyone would like the look and not have to worry about maintaining it.
"Should we invite Sarah and Riley to the party?" Allison asked.
Cameron looked uneasy.
"I will inform them." Cameron said.
Allison noticed Cameron's hand glitch. She quickly understood what the problem was.
"I'll mention it to Riley, Cameron." Allison quickly said. "You don't need to do it."
Cameron was very relieved to hear it. She appreciated Allison's assistance. It was very uncomfortable for her for several different reasons.
"Thank you, Allison." Cameron said. "Can you run it by Sarah as well? She's my mother in law…."
Cam noticed Cameron's distress.
"Awkward." Cam said.
Cam and Ally high fived each other up high, and then down low. There was a loud clap at the top and bottom.
Allison realized there was a cyborg copy of each of them.
"What have we done?" Allison asked Cameron.
Cameron looked at Ally and then at Cam.
"I don't know." Cameron said. "I really don't."
Cameron went on to explain to Allison there were at least eleven of 'her' now.
Allison shook her head slightly as she listened. It was a lot to take in.
"I can't wait to tell my mother." Allison said sarcastically. "I'm sure she'll be thrilled."
Holly thought Allison was still talking about the laser.
"Will Claire want to use the machine too?" Holly asked.
Everyone laughed except Cameron and Holly.
Ally tilted her head slightly.
"Actually, she probably would." Ally said.
Now everyone laughed except Allison.
Holly took Allison's hand. Then Allison started to laugh as well.
Cameron would make sure she mentioned it to Claire personally. She believed it was something John would appreciate later on. There was no reason not to take care of it now. She looked at the others and laughed too.
Savannah listened to the girls talk as she studied…. She always listened to everyone and everything…. Maybe it was something she would look into as well. Several years ago she started using a razor, ever since it became necessary. She wanted to look like Vanna.
She felt she was ready for more. Her encounter with Allison earlier made her body respond in a sexual way. She could feel the desire inside her.
Savannah watched the girls with each other. She looked on the internet and watched plenty of videos. There were thousands of images to look at. She was ready for a little more than 'herself'.
She watched the response of the others, but she never felt the way they seemed to feel when she experimented. Things felt nice, but it was all. There was nothing climatic about them.
Then it happened one day. She wanted 'more' and there was no 'more' for her at the base. She tried to soothe herself and kept going when she started to feel 'strange' and then 'BAM'. There was almost an explosive feeling to it. Wow! It was nice. She tried it again a few times but it was only the same as before. She noticed there was a 'feeling' and she 'followed' it, and then again 'BAM', it happened again. Now she knew how to get there.
She just knew she needed more. She wanted to share.
John Henry wanted to switch security feeds but was stuck on the one with the girls talking. It fascinated him to see four of 'Cameron', which was really four of 'Allison'….
He knew he would be monitoring the feed where the laser was at when the girls used it. He couldn't help but watch them. It made him feel things he was sure he shouldn't feel….
The more he felt them. The more he wanted to feel them.
Where was Mr. Ellison when he needed him?
Closing monologue by Cameron:
Who Is Who
We are who we are
But do we know who we are
Maybe the answer
Will be a little bizarre
There is what we think
Then there is what we do
Actions speak louder than words
They tell the truth about you
Talk is cheap
Words are easy to say
It's how you act
That will give you away
Is it really, do unto others
As you would have them do unto you
Or is it really, do unto others
Before they can do it to you
Everything in life has a price
The toll will eventually come due
When the cards all land
Will we ever know who is who
Nobody
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Jon.
He had looked on stunned as his uncle declared for him, he couldn't help it he bid his uncle to rise and once he did Jon grabbed him and held him tight, he didn't even try to fight the tears that fell. His uncle whispered in his ear and Jon couldn't even make out the words, when he calmed enough they spoke a little on his mother. His uncle told him about the letters and journal he found and Jon did his best to keep his anger in check, his mother's letter was right, he had always known it to be true, but this proved that she may not have known just how deep this conspiracy went.
"We need to find them uncle, all of them." Jon said and his uncle nodded.
"Aye we do, but that's something we can talk about later, you need to get your rest Jon, tomorrow is a big day."
"Aye Uncle, thank you." he said as he smiled and they both left the crypts together.
He walked back to the keep with his uncle, both of them walking silently, behind them Jory and Alyn had given them room should they need to speak more, but Jon could tell his uncle was just like he, drained. So they bid their good nights and he went to his room, opening the door he quickly undressed and got the eggs from their hiding place before he lay down on the bed and closed his eyes. His heart raced when he saw her sitting there on the grass hill, it had felt like forever since he'd last seen his sister.
"
Rhae. Where have you been?" he asked as he moved towards her.
"
I was flying Jae." she said smiling before she reached her hand out and he took it.
They walked down the hill and Jae saw it then, the large dark burned walls of Harrenhal, he saw the tents lined up and the banners waving high. The black bats on a yellow field and the leaping silver trout on red and blue, both either side of the red three headed dragon on black, his house's banner raised far higher than the other two. Excitedly he moved with Rhaenys through the castle he saw squires scrubbing armor and polishing swords, saw horses being decked out in barding being made ready for upcoming jousts.
When they reached the castle Rhaenys led him to the largest of the halls, the famous hall of a hundred hearths. Inside the revelry had already begun and as he looked around he saw her sitting there with his uncles, all four of the Stark children together for perhaps one of the last times it was so. His uncle Brandon was just as he'd imagined him, larger than life and louder than his siblings combined. Ned was quiet and Jae grimaced at the figure sitting beside him as Robert towered above them all, the Demon of the Trident indeed.
His uncle Benjen looked so very small in comparison and even his mother seemed larger and more imposing than he. As for his mother Jae stood and watched, whether or not tears registered in this place he knew not, but they fell down his face all the same. She was lively and he watched as she glowered at something Robert said, as she chastised Brandon for some unknown reason and then spoke softly to Ned. She laughed with Benjen and then a hush came over the hall and Rhaenys drew his attention to the high table.
"
Look Jae, Father." she said and she smiled as he looked to where she pointed.
On the high table he saw him and he was everything he had heard, he sat beside Elia and in her hands she held a newborn babe, Jae looked to Rhaenys and saw her nod as she looked at her younger self. They stayed for a moment and then Jae found himself outside the halls yet again watching as his mother put armor on.
The knight of the Laughing Tree in full gear was small and slight and yet Jae knew from the tale Jaime told that she defeated three knights, he longed to see the joust itself but instead he found himself by a stream and watched as his father held his mother in his arms. It wasn't but a moment later that they were in a glade and Jae saw two men wearing white cloaks stand by while in front of them kneeling facing a Heart Tree his father and mother whispered softly.
"
Jae come we have more to see." Rhaenys said grabbing his arm and yet he found himself unable to move, he looked as his father and mother kissed and he saw it there in their eyes, the love his mother wrote of was undeniable.
As he closed his own he then found himself in a large room with colored glass on the windows. At the front stood a man holding a book and in front of him his father and mother stood facing each other. His mother was draped in a cloak bearing his house's colors and she had a piece of cloth over her and his fathers hands, as he moved closer he heard them speak.
"
Father, Smith, Warrior, Mother, Maiden, Crone, Stranger. I am hers and she is mine, from this day until the end of my days.
As Rhaenys led him out of the room he looked back and a part of him wanted nothing more than to shout at them, to scream out a warning, to let them know how things would be. He opened his mouth to do so but before he got the chance to speak he saw the clouds and the images began to change. At first it was random images, his uncle Brandon kissing a beautiful woman, his mother shouting at Robert, his father and Elia speaking softly, but then he felt Rhaenys's hand grip him tight and the clouds fully darkened overhead.
He saw a silver haired girl walk into a fire as a large dog whined as the flames drew closer, he saw the girl walk out unharmed while three small dragons crawled over her shoulders. In the distance he saw a pale dragon fade in the sun while a black wingless dragon ran as fast as it could towards her.
He saw a sword with a white blade cut through a net and a hand grab a lion with a scorpions tail, he saw the beast being tied to a stake before it shriveled and faded away.
He saw a snake poised to attack only to turn it's head as it heard the hisses of smaller snakes. He saw the snake as it was grabbed by a giant, he saw the giant smile as he brought the snake to his mouth only for a screech to force him to look up, where a white dragon flew close to him it's blue wings unfurled and the giant dropped the snake as a white wolf came up from behind.
He saw a huge grey wolf howl as it looked to a silver wingless bird, it's steps purposeful as it was joined by smaller hungrier wolves.
He saw a three eyed raven try to fly as a tree burned only for a white wolf to jump and catch it in it's mouth.
When he turned to Rhaenys he saw her smile and she pointed as the dragon landed in front of them, he watched his sister climb on the dragons back and hold out her hand.
"
We can fly together Jae." she said as the dragon flew off.
When he woke that morning he felt the heat from the eggs, he felt the sweat run down his chest and onto the sheets of the bedding and as he jumped up he felt his head spin. He steadied himself and placed the eggs back in their hiding place and after drinking some water he sat down and began to draw.
Robb.
Theon had stopped him on the way to break his fast and Robb felt guilty he'd been ignoring him these last few days, but he found he was still annoyed at him too. During the spar against Loras he had seen Theon leave him to face the boy alone, his friend had been hurt but not that badly and yet he didn't come to his aid. Had he then Robb wouldn't have taken such a bad beating, but rather than admit it or apologize, Theon had instead wanted them to make up stories about Jon and Loras or to try and get their vengeance some other way.
Even had his father not called them in to punish them, Robb had already begun to question how things had gone since Jon arrived. From his turning down of the gifts Jon offered at Theon's suggestion, to him trying to bait his brother to spar and allowing Theon to insult his sister to do so. After his father had brought that up Robb felt more shame than he could ever remember, he had been at best a bad brother and at worst a terrible one and just seeing Jon with his sisters showed him how far he had fallen short.
"So you're not speaking to me then, too busy with your new friends?" Theon said annoyedly.
"No, you know we're not allowed to speak together, father made that clear."
"So, since when do you care about what your father says."
"He is my father, I always care." Robb retorted angrily.
"So what, that's it then, your bastard brother is here and that's it for me, we were supposed to be brothers." Theon said a note of sadness in his voice.
"Aye we were, but what happened during the spar Theon, where were you? Brothers don't leave each other to be hurt, where were you?" Robb said shaking his head.
"I was hurt, I.." Theon said and Robb could see the truth in front of him.
"No you weren't', you'd just rather protect yourself than me." Robb said as he walked away.
He felt terrible doing so, but after being punished and told he and Theon would no longer be allowed to spend time together his father had kept him behind while he sent Theon off with his new guards.
"
You're not happy I've forbidden you from being with Theon are you?"
"
No father, he's my friend."
"
I wanted that for you, since Jon left I wanted it so badly, but I was wrong Robb, it was never supposed to be Theon, it was supposed to be your brother, but with him gone, I..I allowed Theon take his place."
"
But why now father? Why all of a sudden have you decided that I'm not to spend time with him?"
"
What happened with your sister Robb?" his father asked and he looked down to the ground the shame clear on his face "That's why son, what have I told you about the pack?"
"
That we must stick together, always."
"
Aye, Theon is not a wolf Robb, he's a squid, should his father rise up one day I may be forced to take his head. I've forgotten that, forgotten how the North sees him. Forgotten he's a hostage Robb, not a ward."
"
But he's my friend father."
"
Aye, but he shouldn't be. One day you'll be Lord of Winterfell, Warden of the North, what happens if when that day comes our bannermen see you as best friends with the family who've reaved their lands, the people who've stolen their property and attacked them all their lives?"
"
But would it not be better if we were friends father, maybe Theon would be different than his father, maybe the Iron Islands and the North could be allies." Robb said and his father shook his head.
"I thought that son, but I didn't realize that he was insulting my daughters, that he and you were behaving badly towards visiting lords, no don't give me that look boy, I saw how you both looked at the Reeds, at Howland's children, what have you I told you about Howland son?"
"
That were it not for Howland Reed you'd not be alive today."
"
Aye, so how do you think I feel seeing his children disrespected by mine own heir."
"
I'm sorry father."
"
Aye I know that Robb."
"
What happens when Jon leaves again father, who'll be my friend then."
"
I'll think of something son I promise."
Now as he headed to his brother's room he hoped he'd accept his apology, they had spoken and being friendly since the night the Manderly's arrived, he and Loras had spent some time together too. But while Jon had taught him some moves in the sparring yard and while he and Loras had japed with him, there was something not right about it. Compared to how Jon acted with his sisters he was still an outsider and he knew it was because as of yet he hadn't spoken to him about things.
He knocked at the door and looked down at the scratches he'd made when he'd tried to sneak inside, it had been a stupid idea but he had been embarrassed to ask his brother for the gifts he'd already turned down, so he had tried to steal them. Thankfully he'd not been able to open the door, how he'd have been able to deal with things had he taken the gifts, he didn't know.
"Robb?" he heard his brother say as he opened the door.
"Jon, can I come in?"
"Aye." his brother said and he walked in.
His brother's room was cold and a little damp and yet not once had he heard him complain, looking around it though he wondered how it compared to his rooms at Casterly Rock. Surely Jaime Lannister had him stay in better rooms than this, he looked to the table and saw some drawings before Jon motioned to the bed and he sat down while Jon sat at the small table.
"Jon, I wanted to say I'm sorry." Robb said looking down at his fidgeting hands.
"For what?" Jon asked his voice even.
"I should have welcomed you better, you're my brother and I…"
"Robb I don't care how you welcomed me, I'm used to it, I was annoyed at you over Sansa, over Theon." Jon said shaking his head as Robb looked at him.
"I.."
"Allowed your friend to insult our sister, that's all that bothered me Robb."
"I'm sorry."
"Tell Sansa."
"What?"
"Speak to Sansa, Robb, tell her you're sorry, she may not show it but it hurt her." Jon said.
"I will." Robb said determinedly.
"Good, now come brother, lets spar, properly this time." Jon said and Robb laughed before he stopped.
"Jon, I did something stupid."
"Well Arya would say you are stupid." Jon said and they both chuckled.
"I…ehm tried to sneak into your room." he said embarrassed.
"Why?" Jon said his voice rising.
"I, gods, I wanted the gifts." he said and Jon laughed before he got up and walked to his chest and picked up the bow and pendant.
"You only had to ask brother."
"You mean it, I can have them?" Robb asked surprised.
"Off course, they were always for you."
He placed the pendant around his neck and held the bow out, as he stood up he saw the picture Jon had been drawing fall to the floor and bent down to pick it up.
"Who's this Jon?"
"That's Uncle Brandon, Benjen, Lord Stark and your aunt Lyanna." Jon said and Robb didn't notice the odd choice of words as he looked at the picture.
"Why did you draw this?" he asked curiously.
"It's a gift." Jon said as he took and placed it back on the table "Now come on, or I'll make you face Meera and her spear." Jon japed and he laughed as they left the room.
Maege.
She looked on as her daughters readied the dress for Dacey, it was a beautiful thing and out of all her daughters it was her oldest who she knew would appreciate it the most. While Jory and Lyra would wear dresses tonight it was not their preferred outfits as for Alysanne well she was like her, there wasn't a reason big enough to wear a dress in either of their opinions. She smiled though at Lyanna and how she looked at her own dress, her little bear cub's face a picture as she looked annoyed at the straps of the thing.
Dacey sat on the bed laughing and joking with her sisters and Maege was about to say something when there was a knock on the door that Jory answered, she was surprised to see Wyman standing there.
"My ladies, forgive the interruption, Maege I was wondering if I could speak to you." Wyman said and she nodded.
She followed him outside and he motioned for her to follow him some more, as they walked through the keep and out into the courtyard she wondered where he was bringing her. A few moments later she got her answer, they walked past the Broken Tower and she saw Jon Snow play with the white wolf, while holding one of the pups in his hand. To see them here finally in the heart of the North was sight she'd not soon forget and it was no surprise to her that it was Jon to be the one to bring the wolves back where they belonged.
She followed Wyman onward and through the small gate into the Godswood, it took them a few more moments until they finally saw the Heart tree and Ser Wylis and a couple of Manderly guards standing by it. It surprised her he'd brought her here given his own view on the old gods, although she knew he respected them all the same.
"Make sure we're not disturbed son." Wyman said as he stood before the tree.
"What's going on Wyman?"
"What think you of the lad Maege?" Wyman asked.
"What lad?" she said though she knew of whom he spoke.
"Jon." Wyman said and she noticed he didn't use the bastard surname.
"Seems like a good lad, did a lot for both our families did he not?" she said raising an eyebrow.
"Aye, that he did, he's just like his mother isn't he?" Wyman said and she gasped for a second.
"I wouldn't know Wyman." she answered evasively.
"Really, remember where we are Maege." Wyman said and she cursed the man.
"No one's ever mentioned his mother." she said and Wyman smirked.
"Yet we both know who she is."
"Do we indeed?"
"Aye, he's the she wolf's babe of that I've no doubt, neither do you Maege."
"And so what if he is?" she asked.
"Then that makes him our king." Wyman said and this time she needed to sit down.
"Careful Wyman what you speak now is treason."
"Is it, I never swore an oath to the stag, did you Maege?"
"I'd rather slit my own throat than swear to that man, how he behaved, love of his life indeed." she said as she spat on the ground.
"Indeed, I heard the stories, though did not see for myself, but I remember Harrenhal Maege, he shamed her there too."
"That he did, but does the boy even want it Wyman?"
"I believe he does, I think he sees how the realm has been run and he wants to change it, that's what he's doing is it not, who else has done as much for the North as he?"
"No one." she said smiling "You think that's why Jaime Lannister took him as squire?"
"Aye I do, I think he knew, I've seen him with the boy watched him closely, did you hear what happened the night we arrived?"
"No?"
"The fish saw fit to seat the lad in the low tables, his young friend, the Tyrell boy immediately sat beside him, when Jaime Lannister came in he called out Ned on it, when he refused to change the seating, the man sat with him. That's not something a knight does for a squire is it?"
"No it's not." she said smiling broadly.
"It's also not the first time, when they arrived she tried to have the wolf placed in kennels, a Direwolf Maege here in Winterfell and she wanted it locked away. The lad just nodded, got back on his horse and said he'd stay in Wintertown, young Loras and Jaime jumped on their horses and did the same."
She pictured the scene in her head, he was his mother's son all right and the laugh she let out was loud and genuine.
"You think Ned will support the lad?" Maege asked.
"He better, that boy is of the North, Maege."
"Aye that he is Wyman."
Dacey.
She allowed her sisters to fix her hair, Jory especially working hard on it, she put the dress on and stood in front of the looking glass, she had never looked better than she looked tonight and she was as ready as she'd ever be. Her mother smiled at her, before coming over to whisper how proud she was of her, how happy she was for her and Dacey did her best to hold her tears at bay. Her sisters went out to take up their positions and her mother stood beside her, waiting to be called.
"Do you like him mother?" she asked nervously.
"He makes my girl happy does he not?"
"He does mother, very much so."
"Then I like him, should he not then he'll feel the full fury of me and your sisters though." her mother said and she laughed.
She stood nervously on her toes waiting for the knock at the door to tell them it was time, her mother for the first time she could ever remember looked just as nervous as she did. It took what felt like an age but when the girl knocked at the door she almost ran to open it.
"It's time my lady." the girl said.
She walked out with her mother slowly, the walk to the Godswood taking them past servants and small folk. Jaime had ordered celebrations in Wintertown that he was paying for, he'd invited some of the people to the feast itself and she loved him even more for it. When they entered the Godswood she saw the lanterns hanging from the trees, little lights which looked like fireflies in the night, the place itself was full of people and she shivered as her mother led her to the end of the pathway.
Standing in front of her leaning against a tree was her betrothed and he looked even more handsome than ever. He wore a black leather coat which came down to his knees, underneath she could see his shirt was blood red. His leather breeches were form fitting and she found herself inevitably drawn to how tight they molded against his arse, he caught her looking and she smiled as he winked at her.
"Who comes before the old gods this night?" Ned Stark said loudly.
"Lady Dacey Mormont of House Mormont, a woman grown, trueborn and noble." her mother said loud and proud "Who comes to claim her?"
"Lord Jaime Lannister, of House Lannister. Jaime said and she smiled at the simplicity of his answer "Who gives her?" he asked.
"Lady Maege Mormont, her mother." said as they walked forward and she stood beside him.
"Lady Dacey will you take this man?" Ned Stark said.
"I take this man." she said her smile only outshone by his own.
He took her hand in his and they knelt, her eyes closed she prayed she'd make him as happy as he did her, that they'd spend their lives together, grow old together, have children and be as one. As they stood up and she felt him remove her cloak and hand it to Loras she saw Jon move forward and hand him her bridal cloak. She felt it's warmness as he tied it to her shoulders and then he leaned forward and kissed her to cheers she imagined, though she only heard them after the kiss. Within in the blink of an eye he had her cradled in his arms, her hands wrapped around his neck as he carried her to the Great Hall.
"My love." he whispered in her ear "My life." he said softly "My wife." he said and she felt her heart flutter.
"My husband."
Jaime.
Seeing her as she stood there he had never in his life seen a more beautiful sight, the dress was a white as snow and embroidered on it in little bits of black and red stone a bear curled up against a lion. Her hair was tied up and two little ringlets hit her shoulders, brushing against the soft skin and making him jealous of them both. When he'd knelt down to pray in front of gods he didn't really understand he just asked for the strength to make her happy, to keep her safe and to bring her the joy she brought him.
When he kissed her it felt different somehow, this wasn't just a woman he was kissing this was his wife, from this day to his last day, this was the woman he'd spend his life with. Carrying her into the hall he had been sorely tempted to just change direction, to just head to their room, their room, no longer his alone. But he resisted, hard though it was, she deserved to enjoy the festivities, for her family to see her and celebrate their wedding and so he carried her to the high table and placed her in the seat beside his own.
"How'd I do?" he whispered.
"It was acceptable I suppose." she japed and he couldn't help but laugh as he leaned forward to kiss her.
Once everyone took their seats, the dishes began to arrive, in the West he knew there'd be course after course, one wedding he'd heard about in the Reach had seventeen courses, here in the North is was a more manageable nine. As the dishes came out he took a bite and began sending them to other tables, the deer he sent to his good family.
Elk he sent to the Manderly's on and on the dishes went and though he wasn't hungry, he ate from each of them. Beside him his wife spoke to her mother and Lady Cerwyn, while he spoke to Ned Stark and the Greatjon, he drank sparingly and had to laugh when the Greatjon stood up and called Jon to the table. He saw Ned Stark look at him in confusion and he just shrugged his shoulders not knowing what the large Umber lord was up to.
"Jon lad, why have these drinks no ice in them, have you not shown the good men and women of Winterfell along with your father, the way of the future." the Greatjon's voice boomed over the room.
"I haven't my lord." Jon said smirking.
"This won't do, Ned you have to try this." the Greatjon said as he nodded to his son.
Jaime just looked at the confused face of Ned Stark and waited until the Smalljon came back into the room carrying a large chunk of ice and bringing it to the table.
"Go on Jon, show 'em." the Greatjon said grabbing the jug of ale and two mugs.
Jon began chipping away at the ice and placed it in the mugs, a third one added when Maege saw what was going on and turned to Dacey to ask about it. Once he was done Jaime watched as the Greatjon filled the mugs and handed one to Maege and to Ned Stark, he saw Wyman chuckling from the side as the mugs were raised.
"What is this Jon?" Ned Stark asked as he licked the ale from his lips.
"The Ice my lord, this is just one of the uses for the ice in the south, don't drink it so fast." Jon said as Ned raised the mug to his lips and the Greatjon looked disappointedly at them both.
"You're no fun lad." the large man said loudly before a cry was heard to his left.
"My head, gods my head." Maege said and the Greatjon laughed loudly.
"Ah, see it's not just us giants that make mistakes Jon, even the she bear can't handle it."
"Damn you Jon Umber if I had my mace I'd make your damn head hurt.
"Maege if you had your mace I'd have held my tongue." The Greatjon said to laughs.
After that more and more ice was sent for and brought in, he noticed Ned looking at Jon proudly while his wife glowered as she spoke to Lady Sybelle, her eyes never leaving them even as she nodded along to what the other woman was saying. He turned to Dacey to see her smiling as she explained to her mother about the ice and watched on happily as more and more people added it to their drinks. Jon walked back to his table and he gave the boy a sneaky wink getting a smirk in return.
After that it was time to hand out gifts to him and Dacey and Jaime was surprised to see how many of the northerner's brought some. Wyman gave him a beautiful dagger and his wife a matching one which she appreciated greatly. The Glovers gave some northern linens so Dacey would always remember what home felt like. They got some furs from the Umbers for those cold nights the Greatjon said as he winked and when Ned Stark and Lady Stark approached Jaime looked on nervously.
"My Lord, My lady, from my wife and I and from all the Starks." Ned said as he handed them two items covered in cloth.
As he unwrapped it he was stunned to see them, they were matching bows made of the white wood of the Weirwood tree, along with some wooden arrows tipped with fierce curved points, they were fantastic, absolutely otherworldly in their beauty. He could see Dacey's face was just as stunned as his own, though she was far quicker to smile than he.
"I thank you my lord, my lady, for such a wonderful and thoughtful gift." Jaime said
"I do too my lord, my lady, they're truly incredible." Dacey said smiling at them both.
Ned and Lady Stark nodded and took their seats and then Maege and her daughters presented them with gifts, once again mainly weapons and had it been anyone else he was marrying Jaime would laugh at the nature of things. But he knew all the gifts they'd been given were one's his wife would appreciate and these northerners knew that too. He shook his head to hide the laugh that was building at the thoughts of what gifts she'd receive in their other wedding.
"My lord, my lady." he heard a soft voice say and looked to see Jon's sister Sansa standing there holding a piece of fabric.
"Lady Sansa, there was no need." he heard Dacey say but he smiled at the girl reassuringly when she began to look embarrassed.
"But it is most appreciated my lady." he said and she smiled back at him as she handed him the fabric.
Opening it up he unfolded it and what he saw was truly a work of beauty, the girl had made them a covering for their bed, embroidered it with black bears and golden lions around the edges. It had a golden castle and an island on the top and bottom of it and at it's center a black bear embraced a gold lion. Written in gold and black were the words 'Here we Stand, Hear us Roar.'
"My lady, this is absolutely incredible, truly." Jaime said as he stood up to hold the fabric up so the rest of the room could see "My lords, my ladies, please, join me in thanking Lady Sansa for such a wonderful and thoughtful gift." Jaime said as the girl blushed some more and the room starting to cheer.
As she ran back quickly to her table, he saw Jon lean over to whisper in her ear when she sat down and the large smile which appeared on her face. He turned to look at Ned Stark's face and this time his proud look was even fuller, he looked to see even lady Stark who'd looked miserable all night seemed full of pride in her daughter. Rightly so, he thought as he passed the fabric on to Dacey's family who looked at it in wonder.
It was a few minutes later when Jon and Loras stood in front of him, he had spoken to them earlier and had told them there was no need for gifts, of course though this was Jon and that was a pointless conversation. Though he still expected them to wait until they reached Casterly Rock and the second wedding, but as his squires approached he saw Jon hold a piece of parchment in his hand and he looked at him inquisitively.
"My lord, My lady, from myself and Loras." Jon said as he handed him the parchment.
The drawing was incredibly detailed, his hair was golden as was his armor and Dacey looked fit for battle, they stood together his sword in his hand, her mace in hers, both caught almost as if they were about to strike. He could see the smirk on Dacey's face both in the drawing and as she looked at it, identical and unbelievably captured, her fur almost seemed to wave in some unseen wind as the mace looked ready to move through the air.
"Jon, when did you do this?"
"I've been working on it since we arrived, Loras got the parchment and the colors." Jon said.
"I thank you both." Jaime said and Dacey added "It's wonderful Jon, Loras thank you" however as the two boys walked away Lyra and Jory spoke up.
"That's you're only gift Jon, I had hoped for a song at least." Jory said.
"Aye Jon, surely you're not going to deny us your voice." Lyra said.
"Aye, Jon, you must sing, that one you sung at the wall was a good one." Jory said and Lyra nodded in agreement.
Jaime saw the panicked look in Jon's eyes, he looked around to see Ned Stark wearing the same look, while Wyman and Maege Mormont looked on curiously. He saw Jon look to the table where his sister was clapping her hands, Sansa making her choice perfectly clear. He nodded to him when he saw him look to him for guidance, it was no use, he'd not be able to back out not here, not now.
"As you wish my ladies." Jon said as he nodded to Lyra and Jory though when the harp was sent for he ignored it making Jaime look at him curiously.
"My lords, My Ladies, for the happy couple." Jon said as he began to sing without music.
My love said to me
My Mother won't mind
And me Father won't slight you
For your lack of kind
Then she stepped away from me
And this she did say
It will not be long love
'Til our wedding day.
She stepped away from me
And she moved through the Fair
And fondly I watched her
Move here and move there
And she went her way homeward
With one star awake
As the swans in the evening
Move over the lake
I dreamed it last night
That my true love came in
So softly she entered
Her feet made no din
She came close beside me
And this she did say
It will not be long love
Till our wedding day.
The song was haunting, the lack of music only made it more so, he looked to Dacey who he could see was smiling though her eyes glistened, as he looked around the room, he saw that while she'd kept her composure, others had not. At Jon's table Sansa was wiping tears from her eyes while beside her one of the Manderly girls and another dark haired girl did likewise. He saw Maege look at Jon with an odd smile on her face and Wyman also looked on with a beaming one.
Ned Stark was looking at him with a look that was hard to identify while Lady Stark looked angrily at him before she caught Jaime looking to her and her face took on a more neutral look. Jon bowed to him and Dacey slightly before turning to walk to his table and that was when the clapping began. By the time he'd sat down the music had stared and as Jaime took Dacey's hand to lead her to dance he saw Jon smile at him.
Sansa.
The wedding had been everything she'd dreamed it would be, the lights in the Godswood were almost magical and the weather had stayed pleasant. She had feared it would rain or snow but it seemed the gods wished to see this marriage as much as Sansa did. Lord Jaime looked so handsome as he stood there and she knew she was not the only one who thought so, given the looks he was getting from some of the older women.
Beside him both Jon and Loras had dressed up too and she had been surprised to see her brother matching Loras's style as he'd worn much plainer blacks since he'd arrived. Tonight though he and Loras had matched, black long coats, white shirts, with a dash of red on both outfits in the shape of scarves, a nice touch for Lord Jaime no doubt. When Dacey had arrived Sansa like all the girls with her couldn't help but admire how beautiful she looked, how incredible her dress was and how they'd all wish they'd look so good on their own wedding days.
The wedding itself was simple and elegant and when Jaime had picked Dacey up to carry her, Sansa was not alone in almost swooning. At the table during the feast she and the other girls had spoken of the dress and the time had passed quickly, when it came to gifting things she was nervous. She had worked long and hard on her gift but what if they disliked it? what if it was silly? before she could back down though, Jon had whispered in her ear.
"
It'll be fine little sister, your gift will be the nicest they receive, I promise."
Jon had been right and wrong, her gift had been incredibly well received, Lord Jaime had been so gracious, so kind, even if he had embarrassed her some and when she sat back down wanting to hide her face, it was Jon who spoke to her again.
"
Told you, it was incredible little sister, so beautiful, I'm so proud of you." she couldn't help but smile.
She had thought Jon's drawing to be a much better gift, but it was when they began to speak of Jon singing that her interest had been perked.
"Jon sings?" she asked Meera who was sitting beside Arya and Lyanna Mormont.
"Aye, he's really good, he sang while we were at the wall."
"He never sang in White Harbor." Wylla said her annoyance clear in her voice.
"No one asked him." Jojen said and he and Lyarra Umber giggled.
"Who's singing?" Arya said as she finished the extra dessert she had somehow managed to get while giggling at something Lyanna Mormont said to her.
"Jon." Wylla said while Sansa looked to see Jon look to her, she couldn't help but clap her hands excitedly.
She looked on with confusion when Jon turned down the harp, was he not going to have music she wondered, though when he began to sing she realized he didn't need it. The song was beautiful, it was sad and yet if felt right, she felt the tears before the song had ended and by the time it had she needed her handkerchief. When he came over and sat beside her she couldn't help but lean in to whisper in his ear.
"That was amazing Jon, thank you for singing it."
"You're welcome little sister. Now my lady would you do me the pleasure of the next dance." he said as he stood up and bowed with his hand out making her giggle.
"Why of course gallant Ser." she replied as he took her hand.
She saw Loras shake his head before he reluctantly took Wylla's hand, Robb asked Wynafred and she said yes while Jojen was practically dragged onto the floor by Lyarra. The music played and she saw Lord Jaime and Lady Dacey dance and smile at each other. Loras it turned out was a terrible dancer as she saw Wylla grimace at him numerous times, Jojen surprisingly was a good one given Lyarra laughs, though she towered over him.
Jon though was really good and she found herself smiling more and more, they danced two more songs, before Jon asked Meera and then Alys to dance. She had one dance with Loras and one with Robb before she sat down to rest for a moment, when Jon tried to get Arya to dance she found herself almost tearing up with laughter.
"Please little wolf, you can't not dance with your brother, why I'd be heartbroken not to dance with you?" Jon said his voice feigning hurt.
"Go away stupid."
"But little wolf, I'll be so sad." Jon said putting on a sad face.
"Gods, you really are stupid, fine, I'll dance, but only one and only with you Jon, I'm not dancing with any of these other stupid boys."
"Why I thank you my lady." Jon said and Sansa had to choke back her laughter as Arya glowered first at him and then her.
She did see the little smile on Arya's face though as she danced with her brother and when he came back she giggled again when Lyanna Mormont said "Never ever." to him while shaking her head, Jon then held his hand out to her and so she danced with him instead.
"Have you enjoyed yourself tonight little sister?"
"Aye Jon, very much so."
"Good." he said smiling at her.
When they got back to the table though it was to find her mother waiting for her, her father too, it was time for the children to go to bed and though she'd have loved to stay, she was actually quite tired. Jon and Loras led her back to her room, Arya and Lyanna already having gone to their own. Jojen, Meera, Lyarra and Alys were also already gone and Robb had left to escort Wynafred and Wylla, when they left her at her door both of them took her hand in turns and kissed it making her smile.
As she climbed into bed she felt happier than she had for as long as she could remember, but she also had to quieten the little voice at the back of her mind which was saying that they'd all be leaving soon.
Cat.
She had outdone herself with the preparations for the wedding, she had organized the feast and the decorations in the Godswood and at least Jaime Lannister had thanked her which was more than could be said for his bride. She had to admit Lady Dacey did make a striking looking bride, but surely when they got back to the West her manners and upbringing would prove a problem. While here in the North she may pass for a lady, in the south she would certainly not, especially given her propensity for fighting alongside men.
However it was not for her to judge who Jaime Lannister chose as his bride and so she held her tongue, something that was getting harder and harder to do especially when it came to the bastard. Her husband had insisted the bastard be treated with more respect than he was due and so she kept away from him, when she could. But it seemed as if he was following her wherever she would go, almost mocking her by how he behaved around his betters.
She had managed to keep Brandon away from him mainly, Petyr's warnings though vague were enough to make her worry. But the rest of her children seemed drawn to him, even her precious boy Robb seemed to want to spend time with him now, though that was his father's fault for taking away his friend. But so far at least the bastard hadn't tried to harm any of her children, at least to her knowledge, though she knew it was only a matter time.
"It's a wonderful occasion is it not Lady Stark?" Lady Sybelle asked.
"Aye my lady it is." she said.
"You've done an incredible job here my lady." the woman said and Cat felt her pride flare up, she really had.
As she watched the children get ready to give gifts, she thought back to her own, she had fought with her husband over the bows, bows as a gift for a wedding the very thought of it. But he was as stubborn as ever and so she had swallowed her shame and thanked the gods this was here and not in Casterly Rock. As she watched her daughter move forward she smiled, Sansa looked resplendent tonight, a true lady, though she would need to speak to her daughter about spending so much time with the bastard.
Something that was proving difficult to do as Sansa seemed to lose her senses when it came to that boy, Septa Mordane had told her of the things her sweet girl had said and if there was ever proof needed of the duplicity of bastards that was it. She was only thankful that they were all still so young, had her girl been a maiden flowered, she shook her head of the thought. Instead looking on as Lord Jaime praised her daughters work.
The gift was wonderful and Cat was so proud of her girl, she would make a Lord or who knows perhaps even the prince an incredible wife one day, her daughter surely deserved to be considered by the crown especially given Ned's friendship with the king. When the bastard stepped forward with his drawing she shook her head, it was bad enough he had done that thing with the ice earlier, but now he was interjecting himself once again where he shouldn't. She didn't hear what was said next, but when the boy began to sing she fumed, was there no end to it, was there nothing else the boy would do to garner attention.
"He has an incredibly voice does he not?" she heard one of the Mormont girls say to her and she nodded while struggling to hold a smile on her face.
"Aye he does." She said as she turned to see the girl's mother stare directly at her.
Despite every fiber of her being demanding her to say something to these women, these savage women, who had come to her home and made it clear just how little they thought of her, she instead smiled politely and returned to her conversation with lady Sybelle. She held her tongue as the bastard danced with her girls, though she couldn't help but smile when she saw how graceful Robb was with the Manderly girl. A good match perhaps, but she had hoped for better for him too, a southern rose or perhaps even the princess, if Sansa didn't marry the prince.
Once the dancing was done with and the children sent to their rooms she knew it wouldn't be long now until the bedding. Thankfully though she wouldn't need to be around for it and so she bid Lady Sybelle, the other guests, Lord Jaime and Lady Dacey her farewells and kissed her husbands cheek. The first real physical contact they'd had in over a moon, though that was his fault and not hers, she walked to her room and as she sat down she fumed.
Her life, her home had all been perfect until the bastard had arrived, even after everything he did in Kings Landing her husband had not only not punished the boy, but taken up for him every chance he got. Her plans to put him in his rightful place had all been interfered with or foiled somehow and she could see his corruption swelling in her own children, it couldn't be allowed to stand.
Petyr could help but it would take far too long for both her letter to reach him and for him to be able to do anything about the boy. She would need to speak to her brother, they needed to act now, or it would be too late, hopefully given his own encounters with the bastard Edmure would act quickly.
Jaime.
As it got closer to the time he wondered how they could get out of this, a bedding at the best of times was not something he enjoyed, when it was his wife who would be getting manhandled it was going to be something he hated. But tradition was tradition and when he'd suggested it to Dacey she had insisted everything would be fine and for him not to worry about it. Something that was far easier said than done, but he drank his ale slowly and waited for the time to arrive.
"My lords, we've drank, we've feasted, it's time to bed them." the Greatjon shouted and Jaime could have guessed it'd be him and not Stark to do so.
"Bed them. Bed Them, Bed them." he heard the chants around the room.
Where so many people came from he could not tell, he had not seen that many women at the wedding, he was surprised though that none of Dacey's sisters were near as he was grabbed and shoved and parts of his clothing torn from him. He looked around to see his wife surrounded by her sisters and then both Umber lords backing away, trying to focus as one woman's hand went to a very private area, he saw the reason and couldn't help but laugh.
"Thank you Jon." he whispered as he saw the white wolf stare down any man who dared get too close to his wife.
Though as he felt his britches being torn from him, he for a moment wished the white wolf was guarding him too. On and on it went and they dragged him down the hall, his coat long gone, his shirt and undershirt torn to pieces, his britches had thankfully not been torn much, though they were almost off him now. He turned to see where they were and was glad they were close to his room, when he finally felt his britches fall he had made it to the door. His small clothing was basically gone, he grabbed some of the ripped material and jumped into the room.
Outside the noise was louder and louder and as he looked around the room to find something to cover himself with the door opened. His wife entered fully dressed and Jaime couldn't help but laugh at the look on her face, she eyed him up and down before she too began to laugh.
"Unlike you I didn't have a wolf to protect me."
"Ah, poor little Jaime, has your squire abandoned you for me." she said softly,
"Actually, I think he was doing me a favor actually, now I get to tear your clothes off myself," he said as he jumped towards her.
"Jaime Lannister." she shrieked.
"Dacey Lannister," he said as he grabbed her.
He kissed her softly at first and then more passionately, moving her towards the bed, he began to slowly undress her, they had waited so long for this, he had waited so long for this that now even as nervous as he felt he took his time.
"Relax my love we have the rest of the night." she said.
"We have the rest of our lives." he whispered back as he kissed her neck.
Dacey.
As she woke up she felt his arms around her, her head resting on his muscular chest, when they had finally succumbed to sleep she knew not, only that she was tired and fulfilled. It had been everything she had dreamed it would, everything she had hoped, as she felt him stir beside her she smiled and kissed his soft lips.
"Mmm, I could get used to being awakened like this."
"Well don't, I intend for you to be the one who wakes first." she said as she bit his lip softly.
"Good morning wife." he said looking into her eyes.
"Good morning husband."
"Do we really have to get up?" he sighed.
"We do, I'm hungry." she said.
"Me too." he rolled on top of her.
"Jaime."
"Dacey." he replied matching her tone and making her giggle.
"Come we must get up, gods knows what time of day it is."
Reluctantly he agreed and they got dressed, though she did spend most of the time watching him, his arse was a thing of beauty, old gods, new gods, whomever made it should be most pleased with their work, she certainly was. Shaking her head she dressed and they both left the room, walking down the corridor to the great hall to break their fast. When they arrived she was dismayed to see it was far earlier than she had imagined, the hall was full and the cheers and japes began immediately.
"Didn't expect to see you for the rest of the day."
"Surely you're not tired of each other already."
"Well he does look worn out."
She could have sworn the last one came from her mother, she looked to the children's table and saw looks of confusion mixed with the odd smirk, both Jon and Loras would pay for that later if she had her way. Sitting down beside her mother and sisters, Jaime sat opposite and both of them hungrily ate, giving yet another reason for japes to be made at their expense.
"How are you feeling my love?" he mother whispered to her.
"I'm good mother, better than good, great," she said smiling back at her.
Once done with their meal she had enough, it was time for some of these men to be put in their place, jape at her expense would they, lets see how they liked a mace across their thick skulls.
"Fine who's up for a spar?" Dacey said and looked to see Jaime smiling broadly at her, my husband she thought and felt her heart was complete for the first time.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
You had arrived home after spending the afternoon training the new slayers alongside Sanemi. He had to leave for a moment after the end of the training though, and that's when you returned home. You put down your sword and took off your dirty, sweaty clothes, tossing them aside before going to the bathroom.
You turned on the hot water in the shower, letting it wash over you and wash away the tension in your aching muscles. These weren't easy training sessions, and Sanemi didn't go easy on the younger ones either. You, unlike him, still tried to go easy on them, but you also knew you couldn't make it too easy for them, as they would have to get used to real-life scenarios where real demons would show no mercy. And in this case, the hashiras had to act like demons, giving no quarter and showing no mercy. And Sanemi was an expert at that.
You closed your eyes and took a deep breath, trying to put work aside for a moment and clear your mind.
Sanemi was returning after training with Obanai and Muichiro since daytime training was not enough for him. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand and sighed. He looked at the floor and saw your clothes, giving a tiny smirk. He also needed a shower and assumed you were already there, so he decided to take off his clothes too and join you.
He walked into the bathroom, and you, so distracted, didn't even notice until his arms wrapped around you from behind. You tremble but soon realized who it was when you looked up and saw his face.
"Oh, it's you! I didn't even feel you come in." You smiled, more relieved now
"What were you thinking about to be so distracted?" He asked, placing a few kisses on your neck
"Nothing special, it was just tiredness from training. I really feel forced to be hard on them since most of the new slayers seem too soft, but at the same time, I feel bad for them." You explained, lowering your gaze, and he looked at you
"It's our job to beat those useless bastards until they stop being weak and soft. If they really want to go out there killing demons, they have to do better. I feel bad too, not for them, but because I couldn't even break a sweat against them. Tch! Weaklings..." He said, and you chuckled softly
"Sanemi, we both know you're an animal and that you have incredible strength, so don't expect them to gain strength like yours overnight."
"Not even if they died and reborn would their strength match mine." He turned you around and ran his hands around your waist, looking into your eyes. "But I must say, you looked so hot while you landed all those blows on those guys. It's a shame we didn't have a break earlier, you had me hard all day just watching you train them. You're getting stronger, princess." He whispered, his forehead resting against yours, and you bit your lip, feeling his hardness already poking at your lower belly
He also seemed stronger, and you weren't even talking about the fact that you'd been waiting all day to have him all to yourself, especially when he paced back and forth with his scarred chest exposed and when he momentarily took off his haori, revealing his strong arms that made you think of so many dirty things.
"It's really a shame we only have the nights to be together like this." You ran your hands down his arms. "I thought so much about you and this moment where we can finally have each other."
"Did you miss me?" He smiled and you nodded
He brought one hand to your chin and kissed you hard, making your hands grip his shoulders. He seemed full of desire to have you, an intensity that lived inside him that overflowed, and now that he was with you, he would definitely show it to you.
He brought his hand from your chin to the back of your head and the other went down to grab your ass, while his tongue met yours, letting you savor that hot kiss.
Your hand ran over his face and through his now-wet white hair, combing it back and bringing your hand back to his face.
"Fuck, how I want to kiss those fucking pretty lips, touch you, run my hands over your curves... Those idiots take up my time to be with you like this." He murmured before kissing you again, and you smiled against his lips
"You can have me whenever you want, even in the shortest break we have." You said, and he chuckled
"I think it would be a good idea to extend those idiots' break a little if it means I can make out with you for a moment or at least eat you out against some tree." He moved his hand from the back of your head to your slit, already damp from the heat of the moment. "Oh, looks like this isn't all just from the water, is it? Did the idea turned you on?" He smirked
You gasped against his shoulder feeling his fingers walking through your slit spreading that viscosity through your folds, he inserted a finger on you and your nails dug into his biceps.
He withdrew his finger and leaned over your body against the shower wall and kissed you as he gave attention to your throbbing pussy with two fingers. You raised your thigh to try to give him a better angle and he took the tip, held it with his free hand keeping it by his hip.
You were moaning against his lips when you felt the calloused fingers in and on and the thumb caressing your clit. Your body shuddered when you felt the tip of his cock poking your thigh, he was too hard and throbbing, he could barely wait to bury deep in you.
"I can say that this pussy missed me by the way you are clenching my fingers and being so wet, baby." He whispered on your lips before starting to kiss your neck
You ran your hands over his back forming small scratches by the way he marked your neck and fingered you faster. The water that fell on you was not that hot compared to the heat that both formed at that time. He took his fingers and took them to your little bud, rubbing it and you moaned feeling yourself getting closer.
Your hips bucked against his fingers, trying to get more contact. You threw your head back and whimpered as you felt your legs weaken and your walls throb, signaling your release. He kissed you, muffling your loud moans as he continued rubbing your already overstimulated clit. His strong hand squeezed your thigh, leaving his handprint there, while your nails continued to trail reddened paths up and down the muscles of his back.
"Umm... ahh~ baby, that's... too much. I feel so sensitive right now, I think I'm gonna... fuck!" You bit your lip and closed your eyes
"What's wrong? Are you going to come again?" He smiled, and you nodded
He then decided to tease you a little more, gripping his cock and rubbing the tip against your slit and your clit. You moaned at the pleasurable sensation he was causing you and laid your head against his chest, feeling yourself come for the second time.
He lowered your thigh and put his hands on your waist, keeping your body stable. You lifted your head to see his little smirk when he saw your legs shaking.
"Do you still want to continue, or are you too weak? Don't tell me I'll have to train another weakly tomorrow?" He teased, and you patted his chest
"Shut up." You chuckled
"Nah, I don't allow you to mix with those bastards. You belong to me. No one else can have you." He murmured, a hint of possessiveness in his voice
"You're kind of cute when you act all possessive of me." You bit your bottom lip, running a hand over his scarred, broad chest
"Oh, so it looks like I can leave some marks on you so everyone can see you're mine, since you like this side of me and even think it's...cute." He licked his lips before turning you around against the wall and bringing his hands to your hips. "You're such a tease, princess." He slapped your ass, and you gasped
"Is it wrong to say I like it when you dominate me and draw marks on me?" You asked, teasing again, receiving another slap that made your hips buck back
"You're such a naughty girl, saying things like that while I'm literally about to leave you unable to walk properly for days." He gave another spank and you let out a moan that echoed off the bathroom walls. "Have you thought about how you're going to be able to train tomorrow?" He gave the fourth slap and you hissed, your fingers curling on the tiles of the shower wall
He brought his throbbing length to your entrance and placed the tip inside you. In one sudden movement, he thrust against you until he was completely inside you, making your body rock and your knees go weak. If it weren't for his arm around you, you would have probably fallen from the impact of the thrust that made your walls pulsate and contract around him.
"Ohh~ you fucking animal..." You gasped and he laughed
"Babygirl, that just boosts my ego when you call me an animal." He gave you another hard thrust that made your head fall back and your mouth open to scream his name
You didn't care if the others would hear, and if he knew they did, he'd go even harder just to show who was the only one who could make you feel this way. He reached a hand up to grab your hair and wrap it around his fist without hurting as his hips rocked against yours from behind.
You rolled your eyes when you felt him go deeper, pulling you against his chest and running his hand over your breasts, kneading them and playing with the nipples.
He lowered his lips to your neck, placing strong sucks and bites there that would surely leave a mark on your skin for a long time. He said he would make you well marked for the whole world to see, and he wasn't going back on his word.
His hips thrust faster and harder against you, making you feel him in every corner inside you, and your walls clenched around him, making him grunt and gasp against your neck and ear. You took one of your hands to reach his white hair, he let go of your hair and put the same arm around your neck but without forcing it, and the one on your breasts went down to caress the sensitive clit in slow circles that made you throw your head back against his chest and moan his name.
"I can already feel you close, princess... You gonna come for me? Gonna make a mess on this cock? Are you going to let the others know that I'm the one giving you this pleasure? I bet they'll love hearing your beautiful moans and the way you say my name, and you know what really turns me on? It's that it will never be their name that comes out of your mouth. Only mine." He growled the last words, thrusting harder
"Sanemi!" You moaned his name louder as you felt his fingers stimulating your clit faster. "Ohhh~fuckfuck, I'm coming..."You said between cries
"Not yet... Not yet, princess." He held your jaw and make you look up at him. "Holy shit, you look so pretty when I fuck you. Look at that cute, pretty face." He smiled before leaning in slightly to envelop your lips in a hot kiss
You moaned and hummed into his mouth, feeling your walls throb even more around him. The hand that was in his hair came to grip his forearm, which was still stimulating your swollen clit, so sensitive it made you shiver.
He pulled away from your lips and smiled, feeling you on the edge but frustrated for not having come yet. He tightened his hand around your neck enough for you to felt your breathing hitch, your vision was blurry and your body was getting limp and on the verge of another intense orgasm.
"Do you want to come for me?"
"Yes, yes! Please... I can't take it anymore... Please, Sanemi." You begged, tears rolling down your face
"Go ahead, do it for me, princess." He ordered, and you came undone as soon as he order you to
You gasped, and he wrapped his strong arms around you, pressing your body against the wall and spreading your legs a little wider while still thrusting against you until you felt his cock twitch inside you and soon filled you with his hot seed, which spurted out and dripped down your thighs.
You leaned your forehead against your forearm, leaned on the wall as you caught your breath. He pulled his cock out of you and pushed the dripping wetness back in before turning you around and hugging you, running a hand through your wet hair and kissing the top of your head.
"Are you okay?" He asked, pulling away slightly to meet your face, and you nodded with a smile
"Yeah... But I don't think I'll be able to walk properly tomorrow." You joked
"I'll take care of you then. You're off training tomorrow, but when I come back you better get ready because there will be more." He said, and you giggled
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Sage was stood at the top of the staircase, peering into the depths of the library. Victoria had started to walk away from Homelander, but he followed after her, almost as though he couldn’t comprehend letting her go. Catching up with her, Sage watched as he wrapped a hand around her wrist, turning her around and drawing her back towards him. Victoria didn’t complain or protest. A hand went to his chest and he picked up his right hand to tuck strands of her hair behind her ear, his own head bowed and forehead almost pressing to hers.
She kept on watching the two of them. They didn’t say anything. They just stood there silently, almost as though they could communicate without words. Sage thought about everything that Homelander had done in the past and wondered if his actions might’ve been different if there was no Victoria. Sage knew all about how she’d ran off with Supersonic, the two of them intending on starting a new life in England. It hadn’t worked out because Homelander had found them. But what if he hadn’t? Would Victoria still be with Alex or would Homelander's pull be too strong for her to ignore and she’d have ended up right back where she currently was?
Lost in her own thoughts, Sage almost didn’t hear the footsteps approach next to her. She glanced out of the corner of her eye, noticing the woman with the bobbed red hair, dressed in a form fitting black suit with a white shirt. Daniella. She seemed to be Victoria’s manager, PR expert, finance guru and, on top of that, the only friend she had who she could speak to considering Starlight was on the run and in hiding.
“The two of them together are becoming quite an issue,” Sage said and Daniella just hummed an agreement with her. She knew that. She knew that the two of them still had something between them. Victoria had even admitted it to herself. “You know her better than anyone. Will she ever truly walk away from him?”
“Do you think he would ever let her?” Daniella shot back, but Sage just shook her head.
“That’s not the question I asked.”
“No, but I’m not sure I want to give you the answer to the question you asked,” Daniella said and that told Sage all that she needed to know. She nodded in understanding before folding her arms over her chest as Victoria said something to Homelander and he smirked, teeth bared.
Sage was surprised he couldn’t hear them talking about him, but she guessed he was too wrapped up in his wife standing in front of him. Victoria seemed to chuckle at something too, her hand still against his chest as she looked away, leaning closer to him, head turned to the side and Homelander bent slightly to kiss her on the top of her head.
“She’s a distraction to him,” Sage said.
“Smartest woman alive must’ve known that was going to be an issue, surely,” Daniella said with a dry tone and a wriggle of her eyebrows. Sage nodded, agreeing entirely with what she was saying. She had seen it. She had known it for a long time.
“But you must also know that he’s a distraction to her. The two of them sneak around in the shadows…hiding…both of them wanting to be together but unable to be together.”
“It’s like some toxic Shakespeare tragedy,” Daniella muttered under her breath. “I love her, I do. She’s my best friend and I’ve been a complete ass to her in the past. I turned my back on her when she needed me the most because I didn’t see it. But this…the two of them…I don’t know how much longer it can go on for. They can’t keep hiding in the shadows. They’re going to get caught eventually and when they do we both know who will come off worse.”
“It would ruin Victoria’s campaign, yes,” Sage concurred with Daniella. “But it also goes against everything Homelander has been pushing: that supes are superior to humans. Everyone knows he is married to a human, but the idea of them thinking that he tip-toed around her…treated her as an equal…is weakened by her…well, that wouldn’t go down too well, would it?”
Daniella suspected not.
“The two of them could mutually destroy each other,” Sage concluded. “Especially with the secrets they keep for each other.”
“Then what do you think is going to happen?” Daniella questioned, folding her arms over her chest and dropping her hip.
She watched the sight in front of her, seeing how Homelander curled a finger underneath Victoria’s chin, tilting it up and letting his thumb make circles against her skin just by her bottom lip.
“Fuck knows,” Sage confessed. “I don’t see either of them letting the other go, despite her insisting that they’re not together. Does that look like the face of someone who wants a divorce anytime soon?”
“No,” Daniella said.
“The only way either of them will part is if one of them dies,” Sage said bluntly, Daniella’s eyes widening at the comment. Sage looked the other woman in the eye. “And we both know Victoria is the one who is likely to die, not Homelander. She’s weaker. She’s human. There’s already been an assassination attempt on her life.”
“What are you trying to say?” Daniella turned defensive and Sage shrugged her shoulders.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Because if anything happens to her then I’m unlikely to forget this conversation,” she said as a warning to Sage who just looked almost amused.
“You’re protective.”
“You tend to be protective over friends,” Daniella shot back. “You might not know that.”
“Oh, I know it,” Sage nodded her head. “But how far does that protection go? Do you not get tired of her running off to him whenever she can? Of letting him close? Of saying that she’s leaving him and then doing the complete opposite? Friendship can be strong, yes, but it can be broken.”
“I’m not turning my back on her.”
“That might be easy to say here and now,” Sage said, “but if this keeps on going then I doubt you’d feel the same way. Besides, it’s in my best interests if she stays alive. I have no idea what he would do if anything happened to her. I can imagine he’d burn down the entire world. No one would be safe. She’s his weakness, yes, but she might also just be the world’s destruction.”
Daniella gulped and wondered if Sage had a point. He was doing a pretty good job of burning the world down himself with his move to the White House and practically taking over national security. He had far too much power. But what would he do without Victoria? If something happened to her then he would feel like he had nothing to lose. He had two children, yes, and he loved them. Sage knew that he loved them. But would they be able to stop him from going over the edge? She sincerely doubted it.
“So what? We let them keep on dancing this dance?” Daniella questioned as Victoria said something to her husband and he let her move from his grip.
“No,” Sage said, eyes flashing dangerously as she turned on her heel and prepared to head back into the event. “The music will stop playing eventually. I just need to find a way to turn the radio off.”
…
Victoria hadn’t told Homelander about what Soldier Boy had said when he had come to her. How could she? She knew that it would just create more arguments and she had seen her fair share of those. Besides, she didn’t think that Soldier Boy really did want to kill his son. She didn’t doubt that he could and he would if he was pushed to, but Victoria wasn’t going to be the one to push him to it. And so she kept the secret to herself. She wasn’t sure if that was risky because she knew Homelander had ways of finding things out.
But she would bide her time. She’d kept things from him before. She didn’t see it as lying if she never told him anything in the first place.
Waking up the morning after the event, Victoria had showered and dressed before heading downstairs to find Evelyn already there with Natalie. She kissed her daughter good morning and thanked Natalie for looking after the kids the night before. She ate breakfast with Evelyn, the two of them picking at scrambled eggs and toast as her daughter asked her if they could to the park and see daddy.
“Daddy is busy today, sweetie,” Victoria said to her daughter. “We can see him at the weekend…and we can go to the park for a little bit, but mummy then has to go to work.”
Evelyn’s face seemed to fall then and Victoria tried not to let it hurt her. She felt like a terrible mother most of the time. She knew she hardly spent as much time with her kids as she wanted to and she hated that she missed out on time with them. She loved them so much and she sometimes wondered if she was spending too much time trying to make a better place for them to grow up in that she was actually missing out on them growing up.
But Evelyn didn’t say anything. She just prodded at her egg with her fork and Victoria looked at her daughter, drinking in her features. Her hair had lightened and was almost a similar shade to her father’s. She had his blue eyes too. She looked so much like him and it made Victoria’s heart ache because she was still so young and she had no idea who her father really was. Would she ever find out? Would she ever find out all of the horrible things that he'd done in his life? What would she even think of him then?
“You know what? I think mummy can take the day off work,” Victoria said and Evelyn’s face seemed to light up at hearing her. Her daughter was three and a half and Victoria didn’t want to miss out on time with her. And so she had to make sacrifices to ensure that didn’t happen.
“Really?” Evelyn asked.
“Really,” Victoria promised her. “Let me go and get Ryan up and we can all go to the park…feed the ducks and maybe have ice cream.”
“Chocolate?” Evelyn asked.
“Chocolate,” Victoria promised her daughter with a wide smile.
She winked at Natalie as she left to go and find Ryan, guessing that the three of them maybe needed some time together and Natalie needed the day off.
…
Victoria knew that her security detail was following her and she tried to be as inconspicuous as possible, but she knew that attention was focused on them. She tried to ignore the stares and the whispers, focusing solely on Ryan and Evelyn instead. They had gone to the park in their local neighbourhood. It was much fancier than any park Victoria had gone to as a child. Then again, in her park the swings were missing chains and the slide was covered in explicit graffiti.
“Mommy, I want to go on the see-saw,” Evelyn said as Ryan pushed her on the swing, Victoria loitering to make sure that her daughter stayed safe. She hovered around her constantly, despite the fact she was stronger than Victoria ever would be. But she didn’t want her to use her powers. She wanted her to grow up without using them or feeling like she had to use them.
“Okay, ten more minutes in the park and then we’ll go and feed the ducks, alright?” Victoria said and her daughter just nodded.
Ryan stopped swinging her and Victoria helped her from the swing, Evelyn’s arms outstretched and reaching for her. She set her down and kept hold of her hand, walking by her side to the see-saw.
“Do you want me to go on the other side?” Ryan asked Victoria.
“Go for it, honey,” she urged from him and she helped Evelyn climb onto the see-saw, holding her by the waist as Ryan let his weight go and Evelyn moved into the air, Victoria helping her then go back down so Ryan was in the air, sitting behind her daughter and laughing as she giggled. Ryan’s own lips tugged upwards into a smile and he chuckled along with them.
For just those few moments, Victoria felt as though they were an almost family, able to go about their everyday lives with no complications. She wanted this to be her life. This was all she really wanted. She wanted to go back to work, but the work that she loved. She wanted to go back to researching and focusing on asylum and immigration legislation. She wanted to spend the weekends with Ryan and Evelyn, going to the park or to the cinema. She wanted to curl up on the sofa with them in the evening and watch whatever film they picked. But could she have that with what Homelander was planning?
“Daddy!”
Victoria was snapped out of her thoughts, wondering if her daughter a mind-reader now. But as she looked up, she saw him by the edge of the park, landing there with a wide smile on his face as people came over to him and he just waved at them, thanking them for their support and how it was good to see them. That was the thing with her husband, she knew he never meant what he said to members of the public, but he was always switched on.
“Mommy, daddy’s here,” Evelyn said and Victoria just nodded her head almost curtly.
“Yeah, he is,” she said and she saw Ryan’s face whiten, his hands gripping the handle of the see-saw so hard that Victoria suspected her might snap it off.
“Hi, guys! How’re you doing! Great to see ya…I’m actually here to see my wife and kids…thanks a lot,” Homelander spoke and Victoria stood by the see-saw, but Evelyn had other ideas. She started to dart off towards her father, Victoria watching her intently as Homelander crouched down, arms outstretched in front of his body to catch her.
Once she was sure that Evelyn was safe with Homelander, she went over to Ryan, seeing the anger in his face. Standing in front of him and blocking his view of his father, Victoria pressed a hand to his cheek.
“You can go,” she assured him. “You don’t need to stay.”
“Why is he here?”
“I don’t know, honey,” Victoria answered him honestly and he set his narrowed gaze on her. He could tell that she wasn’t lying. She really had no idea he was going to show up. “But I don’t want us to attract attention to ourselves in public, alright?”
“Ryan.”
Homelander spoke his son’s name and Victoria turned around, standing in front of the boy.
“John, not now,” she urged from him. He looked her in the eye and shrugged.
“I think this temper tantrum has gone on long enough,” Homelander declared and Victoria wondered just what had brought this on. He had said that he would give Ryan time, but she also knew that her husband was impatient. He didn’t do well with waiting for things to come to him.
“Temper tantrum?” Ryan snapped back as Evelyn’s small arms went around Homelander’s neck, her face pressing to his shoulder. He kept an arm under her thighs, her legs dangling down by his side. His other hand sat on her back, making sure that she stayed pressed against him.
“How else would you describe what you’ve been doing? Running off and making us worry? Staying with Victoria?”
“John, don’t,” Victoria tried to advocate for peace again, but she knew that was looking unlikely. “We can talk about this back at home, but not here in front of people.”
“I can talk about it here,” Homelander said with a shrug of his shoulders.
“No, you can’t,” Victoria sniped back and she saw Evelyn bury her face further into her father’s shoulder, clearly picking up on the tension. “John, let’s go back to my house and we can talk about it.”
“I have nothing to say to him,” Ryan seethed and Homelander rolled his eyes.
“You’re acting like a petulant child.”
“I know what you did!” Ryan yelled and Victoria swore she saw his eyes flash red. She bit down on her tongue, feeling nauseous and like she wanted to vomit, which she swore she might do. “I don’t want to be anywhere near you after what you did to my mom! You hurt her! You hurt Victoria!”
“I didn’t hurt Victoria,” Homelander said and Victoria didn’t comment on how he hadn’t said the same about Becca. “And what happened between me and your mom was-“
“-Shut up,” Victoria interrupted her husband, stepping towards him and hissing through her teeth, glaring eyes fixated on him and refusing to look away. She shook her head back and forth at him, her eyes not once leaving his and he saw that she was angry with him. He pouted and exhaled a shaky breath, wondering if he shouldn’t have come and Sage had been wrong.
“He’s my son,” Homelander said to his wife. “He belongs with me.”
“I don’t!” Ryan yelled back at his father. “I don’t want to be anywhere near you and I am never coming back to that Tower. Stay away from me.”
“Ryan, we can work this out. We belong together. We’re a family.”
“No,” Ryan snapped. “You’re a murderer.”
“Ryan,” Victoria turned around and looked at him with wide eyes, shaking her head. Evelyn’s brows scrunched up on her forehead and Homelander gripped tighter onto his daughter.
“He is!” Ryan snapped back and Victoria knew that was the truth, but it wasn’t as if they could go around advertising it without their being any repercussions. “You told me about what he did, Victoria. You told me what he did to my mom and what he did to you-“
“-Evie is here,” Victoria interrupted in a low voice, stepping closer to him. “I know that you don’t want to go with him and you don’t need to, okay? You can go back home and I will meet you there, but don’t do this in front of Evelyn, please. She’s still too young and I…I know I can’t protect her forever…but please…don’t do this here.”
Ryan wasn’t entirely sure if he was able to listen to Victoria, an anger burning inside of him at the sight of his father’s smug face that he wanted to react to. But Victoria was standing in front of him, a hand holding his arm and pleading with him not to do this here.
“Ryan, don’t push me away,” Homelander urged from his son.
“Go home, please,” Victoria simply pleaded with the boy and he nodded tightly before turning on his heel and walking away, taking off into the sky without looking back.
Victoria turned back around and looked at Homelander, stepping closer to him and holding her hands out, taking Evelyn from him and he didn’t fight her. In fact, his daughter was reaching out for her mother.
“What was that?” Victoria demanded, trying to keep her tone even so that she didn’t scare Evelyn any further than she’d been scared. “What were you playing at, John?”
“I came to talk to my son because I need to work things out with him.”
“I told you that he needed time.”
“And he’s had plenty of time,” Homelander retorted. “We need to put on a united front. I need my children by my side even if I can’t have my wife.”
Your children aren’t going to be used in a pawn in this war you’ve started,” Victoria said determinedly. “And I’m not going to let you use them.”
She began to walk away, Homelander watching as her skirt caught around her legs, the heels of her ankle boots clicking firmly against the ground and her white jumper falling down one shoulder. He was tempted to go after her, his fingers itching as he put them on his hips. He wanted to reach out for her, but he didn’t. He let her go and realised that he had just created a bigger mess: a mess based solely on Sage’s advice.
…
“You need to keep your voice down. I’ve just gotten Evelyn off to sleep and Ryan is in his room playing video games.”
Homelander stood on the balcony of Victoria’s bedroom. She was already dressed in a pair of long-sleeved plaid pyjamas; hair tied into a messy bun at the nape of her neck. He could smell mint on her breath after brushing her teeth and her face had a sheen from her moisturiser.
“I need to talk to him.”
“Why?” Victoria demanded from her husband, shutting the doors and closing the curtains. She went to her bedroom door and turned the lock. Her laptop was open on her quilt, the screen glowing and bedspread crumpled.
“Because he is my son and I want him back with me,” Homelander said. “Sage made a valid point…this was all for him…for Evie…they should see what we’ve accomplished.”
“Sage?” Victoria checked.
“She had a point,” Homelander said to her. “My kids belong with me. I have Soldier Boy…I just need Ryan…”
“To complete the set?” Victoria said dryly. “No, John. You’re not using Ryan. I’m not letting you do that and isn’t it convenient that Sage was the one who had the idea that you should talk to Ryan.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, come on, John,” Victoria rolled her eyes at him and she saw his jaw tense up. “The smartest woman in the world knows what she’s doing. She knows that the one thing that will come between us is our opinion on the kids.”
“And why would she want something to come between us?”
“I don’t know,” Victoria said. “All I know is that she has a plan and I doubt it’s going to be a good plan or one that I want to be a part of. You know that. I know you know that too. So, you can either demand to take Ryan with you and piss me off or you can just leave him alone like we agreed you should do. You want him by your side, but the fact is that he doesn’t want to be there because he knows what you’ve done.”
“You know what I’ve done and yet you still stood with me,” Homelander pointed out.
Victoria was quiet because she knew he was right. She knew everything about him and yet she was still spending time around him willingly, letting him touch her and hold her. She let him get away with far too much and she knew she did. She just wasn’t sure how to stop.
“It’s late and I’m tired,” Victoria simply said. “I don’t want to get into this, alright? Just…go back to the Tower and let me talk to Ryan.”
“You really want me to go back to the Tower?” Homelander asked her. “I could stay here.”
“We both know that you can’t,” Victoria said to him and he wondered if she meant that. There was hardly any conviction behind her voice. “Goodnight, John,” she said and he sighed but nodded his head.
He left again, thinking about Sage and why she would try and sabotage him. What did she have to gain from that? He wasn’t sure. He kept quiet and just floated across to the building across from hers, standing on the roof and needing the air. His mind was whirling and he used his x-ray vision to spy on his wife. He saw her sit back down on the bed, legs cross and typing away at her laptop, but she soon became frustrated. She tugged her hair from her bun and tossed the scrunchie onto her bedside cabinet.
She closed the lid to her laptop and Homelander suspected she was going to go to bed and sleep. But she didn’t. She put her laptop on the floor and kicked it under her bed before going into her drawer and pulling out a small purple oval shaped piece of plastic. Homelander’s brows rose on his forehead and he watched her kick her pyjama bottoms off before tugging the duvet back.
Her hand holding the device moved between her legs and he watched her turn it on and it buzzed lowly, her head resting on her pillows. Homelander felt his pants begin to tighten, his hand moving down to palm at his crotch and he saw his wife’s cheeks turn red, her breathing turning heavier.
But he couldn’t just stand there and watch. Instead, he moved his hand from his crotch and flew back to her balcony, knocking on the door. He heard a muttered ‘shit’ and she clambered around, putting the toy back in her bedside drawer before moving to her feet, pulling her pyjama bottoms on and unlocking the balcony door again.
“Did you forget something?” Victoria questioned.
“Yes, I did,” he said and she frowned as he tugged the glove of his right hand from his fingers, throwing it onto the ground and before she could even protest, his hand was moving beneath her bottoms and under her panties, touching her how he knew she liked to be touched.
“John,” Victoria gasped his name, a hand going to his wrist as he walked her backwards until her back hit the wall, his fingers toying with her and he pressed his other hand to the side of her head, her hips moving against his hand.
“It’s alright, sweetheart,” he whispered hotly against her cheek, seeing her close her eyes, tossing her head back and trying not to moan too loudly. “I know what you need. I know you need this. I know what you like…the right amount of pressure…how fast to go…how to tip you over the edge and you feel so good…so warm…”
Victoria didn’t say anything, not sure she had the words as he quickened his movements, hitting a particularly sensitive spot that made her bite her bottom lip.
“My good girl,” Homelander whispered. “You’re my good girl, Victoria…my sweet…perfect wife…”
She came undone moments later, collapsing back against the wall, Homelander still moving his fingers against her and enjoying the way her body shook and tried to twitch away from him, feeling overwhelmed. He didn’t push her too far, his hand moving from her and wiping his fingers on his suit. He lowered his forehead to press against hers as she closed her eyes, instantly regretting not telling him to stop.
“You think anything can come in between us?” Homelander whispered. “Nothing comes in between us, Victoria. You’re mine and you’ll always be mine.”
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
“Uncle Laenor!” A voice calls him the moment he passes by the library, Rhaena pushing her head out of the door “May I have a moment of your attention please?”
“Of course.” He says, only slight amused by the formality in her speech
Laenor wonders idly, where Rhaena has got her manners from, because it certainly wasn’t from her parents since on a good day it would be a toss up on who could give less of a fuck about pleasantries- Daemon or Laena.
He follows her inside the library to a small desk filled with open books and scribed pieces of paper written in a too tiny calligraphy for him to make sense of any of it from afar, Rhaena is waiting for him, almost jumping from a feet to another but she straighten out when he comes closer, speaking before he can ask any questions.
“I have been reading.” Rhaena explains, hands clasped in front of her like she is giving a strict septa a progress report, eyes darting to the desk and the myriad of books “About Aemond’s injury and how we can help with the recovery, and all the books said that you have to put something where the eye was supposed to be, because otherwise it will create other issues.”
“I see.” Laenor nods encouragingly at her “And what are you thinking?”
“Aemond deserves something pretty.” Rhaena looks at him with sharp eyes, almost as if daring him to question that statement “Not some ugly glass sphere like some of the books talk about, or other plain or uncomfortable things that they suggest, he should have something that makes him happy to look at, that makes him feel good about himself.”
“You make a very good point.” He smiles at the girl, fondness overflowing from his chest “And I have a feeling that you have a suggestion for me.”
“One of the books I read said that gems can be used to fill the eye socket, as long as they are the appropriate size and properly prepared.” Rhaena looks at him with eagerness on her eyes, her arched eyebrows basically begging him to fill the blanks
“And we both know a place
overflowing
with pretty gems of all shapes and sizes.” Laenor prides himself a bit, for catching what Rhaena is hinting at, mostly because he has done his own research too and well, it looks like great minds do think alike
“Do you think grandfather would help us?” Rhaena asks him, leaning forward slightly “He would send mom and us some very pretty jewels on our namedays so perhaps he would give me a pretty raw gem this time? I would take it as my name day gift!”
Laenor barely fights the urge to pull Rhaena into his arms and never let her go, to weep over the sheer amount of gentleness that this sweet little girl carries in her heart, he can see Laena’s love shining in her eyes, can see the compassion that overflowed from his sister and now lives on in her daughter.
Here is Rhaena, only eight name days, still such a young child, and thinking about what she can do for her family, for a dear person that has been hurt, willing to use her name day gift, something that is so very precious for children at that age, just to do something kind to her cousin.
They will need to protect this girl and her soft heart, he has no doubt of it, because there will be no worse sin in this life than to allow the ugliness of this world to taint the kindness that shines in Rhaena, the easiness in which she wants to give to others. They can’t have the world and the evil people that inhabit it taking advantage of her either.
“I think your grandfather will be overjoyed to help you with anything you ask of him” Laenor tells her kindly
His father is at many times a very stubborn individual, more often than not to the detriment of his relationship with his family, the gods knew how often he and Laena crashed about things and spend
moons
without talking, especially after she ran away with Daemon, but he loves them at the end of the day, in his own way of course but there
is
love there, Laenor has never doubted it not even on the darkest days of their relationship.
His father many not understand him, perhaps he may even wish Laenor was different from what he is, may be disappointed by the son the gods saw fit to give him, but his father loves him at the end of the day, loves him enough to love his boys and protect them, to claim them as Velaryons, to uphold Lucerys’ position has heir, and that is honestly all Laenor can wish for- His father may be disappointed in him all he wishes, as long as he continues to keep his sons and wife protected by his acceptance.
And he will love Baela and Rhaena even more now, for they are the last pieces of Laena that they have left.
Rhaena could ask him for the stars in the sky and his father would probably deliver them to her, a mere gem is
nothing
to him.
“You sure?” Rhaena asks and when he nods, she smiles a bit, looking pleased “Can we write him a letter then? To ask him about it, and we can ask the maesters about all the information we need so that we can send it to him too, as to hurry the process.”
“I have a better idea.” Laenor smiles conspiratorially at her, lowering his voice as if to share a secret “How about we fly there instead? I know they would love to see you, and then you could look at all the gems and pick one or two you think Aemond would like for us to bring back.”
“Really?” Rhaena’s eyes sparkle at the idea, wide and amazed “We could?! When?”
“Right now, if you want.” It’s early enough in the day, and Driftmark is not far, especially not on dragonback
“Can I go flying with Grey Ghost?” She asks, eyes wide and hopeful
“No, not yet.” Laenor shakes his head, chuckling when she pouts “A trip to Driftmark is much different from flying over Dragonstone, Rhaena. Grey Ghost doesn’t know the way there, just to start, and neither does you, so neither of you could safely complete the trajectory if anything happened to me or Seasmoke, and Grey Ghost has never left Dragonstone before, so I don’t want his first flight away from his home to be with you on his back.”
That is the problem with young children and grown dragons, why Laenor is deeply grateful that his boys have cradle eggs and are growing up alongside their hatchlings allowing them to discover the sky together when the time comes, his own mother had worried herself sick when Laena claimed Vhagar, the old dragon has a mind of her own even more than the rest of her kin, older dragons are more powerful of course, they can defend their riders with more skill if necessary and they know how to take them from one place to another even if the rider himself doesn’t know the way, but they are more unpredictable, they have strong wills of their own, the queen of them above all else.
Seasmoke wasn’t even that old when Laenor bonded with him, the young dragon had just started to fly when they became one, Laenor was eight name days himself, and even so during their first flights his mother and Meleys had to be close by, to keep the young dragon focused on the path they set for themselves, as Laenor grew he found a balance between the exploration Seasmoke craved and the need to get from one place to another in a safe and timely manner, but in the beginning it was hard to not let himself be influenced by the dragon’s will.
It is even harder for Rhaena, because at least Seasmoke was born in Dragonstone and tended by the dragonkeepers and Vhagar had previous riders and experience with humans, meanwhile Grey Ghost had hardly allowed anyone to
see
him let alone approach him enough to try to domesticate him. Most of the time he can’t even understand the commands Rhaena gives to him because he was never taught them.
No, Laenor will not have an inexperienced rider with a previous wild dragon flying over the sea anytime soon.
“But he will come with us, of course.” He is quick to complete when her expression crumbles with sadness “I doubt he would be fine with the idea of leaving your side, and we can ride together in Driftmark, I just don’t want you flying such a long distance.”
“Do you think grandmother will like him?” Rhaena asks, eyes hopeful “Do you think he and Meleys will like each other?”
“I am sure of it.” Laenor smiles at her again, gently caressing the top of her head, mindful of her hair “Your grandmother will be overjoyed to know you have a dragon of your own now, and Meleys will like him too, because she will sense how important he is to you, and you are important to your grandmother.”
“Do you think mom would like him?” Rhaena asks, voice soft as she lowers her eyes to her feet, hands clenching on her dress “Do you think she would be proud of me?”
“She would love him.” He says, swallowing back tears “Laena would be the first one to tell you how proud she is of your bravery, of how she always knew that your dragon was just waiting for you, a special dragon for a very special little girl.”
“I wish I could show him to her.” She continues, trying to smooth the wrinkles on her dress, still not looking at him but her voice is wet “I wish we could fly together, like she would fly with father. She always believed I would find my dragon, she was always my biggest supporter, it’s not
fair
that she isn’t here to share this moment with me, that I can’t share my joy with her when I shared my sorrow.”
Laenor finds himself unable to stop a single tear from rolling down his cheek as he lowers himself on one knee to look at his sweet niece closer, expression as gentle as he can make it.
Of course this joyous moment for Rhaena is also one filled with the cold Laena’s presence left behind, of course there is a bittersweetness in it that nothing could erase or make better.
And the worst part of it all is that there is nothing they can do to make it better.
This is just the first of many special moments in the girls’ lives that Laena’s absence will loom over like a cloud of grief, at every name day, every feast, every special day, there will be a hole where their mother should be and no one will ever be able to fill it. They can shape themselves around it of course, he and Rhaenyra and Harwin and the children, they can carve spaces for themselves around Rhaena and Baela, they can surround them with their presence and their love and maybe it will be enough to make the sweetness stronger than the bitterness, but it will never erase it, not completely.
None of them will ever be able to replace Laena.
“Laena is with the sea now, Rhaena, and I am absolutely sure she is watching over you, your sister and your father, guarding and loving you just as she did when she was at your side.” Laenor takes a shuddering breath as he gently tilts her head up with a finger to look at her red rimmed eyes “So I know she has seen Grey Ghost, in fact I believe she may have sent him in your way because she knew you are destined for one another, she is part of your joy sweet niece, even if she can’t be here with you in body.”
“I miss her.” Rhaena admits, chin trembling with repressed tears “I miss her so bad, uncle Laenor. I’m scared I will forget about her, that I will be so happy with our family as it is now, that I will forget her.”
“If there is one thing I know about my sister is that she isn’t a person to be forgotten.” He says, wiping a stray tear from her cheek “She was memorable in every aspect of her life, and she will be remembered Rhaena, not only by history as one of the riders of the largest dragon in the world, one she claimed at only five and ten, but mostly, she will be remembered in our hearts and minds, for as long as we want it. You can love this new family we are building, and we will help you never forget about her.”
“She is watching over you too.” The little girl says, blinking away tears, moving to hold his hand in both of her’s “Mom is watching over you and protecting you too, because she loved you very much, uncle Laenor. You, grandmother and grandfather.”
Laenor says nothing else, he couldn’t, not with the lump growing in his throat and the urge to burst into tears pressing into the back of his eyes, he simply squeezes her hands gently before pulling Rhaena to a hug, pressing a kiss on her head as she buries her face in his neck with a shuddering breath.
They don’t cry but they hold each other for a long time, basking into the warmth of the hug, of their shared love and grief.
Laena wouldn’t want them crying over her for the rest of their lives, she would want them to live, to remember her with love, to carry her spirit with them as a source of strength, not endless pain dragging them down.
They all have cried enough over Laena, now it's time they smile for her.
“Go pack some clothes.” Laenor tells his niece when they finally pull apart, caressing her head “I will inform your father and Nyra we will be leaving, if we go now we shall arrive before the sun settles.”
Rhaena smiles at him, squeezing his hand before bouncing away with a lightness to her steps that fill his heart with warmth, the knight takes some deep breaths, willing the sadness to retreat back to her little box, kept secure inside his chest, and only when he feels controlled enough does Laenor leave the library. He knows neither Rhaenyra or Daemon will protest their little trip so he isn’t in a hurry to search for them.
Laenor has someone else he wants to talk with first.
“Harwin!” Laenor calls out in greeting when he sees the knight hunched over some swords in the courtyard “Having a good time with those beauties?”
It turns out that since Dragonstone has not been properly inhabited since Daemon’s little stunt, save for the quick trips his own family has made none of them more than a moon at time, they have grown lax about some aspects, things no one truly bothers about because the castle is not actively being used, and the inventory of the weaponry is one of those things.
Harwin had jumped on the opportunity to do it when Nyra had brought the matter up, in her very subtle way of telling them that someone had to take care of it and it wouldn’t be her, and as such he can be often found in the courtyard with piles of weapons around him. Laenor is honestly quite impressed there are so many swords in a castle that has not seen an army in many years, but perhaps it should make sense, some of the swords are rusty and the arrows so fragile they are all but trash.
“Laenor” The man smiles at him, formality forced out of him a few days ago when Laenor kept correcting him everytime he opened his mouth to call him anything but his name “They are very impressive, even if some of it will need to be cleaned and some will find themselves melted to see if they can savaged into something useful.”
“I’m just glad you are having fun with it.” They both know that the duty would have fallen on Laenor if he didn’t volunteer himself. “But I will be honest that I’m here after something, can you do me a favor?”
“Of course.” Comes the easy reply as the man drops the sword he was inspecting “What do you need?”
“I will be taking a trip to Driftmark with Rhaena.” He explains, leaning against some boxes “A quick thing truly, but I would be grateful if you could spend some time with Baela while we do it, I don’t want her to feel left out and I think it would be good for her, to spend time with someone who isn’t her father.”
Laenor doesn’t want Baela to think she is being left behind as her family moves on, that she has no one but Daemon to rely on. Rhaena is easily the most open of the girls, easily engaging in conversation with the adults around the castle, while Baela is much more reserved, watching the new people with clever eyes and waiting until they give her an opening before engaging in conversation.
Grief is a hard burden to shoulder and he wants his sister’s beloved girls to feel as if they have plenty of people to share said burden with.
And Harwin is a good man, Laenor would trust Rhaenyra’s judgment even if he had not seen it by himself, and he is good with children as well. And besides he is more than used to spending time with little dragons, something made clear by the way he doesn’t even react too strongly to his request, merely tilts his head to the side.
“It will be my pleasure.” Harwin readily agrees easily “I do suppose you have some recommendations about what we can do?”
Laenor only grins giving the swords laid on the table a very suggestive look.
Harwin is not even a little bit surprised when just after lunch a little girl practically runs to the courtyard with eager eyes, he only chuckles, settling down the sword he was inspecting in order to give the child his full attention.
Baela is wearing plain clothing made of cotton in a style he doesn’t recognize so it’s very likely something she acquired on the Free Cities, all burnt orange and bright blues and nothing any lady in Westeros would be caught dead wearing voluntarily. Harwin just
knows
that Daemon will have a field day intimidating the living daylights off half the court at King’s Landing the second someone dares to make a snide comment about his daughter wearing trousers.
He wonders if he can ask the maesters at Dragonstone to make him a supply of medicine for headaches to take back home.
“Lady Baela.” He greets her
“Hi, ser Harwin.” She smiles back and gestures to herself “Are those clothes alright? I didn’t think my riding leathers would be appropriate.”
“You are already showing more sense than many men over half your age.” Harwin chuckles, remembering some of the outfits pompous bastards like to wear to hunts or even to training, impractical and more money than they are worth “This is perfectly acceptable.”
“Good.” She nods, even if Harwin has the irkling she was already aware of that, Baela squints at him, arms crossed over her chest as she continues “This isn't a one time thing is it? Just to appease me while Rhaena is away?”
“No unless you want it to be.” Harwin replies easily, idly tracing the edge of one of the wooden daggers
“Good.” She nods, looking satisfied “What will we begin with?”
“Daggers.” Harwin picks his own dagger from his belt extending it to her, pleased when Baela takes the weapon by the hilt rather than grabbing the blade “They are easier to hide on your clothing, even when you were wearing dresses, and as such you will be able to keep them with you without others being aware of it.”
Harwin is aware that even for a child of royal blood it will be frowned upon for Baela to openly carry a weapon, maybe especially for her being the daughter of a prince and as such protected by the royal guards, most of whom have too big egos for anyone’s good and will take offense to that, as if the girl being able to protect herself is proof of their incompetence.
Harwin has quite a few opinions about the competence of some of them, but that is not there nor here.
“They wouldn’t be expecting me to be armed, so their guard will be lowered and I can attack them by surprise.” Baela looks eager, moving the dagger as if simulating a strike against someone, her form is not that bad he can’t help but notice “Dad taught me and Rhaena how to fight, so I can throw a punch too.”
“That’s good.” Harwin nods “If you do already have the basics down I don’t see why you shouldn’t join the boys on their regular physical training, it’s more likely that men will be your attackers so it makes sense you learn how they fight.”
“Really? I can beat them up?”
“You can train with them.” Harwin corrects, half amused and half exasperated “If your father has no objections.”
“That’s the same thing, you can’t believe that
Jace
would win against me.” She rolls her eyes
And well, Harwin has to admit she probably isn’t
wrong
. Jace has many great qualities and many skills, but Harwin cannot deny that his son will probably be a better strategist and leader than he will be a warrior, while Jace is more than decent with the sword his heart is not into it, especially not while fighting against family, especially not wearing his fists, and his tendency to overthink his actions will always pull him back.
“I will talk with Daemon later.” He settles for, extending his hand to take back his dagger and securing it to his belt before reaching for one of the training wooden daggers he has found while taking inventory “But for now I will teach you the basics of weapon safety and how to properly hold them, then we will start with self defense.”
“And proper fighting? And
swords
?”
“Later.” Harwin says, moving to slight correct her grip on the dagger, her violet eyes following his movements with keen interest “Most of the time, assassins are more prone to using daggers or knives for their attacks, while soldiers or trained mercenaries will rather use swords, the idea of you having a weapon is for your protection in the case of an attack where the guards are overwhelmed or defeated, so you must first learn how to defend yourself. When you have that mastered with real steel we can move out to sword fighting.”
“Can I learn to use a crossbow as well?” The girl asks, a coy smile on her face
“I'm not much of an archer myself.” Harwin admits giving her an indulgent smile “But I think we can easily find someone to train you.”
Harwin wonders, briefly, how Lady Laena felt knowing she birthed her husband's perfect copy. There is much of Daemon in this girl, much of the Targaryen blood running in her veins, burning so hot it consumes both her and those around her, and Harwin just knows she will be fine when they get to King’s Landing, that she will not allow the whispers and the snot faced nobles to extinguish her flames.
He worries for the children in King’s Landing, he had worried for his sisters and brother first, when they came to the Red Keep for the first time and Harwin notices the nest of vipers and rats that the place truly is, but his father had been quick to send the girls home, to protect them from the cruelty of the capital, so Harwin could breath for a time. Then he had worried for his sons the moment they were born with his hair and his father’s eyes, a worry that only grows and grows every day.
And now he has more children to worry about, in a way he never expected to. He settles something in him to be able to teach Baela how to defend herself if it ever comes to it, to see how she burns with dragon blood and flames, because even if he will worry about her he is also aware that she will protect herself.
“So, how do we begin?” Baela demands, clearly impatient as she jumps from a feet to another
The knight shakes his head as he takes a wooden dagger to himself and begins to talk to her about the basics, showing the proper way to sheath and unsheath the dagger and how to wield the blade. Baela is a quick learner, one who is familiar with blade safety at the very least and before the sun starts to dip low Harwin is showing her some easy forms to practice her balance.
“This is not the first time you held a blade, is it?”
Harwin asks, one eyebrow arched as he watches her copy the forms he just showed with far too much precision and grace than a beginner should possess. Some of it may come from observing her father train of course, there are some people who can easily pick things up just from watching others, but Harwin doubts it can be only that, observation doesn’t truly prepare you from the weight of a weapon, for the way it feels to move with it, how to position your feet in a manner that will not make you stumble as you move from one position to another, no Baela has probably done more than just observing her father with a blade.
Baela only looks at him with huge violet eyes and smiles softly, the very picture of innocence, when she finishes with a flourish and a form he had not taught her.
“Does your father know?” He asks again, fighting a smile
Baela bates her eyelashes at him, smile turning malicious for a fraction of a second before the innocence is back in full force, looking for all matters as the most angelical young lady one could ever meet. Harwin is helpless to any reaction but to laugh and shake his head.
Later, he will adjust the rough outline he made for their lessons. He has a feeling Baela will be ready to train with real steel much sooner than he expected.
People always say that their dreams come to them at night, while they are asleep.
Helaena has never been able to relate to that.
Her dreams come whenever they please, often without warning, turning the world around her blurry and muffled as if she is surrounded by mist, taken from this world to another one, existing apart from everyone else. She is aware that she is somewhere else, somewhere far away, but finds herself both unable and unwilling to leave this piece of existence that exists for her eyes only, that belongs solely to her unlike anything else in the tethered world of awakeness.
A lady shouldn't be selfish, but Helaena thinks she is allowed to be when it comes to her dreams, they belong to
her
, no matter how confusing and jarring and painful they may be, how they leave her dizzy and untethered from the earth afterwards. They are not something people can demand from her, not something they can take away, no matter how unladylike they may be.
People also say they dream of images, of sounds and colors, of fantastical things or the most mundane ones, often they don't recall their dreams.
Her dreams are different, they are unique.
Helaena dreams of images sometimes, but more often than not her dreams are just sensations, feelings, thoughts that surround her out of nowhere and engulf her until she is lost in them, stuck in their intensity.
More often than not they don't make sense at all.
Helaena’s dreams feel like pieces of a game she was never taught the rules, scattered pages of a book she never read. They are handed to her without order, without explanation, and the universe just expects her to piece it all together, to make sense of the disjointed mess that assaults her senses over and over again.
More often than not, Helaena feels herself failing at this task.
More often than not the dreams overwhelm her to the point she can barely discern what is reality and what are the dreams, stuck inside of her own mind.
Truthfully Helaena doesn't care about it as much as people may think- She is not stupid, she knows what they say about her, what they whisper, what they laugh about when they think they can get away with it. She is aware of the stares, of the laughter, of the pity, of the disappointed and despairing look in her mother's eyes. Her mother hovers over her like Helaena is something fragile, something to be sheltered and fretted over, something to be
pitied
.
Her mother looks at her like Helaena has been doomed all the while being the one to guide her to her doom. She thinks of her as something to be protected as she drapes her in the green of war.
Helaena touches the green dresses and dreams of blood and fire and pain and grief, of loss and fear and destruction, feels her mouth fill with ashes as the screams ring so loudly in her head she has to clasp her hands around her ears and curl into a corner just to calm down.
Mother doesn't understand it, any of it. She doesn't understand that Helaena cannot control her dreams, she can't make them stop, she can't make herself more appealing, more ladylike, she can't make herself smile and pretend to care about some noble’s petty problem, can't make certain fabrics feel right in her body, she can't make herself feel comfortable in a sea of strangers, can't accept their touches.
She doesn't understand that Helaena doesn't
want
to do any of those things. No one seems to understand it, seems to understand
her
.
Her dreams are an escape from a world she finds herself not being able to truly fit in. There is safety in her dreams, in the shadows pity casts over her- No one bothers her because she isn't worth of the efforts, too simple minded, too lost in her own mind, they allow her to exist with her bugs and her embroideries because they don't believe she can do anything else, has any value outside of her hand in marriage and her womb for future heirs, and Helaena let's them, for why would she want their attention when she has her bugs and her dreams?
Her dreams, as confusing as they may be sometimes, have made her keenly aware of the grim future that awaits them all and Helaena refuses to bring herself pain before the world outside of her control inflicts it on her.
The first dream Helaena recalls is the most recurring one, the dream of
falling
.
Helaena can't say when that dream first started, because as far as she is concerned it has always been a part of her existence, a core memory of her’s, a certainty engraved on her bones: Helaena will fall.
Fall hard and fast, fall on
purpose
.
She isn't scared in this dream, she never was. No, when Helaena is swept into this dream all that she can feel is
relief
.
The fear comes later, when the dream leaves her mind and she is left with the sensation of the wind rushing through her, with the vision of the spikes, with the lingering “
finally
” echoing in her mind. Later when Helaena is stuck with the knowledgement that something so terrible will happen that she will think that falling is her best option.
She looks at Aegon sometimes and feels a dread so profound in her chest that tears gather in her eyes against her will, with no reason at all. She looks at him and for a second she sees a crown on his head and grotesque burns on his face and a shiver run down her spine.
Spools of green and spools of black.
Dragons dancing a deadly dance in the sky.
War awaits for them all and Helaena knows that the Stranger will come for them in it. That she will willingly fall in his arms.
Green is poison for dragons as it chokes them from the inside out, as it spreads like vines in their lungs choking the air out of it.
Is it possible to break something that was never whole in the first place?
Helaena dreams and ashes and blood greet her like old friends. Decades of buried resentment and hatred, of ambition and lust and power boiling over in a pot only she is able to see, their emotions clinging to her skin like the ashes of the burnt.
The Stranger hovers over them all, smiling at Helaena like an old friend.
She closes her eyes to run away from him and in the back of her eyelids she can only see the spikes coming closer and closer, can only feel and hear the wind rushing through her, can only taste the desperation and grief of herself.
She closes her eyes and wonders if it’s worth it to continue when nothing but devastation awaits them all.
But lately her dreams have done something they never did before: They changed.
They shifted right in front of her eyes, moving, cracking like dropped mirrors, retorting themselves as they dance and crack, clinging to her as if in desperation even as a strong pull tears them apart leaving her with nothing but mist and uncertainty.
Slowly but surely the green retreats as if sucked right out of their veins, as if gentle hands are carefully prying them away from their lungs and for the first time in her life Helaena thinks that breathing is not a struggle.
For the first time in her life she looks at Aegon and doesn’t see a bloody crown on his head. She looks at Aemond and isn’t struck with the bitter taste of anger and grief and madness and something
rotten
. She looks at Daeron and she doesn’t see a ghost, something she misses without ever having the chance to have in the first place.
She looks at her older sister and there is not an abyss separating them, she looks at Rhaenyra and there is no bitterness, no grief, no blood and dead children creating a barrier between them. She reaches out and she can touch her sister, she can feel her warmth, she can be at the end of her concern, of her smiles.
Helaena never thought that her dreams could change, for they never did. But now, there is a fire burning inside of herself, something hungry and desperate, something she didn’t even knew she had in her, because Helaena understands now that her dreams are not set in stone, that they are
warnings
rather than predictions.
It would be utterly foolish of her to not listen to them, to not forge herself and her brothers a new path away from the bloodshed, away from the pain.
Helaena sees the Stranger and she clutches her family close to her chest, she holds them in her hands and she shakes her head at him.
No.
No
.
He can’t have them.
He can’t take them from her, he can’t ruin this thing they are building with their older sister and her family, Helaena will not allow it.
The universe will not continue to break this fragile thing they are just now repairing, this bond they are building day by day, tear by tear, smile by smile, touch by touch.
Spools of green and spools of black, spinning, spinning, always spinning weaving a tapestry of destruction, of a family tearing itself apart in a vicious cycle of loss and senseless and empty revenge.
Helaena is tired of it.
Tired of seeing the dragons dancing as the world burns beneath them, tired of looking at her brothers and seeing nothing but death, tired of looking at her sister and her family and being faced with fear and grief and pain, tired of having the universe tell her that she is doomed to fall, that her world will crumble and she will be left with nothing but the desire to end it all.
No.
Helaena will not allow it.
She will break the wheel if that is what it takes to stop the spinning.
She will use her voice, she will make herself be loud for the first time in her life because Helaena is tired of being quiet. She is tired of making herself small and invisible so that she is not seen, so that she is not the target of angry touches and angry voices, she is tired of holding her dreams to her chest in order to be ladylike, in order to fit in a world that will never accept her.
Her mother tells her that Helaena has a duty to the realm, a duty to her family.
Her grandfather tells her that she was born to wear a crown.
They are not wrong.
Helaena has a duty to the realm, a duty to her family. Helaena was born to wear a crown.
But Helaena is tired of being the doll they move as they please, of being the fragile butterfly they cage in their hands, the sacrificial lamb they lead to the altar with a smile and her eyes covered so she can’t see the blade ready to slit her throat.
Helaena is not a tower, she is not a victim.
Helaena is a dragon and she was not made to be earthbound, to be led on a leash, to follow obedient and quiet, to suffer in silence, to drown in the darkness of her mind.
Sister showed her that her dreams can be changed, that there is a new path to be walked, a new road to be trailed, one that isn’t filled with the nightmares that have weighed on her shoulders since birth.
Her duty is to her family and Helaena is suddenly very aware of
who
her family is.
Her duty is to the realm and that means protecting them from becoming the victims of a senseless war of greed and anger.
She will wear a crown but this time Helaena will choose the king that she will stand beside.
She will be a
queen
, not a puppet, not a doll, not a living ghost haunting the Red Keep.
Helaena will use her dreams, rather than be used by them. She will change her fate, she will change the fate of her family because they don’t deserve it.
Her sister, her brothers, her nephews, her uncles, her cousins.
They will not be taken from her, not when Helaena knows that there is something she can do, not when she is finally aware of the true weight of her dreams.
Daenys saved their family with her dreams.
Helaena will do the same.
It will not be easy, she knows that, is utterly aware that even when something seems to have been fixed, it is not a guarantee that something equally as bad is not just waiting around the corner. Aemond didn’t lose an eye to claim his dragon, yet a greedy man took it from him, yet her little brother is still burdened by that pain, and Helaena is well aware that she can’t relax, she can’t just stand there and let things run it’s course because that would be counterproductive.
No, Helaena has to take control of her life and her fate if she wants to avoid falling.
That means she has first and foremost to stop being afraid of it.
For most of her life Helaena has avoided windows and high towers, she avoids looking out of them, she avoids even coming close to one because everytime she does she feels the dream gripping her mind, choking her from inside out with the vision of the spikes coming closer and closer.
She has been trying lately, since they arrived at Dragonstone, to look out of them more often, to enjoy the view of the sky outside. It’s easier here, there are no spikes first of all, and Helaena is hardly ever alone and that brings her a sense of safety, she knows, deep into her bones, that Jace will not let her fall, that she can cling to him and he will hold her just as tightly, that even if Jace doesn’t understand her dreams he listens when she speaks and he is determined to avoid the grim future she whispers of.
There is safety with Jace.
There is safety on Dragonstone, on the walls filled with ancient magic that make her blood hum with pleasure and when Helaena closes her eyes she can almost see Daenys standing in the same spot, smiling at the dragons outside.
But that is not enough, even if that is a big step. So this is why Helaena finds herself quietly watching as her uncle bumps his head against his dragon, a soft smile on his face as he caresses Caraxes’ long neck before adjusting his riding gloves.
“Can I join you today uncle?” Her voice cuts the silence so abruptly that her uncle almost jumps out of his skin, turning to look at her with a hand over the pommel of his sword and she can help the smile that takes over her face
“By the fucking gods we will have to put a bell on you or something.” He complains, relaxing his hand and dropping it to his side, an annoyed humf leaving his lips as he leans against Caraxes “Otherwise I think you will lead me to an early pyre.”
“I was already here when you arrived.” She points out with a chuckle, amused “It was you who didn’t see me.”
“And you who didn’t say anything, just kept lurking.” He says back, rolling his eyes, “Creepy kid.”
Helaena giggles, because, well, perhaps she just finds it funny when people are unsettled by her.
“Can I join you on your flight uncle?” She asks again, clasping her hands together
“Of course.” He answers easily “What a dumb question, niece of mine, that is not something you ever have to ask for.”
Rather than answering him she just closes her eyes for a moment, tapping into her connection with Dreamfyre and calling her blue lady in a soft whisper.
Not unlike her rider Dreamfyre is a silent as a ghost as she approaches them coming from deep inside the caves that run throughout the island, her pale blue scales almost shine in the half light, the silver marking glistening like stars in the sky, her eyes so pale they look almost white, shining in their true silver only when the light hits them in the right angle; Dreamfyre pays Caraxes and Daemon no mind as she approaches her rider, bowing her head so she can nudge her head against Helaena with a starking gentleness.
“My beloved.” Helaena whispers as she puts both of her hands on her snout, pressing her head against her, feeling grief press itself deep into her chest
What is a dragon if not the other half of your soul? What is a dragon if not the only being in existence that understands you better than you will ever understand yourself? What is a dragon if not the parts of yourself you keep tight to your chest?
Helaena remembers how Dreamfyre called to her, how empty and dark her own soul was until the day she found herself reaching for Dreamfyre as if in a haze, ignoring the warnings of the dragonkeepers and guards alike, how everything around her exploded in colors and energy she never felt before, as if her own being was finally complete, as if the world itself was somehow different.
Dreamfyre was her teacher when they took to the skies, for there was no one else to do that. She taught her how to fly, how to feel the wind, how to hold the reins, how to move, how to make a home for herself away from prying eyes and cruel laughter.
But Helaena knows that Dreamfyre too is doomed to fall.
She sees it in her dreams, she sees her pale lady bound in chains as angry men attack her home, she feels her rage and her grief and her pain and her madness. She feels as the other part of her soul struggles and rages and tears apart those who dare to hurt her and her kin.
She sees how Dreamfyre falls.
It scares her, perhaps more than her own fall, to see her beloved girl in so much pain, so much distress. To know that the dance will take Dreamfyre from this world as well, that the dragons too will be victims of the dragons of flesh and their senseless war.
Dreamfyre presses herself harder against her, a low sound on the back of her throat and Helaena smiles with her eyes closed, burying her face against her and breathing deeply.
“You will not be chained again.” She promises, whispers it directly into her scales
If Helaena will not fall, then neither will Dreamfyre, for they are one.
She was often scared of taking to the skies, not because she was afraid of flying, not because she didn’t trust Dreamfyre, but because everytime she closed her eyes and the wind hit her skin she would be engulfed in the dreams again. She would see the spikes, she would see the ceiling tumbling down, she would feel it all like she was there, like nothing outside of those dreams could possibly exist.
But not anymore.
Helaena cannot be a scared little girl, running from her dreams, if she wants to have any chance of taking control of her own fate.
To save not only herself but Dreamfyre Helaena has to embrace her dreams at the same time she decides how she will act about them.
“Do you want to fly somewhere in particular, or just stay close to the island?” Her uncle asks, already mounting in Caraxes and binding himself to the saddle, his head tilted to the side so he can look at her
“I don’t have anywhere in mind.” She shrugs, giving Dreamfyre a last caress before moving to get on the saddle herself “I trust you to lead me, uncle.”
“Alright.” He nods at her, giving her a long look for a moment before pulling Caraxes in the direction of the entrance of the cave “I think I have the perfect spot in mind.”
“Lead the way.” She says to the empty cave, gently guiding Dreamfyre to take to the skies after him.
No one in her life truly talked about Daemon Targaryen.
Daemon is an open wound of a man, he leaves people bleeding wherever he goes, and not only physically, he tears into their very souls to build himself a home there, to claim them as his, to stake his claim not unlike a dragon spitting fire in order to protect his nest.
He leaves open bleeding wounds in those he comes in contact with, opens wounds who refuse to heal, to scar, who tear themselves open over and over again as if to never let anyone forget he once belonged in that space.
No one talks about those wounds, they nurse them quietly in the dark of their own minds, in a hidden corner of their hearts never to be spoken of.
Helaena knows her uncle Daemon better than anyone else, despite the fact that no one truly talks about him, only about the things he did.
She sees him, often, perhaps more often than she sees anyone else, saw him way before she even knew who he was.
She saw a young man with fire burning so bright and so hot he couldn't help but burn not only himself but those around him.
She saw a man drenched in blood with a feral grin on his face as he took the lives of his enemies, his blood singing in his veins.
She saw a man stuck between ambition and desire and love unable to handle it, destroying what could be beautiful because he didn't know how to deal with it.
She saw a man looking at a woman like she hung the sun, as if she embroidered the stars in the skies.
She saw a man holding a tiny baby like the most precious thing in the world.
She sees him with anger in his eyes and revenge on his heart.
She sees him angry and bitter and hungry for blood.
She sees him with his hands drenched in the blood of innocents.
She sees him, too, falling.
Helaena looks at Daemon Targaryen and she knows, as one knows they need to breathe, as the dragons know how to fly, as the fire knows how to burn, that he is the reason she will fall.
But it’s hard to hold into that certainty and in the fear it brings when she looks at him now, when she sees the way he softens in her presence, in the way he stands fierce and proud and angry in their defense, when she watches as his viciousness is directed at those who want to harm her and her siblings.
Her dreams are changing and Helaena thinks that this is the biggest change of them all.
If she is to stop fearing the fall, then she must stop fearing her uncle as well, for he is no longer the man who would look at her with contempt and even hatred, for those dreams have disappeared in smoke the night where he helped her find a safe spot for a spider and tucked her in bed afterwards.
No, the Daemon Targaryen of her dreams is no more, just as the version of herself who would willingly fall is no more.
They fly away from Dragonstone, leaving the island behind until they can barely make out the highest of the towers in the distance, Caraxes is faster than Dreamfyre, younger and brasher and he flies with almost abandon, rising above the clouds or descending so low he touches the sea, but he always comes back to her side, his smaller frame never straying away from Dreamfyre’s and Helaena's eyesights for too long, her uncle as well, turns constantly to look at them as if to make sure that they are still there, flying close in what she can easily identify as a protective instance.
Helaena smiles to herself and allows Dreamfyre to follow the red dragon at a leisure pace.
They don't fly for too long, Caraxes hovers above a tiny island just a short distance away from Dragonstone whistling in a last call before descending quick as a arrow, Dreamfyre circle the sky for a little longer before she too descends, landing a few meters away from Caraxes and promptly lowering herself on the grass.
Helaena let’s out a grasp of surprise as she fully takes in their surroundings, eyes wide with wonder.
The clearing they have landed on is
beautiful
.
It could easily be an illustration on one of the many books in the royal library, something almost magical in the way it stands, absolutely untouched by human hands. The grass is green and soft looking, the trees are tall, taller than any Helaena has ever seen and close to one another to the point that the clearing is a bright spot in a sea of green and she feels the urge to run through the woods, to know their every secret. There are delicate looking flowers spread around them in no particular pattern, explosions of red and yellow and pink among the soft white and lilacs, flowers Helaena has never had the pleasure of seeing before attracting butterflies and bees to their sweetness.
Peace settles over her shoulders like a mantle as Helaena exhales, trying to take every single detail.
“I hope I didn’t let you down with my choice of destination.” Her uncle says, smiling as he jumps from the saddle and immediately lays down on the grass, hands on his stomach as he stares at the sky “I used to come here when I was younger.”
“No, this place is
beautiful
.” Helaena shakes her head as she too lowers herself to the ground and very deliberately lays down so that their arms are touching “I don’t think you will ever let me down, uncle Daemon.”
“No, I will not.” He says, turning to look at her and the look on his face says that he too is talking about much more than a destination, when he takes her hand his’ are warm and calloused and
safe
.
Those hands will never bring her harm. This man will not cause her to fall.
Helaena smiles and closes her eyes as the wind spreads the smell of the flowers and the grass gently caresses her skin.
She feels peaceful, unburdened, and when uncle Daemon offers her a slice of a peach she never realized he got up to pick, it’s the sweetest taste she ever experienced.
The dreams retreat from her mind, as if this clearing is magical itself, keeping them away from her.
When the sun starts to settle and uncle Daemon calls her to return home, proudly wearing a flower crown she made for him, Helaena feels a pang of disappointment at having to leave this place where everything feels so easy and so unperturbed by the conflicts of the world, but she stores this memory to savor and revisit later and only nods at her uncle accepting his offered hand to help her climb on the back of Dreamfyre no matter how unnecessary it is.
Helaena flies, higher and higher until she and Dreamfyre rise above the clouds, until they are so high in the sky Helaena finds herself struggling to breath, when they start their journey home.
She laughs. Opens her arms and laughs as Dreamfyre darts back in the direction of the ground, faster than they ever flew together, roaring high enough to be heard down below.
Caraxes whistles somewhere to her right and soon enough he breaks through the clouds and the two dragons start to fly around each other, dancing in the sky as they both continue their controlled fall even at their high speed.
They are going so fast that Helaena can barely see anything around her but the blue of Dreamfyre and Caraxe’s red, can’t hear anything but the wind rushing around her, caressing her skin in a way that could almost be painful, her pale eyes flush closed and the dream, the oldest of her dreams threaten to rear it’s ugly head but Helaena reaches in her mind and she pulls it apart herself, she rips it apart like a page out a book and she throws it away, focusing on what is happening around her, on the solid heat of Dreamfyre, on the way her riding leathers feel on her skin, on the taste of freedom on her tongue.
She opens her eyes at the right moment to catch a glimpse of her uncle as Caraxes spins around Dreamfyre. They are mirrors of each other in that moment, open arms, wide smiles, his eyes closed as he tilts his head back and laughs even if the wind swallows the sound.
Peace settles on Helaena’s shoulders like the softest of blankets.
She is falling, but for the first time Helaena is not afraid.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Padmé caught him up in a hug. "You did it!"
"I did it," he said. "Although I think we'd better plan on me being arrested again shortly."
"Agreed," said Padmé. And then, "'I know how to play the game?' Really?"
"Still don't
like
it."
"Insane," she replied, shaking her head. "I love you." Then, more quietly, "Would you . . . actually have had everyone arrested?"
"It was a contingency plan," he said. "But it would have put me in the unenviable position of having taken over the galaxy after I'd promised my wife not to, and also, ruling a galaxy is not a responsibility I want to have. I have enough of those as it is."
Padmé laughed. "That's a relief. You'd be
so bad
at it."
"I know!" he agreed. "Let's leave the governing to you, and the moral uses of amoral powers to me. If there even is such a thing."
"That's a question I want to ask the Jedi Council, actually," said Padmé. "So, if you know they're going to ask you, please warn me." It was a simple request; but something about her tone was hard and queenly.
He smiled and said, "I have an awful headache. Let's stay in for dinner."
Padmé made a face. "Stay in my apartment, or stay at the Temple?"
"Is there a reason not to go to your place?" he asked.
"It is almost certainly being camped out by reporters."
" - oh. Sure, we can go to the Temple."
The apartment at the Temple was also being camped out, but by a single person. Unfortunately, that person was Yoda. He paused. "Is there any chance we can not do this now?" he asked.
"No," said Yoda, peering up at him.
"Thought not," he said, and sighed. "Then you had better come in."
Padmé, meanwhile, had palmed open the door. "Grand Master Yoda. Can I get you anything?"
"Answers I want," said Yoda, and sniffed. "Tea appreciated would be."
"Ani?"
"Something cold. Please."
Yoda hopped up onto one of the comfortable chairs. He sort of flopped onto the couch, and put his arm over his eyes. "Okay," he said. "I did
not
make anyone's decision for them. Well, you saw the vote, plenty of senators voted against - I wasn't making anyone's decisions, because that would be illegal as well as unethical. I did Force all of them to feel the way I do about slaves and senators and the Constitution and
doing their stars-blighted jobs
. You know as well as I do how long they've been slithering out of this vote. I refused to give them that option."
"Mm. And the Dark side, you used."
"Yes. You can't - using emotions to deal with the Force is the definition of the Dark side."
"Hmm." And then, unexpectedly, "But fear you did not use."
"Because having the entire Senate terrified of the one point eight million life soldiers I wanted them to free would have helped," he said. "
Really
. I used duty. Honor."
"Here," said Padmé, and handed Yoda mug of tea.
"Thank you, senator."
"And here," she added, joining him on the couch with a bowl of frozen yogurt. He rested his head on her shoulder gratefully.
"Fear, you can use," accused Yoda.
"Right now I can't use anything. Ask again when my entire sense of the Force isn't one big bruise."
"Important to you, this was," said Yoda. "Why?"
There was moment when the entire universe lined up, hot and and insistent and
ready
; and he'd probably have said something very rash if Padmé hadn't said, "You . . . really don't get it, do you?"
"If I did, ask I would not." It was almost mournful.
Just like that, the rage went away. "That's because you're good at distancing yourself from the physical," he said. "Too good, and coming from me that's saying something.
Most
people, not Jedi, just regular people, make no distinction between themselves and their bodies. In a very real sense, there is no difference. It's not hardware and software, Yoda. It's software that can iteratively rebuild its hardware on the fly.
"Everyone deserves clean water. Everyone deserves enough food. Everyone deserves shelter, and clothing, and medical care, and to spend their lives doing work they enjoy with
people
they enjoy. It doesn't matter if we're talking about a princess of Alderaan or the poorest baby born to a slave on Tatooine, all of these things are and remain true. And I dare you to say that just because we 'aren't this crude matter,' because one day we'll all be at one with the Force, it is okay to deny any one of those things to anyone
now
.
"Slavery is the denial of
everything
. It is not allowed, full stop."
Yoda said, "How bright you are," and sipped his tea. "Your actions the Council will debate."
"I'm sure," he said, dryly.
"Duty and honor only?"
"Responsibility. Maybe a little bit of regret," he allowed.
"Pff," said Yoda. "Come to the crèche tomorrow you will."
There was a short pause. "Yeah," he said. "Okay."
After Yoda left, he finished his frozen yogurt and then lay there, head on Padmé's lap, listening to the dull thud of his heartbeat. He sort of half-dozed, painlessly slipping between meditation and sleep, turned in to face Padmé's stomach while she balanced a 'pad on his head and did something. Probably something senatorial; she'd never shirked her duty, even to be with him. It was one of the skills he most wanted to learn.
He was dreaming curves again, and he was just conscious enough that it made sense to think about Padmé's curves in particular: not even the span of her hips, but the curl of her smile, the shell of her ear. The way she'd trembled when telling him that, despite all of their precautions, she was pregnant. His double-take, and checking the second time to find the swell of her belly under her growing breasts. The hollow of her throat as she mouthed the words "I love you."
He'd figured it out, eventually, in the months between Bespin and Endor. Mostly by reading autopsy reports on men he'd murdered: choking someone by Force collapsed their trachea, but didn't show any external marks. Only a very good doctor would have caught it, and Kenobi . . . wouldn't have had access to any kind of doctor, much less a good one. He wondered, occasionally, where his children had been born, and if Padmé had lived to see them or if they'd been ripped out of her corpse -
He threw that thought away, made himself contemplate sense-memory of naked, pregnant Padmé during those few last, terrible days instead. It wasn't good, exactly. He'd been coming apart at the seams and in retrospect Padmé shouldn't have been spending so much of herself on him, given their unborn baby. Even so, in bed at night she'd curled into him, as if he weren't the one tearing their world apart. As if he could be anything but awful for the child whose heartbeat was already so clear, there under the gentle curve.
He gasped awake, and suffered a weird moment of vertigo to find himself looking at Padmé's abdomen, which was flat because here and now Padmé was not gravid. "Under the curve," he said, out loud. "Write that down, please. It's important."
"All right," said Padmé, doing so. "Why? Does it have something to do with all the math?"
As soon as she said it, he knew it did. "Yes," he said, sitting up. "I need to get to work."
"You
need
to eat something! You missed lunch and a bowl of frozen yogurt does not count, and now it's nearly the twentieth hour."
"Um," he said, as his stomach informed him that, yes, it was empty. "Yes. I'll cook?"
"How's your headache?"
He checked. "Not as bad. I can work through it."
"But you don't have to," said Padmé. "You have no job right now other than to get well. I'll order something from the commissary - no?"
"Have you ever eaten in the commissary here?" He shook his head. "They are healthy calories. Generally they have about as much flavor as wicker furniture. Order out to Dex's instead."
"They deliver?"
"To here, they do," he said.
Padmé ordered. He turned on his 'pad - "Not to work, Padmé!" - and checked his comms.
Kenobi had written.
How in all the hells did you do that?
I could explain, but to do it yourself, you'd have to Fall.
Ahsoka had written.
Skyguy, I didn't think you'd get into politics the second I turned my back. I told Padmé to keep you safe, not throw you in with the rancors!
It needed doing.
Rex had written. One sentence, four words:
You have the army.
I don't want an army. I want you to live your own lives.
By the time he was done answering Rex, Kenobi had answered.
Make an attempt.
The opposite of empathy. Projective emotion.
Rex's message pinged while he was typing out Kenobi's, so he checked that.
Plenty of us are getting out, no worries there. Jesse, and probably that means we're going to lose Kix too. But you have us, all of us. If you need us.
There was only one reasonable response to that.
Nayc entye, Rex.
There was a pause, and then the incoming message pinged.
We know, sir. It's not about debts. You're our brother too. Whatever you need, whenever you need it. Vode an.
He had to stop for few minutes while the Dark came. He wasn't lying, his headache had gone down, but that didn't mean he was ready to fill his skull with it again either. The Dark was shit for healing, he had to use the Light for that, and the Light was elusive while he was feeling like this. It wasn't an emotion he wanted to lose, either, so he just rode it out.
Force. A
brother
.
By the time he was able to respond, Kenobi's incoming message pinged.
What kind of emotion can force the Senate to sit down and have
that
vote?
He replied to Rex first.
I'm honored.
Then he sat and stared at the screen for a while before typing.
The way it felt when I realized that Sidious was either going to kill or corrupt my son, and the only thing I could do to stop it was to kill him first.
He turned off the power on the thing before Kenobi could ask any more questions, although he knew they'd be waiting for him when he turned it back on. He sat like that, just breathing. That wasn't entirely accurate; he'd been feeling more than a little bit of regret at the time. At least until he hadn't been feeling any emotions at all, because he was busy being electrocuted.
"Padmé," he said instead.
"Yes?"
"I - we agreed not to, because of the war and the, the secret, but. The war's almost over and I've given up on telling lies. Do you want to have children?"
"
Yes
," she replied, instantaneous. "Do you?"
"Yes. I'm just not sure if. I'm so busy, and I'm still only dubiously sane, and - "
"You'll never be less busy," said Padmé. "But otherwise I agree. Let's see this war done and dusted first; let's make sure we'll be bringing them into a world worth joining. But, Anakin Skywalker Naberrie, I absolutely want to have children with you. You'll be a great father."
"I hope so," he said, and the buzzer on the door went off.
"Coming!" called Padmé, and went to go get the food.
They ate and he showered and they went to bed, where he didn't have any dreams at all.
Yoda was as perceptive as ever: he didn't have time the next day to mope around, because he went to the crèche as commanded and was immediately surrounded by younglings. They didn't, in general, care about what he had or hadn't done; even the ones who hid behind their crèchemates and approached him obliquely got over it in one ninety-minute session. He had only met about a hundred of them so far, and Yoda seemed determined that he should meet all four thousand of them.
Today, though, it was just one boy, padawan-age. He looked at Yoda.
"This Migs Ky is," said Yoda. "Speak to him you will."
"I don't want - " began Ky, before Yoda hit him on the head with his cane.
"Politely," said Yoda, and turned to leave the room.
He looked at Ky. Ky looked mulishly back at him. "Right," he said. "Yoda wants me to talk to you. Do you know why?"
Ky glared at him.
He shrugged. "All right. In that case, I'm going to keep working - "
"
Working
," sneered Ky. "On what? Bending the whole galaxy under your fist?"
"Math," he said, and sighed. "Is it that I'm Fallen, or that I left the Order?"
"It's fine to leave the Order, when you find the right person or the right cause," said Ky.
He nodded. "Then it's the Dark."
"Yes! A thousand years fighting it, and then
you
come along and suddenly all the old rules don't apply anymore? It's okay to have a Sith wandering around in the Temple, in the
crèche
? And we're
helping you
?"
"Ah. And I suppose telling you that I'm not a Sith won't help."
"It's not a very believable lie," said Ky.
"I hope not," he said. "Given that I don't tell lies anymore. Life is so much easier when I don't have to constantly keep my stories straight." Ky snorted. "What about you? What's your story?" Why does Yoda want me to talk to you, he meant, even though he pretty much already knew.
"Me? I'm nothing special. Just another failed Initiate, about to age out of any chance of becoming a padawan, and I don't want to join the Service Corps."
"So don't," he said.
"
What
?"
"If you don't want to join the Service Corps, you don't have to. It's not like a Temple-trained Initiate has no other marketable skills. You can go do what you like. Get a job in industry. Go take classes at one of the universities, assuming you pass the entrance exams. Go meet your family, if you like. The Jedi Order is obligated to continue to pay for your upkeep until you reach your majority, and you don't owe them a single hour of even so much as meditation in return. If you want, you can take them for a
lot
in a five-year period."
Ky was staring at him, again, but not in hostility. "I want to be a
knight
."
"Can you make a knight chose you?"
"Uh - " said Ky, looking at him.
"In an
ethical way
," he added.
"No," began Ky.
He cut in. "Then whether or not you'll become a Jedi is out of your control. Have a contingency plan. Have ten contingency plans. Stop acting as though the universe owes you anything. In my experience, the universe rarely cares."
"Easy for you to say! You had a master the moment you stepped into the Temple - "
"Sure. And I had four years to complete six years' worth of coursework, plus learning to control the Force, plus learning how to use a lightsaber, plus this whole 'Chosen One' bullshit making the Council watch me like swoops. I worked hard for my knighthood."
"And then you
threw it away
!"
"I found the right person, and the right cause," he said.
"What, Forcing the Senate to vote the way you want them to - "
"Just because I wanted them to free the slaves, and they did, I must have been Forcing them to do it? It's impossible that they would have voted that way on their own?" He paused, and then said quietly, "Freeing slaves isn't a worthy goal in its own right?"
"I - you," said Ky. "What do you
want
?"
"At this exact moment," he said, "I'd like to help you not Fall. You're about two centimeters from stepping off that edge, and I think you know it."
"I'm not."
"You were seriously considering Forcing a knight to chose you," he said, softly, letting the Dark up into his eyes.
Ky looked away first. "I - why would you want to help me
not
Fall? Isn't that the point of Sith?"
"Once again: not a Sith," he said. "Assuming you've had the same push-pull training I did, you've also had fun jumping off the northwest tower. You know there's a difference between a plummet and a controlled fall. I'm going to need more people to join the Dark side eventually, but I want it to be a choice, not a - not something you do in pain and rage and fear. That
is
the Sith way to do things, but it's not
my
way. Clear?"
"Alumina," said Ky. Then, "But aren't I already Dark?"
"Having thoughts about things you'd never, ever do is normal," he said. "As always, actions are what counts. I can tell you that you're not. Not yet. If you keep on the way you have been . . . "
Ky frowned. "Wanting to be a Jedi?"
He shook his head. "You're angry. You were ready to attack me, although as far as I know I've never done anything to you. You were ready to attack Yoda, and I
know
he hasn't. You're afraid, although I can't see why; you never have to worry about being hungry or not having work that you're good at and enjoy or about the actual horrible war that is tearing our galaxy apart right now but which will be over by the time you'd be old enough to go to the front. You're in emotional pain so acute that I got it after talking to you for two minutes. Wanting to be a Jedi is fine. It's all the other stuff that's the problem."
"Don't tell me to meditate it away," replied Ky warningly. "It doesn't work."
"No, of course not. Wait, was that Yoda's advice?"
" . . . yes?"
"Kriffing hells," he said. "
No
. Your emotions are always valid. You own them, and then, if they aren't emotions you want to keep - and if you're a Jedi, that's all of them - if they're not emotions you want to keep, you
let them go
."
Ky was looking at him with a kind of awed apprehension. "How?"
"Good question," he said. "Meditation eventually, but - come on. We're going to the salle."
The salle wasn't busy that time of day, midmorning. Ky looked at his dubiously as they went through stretches. "Is this supposed to help?"
"I hope so," he said, and stood up. "Okay. Face me."
"No! You don't have a lightsaber!"
"And?"
"And I'm not
stupid
. The Hero With No Fear? Unarmed, sure, but - you're better than that. You fought a
Sith Lord
and won!"
"I've fought four Sith Lords. I lost one and nearly got my master killed, won two extremely pyrrhic victories, and only most recently stopped being stupid and started bringing friends. And I don't see any friends here."
"But - "
He sighed, stepped forward, took Ky's lightsaber, and had the blade up against the nape of his neck before Ky even considered moving. "That," he said, switching it off and handing it back, "was pathetic. Try again."
Ky got himself into a proper attack stance, which meant it took him fifteen seconds to get the boy down. "Again," he said, and took him down in twenty. "Again," and this time Ky was expecting him to go for the 'saber, so the kick to his shoulder was completely unguarded. "Again." Ky was too guarded that time, and blocked a flurry of blows and totally failed to notice the foot until it hooked his ankle and tripped him. "Again."
"Is there a point to this?" demanded Ky, panting after that round.
"Yes. Again."
It took another four defeats before Ky's control cracked and the boy attacked wildly, out of stance. He reached with the hydraulic arm, caught and twisted and, in one smooth motion, had Ky on the mats with both arms pinned to his back. "Let me guess," bit out Ky. "Again?"
"No," he said. "Now you tell me how you're feeling."
"How do you think?"
"You still have to say it."
There was a moment balanced right on the edge between Light and Dark. "Angry. Hateful Humiliated," spat out Ky. "There, are you happy now?"
"Why humiliated?"
"I don't know if you noticed, but you just beat me ten times in twenty minutes."
"Did you expect to win?"
"No!"
"So you expected to lose, and you lost. How is that humiliating?"
"You didn't have to do it so many times, where everyone can see!"
"The salles are public. Where else were we supposed to do this?" A pause. "Ky?"
" . . . so it's my fault?"
"What?"
"That I," choked out Ky. "That I feel humiliated?"
"No! Your emotions are always valid. I just want you to recognize that it's there, and yours. No one else's. Got it?"
"Yes."
"No, I mean, not do you understand, but is it yours? Does it belong to you? Do you
own
it? So that you can take it and do whatever you want with it?"
"Yes!"
"Then take it, and bundle it up, and give it to the Force."
Another moment of stillness, of
decision
, and then Ky breathed out an, "
Oh
."
He let Ky go, rolled off the boy and to his feet and offered a hand up. "Now," he said, "I'm happy." It wasn't entirely true. Happy was the wrong word, and also, he was not insignificantly jealous. Then again, no Jedi would ever have dared push a padawan as close to Falling as he'd just pushed Ky.
"Yeah," said Ky. "Is this what it's supposed to feel like? All the time? The Force - it
sings
."
"Yeah. It does," he said. "Time to meditate. Well, I say meditate, I mean go sit somewhere quietly for a while and listen to the Force. Up for it?"
"Absolutely," said Ky fervently.
He was fine, too, riding a lift up to the observation level and more or less pouring himself onto one of the benches and then dropping into a fugue so complete he wondered if the boy had ever really heard the Force before in his life. Possibly not. He'd been thirty before the Force had stopped whispering, and the Force actually had a job for him. He checked to make sure Ky hadn't really just passed out before sitting down. "That," he said, "was a shit apology."
"But a good exorcism," replied Yoda, opening one eye to look at him. "Feel better now, you do."
"I'm not entirely sure he's going to be a Jedi," he said, looking at where Ky was starting to glow softly. It wasn't obvious in the bright, sunlit atrium of the training salles, but he saw it; and so, he was certain, did Yoda.
"Entirely sure I am that a Jedi he will not be," said Yoda. "But a knight, most certainly.
Most
certainly."
"And that was completely intelligible," he added. "You're slipping."
"Perhaps merely wiser you are."
"Mm. No. Definitely slipping. How many more like him?"
"One or two each month, perhaps."
He took a deep breath, then let it out. "Yeah, okay. Listen, I'm going to the library. Keep an eye on him. If he stays out long enough to need medical, do not let Bren give him azumenizol. He's not Dark; it'll do more harm than good.
"I understand," said Yoda.
When he arrived in the library, he didn't immediately jump into equations; instead, he sat down and opened up his comms, and checked the six separate messages Kenobi had sent.
Your son.
Of course you had a son. I don't know why I'm surprised.
'There were complications.'
Why do I even like you?
Anakin?
Good night.
He typed his response.
Luke Skywalker. The Jedi I never was. There isn't much to mourn about amputating that future, but Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa are at the top of the list.
You like me because I'm just as insane as you, but in the other direction.
He waited a few minutes, but when his comm didn't light up again he did break out his scribble program and begin reviewing all his old work, paying particular attention to equations involving integrals. None of them jumped out at him, which was disappointing; he'd hoped that was going to be his big breakthrough, the last of the concepts he needed before he could finish building the final picture. No such luck. He sighed, and then got to work on the Higgs and gravitons.
The Higgs was reasonable, or at least, the equations were well-behaved and only took him a few hours. Gravitons . . . were not. A lot more work had gone into them, because artificial gravity was all about controlling where they were and were not. He sighed, and settled into what was sure to be days worth of fiddly imaginary math.
On the third day in, he got a message that the psychiatrist from Corellia had arrived, and if he could take some time off he should go to medical to meet them. He saved his work and then did.
The therapist turned out to be a somewhat plain-looking woman, wearing the kind of sensible professional coverall that nevertheless screamed
spacer
. Her short-cropped hair confirmed it: this was a woman who'd seen a lot of time in freefall. He paused, just checking. She seemed kind of familiar.
"Are you going to stop staring and come say hello like a civilized person?"
"Haven't you heard?" he replied. "Heroes aren't civilized."
"Bantha fodder, Mr. People-get-trials."
He smiled, sat down in the chair opposite, and offered his hand. "Anakin Naberrie."
She took it, not thrown for an instant by his left-handedness. Her grip was firm but not ungentle; he could tell she had a lot of manual strength that she just wasn't using right now, and the fact that she wasn't turning a handshake into a pissing contest was a good sign. "Jaina Solo."
He blinked, and looked at her again. Now the familiarity made sense. Solo said, "Do I have something on my face?"
"Just the Force dicking me around again," he said.
"Oh?"
"You have a husband named Jonash who works at the Corellian shipyards, and a son named Han who . . . isn't here, but is a huge fan of Obi-wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker. Stop me when I get to something that isn't true. You're supposed to get an autograph no matter what happens. You, yourself, have not been having the easiest of marriages, given that you just spent eleven years in school while working part-time and raising what must be a pretty troublesome youngling. Possibly he was unplanned; he seemed like that kind of person. Part of accepting the transport to Coruscant and this interview was because you wanted a little time away, and you figured even if this is actually too good to be true, nothing bad could happen on Coruscant - please think more about that in the future, Sidious has made his lair on Coruscant for the last dozen years and plenty of bad things happen on Coruscant. If this works out, you want to bring your family here, which you can do but given cost-of-living is not something
I
reccomend. I might completely ruin your marriage - "
"Stop," said Solo. He did. "You got all that from one handshake?"
"No. I got that because I once spent a lot of time learning everything I could about one Han Solo, and that included his family."
There was pause. "Why?"
"He defied me, and then inexplicably kept not dying when I tried to kill him."
"He's
eight
!"
"I am aware. We're talking about time that . . . well, from everyone else's point of view, it's time that never happened, vision time. From
my
point of view, I'm forty-six years old."
"Hence the need for a psychiatrist," said Solo.
"No. There's no problem with cognitive disconnect; I just view it as a sort of time travel, discontinuous time, and that takes care of it." He hesitated, and then continued. "The problem is, and I am saying this to you in confidence as your patient, the
problem
is that, in that time which didn't happen and now never will, I was a Sith. For twenty-three years."
"Oh."
"Yes."
"Is that," began Solo hesitantly, and stopped. Then, much more confidently, she asked, "That's something you can stop being?"
"Well I
did
, so." He held out his hands, as if to say, 'nothing up my sleeves,' which was such a lie. "But it was not a pleasant experience, and it left scars."
"You seem pretty functional," said Solo.
"Seem being the operative word. When I let myself off the leash just a little, I go into a six-week coma. I'm not okay, I'm just good at faking it. I'd rather not have to."
"And all those NDAs I signed?"
"You're going to have to know everything. I only want to tell it once. Therefore, you get to be a part of the single worst debrief since the Ruusan Reformation. You will have to work closely with several Jedi Councillors. I don't know which ones, yet - Windu and Kenobi, almost certainly, but others as well. Some of the things will be military secrets, things that seriously threaten the security of the Republic. Some of them are going to be
Sith
secrets; I plan to burn Sidious' legacy to the ground, and that means every bit of Sith lore I know, which is pretty much all of it, is going into the Jedi database. Just reading you in is going to take days. If this is something you want to do, I mean."
"Didn't the Force already decide that?"
"On my end. I won't make you do this if you don't want to."
Solo said, "I have to go back to Corellia. If nothing else, I need to formally divorce my husband and collect my son, plus all the things I want to keep. I know what you said about cost-of-living, but this offer comes with housing in the Temple, did you know? And whatever else, you can't say the education available on Coruscant won't be better for my son than the education of a spacer brat."
"He did fine for himself," he said, not sure why he felt the need to tell her. "Lieutenan in the army, freed a slave at the expense of said commission, general in the
other
army. Councillor Kenobi isn't on-planet right now, but I can give you an autograph and a promise of another whenever the two hundred twelfth gets back."
"Done," said Solo. "And if you have time right now, we can start getting to know each other. You know far more about me than I do about you, and gossip is . . . "
"Gossip," he said.
"Exactly," said Solo. "And even if you think of yourself as forty-six, or whatever, your brain is still twenty-two years old. Not entirely finished."
"I - huh. I hadn't actually considered that," he said. "Neuroplasticity is a wonderful thing."
Solo blinked, then nodded. "Right, you - know some of that. The arm." She motioned to his prosthetic. The neuroplasticity talk was a pretty big part of getting one, and then he'd had to spend another couple of months reading up on it when he was redesigning it to not be utter shit. Now it was only sort of shit. He had to make time for his new arm soonish.
"I know a lot more than some," he said. "I was a paraplegic for more than twenty years. I, personally, redesigned the entire prosthetic-neural interface in order to get over some of the current inadequacies. I'd probably qualify as a neurosurgeon, if I went in for that kind of thing."
Solo nodded. "Right, so. We can talk about cryptic statements like that later. What I want to know
now
is, how much of what you told the media and the Senate is lies?"
"Mm. None of it."
"But?"
"The media didn't request that I tell the whole truth, either. I left out a lot."
"Such as?"
"I can defibrillate people with my bare hands," he said. "If you take that thought to its logical conclusion, I should be able to
stop
people's hearts just as easily."
"And can you?"
"Yes."
A pause. "Have you?"
"In real time or vision time?"
"In time that you feel you've experienced."
"Yes," he said. "Regularly. Though not often and not recently. Scared yet?"
"I've known since the moment I stepped on that shuttle that I was going to be dealing with someone dangerous. If nothing else, you are still the Hero With No Fear. The media might have embellished, but broadly speaking those were all things you did. No one who could do any one of those things, much less all of them, could ever possibly be considered not dangerous. I am curious about why you're trying to frighten me, but suspect you're just checking my mettle."
"Not untrue," he said.
"Tell me another true thing that you didn't tell either the news or the Senate."
"The list that controlling my eye color is on is the 'things I figured out how to do years ago' list."
Solo chuckled. "That, I knew. You can obviously reliably get it to happen, and making it not happen was vital to your survival for a few days, and I know how difficult it is to think, 'Oh, I'll just not do it,' and then actually not do something." There was a story there, and if she wanted to share it, she'd share it. "Therefore, you must be just as capable at getting it to go away. Is it - it goes when the Light is near?"
"Something like that," he allowed.
"You still owe me a truth. A new one, this time."
"I - the first time around, when I married Padmé, and after, I
loved
her but I didn't actually like her that much. If that makes sense?" Heart pounding in his chest, he went on. "She was just - so put together, she knew exactly what she wanted out of life and the galaxy and demanded that she get it, and it was. I was a walking human disaster. I wanted what she had, and I thought she could give it to me. Probably she could have, but not while I was also trying to be a Jedi. Getting what you want out of life and being a Jedi are pretty much mutually exclusive."
"Hence you leaving the Order."
"The main reason, yes," he agreed.
"And now?"
"Um. I still love her, but I can also see that there are parts of her that I really admire and also hate about her. She'll go out in public to make inflammatory speeches while a bounty hunter is
actively trying to kill her
. She'll support me far beyond the point when she really should stop. I got a promise that she'll kill me if I ever go evil, which is good, but . . . "
"You asked your wife to kill you," said Solo flatly.
"Yes?"
"Your
wife
."
"I owe it to her," he said, uncomfortable. "I killed her last time; if someone needs to put me down this time, she's the one who . . . Kenobi didn't. He could have, and really should have, but he didn't. I can't trust him to do that, if it needs doing. But my wife won't hesitate, and I'll - if she's the one pointing the blaster at me - I'll hold still long enough for it to be a one-hit kill."
"You're not a hound, Naberrie."
"What?"
"You said 'put me down,' as though you're some kind of dangerous animal. I know that's not true; you're one of the most intelligent people I've ever met." Her eyes were bright, passionate. "You might need stopping. I will grant, not knowing the full extend of your abilities, that it might even require lethal force. I will never agree that you, a person, will ever need 'putting down.'"
" - oh."
"Now tell me, why did you feel like that?"
He had to think about it. Finally, he said, "Sidious used to call me his pet. It was - nothing about that relationship could be called healthy, not ever, but I suppose I came to believe it in a way. Other people called me rabid, which wasn't entirely untrue for the first few years. By the time I got over it, the expectations had been set. Therefore: a rabid animal, in need of
putting down
."
"Mm. But Sidious deserved a trial."
"I get what you're saying."
"But?"
"But nothing. It's a dichotomy within myself that I hadn't realized was there. I need to meditate on it. A lot."
Solo nodded. "You do that. That was - far deeper in than I thought we'd get on a first session."
"See what I mean about the Force making these decisions? They're the right ones, obviously, but I'm oblivious so the Force shouts."
Solo chuckled. "Assignment for you, before the next time I see you: ask your wife how she feels about you having killed her."
"Okay," he said. It wasn't, but Solo was the one with the degree.
It would involve first telling Padmé that he
had
killed her, which was not a conversation that he wanted to have, now or ever. On the other hand, he wasn't under the impression that this was meant to be a fun time, either. It was meant to be healing, but he knew from experience that healing hurt.
He stood up and saw Solo out, and then pestered the secretary for a piece of fancy stationary so he could write out an autograph for Han. She took it, and promised to be be back in ten days. He automatically decided to give her a month. They shook hands, and with absolutely zero fanfare, she left.
He went back to Padmé's, and sat on the couch. As the sun set, he thought a lot about how things had happened, and how they hadn't, and what explanation would possibly be enough to explain what he'd done.
Padmé arrived home later, turned on the lights, and jumped. "Ani! What are you doing sitting in the dark? You scared me halfway to death!"
"I - " he said, and then his throat closed.
Padmé said, "Oh no. What's wrong?" and came to sit with him on the couch.
"I. You didn't die. I killed you."
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Hob has been shot before.
Of course he has; he’s been in wars. He’s seen the darker sides of life, the ones that lurk in empty street alleys and prey on innocent people with false promises of sweet nothing. Hob has been shot and shot other people—he’s familiar with the sound of gunfire and the blooming pain that comes with bullets.
That being said: Hob hasn’t been shot in a
long time.
The pain that pierces the back of his left shoulder is merciless, ripping through his chest and down his arm. A strangled shout leaps from his mouth at the impact of it. His opposite hand flies to grip the wound on instinct and the movement sends him off balance; his uninjured shoulder hits the glass and he drops down to his knees, sparing a brief thought toward guilt that it makes the cage rattle unpleasantly.
He can feel blood, hot and slick, seeping between his fingers, and he clenches his jaw against the sensation of it. The edges of his vision blur with tears, and for a moment he thinks he can feel his heartbeat in the whole of him—before he realizes it’s the glass rattling, and looks up to see his Stranger knelt inside, looking terrified.
Hob starts, through gritted teeth, “It’s fi—”
His Stranger’s eyes snap upward, and Hob has just enough time to follow the gaze before a kick catches him in the chest.
Hob hits the ground on his back with a yelp, one that breaks into another shout as his injured shoulder scrapes against the stone. He groans, blinking furiously through the pain, and wheezes when a heavy boot lands on his chest and pushes down.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you,” growls Andrew, leveling his pistol down at Hob’s forehead.
Hob’s head is spinning, sending the room lurching, and it feels like Andrew’s boot on his chest may as well be an anvil. He reaches up and grabs at Andrew’s ankle with both hands. “Well,” he coughs up at the man, struggling for breath, “It’d be real fucking inconvenient.”
Hob pushes.
Andrew stumbles back, thrown off balance, and Hob rolls to the side just as the gun goes off again, the bullet burrowing itself against the stone where his head had been. Immediately, Hob’s ears split into a furious ringing, high-pitched and overwhelming, and it catches him off guard just long enough for another kick to land on his ribs.
The force behind it shoves him to roll further, and Hob finds himself subject to a brief and terrifying drop over the edge of the platform, down into the water.
It’s far deeper than anything built into a basement has any right to be. Hob feels his body sink far faster than he wants it to, and it takes quite a bit of flailing to orient himself to grip the edge of the platform and drag himself up. His shoulder flares angrily with pain. When his head breaks the surface, gasping and spluttering, he catches a glimpse of his Stranger; the otherworldly man is banging on the inside of his cage, mouthing something that Hob can’t hear over the ringing in his ears. It looks like, for a moment,
“Not again.”
Andrew blocks the view, dropping down to one knee and tossing his gun aside, and grabs Hob’s hair to shove his head back beneath the water.
Hob thrashes. The water is frigid and dark, even more so as Hob’s blood spreads through it. His hands go immediately to Andrew’s arm, clawing and hitting. All of the movement makes it feel like he’s being shot all over again, and the pain of it makes him open his mouth to cry out, air escaping his lungs in bubbles through the water. His feet find no purchase, knees banging against the stone of what he can only assume is the submerged half of the platform as he struggles. Water rushes down his throat, into his nose, suffocating—
Andrew drags him back up by his hair. Hob chokes and gasps as his head breaks the water, digging his nails with as much force as he can muster into Andrew’s wrist. He watches as the man speaks, lips forming words Hob still can’t hear over his ears’ ringing, before anger darkens Andrew’s face, screws his mouth up in a scowl, and he pushes Hob back under.
I could die,
Hob thinks quite suddenly, as he punches blindly against Andrew’s forearm.
I could die here. I’m going to die here.
His Stranger’s gaze, soft and knowing, fills Hob’s mind. His Stranger’s fear, the terror painted so plainly on that face, burns at the inside of his eyelids. The shape of his Stranger’s mouth forming
not again
pushes ice through his blood.
Andrew drags Hob back up. The ringing in his ears is subsiding, replaced with the thick clogging of sound that comes with keeping his head beneath water.
“—give me the Estate,” Andrew is hissing, “And you want to
ruin it—”
Hob can see, just around the other man, his Stranger.
Trapped in the glass, stood back up now, pounding his fists against the inside like it will get him anywhere. There are tears in his eyes, running freely down those thin cheeks, desperation shining from the inside. Hob’s blood is splattered across the outside of the glass from the gunshot, and from the angle Hob is looking at it, it’s almost like it’s covering his Stranger’s chest, cutting across from one side to the other.
“Please,”
his Stranger begs, in as thin and broken a voice Hob has ever heard, “Not again, please—”
Hob’s eyes fall from his Stranger to the circle. Water and blood has sloshed across the platform from all the struggle, soaking atop the paint.
Andrew yanks fiercely on Hob’s hair, forcing his gaze back to the other man’s. “I’m going to kill you,” Andrew growls, “And keep that
thing
in its cage, and get the fucking money I’ve spent my whole life begging that old bastard for, do you understand? You
pathetic
little—”
“If you kill me—” Hob bares his teeth in a grin, reveling in how it makes Andrew recoil. “—then you’re coming down to Hell with me, Andy.”
Hob reaches forward with one hand, gripping the front of Andrew’s coat and
pulling,
dragging the man down into the water with him with a shout.
His other hand, blood-stained, reaches out across the stone floor and drags itself through the paint of the circle, breaking it.
“Hob!”
his Stranger shouts, just before Hob’s head goes back under the water.
Andrew is clawing at him, grabbing at shirt and jacket and skin alike, grappling for anything he can use for purchase. He finds Hob’s injured shoulder and
yanks,
and Hob shouts into the water with the pain of it, lashing out with fists and feet. They’re both fighting blind in dark, blood-clouded water—Andrew’s fist hits Hob’s jaw, Hob’s foot hits Andrew’s chest, something hits Hob’s side with a sudden burst of pain and so with one mighty shove Hob
kicks.
A thud reverbs through the water, and Andrew stops fighting.
Hob can see the outline of him, in the water; the barest silhouette. Something begins to cloud around his head, lifting up as he sinks. Hob kicks toward the surface.
When he breaks it, coughing and gasping and choking for air, clawing at the edge of the platform for purchase, it’s to the sound of his Stranger shouting, voice cracked and strangled with tears.
“Hob!” he hollers, banging his fists against the glass. “Speak to me! I swear to all creation, Robert Gadling, if you die—”
“Not dying,” Hob wheezes as he finally finds a grip in the bricks. Agonizingly slow, he begins to drag himself out of the water. “C-Can’t—fuck—g-get rid of me th-that easy.”
The water was fucking frigid, and Hob’s entire body is shaking with cold and pain, sending his teeth chattering and his bones aching. It feels like his limbs weigh tons as he forces himself over the edge of the platform, landing on his hands and knees on the stone. He coughs, grimaces, and feels his stomach seize; water, blood, and takeout stain the stone between his hands as he vomits.
“Hob,” croaks his Stranger, thin and weak, “Look at me.”
It takes far more effort than it should, but Hob obeys, shuddering.
His Stranger’s face is streaked with tears. There’s exhaustion and fear and relief all painted in those eyes, pale blue as Hob has always known them. Some detached part of Hob finds it a little funny, how pretty of a crier his Stranger is. Not a red face or runny nose in sight.
Hob must look like a fucking mess in comparison, sopping wet and covered in blood and shivering over his own bile.
“My name is Morpheus,” says his Stranger.
They stare at each other as Hob’s pain-addled brain turns over. Hob blinks. His Stranger—
Morpheus—
knits his brow. A soft frown pulls at his mouth the longer Hob keeps silent.
Rather abruptly, and without his permission, a laugh leaps from Hob’s chest, and he drops his head to let it hang, wheezing with amusement on his hands and knees, bleeding from a bullet wound on the stone ground of his greatest friend’s prison.
“What?” demands Morpheus, just a little haughtily.
“I wish,” Hob admits, choking a little on his laugh, “That I didn’t find that out in this fucking basement.”
“Well,” says Morpheus, significantly more haughtily, “You asked.”
Hob coughs out another laugh, because
that’s
his Stranger—his Morpheus. His love. Kingly as the day is long, and snooty to match it. He really is like a cat.
“Christ.” Slowly, Hob starts climbing to his feet. It feels like an effort to rival Atlas. His shoulder is crying out with pain; his chest aches from swallowed water and exertion. His side is stinging where Andrew hit him. His knees tremble like earthquakes. “You’re insufferable, do—d’you know that?”
“Hob,”
Morpheus breathes, and for a second Hob thinks he’s going to get scolded for calling a king insufferable—but when he turns his gaze to his friend’s, Morpheus is staring downwards, eyes dark again and wide with horror.
Hob follows the stare, and finds fresh blood blooming a dark stain from his stomach, welding the knife-sized hole in his shirt to the wound.
“Ah,” he says, “That’s—yeah, th-that’s pretty inconvenient. Anyway—”
“Anyway?”
Morpheus echoes, and it sounds like he’s ready for murder. His palms are pressed against the inside of the glass, but Hob can see them shaking; see the whole of him shaking, really, like a thin branch in a storm. “There is no
anyway,
Hob Gadling—you are severely wounded—”
“I wouldn’t—ah, fuck—” Hob hisses through his teeth as he bends to grab Andrew’s discarded pistol. His right hand presses down on the knife wound—because of course it had to be on the same side as the bullet—and he grimaces at the feeling of fresher blood running slick past his fingers. “Wouldn’t say
severely.
I’ve survived worse—”
“Under Death’s protection,”
booms Morpheus, and Hob shudders with the power of it. It’s no louder than he’s been speaking the whole time, but there’s
intent
behind it now, dark and all-encompassing. Despite that, Hob doesn’t find himself frightened like he had been in the face of Death’s anger; although he’s not sure if it’s because of the adrenaline or because of how hopeless he is for this incomprehensible King of Dreams.
“Stand back from the glass,” Hob instructs, and when Morpheus opens his mouth to argue, adds,
“Now,
love, or neither of us are getting out of here.”
Hob watches his friend’s eyes go wide, watches them wash away from starry dark to the pale blue he’s so familiar with, and spares his own thought of
ah, fuck,
because he definitely hadn’t meant to say that. He’ll blame it on delirium, Hob decides, as Morpheus slowly steps back to press himself against the far side of the cage.
The gunshots are loud, and Hob flinches with the recoil of each of them as it pushes back against his injured shoulder. The pistol only gives him three bullets, but even the cage seems to have given up. The glass shatters and falls away, and Morpheus is darting to freedom before Hob’s even tossed the gun in the water to sink with Andrew’s body.
Whatever Hob was expecting upon getting his friend out of that cage, it definitely wasn’t Morpheus hitting him with the force of a truck, burying that gaunt face of his in Hob’s uninjured shoulder and snaking those thin arms around Hob’s back.
Hob wheezes lightly with the impact; it sends him half a step back, but he’s always been bulkier than Morpheus, and even wounded it’s ridiculously easy to accept the sudden weight. His body is burning with pain and exertion, ears ringing faint again from the gunshots, and he quite feels like he’s going to pass out—and yet, slowly looping the arm not focused on his knife wound around Morpheus’s shoulders, Hob might as well have been in Heaven.
“Hey,” he whispers, smartly, and drops his head to press his face into that ridiculous hair. It smells like winter and lightning and black tea.
“I thought,” says Morpheus, quiet and muffled into Hob’s shoulder, “I was going to lose you, Hob Gadling.”
“Yeah,” Hob admits in little more than a breath. He feels Morpheus grip the back of his jacket, bunching the fabric up between his fingers. Swallowing, Hob adjusts his hold to press his hand gently against the back of the other’s head. “Me too.”
They stand like that for Hob isn’t sure how long. They’re both trembling, holding each other like one might disappear if the other lets go. Hob spares a brief thought to the realization that he must be getting blood all over the both of them, but Morpheus seems unbothered; he’s clinging to Hob like a frightened child holds their only toy in the world, leeching as much comfort from it as they can.
It’s when Hob is starting to get light-headed and doing his best to breathe through it that he hears the rustle of feathers and the sound of boots on stone.
Morpheus doesn’t move as Hob lifts his head to blink wearily at their surroundings. It’s just as dark and dank as before—it’s starting to smell like blood and mildew, although maybe that’s just Hob—but Death looks entirely unaffected, as she stands at the edge of the platform and peers down into the water, hands in her pockets.
“Well,” she says cheerily, turning her head a bit to flash Hob a smile, “At least nothing exploded.”
Morpheus tightens his grip even more on Hob’s jacket.
“Right,” says Hob, a bit haltingly. “Are you, ah—”
“Oh, no,” Death reassures lightly, like it had never even been a question. Hob can’t help the half-hearted scowl that pulls at his face, though Death only grins back. She takes a hand from her pocket to point down at the water. “I’m just here for him, is all.”
A hand breaks the surface, followed by Andrew’s head and shoulders, gasping and coughing.
Hob damn near jumps out of his skin. He rushes back a few steps, taking Morpheus with him; the Dream King follows willingly, hardly breaking his grip on Hob, though when they settle in place again his shoulders shake lightly. It takes a few seconds longer than Hob would like to realize Morpheus is
laughing
at him, quiet little huffs of breath into Hob’s shoulder.
“Oh, you
fucker,”
Hob hisses down at him, “You knew that would happen!”
Andrew is spluttering as he drags himself onto the platform, hacking water the same as Hob had. He’s soaked, dripping over the stone, and his eyes are wide and wild as they flash over his new audience. They settle on Hob, fury burning in them, and Hob tenses, tightening his grip on Morpheus.
“You needn’t come to my defense,” Morpheus mutters into Hob’s shoulder, though he doesn’t sound like he’s complaining.
“Shut up,” Hob snarks down at him half-heartedly.
“You!”
Andrew snarls. He scrambles to his feet, swaying unsteadily. Hob winces at the blue coloring the man’s lips. “You-You’ve ruined
everything!
Why aren’t you dead?! You a-and that
thing—!”
“Andrew,” Death interrupts firmly. Hob marvels at how steady her voice is, void of both compassion and condemnation. “It’s time.”
“What?” Andrew’s gaze flashes to her. Hob is reminded, suddenly, of an animal cornered, as he watches realization dawn on the man’s face, followed quickly by fear. “N-No,
no,
not after everything I’ve done, everything I have to do—!”
Hob hides his face back in Morpheus’s hair.
“Let’s go,” Death says, quiet as a whisper and yet clearer than anything Hob’s ever heard. Andrew’s pleas grow louder, more desperate, begging—and Hob hears the flap of wings and then silence.
When Hob draws in his next breath, the pain in his stomach has disappeared, healed over by the miracle that is his body’s refusal to die. His shoulder aches with the bullet stuck in it still, but it’s a pain he’d be willing to endure millions of times again, if it got him to where he is now.
Sopping wet and blood-stained, shot and shivering as he is, Hob Gadling is alive, holding the love of his life against himself, content.
“Alright, you two,” says Death, in the most elder-sister teasing tone Hob’s ever heard, “We should probably get you out of here before Alex Burgess starts to wonder why his son isn’t coming back.”
“His
what?”
Hob blurts, snapping his head back up to stare at her. Morpheus huffs another muffled not-laugh.
Death blinks. “Hob,” she says, an incredulous grin pulling at her mouth, “It didn’t occur to you at all?”
“I
thought
he was their
butler,”
Hob wheezes, “A-And they’re
gay!”
“Adoption, Hob Gadling,” says Morpheus into Hob’s shoulder.
“I hate you,” Hob complains down at him.
“No you don’t,” Morpheus hums.
—
Hob isn’t exactly sure how Death does it. She instructs him to close his eyes—so he doesn’t ruin the magic, she tells him with a shit-eating grin—and Hob does. There’s a feeling in his gut like going down a tall hill in his car, except ten times worse, and when he opens his eyes again, still holding onto Morpheus, they’re standing in the middle of Hob’s flat.
Huh, Hob thinks, staring at the open window where he’d let Matthew in. He forgot to close that.
Death tosses one of Hob’s throw blankets over Morpheus’s head, hitting Hob in the face with it in the process. It’s patterned with black cats, and Hob can’t help his snort of amusement at it; he’d bought it from a little gift shop some months ago because it reminded him of Morpheus.
“Take care of him,” she says. Her smile is soft and knowing. Hob isn’t sure which one of them she’s speaking to. “You know where to find me when you can, little brother.”
Morpheus makes a noncommittal noise. Hob glances down at him, hidden under the blanket, and when he looks back up, Death is gone.
“My car is still back there,” Hob realizes lightly. He can’t really find it in himself to care. Buying a new one will be pennies, with the amount of wealth he’s gathered over six hundred years.
“There is still a bullet in your shoulder,” Morpheus reminds him from beneath the blanket.
“There is,” Hob agrees. He reaches up and lifts the edge of the blanket. Morpheus blinks up at him, slow and leisurely like a cat woken from its nap. “Will you let go of me so I can get it out?”
Morpheus squints like this is something he has to seriously consider. “For a price,” he says, after a moment.
Hob raises a brow. “What could the oh so almighty King of Dreams want from—”
Morpheus tips up on his toes and kisses Hob into silence.
Forget Heaven—Hob has stumbled into Eden itself.
A squeak of surprise leaps from Hob’s chest, though he melts just as quickly, putty in Morpheus’s hands as the other reaches up to cradle Hob’s jaw in one palm, featherlight. It’s a chaste kiss, calm and gentle. Hob knows his lips are chapped, that he must taste like blood and bile and the water from the basement, and yet Morpheus kisses him as sweetly as though it were the most romantic thing on this plane or any other.
Morpheus, for his part, tastes like rain.
When Morpheus breaks the kiss, pulling away and looking smug as any cat who’s gotten the cream, Hob can do little more than blink, starstruck. “Yeah,” he breathes, an utterly dopey grin pulling at his mouth, “That’s a pretty good price.”
The small smile that tugs at the corner of Morpheus’s lips could fuel Hob for decades. That, and the cat-patterned throw blanket still draped over his head, flattening his hair and making for possibly the cutest thing Hob has ever seen.
“Let us remove the bullet,” Morpheus says, matter-of-fact, underneath the cat blanket, and really, Hob’s life has gotten so damn weird, and he’s adoring every second of it.
“Let’s maybe get you some clothes, first,” he decides, huffing a quiet laugh of his own.
Morpheus blinks, glances down at himself, and frowns, like it’s the first time he’s noticing his nakedness. Hob reaches up and adjusts the blanket to sit around the other’s thin shoulders, enveloping like a cape. Morpheus runs his fingers over one of the black cats with something Hob can almost confidently call fondness, his other hand holding the blanket closed around him.
“Modesty is a rather human concept,” Morpheus observes airily as he follows Hob to the bedroom.
“Well, love, not sure if you’ve noticed,” Hob hums, “But I’m human.”
“I suppose you are,” Morpheus agrees, with a thoughtfulness in his tone that Hob decides he’s not even going to try to dissect right now.
The King of Dreams hovers in the doorway of Hob’s bedroom as Hob rummages through his dresser. There isn’t much he’ll have with a proper fit; Morpheus is bone-thin and shorter than Hob, and Hob likes his clothes a little bigger besides. He had been planning to do laundry today, funnily enough; the idea of something so mundane after how the last day has been feels incredibly far off.
Hob comes away from his search with a faded Guns N Roses t-shirt and sweatpants he doesn’t ever remember wearing, but that at least have a drawstring, unlike most of his other pairs. Morpheus raises one kingly brow when Hob offers up the clothes, and Hob responds by tossing the shirt at his head.
Morpheus raises a hand and catches it with little fanfare, but it seems to be the only prompt he needs to actually get dressed. The clothes are, predictably, almost comically large on him, and Hob wonders at how this otherworldly man can look so put together even when the hem of his sweats fall under his bare feet when he walks. The cat blanket remains draped over his shoulders like a cape.
Getting the bullet out of Hob’s shoulder is unpleasant at best and an ordeal at worst. He keeps medical equipment in his bathroom cupboards—trips to hospital are lengthy and bothersome when it’s for a gun wound—but because the shot went through his back, Hob can’t exactly reach it with the forceps. Morpheus, watching in the doorway, puffs up like an alley cat when Hob holds the tool out to him, instead.
“You cannot be serious,” the King of Dreams argues, staring at the forceps as if they’re going to bite him.
“Well,” says Hob lightly, standing inside his bathtub, shirtless. His ripped and bloodied shirt and coat are on the floor beside the sink. There’s clean sweats waiting for him on the toilet. “It’s either this, or I have to find some real doctor to do it for me, and they’re going to have plenty of questions.”
Morpheus stares at Hob like he’s questioning whether Hob lost his brain, somewhere between the bedroom and the bathroom. It’s the same look the cashier gave him this morning, actually.
“It’s easy, love,” Hob promises, shaking the forceps a bit, “It’ll start healing as soon as it’s out.”
This is true. The knife wound in Hob’s stomach has already closed itself to a silvery scar, one of many scattered across his front and back. It’d been an interesting thing to learn, way back when; that Hob’s body will heal the wounds, but not the scars.
Morpheus looks up at the ceiling, and Hob recognizes the expression distinctly as one of a man asking for patience.
Very carefully, Morpheus sets the cat blanket down on the floor outside the bathroom and steps up to the tub, taking the forceps from Hob like they may explode. Hob leans down to press a kiss against the other’s forehead before he turns to present his shoulder.
“Don’t worry about hurting me,” he says to the wall. He feels Morpheus rest a hand on his uninjured shoulder. “Just g—
ah, fucking
Christ!”
There’s a pain in Hob’s shoulder like he’s been stabbed again, a horrible wet squelch, and then Morpheus holds the bloody forceps, bullet and all, out for Hob to examine.
“Jesus,”
Hob wheezes, as he takes the forceps from the other’s grasp. “You’re a right little monster, aren’t you?”
“To some,” Morpheus agrees, though when Hob glances back at him, his brows are knit, expression tight as he lifts a little packet of sanitation wipes from Hob’s medical kit.
Hob, in one of his conscious moments of wisdom, lets Morpheus clean him up with slow and gentle touches. He decides not to mention that he can already feel the wound closing by the time Morpheus ties off the last of the bandages.
They leave the bloodied wipes and forceps in the tub. Hob changes into his own clean sweatpants and tosses his ruined clothes in with the rest of it. Morpheus picks the cat blanket back up from the floor and wraps it around himself again.
“Not sure about you,” Hob says, softly, reaching up to card his hand through Morpheus’s hair as the other drops his forehead onto Hob’s good shoulder, “But I think I could use a lie down.”
“Yes,” says Morpheus, with such inarguable conviction that it makes Hob laugh.
They end up on the couch; Hob sprawls on his back and finds himself with a Dream King between his legs, wrapped up in the cat blanket, burying his face in Hob’s chest. Morpheus snakes his arms around Hob and seems to melt there, and Hob doesn’t try to fight the stupid grin that pulls at his mouth as he pets one hand over his friend’s hair, the other drawing idle lines up and down his back.
There’s a lot for them to talk about, Hob knows. Surely a lot for Morpheus to do, if what Matthew said about the Dreaming being in disrepair is as serious as Hob imagines it is. He wonders if Alex Burgess will be after them—after Hob, for stealing his prize and killing his apparent son. Hob can’t find it in himself to be sorry about Andrew. He can’t find it in himself to be sorry about any of them.
For now, though—
“Darling?” Hob murmurs. Morpheus hums in question. “Can we, ah… can we scrap the every hundred years bit, now?”
Morpheus lifts his head from Hob’s chest, adjusting a bit to lean up on his elbows, and there’s the look like he’s wondering if Hob is stupid again.
“Robert Gadling,” says the King of Dreams, very strongly, “If you think you are going to keep me away any more than my position demands, perhaps you’ve been struck about the head.”
Hob grins, wide and adoring, and is rewarded again with a kiss.
—for now, Hob is happy.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Astral Express
Caelus added Blade & 2 others
Caelus: Please welcome Blade, Jing Yuan and Kafkaa
March: YOU REALIZE THAT YOU JUST ADDED LIKE OUR SWORN ENEMIES IN HERE?? (except for Jing Yuan)
Caelus: Jing Yuan and Himeko literally fraternize with the enemy, this is fine
March: That doesn't mean we should be associated with them too!!
Caelus: Kafka and Himeko literally suck face at the back of the express. And I don’t even wanna get into what Jing Yuan and Blade do
Blade: You have no idea what we do
Caelus: I have my ways (Me and Jing Yuan engage in gossip)
Blade:
@Jing Yuan
You like 1000 times older than he is what are you doing gossiping with him??
Jing Yuan: He’s funny ok? Also you said you were gonna come over today, what happened?
March: I wish I had someone who could come over
Dan Heng: STELLE DONT SAY ANYTHING
Stelle: I wasn’t even paying attention
Blade:
@Jing Yuan
I didn’t have time
Kafka: Caught him with his bed unmade. Gotta teach him to be tidy so I made him clean the whole place
Caelus: ARE YOU HIS MOTHER?? LMAOO
Kafka: No but he needs discipline
Blade: I’m gonna kill you in your sleep one day
Kafka: K
March: Bro threatened her life and she replies with “K”, girlboss tbh
Caelus: This is so embarrassing for you Blade
Blade: I know your secret
Caelus: What?
Blade: I know what’s in your room
Caelus: EXCUSE ME??? HOW??? VIOLATION OF MY PRIVACY??
Blade: :)
Stelle: What’s in there Blade?
March: YEAH SPILL
Blade: Multiple raccoons and around 20 different trash cans. I think he’s trying to create a raccoon farm.
Himeko: IN THE EXPRESS???
Dan Heng: Ok so the scratching at my door wasn’t March?
Caelus: ONE OF THEM GOT OUT??
March: YOU THINK I’D SCRATCH AT YOUR DOOR???
Dan Heng: I put nothing pass you
March: I’M SO HURT RIGHT NOW
Stelle: You’ve literally scratched at my door before March
March: BUT DAN HENG JUST ASSUMED IT WAS ME
Stelle: WHO ELSE WOULD IT BE
March: IDK PROBABLY CAELUS YOU’VE SEEN WHAT HE’S DONE
Caelus: I knock like a human being not scratching like feral animal :)
Himeko: MAYBE WE SHOULD FOCUS ON THE HOARD OF RACCOONS YOU HAVE
Caelus: They are family
Stelle: I’m on the same relationship level with a bunch of raccoons
Caelus: Nah you’re kinda like an acquaintance than family really
Stelle: WOW I’VE BEEN REPLACED BY TRASH HOARDERS
Dan Heng: Isn’t that what you usually do?
Stelle: BUT IM HUMAN SIZED NOT A FUR BALL
Himeko: LETS STOP CHANGING THE TOPIC. CAELUS GET RID OF THE RACCOONS
Caelus: NO I REFUSE
Himeko: THEY’LL ALL DIE EVENTUALLY SO LET THEM GO
Caelus: THEY LOVE ME IN TIMES OF NEED
Dan Heng: Ok ouch
Caelus: You do that too Dan Heng but I’m trying to keep my family safe
Himeko: THEY ARE NOT FAMILY THEY ARE WILD ANIMALS. ARE THEY EVEN VACCINATED? DID YOU CHECK IF ANY OF THEM HAD RABIES??? WHAT PRECAUTIONS HAVE YOU TAKEN???
Caelus: THEY ARE ALL FINE HIMEKO
March: WHY ARE YOU TYPING IN ALL CAPS??
Caelus: SHES TRYING TO TAKE MY KIDS AWAY
Asta: IM REALLY CONFUSED ABOUT WHAT GOING ON!!!
Arlan: ME TOO
Caelus: I FORGOT YOU GUYS WERE HERE
Dan Heng: Let’s all breathe. Caelus throw out the raccoons
Caelus: How will they survive on their own ;(
Himeko: The way they did before you brought them in
Caelus: We are all focusing on the wrong thing here
Himeko: What should we be focused on??
Caelus: The way Blade was on the express but no one knew
Blade: Bro ain’t no one try a focus on that right now
Caelus: Idk but you could’ve killed us all
Blade: I got better things to do than prey on y’all while you sleep
Caelus: THEN WHAT WERE YOU DOING??
Blade: I CAME TO SEE POM POM
Himeko: What?
Stelle: That’s crazy
Caelus: Nah we need Pom Pom up in here rn
Caelus added Pom Pom
Pom Pom: What
Caelus: What is your relationship with Blade?
Pom Pom: Who the hell is Blade?
Caelus: BLADE YOU LIAR
Blade: I didn’t say they knew me
Caelus: THEN HOW DO YOU KNOW THEM
Blade: Kafka told me the Express had a mascot and I just had to see it
Pom Pom: Before I leave I’d like to say I am NOT a mascot I am in fact the conductor of the Express, GET IT RIGHT
Blade: I wanna throw you like a teddy bear
Pom Pom: Kill your self
Pom Pom has left
March: Nahhh bro upset Pom Pom
Stelle: Keep one eye when you’re sleeping
Blade: They’re smaller than my arm, what are they gonna do?
Himeko: I’ve seen them beat the shit out of Caelus
Caelus: It’s true
Blade: I should’ve grabbed them when I could
March: YOU WERE PLANNING TO STEAL POM POM???
Blade: I would have treated them better than y’all ever would
March: THEN WHO WOULD DRIVE THE EXPRESS??
Blade: Your mom?
March: I really dislike you
Himeko: I haven’t forgotten about the raccoons Caelus
Caelus: I don’t care
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
When Eddie awoke, it was to a hand running slowly up and down his stomach. He blinked the sleep out of his eyes, registering that it was morning, and Steve was in his bed. Which meant everything last night actually happened. A sleepy smile stretched his face, taking in Steve’s unruly hair on his chest.
Steve must’ve noticed he was awake, because he twisted his head to look at Eddie properly. “Morning,” he said simply, voice still scratchy from sleep.
“Morning,” Eddie echoed, moving the hand that was around Steve’s side to play with his hair, lackadaisical. He attempted to clear the gruffness out of his throat before asking, “You been up long?”
Steve shook his head, “A little over half an hour, or something.”
Eddie snorted. “I’d consider that long, but whatever.”
Steve let his head lie back down on Eddie’s chest, inching impossibly closer as Eddie continued running his fingers lazily through his hair. Their legs were entangled, Steve’s hand still exploring Eddie’s torso, dipping dangerously lower. The stiffness jutting into Eddie’s side did not go unnoticed.
“Clearly it’s been an agonizing half hour,” Eddie teased.
“Shut up,” he murmured. “Thought it would go away but it didn’t.”
“Unfortunately for you, it’s gonna have to remain unresolved,” Eddie informed, a bit disappointed himself as he took his hand away from Steve’s hair, letting it fall on his shoulder instead. He looked over to check the clock on the bedside table to confirm his thoughts. “Wayne’s definitely home by now, and I don’t trust you to be able to keep quiet. Last night was proof enough.” And they hadn’t even gone all the way. The thought of what Steve might sound like when they did was one Eddie didn’t let himself linger on, lest he end up with the same problem as Steve.
“Really?” Steve asked, surprise lilting his words. “I haven’t heard anyone inside.”
“Trust me, that man moves silent as hell,” Eddie said with a grimace. “Learned the hard way. Many times.”
“Yikes,” Steve said grimly, before sighing longly. “Guess I should get off of you then.” He was unmoving.
“That would be a start,” Eddie concurred. Steve still didn’t move. “You’re not moving, Steve.” He said flatly, Steve unable to see the amusement on his face.
“Alright, alright,” Steve huffed as he rolled off Eddie. “Jeez, be a little more eager to get rid of me, why don’t ya?”
“Dramatic,” Eddie noted, unable to keep the fond smile hidden.
“Wanna get food at the diner?” Steve asked. “On me,” he reached out to affectionately trace over a spot on Eddie’s neck. This is when he noticed all the
very
visible hickies on Steve’s neck and… well, pretty much dappled across his entire torso. But the neck ones would be hard to hide.
Eddie cringed a bit as he turned Steve’s head by the chin to inspect further. “Thank god you wore a turtleneck last night. Otherwise your first time meeting Wayne was about to be a lot more awkward.”
“Uh, look in the mirror, Eddie,” Steve said as an almost ‘gotcha’ statement. Eddie expected one, maybe two marks he’d have to own up to, but not six. One of which was a very clear bite mark, though that one might be concealable under a shirt. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ, dude,” Eddie held his hair up to examine them further.
“Don’t even start, you have less than me,” Steve retorted. “And don’t you have makeup, anyway?”
“Not concealer,” Eddie said, dropping his hair and turning back to face him. “I mean, not like Wayne really cares but… I did kinda stress the fact we’re just friends.”
“He can’t prove
I
gave them to you,” Steve shrugged from the bed. Eddie gave him a pointedly blank look. “Okay, so it’s pretty obvious I gave them to you. I could always sneak out the window?”
“He’s definitely seen your car in the driveway, Steve,” Eddie chuckled genuinely. “It’s cool. He won’t tell anyone. This just might be… unpleasant. Especially since he was asking around about you–”
“
What?
” Steve’s eyes bulged. He ran his hands over face roughly. “Well, what’d he hear?”
Eddie’s face scrunched in hesitation. “Basically… that you’re kind of a slut,” Mortification washed over Steve’s face, Eddie quickly trying to do damage control. “It’s fine, Steve. Why do you care what he thinks about you anyway? Wayne literally couldn’t care less if you’re into guys.”
“No, it’s not that,” he shook his head. “It’s just– he’s your uncle, and this is the first time meeting him,” Eddie could hear the start of a Steve-Ramble commencing. “And not only has he heard I’m some sort of… some sort of–
hussie
--”
“
Hussie?
” Eddie laughed out, eyebrows raising at Steve. This did not deter his spiral.
“--But I’ve clearly just done something nefarious with his nephew–”
Eddie covered his face as his laugh shook him harder, gaping at Steve as he repeated, “
Nefarious?
Who
are
you?”
“I know big words, too, okay?” Steve defended.
“Henderson again?” Eddie asked, laughter now gone but leaving behind a large grin in its place.
“
No,
” He doubled down, only adding to Eddie’s amusement. “Read it on the back of a movie during my last shift… And then I asked Henderson what it meant.”
“There it is,” Eddie teased briefly. “Look, seriously you’re stressing too much. It takes a lot to get Wayne mad. And it’s not like we’re teenagers.” Eddie scoffed. “Remember, he’s already well aware I’m not exactly the virgin Mary.”
Steve gave him a long, debating look before sighing. “Fine,” he stood up, the stress seemingly having helped his problem. He picked up the black turtleneck from the floor, seeming to have a moment of appreciation for the clothing before tugging it on.
“You should… probably wear that to the diner, too,” Eddie said, concern creeping into his tone. “Just in case. Both of us being covered in hickies is… questionable.”
“I’m gonna swing by my place and shower, anyway,” Steve said as he stepped into his pants. He’d never even changed into the sleep clothes he brought, both of them opting to sleep in underwear. “I definitely smell like sex.”
“Good call, I’ll just meet you there,” Eddie pulled on the shirt from last night and some sweatpants nearby, knowing he’d only be wearing them before a shower. He looked at Steve with raised eyebrows. “You ready?” Steve looked reluctant, but gestured for Eddie to lead the way nonetheless.
Wayne was leaning over the counter in the kitchenette, eating scrambled eggs and drinking coffee. They’d slept past noon, so it was likely the man had already gone to bed after his shift, and this was also his morning. “Morning,” Eddie said, Wayne turning to face them fully, instantly inspecting Steve behind Eddie.
Eddie took it upon himself to start the introduction, not allowing the silence to linger. “Uncle Wayne this is Steve, Steve… Wayne.”
Steve stepped forward, stretching out his hand for Wayne to shake. “Uh, hello, Mr. Munson. It’s nice to finally meet you,” Eddie bit back a smile at the formality, hiding it more with a small cough as Wayne shook Steve’s hand.
Wayne was giving him a scrutinizing stare, sizing him up. “Steve… I’m assuming you’re the Steve Harrington who’s always callin’?” He asked, Eddie giving his uncle a look as Steve’s mouth opened and closed for a second.
“Yes, uh– that’s me,” Steve chuckled tightly, clearing his throat uncertainly at the end. “Sorry… about that.”
His eyes flicked from Steve to Eddie, almost immediately zeroing in on his neck. He narrowed his eyes back at Steve, not angrily, but furthering his analysis. “Last I heard, Steve was ‘
just a friend
’,” Wayne’s eyes fell back on Eddie, raising his eyebrows as he took a long sip of his coffee.
“Uncle Wayne,” Eddie scolded lightly, knowing his uncle was just taking the opportunity to make Steve sweat a little. And it certainly looked like it was working. Steve’s eyes were wide with unease and concern, a look he frankly hadn’t seen since fighting Vecna. “Okay, well, you’ve met. I’m gonna walk him out.”
“It was nice meeting you,” Steve said to Wayne, still clearly on edge. Wayne merely held his mug up, then took another sip. He was watching them walk out when Eddie turned to his uncle with an entertained smile, mouthing a humorous “What’s wrong with you?” before closing the door behind him.
“Great,” Steve said sourly as he walked to his car. He slumped back against the driver’s door, crossing his arms. “He hates me.”
Eddie rolled his eyes lightheartedly. “He doesn’t hate you. That’s just…” He shrugged. “Wayne.”
“Well, I hope you’re right,” Steve sighed, glancing back over at the trailer. His head snapped back to Eddie, eyes wide in mild panic as his posture stiffened. “He’s watching us,” he whispered. When Eddie looked over, the curtain was pulled back and Wayne was standing in the window, watching them unashamed over his coffee.
Eddie waved at him to go away, giving him a disappointed look. Wayne stepped back and the curtain closed. He shook his head, looking back at Steve. “Sorry he’s… nosier than he looks. Meet you at the diner in an hour.”
“Make it two,” Steve said. “Gotta find my other turtleneck.”
“You have
two
turtlenecks?” Eddie asked, baffled into an open smile.
“Yeah, and ya know, thank god I do,” Steve moved to open his door. “Looks like I’ve been mauled by a bear.”
“Nah, bears don’t seem to be your type,” Eddie joked, though it went completely over Steve’s head, who furrowed his brows. Eddie moved on, deciding it unimportant. “Now hurry up. I’m hungry.”
Steve smiled widely, saying his goodbye as he slid into his seat. Eddie watched him pull out of the driveway, wishing he could’ve kissed him, but one of his elderly neighbors was watering her plants not far away. Plus, it was the middle of the day.
“So,” A voice directly behind Eddie made him jump, spinning around.
He felt his heart return to normal as his eyes settled on a smug Max. Eddie didn’t even hear her approach. “Jesus Christ!” Eddie yelled to expel the panic that had been induced. “I don’t enjoy you sneaking up on me all…
Children of the Corn
.”
“Thought you and Steve were just friends,” she completely ignored him.
Great.
Eddie’s lie certainly wasn’t holding up today.
“Yeah, we are,” he and Steve really needed to have that conversation about what to tell the kids. “Friends stay over at each other’s houses. Try it sometime instead of spying on me.”
She raised her eyebrows, her smug smile deepening. “Friends come over at one AM to listen to your sex mixtape?”
Shit.
He knew he’d forgotten to do something. “Jesus, Mayfield, it’s a
normal
mixtape– and I thought I told you to mind your business?”
Max shrugged. “This is more fun to me.”
Eddie sighed, running a palm over his face. Clearly they were busted, and he needed to do some damage control. “Okay, look. Don’t tell any of the others. It’s… new,” sincerity filled his voice more as he said, “Especially for him.”
“Yeah, whatever dude,” she said nonchalantly, sliding her hands into the pockets of her jacket. “I like knowing shit, but I know how to keep a secret.”
Eddie scrutinized her for a moment, a brief thought about how her and Wayne would get along scarily well. “Thanks,” he said genuinely. He knew she was good for it. More than a lot of the kids, Max was able to grasp the severity of situations, even if she tried to make it seem like she took everything as a joke. “And uh… we weren’t… too loud, were we?” He didn’t want to ask the question, but more than that he didn’t want to subject her to it again.
“Gross,” she said with a disgusted face. “But no.”
“Good, good,” Eddie nodded awkwardly, clearing his throat. “I’m just gonna…” he jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, pointing at his trailer.
“Right,” Max smiled wryly, taking a few steps backward to her own trailer. “Wouldn’t wanna keep Steve waiting.”
“Okay,” Eddie said defensively, taking that opportunity to end the conversation before she could rub it in more. Wayne was still drinking his coffee when he came inside, now moved to the couch. “Steve thinks you hate him,” Eddie informed.
“I don’t hate him,” Wayne said simply. “Got my eye on ‘em, though. Do him some good to know that.”
“He’s well aware,” Eddie smirked. “I’m gonna shower and meet him for lunch.”
“Hold on a sec,” Wayne said, halting Eddie’s steps toward his room. He walked curiously back over to his uncle, who had a serious expression on his face. Technically, he always sort of had a serious expression, but this was one Eddie rarely saw. “Obviously, you two are more than friends now, and I know you’re an adult–”
“Oh, Uncle Wayne,” Eddie cut off, cringing. “Don’t tell me you’re having another sex talk with me. We’ve been through this and it was a painful experience for the both of us. Not to mention I’m twenty-one.”
“Yeah, well this one’s a little different because you didn’t have…” Wayne searched for the right words. “Well, somethin’ more consistent than what you’re used to. And I need to know you’re being safe.”
“I told you I get tested and always use a condom–”
“Listen, son,” Wayne cut him off. “I’m serious. Sit down, please. Just hear me out, for my sake if anything.” He patted the empty couch next to him. Wayne’s severity putting him on edge, Eddie hesitantly took a seat, giving him his full attention.
“Things… change when you get into something… more serious. You might think it’s safer to… not be so worried about protection,” he didn’t know where Wayne was going with this, but it was clear the man wouldn’t let this go. Eddie knew what worry looked like well in his uncle. “Ya know, because it’s just you two. You’re not seein’ anyone else, and neither is he. Or that’s what he tells you,” and thus, the point had presented itself.
“Except, if he’s cheating on you and lyin’ about it…” Wayne’s eyes were almost… pleading. “You got a lot more to risk than a broken heart.” Eddie’s jaw clenched as his stomach sunk in the slightest. It was something that scared Eddie too much to think about often, though that didn’t stop him. Of course it would be something Wayne worried about as well.
He didn’t think Steve had anyone else he’d be hooking up with, though technically he had the right to do so. They weren’t official, and while the idea of him being with someone else bothered him for the average reasons, he needed to consider the possibility. Shit happened, people made mistakes, but all it took was one wrong decision to put both of them right into another nightmare.
“Just… please,” Wayne's voice trembled as he spoke again, his eyes glassy and intense as he held Eddie’s stare. His hand came to rest heavily on top of Eddie’s head. “I can’t lose ya, Eddie. Not after I just got ya back. And I know it’s selfish but…” Wayne’s jaw visibly clenched as he swallowed thickly, tears prickling Eddie’s eyes as he watched the pure desperation in his uncle. “I won’t survive outliving you. I just won’t.” Wayne gave a harsh sniff, eyes watery.
Eddie’s throat was sealed shut. All he could do was knock Wayne off balance with a crushing hug, which the man quickly returned. Eddie clutched him as a few silent tears broke free, spilling over his cheeks. “I’ll be careful. I promise,” he finally managed to rasp out.
The embrace lasted a few moments longer before Wayne pulled back, both of them wiping their eyes and clearing their throats awkwardly. “Didn’t mean to dump all that on ya before your plans.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Eddie waved dismissively, standing up. “I, uh… need to have that conversation with him, anyway. He’s probably never had to worry about it until now. Straight people uh, sort of have a habit of thinking they can’t get it.”
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Wayne brought his mug over to the sink, starting on his dishes. “Oh, and, uh,” he turned over his shoulder to look at Eddie. “We’ll be havin’ Steve over for dinner soon. See if he passes my test.”
Eddie snorted. “You have a test?”
“Oh, yeah,” Wayne said as if it were obvious. “Been waitin’ to use it. This one seems like he might be sticking around, so,” he shrugged, turning back to the dishes.
Eddie shook his head in amused disbelief. “I’ll tell him to start studying, then.” With that, Eddie started to get ready.
+++
The diner wasn’t busy, considering they were eating a couple of hours after most took their lunch. They’d just ordered, Eddie’s mind far from the moment as he thought on what he needed to talk to Steve about. He wasn’t dreading the conversation about the kids, really. Whatever Steve decided he’d be fine with. His worries were on the darker subject.
What if it scared Steve off completely? He wouldn’t blame him, it’s a harsh reality to consider. Eddie would try to settle for Steve as a friend in that scenario, because he cared for the man passed being… whatever they currently were. But what if either of them realized they
couldn’t
be just friends anymore. What if Steve decided he couldn’t have Eddie in his life?
“Eddie,” Steve tapped their shoes together under the table, snapping Eddie out of his impending spiral. He hadn’t even noticed when he started bouncing his legs, but they were piloting at a rapid speed. “You’re getting all… twitchy again. What’s up?”
He blinked a few times to bring him back to the moment, making an effort to still his legs. Eddie decided to start with the easy topic, keeping his voice low despite being away from the other customers. “So… Max knows about us.”
“How?” He furrowed his brows.
“Well, for one, it’s her. And she’s my neighbor,” Eddie pointed out, Steve wincing.
“She didn’t… hear, did she?”
“No, thank god,” Eddie breathed out, still deeply relieved about this fact. “She has her own
annoying
fuckin’ ways, though. Couldn’t lie my way out.”
“Okay, so Max knows… Is that why you’re so freaked?”
“No… but we should talk about what we’re… telling them, right?” Eddie took extra care in speaking quietly. “Or start hiding it better. I told Max not to tell any of the others, but who knows if any of them already have their own ideas. So… what do you wanna do?” Eddie flicked his eyes briefly to Steve’s brown turtleneck.
He really does have two.
“We can’t both suddenly get into a turtleneck phase.”
“Okay, okay,” Steve held up his hands briefly before letting them fall back in his lap. “We got a little… carried away.”
“In general we should be more careful of that… during,” Eddie said, Steve nodding in agreement.
“With the kids…” Steve trailed off in thought for a moment, staring at a spot on the table before shrugging and meeting Eddie’s gaze. “Well, I mean, what do you wanna do? I’m not really the… expert.”
Eddie snorted hardily at this. “I’ve never had to deal with hiding my affairs from the group of snooping teens I’m frequently surrounded by.” Eddie glanced around the diner, whispering as he leaned in. “You’re not a one night stand I just gotta bring around late at night. I see you
literally
all the time, and most of it we’re not alone,” he sat back, still speaking softly but more casual. “I honestly don’t care what we do. Can’t imagine any of the kids giving a fuck, honestly, but it’s still our business.
Your
business,” He made sure to fix Steve with an earnest look. “Really. It’s up to you.”
Steve’s eyes were wide in contemplation, speculating over Eddie as he worked through whatever was in his head. He sat forward, leaning his elbows on the table. “How about we… reel it in a little around the kids, but don’t stress about it too much. If one of them asks us outright… we tell them,” Steve shrugged. “And make sure they don’t tell anyone else.”
This seemed like as good a plan as any to Eddie, but there was one thing he was getting hung up on. “And– just so we’re on the same page,” Eddie clarified. “What are we telling them, exactly?”
An amused smile spread across Steve’s face as he looked at Eddie, leaning in further. He was about to answer when he glanced over Eddie’s shoulder, and sat back quickly, his face falling into a blank expression. A few seconds later and the waiter was beside him, lowering their food onto the table. They voiced their thanks, Steve’s eyes following the waiter as he left before continuing the quiet exchange.
“I guess I didn’t really think about that,” Steve said simply. “Uh… what do you wanna tell them?”
“It’s up to you,” Eddie repeated humorously, eating some of his fries.
“You kinda know this better than I do–”
“For fuck’s sake, Steve,” Eddie leaned back with a chuckle, running a hand over his face. He leaned forward again, a tired smile on his face. “I’ve been fighting
this,
” Eddie gestured circularly to his own torso before flicking his hands at Steve, wiggling his fingers in his direction. “Since Vecna, alright? I’m trying to follow your lead, but I can’t do that if you don’t take it in the first place.” Fondness spread through him as he looked at Steve, even in his mild frustration, because a timid Steve was still incredibly endearing.
Steve stared at him for a moment, then a smirk appeared, and Eddie instantly knew he wasn’t getting a serious answer. “Two things,” Steve held up two fingers before leaning in to quietly say, “One: I got the impression last night that you
like
taking the lead–” Eddie rolled his eyes, ready to scold him, but Steve continued with a bit more volume. “Two: Really?” His smirk stretched into a smug grin. “Since Vecna?”
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” Eddie ran his hands over his face exasperatedly. “I’m not even gonna entertain that. What do you wanna say, Harrington?” The smile on his face surely betrayed the rest of his annoyed demeanor.
The toe of Steve’s sneaker pressed into Eddie’s calf, sliding minutely up his pant leg. It was hidden between their other legs and the wall, one of the few actions they could get away with. “I mean… I don’t plan on seeing anyone else, do you?”
Eddie’s brows creased slightly. “No.”
“I think people call that ‘dating’,” Steve teased, sliding his elbows a bit further across the table. A smile twitched Eddie’s lips at this. “So, if they ask, we tell them that.”
He couldn’t help but beam back at Steve, soon finding it too hard to contain himself if he continued and busied himself by loading ketchup onto his fries. “Is that all you wanted to talk about?” Steve asked, taking a bite of his own burger.
Eddie paused, looking around the diner warily before turning back to Steve. Even being in the back with few other people around them, this was still something Eddie didn’t feel comfortable talking about in public. “We shouldn’t talk about it here. And it’s kind of… heavy.”
A perturbed look crossed Steve’s face, but he nodded. “How do you feel about another night at ball log?”
“Guess we’re not comin’ up with another name, huh?” Eddie joked dryly. “Alright. When do you wanna go?”
“Tonight?” Steve offered before taking another large bite of his food.
“What, the thought of going a night without me is too much to bear?” Eddie teased with an arrogant smirk.
Steve rolled his eyes playfully, removing his shoe from Eddie’s calf, as if in punishment. “God forbid I take you seriously and wanna talk about whatever’s got you so worked up.”
“Tonight works. I’ll come by at eight,” Eddie bit down his own burger hungrily, now that the stress had subsided minimally.
“My parents are home, by the way,” Steve said, the carefree demeanor he had maintained for the majority of the conversation slipping. “Thought I’d… give you a heads up.”
“Should I… stay in the car, or…?” Eddie asked uneasily. He didn’t know how much Steve’s parents knew about him, at least in relation to their son. He was positive they knew
who
he was, of course. Unavoidable.
“No, no,” Steve brushed off quickly with a dismissive wave of his hadn. “I just thought you might… wanna know. I doubt they’ll even ask who I’m hanging out with.”
Sensing his mild distress, Eddie pressed his own shoe against Steve’s leg, smiling impishly at him. “I could always get all dressed up and meet them. Ya know. Collared shirt, tie, khakis,” They both laughed at this, Steve especially. “Whole nine yards.”
“
Please
don’t put on khakis,” this furthered their laughter.
Eddie made a show of being offended. “You don’t think I could pull them off?”
“It’s not about looking good, it would just be… weird,” Steve cringed. “Like…
Bizarro World.
”
“I’m surprised you were able to make that reference,” Eddie commented with a small scoff. “Bit nerdy for you, don’t ya think?”
“Yeah, well. Been hangin’ around you too much,” he smiled, taking another bite out of his burger.
The bell over the entrance to the diner jingled, Steve’s eyes flicking over Eddie’s shoulder. They quickly snapped back to Eddie’s, wide as he whispered, “No fuckin’ way.”
“What?” Eddie asked quietly, concern inching into him and freezing his gaze on Steve. He pulled his shoe away quickly.
Steve held his soda up to his mouth, blocking it from view as he muttered, “Chip Hudson just walked in.” He took a sip, still looking pointedly at Eddie.
Eddie’s eyes bulged, and he couldn’t resist the urge to look over his shoulder. A vaguely familiar blond guy who was very clearly an athletic type scanned the diner for a place to sit. Eddie whipped back around to face Steve with his own dumbfounded look. Steve was right when he said Chip wasn’t attractive.
“Oh my god,” Eddie mouthed silently in distaste.
Steve nodded enthusiastically, mouthing, “I know.”
“Ew,” Eddie mouthed back, brow creasing in concern over the fact
that
man had apparently been hitting on Eddie. He looked like a frat house birthed him itself.
“Told you,” Steve mouthed once more, holding up his thumb and nodding at it pointedly. “Thumb.”
Eddie looked back once more to see if Chip did indeed look like a thumb, but was immediately met with the man’s gaze. Chip’s off-puttingly blue eyes (unsettling even from a distance) lit up at the sight of Eddie, making his way to the table.
“Oh god, what is he doing?” Eddie whispered as he turned back towards Steve. He was usually elated when people didn’t shrink away from him in repulsion, cross to the other side of the street, or generally look at him in disgust– but he had
zero
urge to talk to this man.
“Eddie!” Chip beamed as he came up to their table. “Long time no see,” his eyes fell on Steve, greeting him with nowhere near as much enthusiasm. “Harrington.” Steve waggled his fingers in a lazy wave, not doing much to hide the disapproving look on his face.
“Uh, Chip,” Eddie gave a weak smile. “Good to see you.” It was always awkward talking to someone who clearly knew him, meanwhile he had been too blackout to remember much about him. Frankly, everything he knew about Chip Hudson was not only second-hand, but against his will.
“You know,” Chip leaned one hand on the table, angling himself so he was only really addressing Eddie. A glance to the side showed a clearly annoyed Steve, who was glaring at the side of Chip’s face. Up close, Eddie noted that he could really see the thumb-resemblance. Something about how his jaw transitioned into his neck. “I was kinda hoping I’d see you at another one of my parties, but so far you haven’t showed up.”
“I haven’t heard of you throwing any more,” Eddie lied. Robin, Eddie, and Steve had collectively heard of more than a few of Chip’s parties, but never felt the need to go. Thinking back, he realized Steve was always most adamant about how lame it would be. Which was directly contradictory to everything they said about Chip’s birthday party. Honestly, Eddie was surprised he’d never noticed that.
“Guess our invitations got lost in the mail,” Steve said flatly, earning the mildly irritated attention of Chip.
“Consider this a formal one, then,” Chip smiled back over at Eddie confidently. “I’m having one this weekend. Bring whoever you want.”
“Uh…” Eddie looked over at Steve, who seemed to be trying to communicate something telepathically to him. He gave up on deciphering the message quickly, turning back to Chip. “Maybe. We might have plans, but if not we’ll… stop by.”
“It’s gonna be pretty fun,” Chip tried to sweeten the deal. “I can be your personal bartender.”
“We’ll think about it, Chip,” Steve immediately chimed in, narrowing his eyes at the blond. They shared a hostile look.
A tense silence hung around for a few seconds before Chip’s gaze fell back on Eddie, softening as he ignored Steve. “Hope to see you there, Eddie.” With that, he walked away, leaving Eddie to raise his eyebrows at Steve with a devilish smile.
“Easy, boy,” Eddie purred once Chip found a table across the diner, voice low and teasing. “Didn’t know I also got a guard dog.”
“Fuck off,” Steve rolled his eyes, a smile twitching his lips regardless as he turned his attention to his food.
“Ya know, I expected him to be one of those guys who didn’t know yet,” Eddie commented idly. “But I think he knows.”
“You
think
he knows?” Steve repeated. “Jesus, no wonder you never noticed when I was flirting with you.”
“In my defense, half the people you talk to it looks like you're flirting,” Eddie reminded. “I didn’t know if
you knew
you were flirting.”
“Point taken,” Steve rescinded. The two of them finished eating over lighthearted conversation, Steve somehow, once again, being able to distract Eddie’s mind from all the worrying it was trying to do. He double downed on paying, which Eddie fought more this time, but eventually let happen. He’d do his share of spoiling Steve in other ways.
Soon, though, all of Steve’s distractions washed away, and Eddie was left alone in his van with only his concerns for company. Even the fact that he’d slowly become more accustomed to not talking himself down, leaving Steve to do damage control, added to the frenzy in his head.
If Steve
did
end up not… wanting Eddie around… did he even still know how to pick himself up? Not only was it unfair to Steve to constantly push his baggage onto him, it wasn’t sustainable for him to rely so heavily on someone else.
Before everything with Vecna, he only had to worry about Wayne dying, and how he would survive the devastating blow of that. If he even fucking could. But now… there were so many people he couldn’t lose, and it was like he was juggling all of their lives at once. It felt like if he stopped worrying about all the possible outcomes of any given scenario, it would be the
one time
things go catastrophically wrong.
He often felt that way before Chrissy, but after… he practically never stopped waiting for the final blow. Just another bullet point on the long list of things that had changed about him, he supposed. His confidence, his innocence, all of it was stripped from him. He had to rebuild himself from scratch. Reality simply had different rules than it did before, and it left Eddie with the inability to feel like he knew what he was doing– in
any
aspect of his life.
For a long time, it didn’t feel like Eddie ever stopped running. Like he wasn’t living, rather simply surviving. But spending time with Robin was what started to bring him out of that. Make him feel like he could breathe a little. And practically nothing reminded him of why he stuck it out more than being with the kids. Watching them laugh, grow up, finally
be children.
And Steve… Steve brought the color back. Everything was somehow more… vivid. It all had a shape. He hadn’t realized how small his world had become until Steve opened it up again.
More than anything, Eddie didn’t want to lose that. Any of it.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Jean was heading towards the Domaine de l'Aurore, she was going there to see her two best friends. These two had always supported her. Whether in her childhood when her parents had divorced and each had taken one of the sisters with them or recently in her complicated relationship with her sister Barbara. Indeed, after years of no longer seeing each other, Jean did not know how to act with her younger sister. Moreover, she had always considered the Ragnvindr brothers as the ideal siblings, she appreciated them as much as she could admire them for that.
As she approached her destination, she saw something strange, or rather, someone. From here, she could see a person face down on the ground. Her eyes widened when she saw familiar dark blue hair. She ran towards the body.
She knelt down beside it and turned him over; it was indeed Kaeya. She examined him, horrified; he was injured all over his body. Small pools of blood had formed under him; she noticed that the wounds were actually burns from a claymore. She frowned; it was exactly like her brother Diluc's weapon and power; it was surprising he wasn't there. She shook her head; it could only be a coincidence. Besides, he had a nasty eye injury. He was breathing, but given his injuries, something would have to be done.
She activated her divine power to heal him. It helped, but it was clear it wouldn't be enough. She lifted the young man by the arms and placed him on her back to carry her. She didn't know why, but she had a feeling that taking him to the estate wasn't a good idea. If Diluc wasn't with him, he probably wasn't here anyway, and getting a healer here would take a long time anyway. So she took him to Monstad, heading towards the cathedral; her sister could help her there.
—-
The man woke up, groggy, and didn't recognize where he was. It looked like a cathedral, and he was on a bed in a closed room. He looked out the window and realized he didn't recognize the city either. He realized that if someone asked him what he was doing there, what had happened to him, or even who he was, he wouldn't know how to answer.
“Kaeya!”
The room’s door opened and he turned his head towards her. A tall, blue-eyed blonde appeared. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, and she was wearing a uniform whose origin he didn't know, but which seemed strangely familiar.
"You're fine, I'm so relieved."
She approached him and he stared at her.
"Excuse me, but who am I talking to?”
He smiled at her politely, hoping she wouldn't react badly to this question since, unlike him, she seemed to know him well.
“My name is Jean. The doctor told me that with your injuries, it was likely you'd have memory problems. I was hoping it would be otherwise. What do you remember?”
“Right now, nothing at all.”
“I see, well, you've already been asleep for three days.”
“What happened to me?”
“We expected you to tell us. In any case, I'm going to have to explain a few things to you. Your name is Kaeya Ragnvindr. Your father, Twilight Ragnvindr, died the day before I found you seriously injured. Your brother passed away shortly after that."
"I have a brother?"
“Yes, adopted, his name is Diluc, the three of us have been best friends since childhood.”
The next few hours were spent by Jean explaining her past, the city, the little she knew about his origins (basically, that Crepus had found him alone by the side of the road one stormy day and adopted him), as well as his dreams and aspirations. She also told him about divine eyes, what they would be like, and that she didn't know how he got one. In particular, she confided in him that he was the assistant to her brother, the former cavalry captain, and that since he had recently resigned, it was highly likely he would be asked to replace him. Kaeya listened quietly to what she was saying without interrupting her or appearing particularly interested or surprised.
—
A few days later, Kaeya, having recovered from his injuries, was allowed to return home and accompanied Jean. She confided in him, embarrassed, that she had learned that his brother had stripped him of his family name and that he could therefore no longer return to the family home, a home he didn't know anyway. So, it was no longer Kaeya Ragnvindr, but simply Kaeya. She took him to Favonius's headquarters, both to take him to his room (which was rarely used by the knights, in reality) and to Varka, the Grand Master who would soon be leaving on an indefinite mission.
They entered the office of the famous Varka; he was a tall, muscular blond man with blue eyes and a scar on his face. He greeted Kaeya warmly before telling her what the two friends already suspected.
“I'm sorry. I know a lot has happened to you lately, even if you don't remember it, but I'm going to have to appoint you Cavalry Captain; you're the only one qualified to become one. However, since this is sudden for you, you won't be part of the expedition.”
Kaeya nodded. After all, if he had to live there, he had no reason to refuse.
—
A few hours later, Varka gathered the knights and announced the appointment of the new cavalry captain. Most of the knights didn't seem enthusiastic, and Kaeya heard whispers that he looked pale next to his brother, that he was a poor replacement, and that his position was only due to his last name. They only knew that he had been stripped of the name. Only a few people applauded with real enthusiasm. They were in the front row, obviously Jean, a pretty brunette with green eyes next to her, another brunette dressed in red, and a stern-looking woman with light blue hair. A young blond boy, further back, was also applauding.
Varka grabbed his shoulder and dispersed the crowd.
"Do you see that man over there?"
Kaeya nodded.
"This is Inspector Eroch. You can go see him if you ever need help or clarification in the performance of your duties. I've also appointed your friend Jean as my helper, so she'll replace me during my absence, so you can contact her."
Kaeya nodded again, and the blond man left, wishing him luck. Taking all the horses with him, Monstad found himself at peace, but with a new cavalry captain without any cavalry.
—
His fingers were freezing; Snezhnaya was truly hostile. He had just eliminated a camp of fatui that had blocked his path. He'd been doing this for weeks, but it didn't make him feel any better. He wanted revenge, but he couldn't get it.
Throughout all this, he never thought about his ex-brother, what he'd done to him, or how he was doing. He simply killed any fatui unfortunate enough to cross his path. His illusion warmed him; he had left his divine eye at the Domain of Dawn, and he could feel that something was missing, but it was still better than nothing. Besides, for the moment, he no longer wished for a divine eye, his father's greatest wish, which the gods had never granted him.
He sighed as he saw a light in the distance; a new camp of fatui awaited their demise.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Ami was very happy that she had her Chadbert's large cock up her vagina, but Makoto had made her moment a lot better, shoving a strapon dildo up her ass. Not just those two moments, but a lesbian kiss between Ami and Makoto, and Hilbert loved it when any of his girls were making out together. Minako was able to get some of Hilbert, licking his cheek repetitively.
Before the real beginning of Hilbert's new life with all of his eleven girlfriends, Michiru and Haruka were the last two to join Hilbert's harem, after they had admitted that they were bisexual and wanted Hilbert themselves. The more, the merrier. Cliche words, but important for a lucky fuck like Hilbert. Haruka and Michiru were feeding Hilbert whipped cream, and Hilbert was watching more of his girls, Setsuna and Hotaru, make out, with Hotaru and Setsuna sharing some whipped cream and Hotaru beating off his cock. Setsuna holding Hotaru's arm was also added, showing more of the relationship between the two.
Bulbasaur was the second male Pokemon to have a threesome with Cynthia and Leaf. But a room or the Pokemon League weren't chosen as places for the threesome. Instead, a tub, along with a bubble bath. The only penetration that had happened was Bulbasaur giving Leaf anal sex, but there was some scrubbing from Bulbasaur and Cynthia, with Leaf getting her hair and back scrubbed simultaneously. The best part? Leaf sucking on Cynthia's nipple.
Veran was revived somehow! But not Onox or any of her other allies. Din and Nayru were the first to see the revived Veran. The two were angry at Veran because of all the horrible things Veran had done, but Veran had claimed to be a changed woman. Din and Nayru didn't believe her, but over the next few months, Veran had done a lot of nice things for Din, Nayru, Farore, and Holodrum and Labrynna combined, and she was accepted 100%.
A few weeks later, Din and Nayru had developed a crush on Veran before telling her. After learning that Veran was into girls herself, Din and Nayru had wanted to become sex slaves for Veran, with a double-leash in the mix. At first, Veran had rejected that idea because of her past. But Din and Nayru said that them being Veran's sex slaves had nothing to do with the past.
Afterwards, Din and Nayru had officially become sex slaves for Veran, but a threesome couple as well. Their first threesome was glorious; Din and Nayru were sucking on Veran's nipples, Din and Nayru had dildos, the same colors as their hairs, up their pussies, Veran had her legs crossed, and Din and Nayru were looking at Veran, with Veran looking at them. More weeks later, the three had decided to add something new, and that was having a male involved in their lives.
Lucio and Symmetra weren't friends in the slightest. They were sworn enemies. Even when they were on the same team, they continued to show their hate towards one another. On the Hollywood level, shortly before the battle had gotten started, Pharah had heard a short but heated conversation between Lucio and Symmetra. Pharah had wanted both Lucio and Symmetra to get along, but the two refused to do such a thing.
However, Pharah had made a deal, saying if she, Lucio, Symmetra, and the rest of their team were to succeed on Defend, the first point, the former three would have a threesome. Despite Pharah's deal, Lucio and Symmetra didn't throw the game, only winning for their team but not for each other. On Attack, Lucio, Pharah, and Symmetra had the threesome, with Lucio and Symmetra enjoying it in a non-romantic way; by the look on Pharah's face, Pharah was into Lucio. This was great, but at the end, it had costed them and their team a Draw.
Selene was having a lot of fun here; her mouth and anus were taken care of by Plumeria and Ash's tongues, something that was uncommon in threesomes. Speaking of Ash, he was just about to leave Alola with his Pikachu, but a lesbian moment between Plumeria and Selene had distracted him. Right now, Pikachu was waiting for Ash, but how long would the mascot Pokemon have to wait?
Without a Hybrid battle going on, it was safe for Ingrid to go to Eichenwalde with her daughter and future daughter-in-law, Brigitte and Zarya, and have fun with them, but they shouldn't stay too long, though. Brigitte was the special one here, hence why a double-penetration scene had happened first. Also, Brigitte's birthday was in a few weeks, meaning that she'd get more special treatment.
Futanaris were sorta common, but futanaris with two cocks were very rare. Fortunately for Cynthia and Leaf, they had met in a futanari club and showed each other their two cocks. And shortly after that, they had gotten out of the futanari club to have double-penetration sex with one another. Leaf was the first to get her pussy and anus filled by two futanari cocks, loving it very much. There was some mess afterwards, but Leaf and Cynthia didn't care.
The Sailor Scouts were going out at night, leaving Lady Kayura, Linda, and Hilbert all by themselves. But even without the Sailor Scouts for the time being, a threesome between them would happen. Ami and Usagi were the first two girls to have their pussies filled up by Hilbert and his giant cock, so Lady Kayura became the third girl to have her pussy filled up. That expression from Lady Kayura. It was impeccable. Hilbert's cock was the best one she ever had, infinite times better than her ex-boyfriend's cock. She had also enjoyed Linda's tit-sucking.
Mamoru and Chibiusa had finally found out about Usagi's secret new life. Mamoru was obviously hurt, with tears rolling down his cheeks. But Chibiusa was hurt even worse because if Usagi were to ditch Mamoru and fuck another guy, Chibiusa would cease to exist, unless Chibiusa was somehow related to Hilbert and not Mamoru all along. No one would miss Chibiusa except for Mamoru. She was very annoying, after all.
Rei, Hilbert, and Usagi were expected to bring their babies into this Sailor Moon universe very soon.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
The fear and rage that gripped Minato’s heart the moment he realized the blazing source of chakra that belonged to his son disappeared off his radar was palpable.
Coupled with the wrath the Uchiha clan had when their second heir was nowhere to be found?
Yeah, Konoha’s citizens walked on thin ice. ANBU scoured every corner and crevice. The police officers who were Uchiha had stony faces and sharingan on 24/7.
Kakashi and Tsume raged that there was no scent for their hounds to track.
His office is crowded with shinobi.
Fugaku, Mikoto, Itachi, Kakashi, Obito, Tsume, Shikaku, Hiashi, Hizashi, and Inoichi surround his desk. All their faces are stone cold, reflecting the urgency of the situation. His sensei is deep undercover, and Minato would not dare disrupt his mission, no matter how dire.
Not just because Naruto and Sasuke are the children of two of the most powerful families in the village, but because Naruto has taken the mantle of
Kyūbi jinchūriki
since his mother’s passing. And stealing such an “asset” was basically declaring war.
“The carrier birds are ready to head out to our allies, Suna and Kiri,” Shikaku announces, blowing his cigarette smoke out the window.
Tsume growls deep in her throat, “I have
jōnin-
rank clan members ready to accompany all parties to non-allied nations.”
“First, Kumo tries to steal Hinata-sama,” Hizashi grits out. “Now someone has stolen the son of, not only the Hokage, but our chief of police.”
Hiashi glares in the distance, “Clearly, people are looking down on us and our goodwill and stance on peace.”
It’s been well over 72 hours, and Minato is moments from sending diplomatic envoys to the elemental nations when twin clouds of summoning smoke pop up on his desk.
Two elderly toads sit on their hind legs before them.
“Ma! Pa!” He exclaims in shock. Very rarely do summons summon themselves to their summoner instead of waiting to be called.
“Minato-bo,” Shima-sama greets, “You poor dear. We just heard from Katsuyu-neechan. You must have been worried out of your mind.”
The elderly toad has jumped closer to him and grabbed his face with her hands. She maternally squishes his cheeks.
“Look how much you’ve aged!”
“Calm down, you old hag!” Fukasaku shouts.
“What did you call me?!” She shrieks, jumping off Minato and toward her husband.
Minato is not alone in his shock as he looks at the sagely summons.
“What are you talking about, Ma? Pa?”
Shima, still pinching her husband's cheeks harshly, turns back to Minato with furrowed brows, “About yours and the Uchiha tadpole getting kidnapped, of course.”
Time stops as all eyes focus on the married couple.
“Leggo of me, woman!” Fukasaku huffs, rubbing his sore cheek. “Ahem, like she said. Katsuyu-neesan came to see us moments ago and said her summoner found the two tadpoles. Gave the kidnappers a rude awakening, she says. Buried ‘em so deep, no soul will find ‘em.”
Minato is gawking at the toads.
“That she did, that she did! Poor tadpoles. But thankfully, the boys are healthy and hale, recovering quickly. Eat like an army, she said. Poor lass is running out of food to feed ‘em.” Shima adds on.
The two toads go back and forth with their banter, updating the room about the status of Naruto and Sasuke casually. As if this wasn’t huge news.
But first, Fugaku steps forward, desperate.
“Tsunade-hime rescued the boys?”
The couple stops bickering to look at Fugaku.
“Ah~ The newest Uchiha patriarch is he? Last I saw him, he was no taller than this desk..” Fukasaku muses.
“Tsuna-chan? No, no. Tsuna-chan’s daughter, Sakura-chan! She sensed some intruders around her property and interfered since the tadpoles were clearly kidnapped.”
Minato has a lot he wants to say. Wants to ask, in fact.
But what comes out is, “Tsunade-sama has a
daughter
?!”
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
"You know," Sirius said with a theatrical sigh, "it wasn't so bad learning all about your life through Rita Skeeter articles when I was on the run and literally risking my very soul in order to see you. When I'm teaching at your school and you're taking my class, though…it's kind of pathetic."
"You could always make an effort to seek me out," Harry pointed out.
"And I am doing so, right now," Sirius replied. "And let me tell you, I am both incredibly proud of but slightly disturbed about the latest update on your little love square."
"I wouldn't say it's a 'square' as I don't think Ginny, Hermione, or Luna have feelings for each other, so it would really be more like a bisected triangle," Harry nit-picked. "Oh, and they're not even fighting over me in the first place."
"That's not what Rita Skeeter says," Sirius countered. "I read all about it in today's article. Have you seen it? It's delightfully vapid."
Harry shook his head. "I never bother reading what Rita Skeeter has to say about me because my solicitor knows to sue for libel the minute the Daily Prophet crosses the line and everyone else always lets me know what's going on in my life soon enough. Seriously, I would never have guessed these things about myself!"
"Rita Skeeter: exposing such deep, dark secrets that you don't even realize you have them," Sirius agreed.
"So what's it say today?" Harry asked.
"Take a look," Sirius responded, tossing the paper at him.
Harry looked down at the article.
Harry Potter: Testing the Waters
By Rita Skeeter
As you are no-doubt aware, Harry Potter is the Boy-Who-Lived and saved us all from certain doom at the hands of You-Know-Who but thirteen years ago. He is also a fourth-year Gryffindor and the American Representative in the Pentawizard Playoffs. One thing that is easy to forget, however, is the fact that he is also a teenage boy.
Like many boys his age, Potter has just started to realize that half of the people around him are – in fact – girls. Three in particular have caught his attention: Muggleborn Hermione Granger and Purebloods Luna Lovegood and Ginevra Weasley.
Each girl has their own unique advantages and disadvantages. Granger is one of Potter's closest friends and spends the most time with him, but a bad break-up could spell the end of that powerful friendship. Weasley is a fiery red-head like Potter's mother, but she is a year younger than him and Potter's best friend might not take too kindly to Potter dating his sister! Finally, Lovegood is a very open-minded and free-spirited individual who can support many of Potter's unconventional views, but is in a different house and a year below him as well as being a judge in the Playoffs.
Potter himself has expressed no preference to any of the girls leading some to speculate that he is merely leading them on. Potter has vehemently denied such claims, stating "Luna, Ginny, and Hermione are really great friends of mine. I respect all three far too much to even think of trying to pull something like that. Besides, I'm far too busy right now to worry about dating someone. When I do decide to start, though, I'm sure you'll know about it before I will."
"I can't believe she actually put that in there…" Harry said, shaking his head in amusement. "Seriously, do people have NOTHING better to do than obsess over my non-existent love-life?"
"Apparently not," Sirius replied.
"I just hope that Molly doesn't believe that I'm playing with her daughter, the girl she used to babysit, and her son's crush's heart's…" Harry murmured. "I mean, just look at how she treated Hermione when she thought she was two-timing me…"
"So how does the article fair after a quick reality check?" Sirius inquired.
Harry snorted. "It doesn't even rate. Hermione never liked me before I started being as annoying as I possibly can, Luna knows about my crippling fear of accidentally being a pedophile, and Ginny…well, I am hoping she'll come around but hopefully not for a while yet so I don't have to reject her because she's too young and hurt my future chances with her."
"You DO realize that just because you ended up with her in the past isn't necessarily an indication that you'll do so again in the future?" Sirius asked. "I mean, you're both different people and she isn't the girl you have all those shared experiences with. It wouldn't be fair to her to constantly compare everything she does to the person she was in another time."
"I wouldn't!" Harry declared heatedly. "Shared experiences or not, Ginny is Ginny and I love her! I don't want to be creepy so I need to wait, but that isn't going to change!"
Sirius eyed him carefully. "Just…don't take it for granted, okay? I don't want to see you get hurt."
----
"Why can't they just tell us whatever we need to know inside?" Fred grumbled as he, his twin, Cedric, and Harry made their way down to the Quidditch Pitch to receive their instructions about the Third Task.
"They just have to rub it in that we didn't get to play Quidditch this year," George added.
"Maybe they want to make sure no one can overhear us or maybe they're using the Quidditch Pitch for the Third Task," Cedric suggested.
"What could they possibly be using the Pitch for?" George asked skeptically.
"What do you think, Harry?" Fred asked.
Harry shrugged. "I don't really care one way or another but my scar's with Cedric."
"Your scar always takes Cedric's side," Fred noted.
"Is it possible it's in love with him?" George asked.
Harry shuddered. "Dear God I hope not. No offense or anything, Cedric, but that would be pretty awkward, I like girls, and there are enough rumors floating around about my love life as it is."
"None taken," Cedric assured him. "I, too, feel it would be rather awkward to have my friend's supposedly psychic 'facial disfigurement' in love with me. I mean, there's no way I'd even know unless you told me, but – knowing you – you probably would. In excruciating detail."
Harry shrugged again. "If I would have to deal with it, so would you." He bumped into Fred. "Hey, why'd you stop?"
Fred and George both took that moment to fall to their knees instead of answering him. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
"What the-?" Harry was all for melodrama, but usually it had a purpose. What was wrong?
"The Pitch!" Cedric exclaimed, sounding a little upset.
"Oh, right," Harry remembered. "The Pitch is being turned into a hedge maze."
George turned accusing eyes to Harry. "You knew?"
"I told you my scar agreed with Cedric," Harry pointed out.
"I'm going to take the fact that you didn't feel the need to mention this to me as a clear sign that your scar sees me as just a friend and then let the matter drop," Cedric announced.
"Good, because we have more pressing things to worry about," Fred told him. "Such as…why, God, why?"
"Surely it's not that bad," Bagman claimed as he stepped forward to greet them. He had been standing with Fleur and Viktor just twenty feet away from them.
"You're speaking to four Quidditch fanatics, sir," Harry informed him. "Five if you count Viktor. Six if – do you play?" he asked Fleur.
"A little," she answered. "I was not on any 'Ouse team, though."
Bagman's smile faded a little. "Well…it will be back to normal in no time after the Playoffs are over, don't worry."
"Is this why we couldn't have Quidditch this year?" Harry demanded. "Because you'd think we could have just gotten all the matches out of the way before April."
"You'd have to ask Professor Dumbledore about that, I'm afraid," Bagman replied. "Can anyone tell me what this is?"
"If we do do we get a prize?" Harry asked immediately.
"…No," Bagman answered shortly.
"Then I'm sure I don't know," Harry said.
No one said anything for a moment; they just stared at each other waiting for someone to answer the obvious question. Viktor looked away first.
"Maze," he supplied, rolling his eyes.
"Very good!" Bagman beamed like being able to recognize a maze was any sort of accomplishment at their age. "A maze. The third task's really very straightforward. The Triwizard Cup will be placed in the center of the maze. The first champion to touch it will receive full marks."
"We simply 'ave to get through the maze?" said Fleur, looking decidedly unimpressed. How that girl had ever chosen to stay in Great Britain after so very clearly hating every minute of her seventh year there was, quite frankly, a complete mystery.
"There will be obstacles," said Bagman happily, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Hagrid is providing a number of creatures… then there will be spells that must be broken… all that sort of thing, you know. Now, the champions who are leading on points will get a head start into the maze." Bagman grinned at Harry, Fred, and George. "Followed by Mr. Diggory. Then Miss Delacour will enter… and finally Mr. Krum But you'll all be in with a fighting chance, depending how well you get past the obstacles. Should be fun, eh?"
"So you are saying zhat our point totals are completely worthless?" Fleur asked. "Because it does not matter 'oo is ahead but 'oo touches the Cup first?"
"Not at all!" Bagman insisted. "Because the more points you have, the sooner you get to go into the maze. For instance, Harry and Mr. Weasley each have 121 points while Mr. Krum has but 95. That's a 26 point differences, which means they should have a good fifteen minute head start."
"But since it is a maze then I am thinking that you really mean that ve didn't need to bother vith the first two Tasks at all," Krum countered.
"Well, if there are no more questions then we can all head back up to the castle," Bagman said loudly.
----
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," Lockhart was saying as Harry walked by an apparently occupied classroom. Naturally, he stopped to listen.
Moody laughed harshly. "I'm sure you don't. I've never thought you were anywhere near talented enough to pull off half of the accomplishments you've laid claim to and with the amnesia that pops up at the site of each of your victories…you have to wonder."
"No, you really don't," Lockhart countered, sounding annoyed. "I prefer to let my accomplishments speak for themselves and not go around showing off my magical prowess because that would just be over-the-top. Dumbledore does, but he also hasn't written a series of books, so that's not too much as far as he's concerned."
"And the amnesia?" Moody impressed.
"Psychological trauma? Head trauma? Spell gone wrong?" Lockhart suggested.
"That last one sounds about right," Moody informed him.
"One case of lost memory in a town where they've had such problems that I've needed to step in is hardly out of the ordinary," Lockhart insisted. "Now don't you have anything better to do?"
"Better than investigating a possible crime or series of crimes?" Moody challenged. "What could possibly be more important than that?"
"Grading papers?" Lockhart offered. "Interrogating either Snape or Karkaroff about possible Death Eater activity? Stopping Bagman from scamming schoolchildren with bets he has no intention of repaying? Keeping Rita Skeeter off the premise?"
"I've already done the first three," Moody announced. "And that last one is really none of my concern."
"For the love of God, aren't you supposed to be retired?" Lockhart exclaimed.
"I am," Moody conceded, opening the classroom door. "But that's not nearly as entertaining as you might think. I'll let you go for now, but I'll be back when I have more questions."
"Don't hurry back," Lockhart called after him.
Moody nodded at Harry. "Potter."
"Harry?" Lockhart brightened immediately. "How are you?"
"I'm good," Harry said distractedly. "Is he-?"
"Who? Moody?" Lockhart asked. "No, don't worry about it. He's suspicious about me, but then he's suspicious about everyone up to and including Professor Dumbledore himself. Apparently his sister had some sort of mysterious death or something…either way, he has no proof and I'm not careless enough for there to be any for him to find."
"That's good," Harry said. "So how's being a Headmaster suiting you?"
"Surprising well," Lockhart replied. "The lack of an actual school or students aside from Fred and George means there's practically no work but the publicity is great. Though you would not believe the flood of applications I keep getting."
Harry raised an eyebrow. "Applications?"
Lockhart shook his head pityingly. "Harry, Harry, Harry…you create a 'Harry Potter School of Awesomeness' which combines two things that people love – you and awesomeness – and you don't expect people to apply? You've come along way but you clearly have some work yet to do."
"Well, I've only been at it for a little over two years," Harry said defensively.
"Still, you're leaps and bounds ahead of Viktor," Lockhart remarked. "He just looked confused when I suggested that he sue whoever is selling unauthorized merchandise of him and get in on the profits. He's coming around, though. But enough about that: how are you as far as the Third Task?"
Harry shrugged. "It's a maze; I know a spell that can help me find the Cup's general location."
"Could you be any less specific?" Lockhart requested.
Harry made a face. "I really don't know. There's supposed to be magical creatures in there so a Boggart's a good guess. There are acromantula in the Forbidden Forest so maybe there will be a few of them roaming about. A sphinx is always good for a maze so maybe I should brush up on inane riddles and they've got to get rid of the Blast-Ended Skrewts somehow, right?"
"So you've got a plan?" Lockhart asked. "After all, it simply wouldn't due to fail miserably during the Task and possibly even need rescuing after such a strong showing. Remember, Harry, your age makes you the underdog in the competition and no one wants to see the underdog lose."
Harry nodded. "I know and I'm about as prepared as I can be. It's not even the maze I'm really worried about because I'll be fine, I just need to get to the Cup before anybody else does."
"Well, yes, I suppose it would be exceedingly difficult to die during the Playoffs since Dumbledore has introduced all these ridiculous 'safety features'," Lockhart concurred. "But should any of you die, at least you waited until the Third Task."
"Because when you die, timing is just so important," Harry deadpanned.
"Exactly," Lockhart agreed, sounding perfectly serious.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Chapter 56
Mycroft debriefed them on their way back to London. Oliver sat on John’s lap, leaning heavily against him, and listened, his eyes wide. John was sure he was understanding everything, and he couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or not. Mycroft was saying things that John didn’t care about, about the scientists having been involved in Oliver’s original cloning; how they had simply walked Oliver right into Baskerville, no questions asked, because of Baskerville’s special status; how Mycroft was going to change things. Sherlock was interrogating Mycroft, but John couldn’t bring himself to be interested in what was happening. He kept his lips on Oliver’s head and murmured to him, words of love and safety and comfort that he hoped were making more of an impact than the story Mycroft was telling.
It wasn’t terribly late when they got back to Baker Street, but John felt like it should have been the middle of the night. Lestrade met them at the door and looked at Oliver in relief.
“You got him.”
“Yes,” John said, and gave Lestrade an exhausted smile.
John saw Lestrade’s gaze linger on Oliver’s shaved head, but all he said was, “Good to have you back, Ollie.”
“Hi,” Oliver said, tiredly.
John started to walk up the stairs, then turned back. “Sherlock,” he said, blindly, because he felt like he couldn’t deal with anyone else anymore.
“Yes?” said Sherlock.
“Get rid of everyone,” John said, shakily. “Please.”
“You should really have Oliver checked out—” began Mycroft.
“John will check him out,” Sherlock said.
“He’s fine,” John agreed, wearily. “He needs to be home and cuddled for a little while. I can’t make him go to a hospital right now. I’ll check him over more thoroughly but he’s fine. Here.” On a sudden whim, John handed Oliver to Mycroft.
Mycroft bundled him into his arms automatically, to keep him from dropping entirely, looking startled.
“Thank you, Mycroft,” John said, gravely. “For all the help. Thank you.”
Mycroft looked at Oliver, who looked back at him, wearing the expression of cautious worry he’d been wearing since they’d retrieved him.
Mycroft said, solemnly, “I’m sorry, Oliver. I failed you, and I won’t do it again.”
Oliver said, “Myc,” which as the first time John had ever heard him call Mycroft anything but
client
.
Mycroft actually smiled at him, and then Mycroft leaned in and kissed the baby’s forehead, which was more affectionate than John had ever seen him be. He handed Oliver back to John and said, “Greg and I will be back tomorrow. We’ll make sure everything’s alright.”
John nodded and turned to mount the stairs, hearing Sherlock following up behind him.
Mrs. Hudson met them at the top. Oliver saw her and reached for her immediately, saying, “Ma.”
“Oh, Ollie,” she said, and took him and cuddled him and sniffled against him.
John glanced over his shoulder at Sherlock. “Run the bath, would you?”
Sherlock nodded, and John heard him go into the bathroom. He put the kettle on and set out two mugs and a sippy cup, making the tea automatically.
Mrs. Hudson came into the kitchen, pressed Oliver’s head up against her and covered the ear facing outward, and hissed at John, “But why would they shave his beautiful hair?”
John measured out sugar and answered calmly. “Because they were attaching electrodes to his head to measure his brain waves and they wanted to make sure it was a perfect connection.”
“Oh, little lamb,” Mrs. Hudson tutted, and then said, “Well, you’re home now with your dads and safe. There you are, love.”
John glanced over at her, watching her hand the baby over to Sherlock, who had come into the kitchen.
“You three just have a nice, quiet evening together. I’ll bring up some biscuits and leave them and not disturb you.”
“Mrs. Hudson,” said John, stepping away from the kettle and stopping her before she left. He pulled her into a close hug and closed his eyes and said, “Thank you,” because she had been there with him, from the very beginning, for him and them.
“Oh, love,” she said, and smoothed a hand through his hair in a gesture that was extraordinarily maternal, and John’s mother had died when he had been at uni, so long ago that he had forgotten how lovely it could be feel to be comforted by a mother. He squeezed her a little bit tighter in reaction. And she said, “I never doubted you’d have a happy ending.”
John would have liked to say the same. But he had woken next to Sherlock that morning with the sour taste of a nightmare in his mouth, the weight of Oliver’s lifeless body in his arms, and he was not proud of the fact that he had resented Sherlock’s deep, even sleep enough that he had lashed out at him as soon as he had seen him awake.
The kettle clicked, and John made them tea, and Mrs. Hudson left, and John carried their tea into the bathroom and Sherlock put Oliver in the tub. For a moment Oliver just sat and regarded them, and then he reached out and splashed Sherlock directly in his eye.
“Lovely,” said Sherlock, dryly, the afflicted eye squeezed shut.
Oliver giggled and commenced to splashing much more energetically. He got water all over the bathroom, and Sherlock and John watched and got soaking wet and silently agreed it was the most beautiful thing they’d ever seen.
***
Sherlock played for them. He started with Oliver’s song, and Oliver listened to him raptly, and Sherlock sang the notes for him as he played them, being careful with showing where his fingers were positioned on the violin. And then Sherlock transitioned into “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” which John had never heard him play before, because Sherlock generally thought that Oliver’s taste in music should be identical to Sherlock’s, even at such a young age. But he played it, and Oliver on John’s lap brightened and sat up straighter and sang along, slightly behind the notes Sherlock was playing. John decided he couldn’t stand this and cuddled Oliver close and pretended he wasn’t crying into the back of Oliver’s neck.
Oliver squirmed, offended, saying, “Papa. Baa Baa Blah Sheep,” as if he couldn’t believe John would bother him during such artistry. He slid off of John’s lap and gave John such a perfect Sherlockian look of
ugh, peasants
that it didn’t really help John’s tearfulness. Oliver toddled over to where Sherlock was playing by the window and pulled himself up onto the desk chair and sat and listened politely to a bit of flourish Sherlock was playing, before saying, “Daddy, Baa Baa Blah Sheep now.”
“Listen to this really beautiful little bit of Mendelssohn I’m going to play for you right now,” Sherlock told him.
Oliver stood on the chair, frowning, reaching for Sherlock’s arm. “Daddy, Baa Baa Blah Sheep now
please
,” he said, with the
please
delivered with the unmistakable disgust of
look what you’ve done you’ve made me have to say please
.
Sherlock gave in, and Oliver sat on the desk, satisfied, and sang along again, and clapped when they reached the end of the song.
“You’re welcome,” Sherlock told him, fondly, and kissed the top of his head. “Now can I play you some Mendelssohn?”
“I think you should learn I’m a Little Teapot,” John said, having managed to get himself under control, so that the smile he was smiling was only slightly watery.
“Don’t even get the idea in your head, Oliver,” Sherlock said, sternly, and then he didn’t play Mendelssohn, he played John’s song.
John smiled and leaned back in his chair. Oliver clambered down off the desk and retrieved his skull and his periodic table blanket and carried both over to John, where he directed exactly how he wished everything to be arranged and then climbed up, settling against John with a little sigh. He was clingier than he normally was, which John didn’t blame him for at all. John felt clingier than he normally was, after all.
John kissed Oliver’s head and tried not to focus on how very different it felt for it to be skin instead of a riot of curls. He said, softly, “You’re okay, Ollie.”
He didn’t expect Oliver to answer, but Oliver said, watching Sherlock raptly, “Yes.”
“Glad you agree,” said John.
“Love you,” said Oliver, and John had never heard him say that before, and he closed his eyes and rested his lips against him and breathed him in.
“Love you, too,” he said, and Sherlock transitioned into Mozart at the window.
***
There was never any possibility of putting Oliver in his cot. John carried him into their bedroom, fast asleep, and stretched out on the bed next to him, and he was asleep, too, by the time Sherlock finished changing into his pajamas. Typical, thought Sherlock, looking at the pair of them. They were adorable, of course, but he wasn’t the least bit tired.
He retrieved his laptop from the sitting room and carried it to bed with him, where he sat and researched infant memory. Eventually Oliver shifted, and Sherlock looked down at him and watched him blink himself awake.
Sherlock put a finger to his lips and whispered, “Papa’s sleeping.”
Oliver glanced behind him at John, turned back to Sherlock, and said, “Silly.”
“Indeed.”
Oliver crawled over to Sherlock, insinuating himself into Sherlock’s arms and immediately trying to smash the keys on Sherlock’s laptop.
Sherlock closed the laptop and put it on the nightstand, and Oliver protested with, “Daddy!”
John stirred and Sherlock looked over at him, but he didn’t wake.
“Shh,” Sherlock said again, and rested his lips on Oliver’s head, annoyed that there was no hair on it anymore. It was irritating to him. They could take Oliver home and make him feel loved and safe but they still looked at him and
knew
that there had been a time when he hadn’t been there with them, when someone else had been in charge of him.
Oliver turned in his arms, pulling himself into standing, and suddenly reached out a hand to Sherlock’s hair, twisting into it and tugging. He was frowning as he did it, thoughtful. He reached up his free hand to his head, clearly making the connection, and he looked quizzical.
“They shaved it,” Sherlock told him, because he felt like Oliver deserved to know when things were confusing him. “Look, I’ll show you.” He picked up Oliver and carried him into the bathroom and showed him in the mirror.
Oliver stared, wide-eyed, alarmed, and then his lower lip trembled. And Sherlock felt horrified suddenly. He hadn’t even
considered
that Oliver would find it upsetting. Yes,
they
did, of course they did, they looked at Oliver all the time, but Sherlock hadn’t realized that Oliver had an idea of what he looked like in his head. Sherlock hadn’t thought that through. But of course he did. He could pick himself out in photographs, of course he knew what he looked like, and of course he no longer looked that way.
“Shh,” said Sherlock, stepping away from the mirror and trying to comfort him. “It’ll grow back. I promise. It’ll be fine, right? It’s all going to be fine. It’s all going to be just like it was.”
Oliver sniffled, eyes filled with tears, looking heartbroken, and Sherlock heard himself say, “Watch. I’ll show you.”
And then suddenly Sherlock was in the kitchen, retrieving scissors. He frowned at them, wondering how clean they were, deciding they were clean enough. He went back into the bathroom and settled Oliver on the toilet.
“Watch,” he said, and took a deep breath, and then cut an enormous lock of his hair off.
Oliver’s eyes widened. And then he laughed and reached for the lock of hair. Sherlock handed it to him, and Oliver looked delighted. He looked up at Sherlock, eyes shining, and said, “More, Daddy.”
As if he was going to deny him that. So Sherlock cut and cut and cut at his hair, leaving a pile of dark curls on the floor around him. Eventually he looked at what was left and remarked, “Well. Papa’s going to help me shave the rest of it, though, it just looks ridiculous like this.” He studied himself unflinchingly. He had always been vain about his hair, and he thought that of course Oliver must have been the same way, and he liked the idea of shaving his head to match Oliver, an outward sign that they would heal together.
Sherlock sat on the floor, in the middle of the mess he’d made, and pulled Oliver into his arms, and spoke to him very seriously. “You might remember what happened to you. And you might not. It could go either way with trauma at your age. But if you remember, this is what I want you to remember: There is nothing, ever, that will keep us from you. Ever. If you are lost, we will always find you. If you call for us, we will always answer. Just like we did today. I want you to remember
that
. You are the most beloved, important, precious person in our lives, there will never be anything more beloved or important or precious than you. So just remember
that
. Don’t remember whatever they did to you, whatever they said to you, remember that you are ours and we are yours and we will protect you and when we fail we will save you and I am so sorry, Ollie. I am so sorry.” Sherlock leaned his forehead against Oliver’s, surprised at how much he could
feel
now that he’d cut so much of his hair off. He closed his eyes and held Oliver and said again, “I’m so sorry.”
“Love you,” said Oliver, and Sherlock smiled.
And then John said, “Oh, my God, what did you do to your
hair
?”
Sherlock looked up. John was blinking blearily in the light, staring in horror at Sherlock’s head.
“I’m proving to Oliver that it’s not a big deal to have your head shaved,” said Sherlock, defensively. “We’re going to grow our hair back together, Oliver and me. Isn’t that right, Ollie?”
“Yes,” Oliver said, and picked up a handful of Sherlock’s hair, showing it to John in delight. “Look!”
“Time will pass,” said Sherlock, “and our hair will grow back, and we’ll all get better.” He said it stubbornly, because he knew John had been fond of his hair, but he also knew that it would grow back, that nothing that couldn’t be fixed had happened over the past day, and they had got so lucky.
John said, after a moment, “I’ll shave yours if you’ll shave mine.”
***
Mycroft eyed the collection of shaved heads in Baker Street but said nothing. He said to Sherlock, simply, “Do you want to hear what we’ve learned?”
John said, “I don’t want Oliver hearing it.”
Which of course caused Oliver to walk immediately over to Sherlock so that he could hear everything.
“I thought we might go for a walk,” Lestrade suggested. “Mycroft sent a small army to keep us safe.”
“You were saying you wanted to get him outside,” Sherlock said, because it was a beautiful day, the sun shining brightly, and John had been hesitant to leave Baker Street, where he knew they were safe, but Sherlock thought they
had
to leave Baker Street or they’d never leave.
“Quick walk,” John said, after a moment. “Not a long one.”
“It’ll be fine,” Sherlock assured him, firmly.
John nodded after a moment, picked Oliver up, walked toward the doorway, then backtracked to kiss Sherlock firmly, because he hadn’t kissed him before he’d gone off for the puddle experiment the other day, and it could have been the last time he’d seen him. “I love you,” he said.
“It’s going to be perfectly okay,” Sherlock told him.
“I love you anyway,” said John.
Sherlock smiled. “Yes. I know. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t say it that day. But I love you, too.”
“Thanks. Ready for a walk?” he asked Oliver.
“No,” said Oliver, pouting.
“Want to feed the ducks?”
“No,” said Oliver.
“We’re going anyway,” said John, unperturbed.
“Papa!” Oliver complained.
Sherlock listened to the door open and close and then said to Mycroft, “What have you learned?”
“They were part of the original team. Thorpe told them where Oliver could be located.”
“So we didn’t fake Ollie’s death soon enough.”
“It would seem not. Thorpe himself didn’t appear to have anything to do with the plan, although he no doubt told them hoping they would act. They insisted that they weren’t going to harm Oliver and they were going to return him as soon as they were done. Not killing you was their show of good faith.”
“Oh,” mocked Sherlock, “how polite of them not to kill me.”
“They think you’re being unreasonable, not allowing them to collect data from Oliver. They clearly don’t know you, you are never
reasonable
.”
Sherlock smiled faintly. “But how did they orchestrate it all?”
“What do you mean?”
“Stealing the cab, making sure to pick me up, spying on me in such a way that not even you noticed, determining where the transfer should take place so the CCTV wouldn’t be able to see, injecting me with enough drugs so that I wouldn’t be in pursuit immediately, getting me to the warehouse—I mean, there had to be
teams
of them.”
“There was a great number involved. We’re still tracking them all down. The news spread among the scientists fairly quickly.”
“What is your plan for dealing with them?” Sherlock asked.
Mycroft hesitated. “I’ve shut down Baskerville’s cloning program. And I’m requiring Baskerville to start making the usual reports. Their free rein is over.”
“But what are you doing with the scientists involved with Oliver’s kidnapping?” Sherlock asked again, patiently.
“I’d rather you not know. Suffice it to say: I will keep him safe, Sherlock. It’s every bit as important to me as it is to you. I know you don’t believe that. But it’s true.” Mycroft paused. “Please don’t ask me to shave my head to prove it, though.”
Sherlock snorted. “I doubt it would grow back.”
“Indeed.”
Sherlock sat and steepled his fingers and said, “To trick
both
of us…”
“It was meticulous planning,” Mycroft said. “And we were caught flat-footed.”
“We shouldn’t have been.”
“We won’t be again,” said Mycroft.
***
The weather was unbelievably gorgeous and John thought it apt, considering how happy he’d been all day. He had woken up to Sherlock and Oliver both sound asleep next to him and had managed to bring them tea in bed and they had lounged for a bit just enjoying each other. And now Oliver was being very interested in everything all around him, just the way Oliver always was.
“You’re going to have to buy him a hat for his head, now that he doesn’t have any hair,” remarked Lestrade. “You, too. You’ll get sunburnt.”
“It was a solidarity thing,” John said. “I think Sherlock felt like we needed to all be in this together, have some outward sign that we were all getting better.”
“I think it’s nice,” said Lestrade.
“Papa, no ducks,” Oliver said from the pushchair.
“I know, Ollie. He hates the ducks,” John told Lestrade.
“Sodding ducks,” said Oliver, passionately.
“Well, then,” said Lestrade.
“He
really
hates ducks,” said John.
“How did I not realize what he was,” said Lestrade, in amazement.
“It isn’t the kind of thing you would assume,” John pointed out.
“But he is
so exactly him
. Now that you’ve said it, it seems obvious to me.”
“He’s actually not exactly him. I mean, he is, in lots of ways, but in other ways he’s not very much like him at all.”
“Well, that’s nature and nurture,” said Lestrade.
“Yes,” agreed John. “And it’s exactly why it all happened, because they want to
know
these things.”
“How would they ever think they could know any of them without knowing the two of you as well?”
“Well. Sherlock and Oliver would both say that they’re idiots,” said John.
There was a moment of silence. Oliver was singing to himself. “Baa Baa Black Sheep” again.
John said, “We were going to tell you.”
“I know,” said Lestrade.
“It wasn’t that we didn’t trust you. We were being…so cautious, with who knew—”
“It’s okay, John.”
“Don’t be angry with Mycroft. He didn’t tell you because we asked him not to tell you.”
“John, I am so used to the secrets Mycroft keeps. I’m not offended by any of them.”
John decided to take him at his word.
Lestrade said, after a moment, “In a weird way, this makes so much more sense than the story you told me about where Oliver came from.”
“Yeah,” John said. “We would have a child in the most unique way in the world.”
“Sodding ducks,” said Oliver, darkly, and glared at them as they passed.
***
“John apologized, you know,” Lestrade said, toeing his shoes off.
Mycroft was staring at his tablet, but then Mycroft was always staring at his tablet, so it wasn’t like that deterred Lestrade.
“Well,” he amended. “He apologized after a fashion.”
“They were worried about telling anyone at all,” said Mycroft, apparently paying attention even though he did sound distracted. “It was nothing personal.”
“I didn’t take it personally.” Lestrade walked over to where Mycroft was sitting at his desk, leaned down and kissed the side of his neck. “You, though, paying attention to that tablet right now instead of me—that I’m taking personally.”
“Thorpe is dead,” said Mycroft, flatly, and put the tablet down.
Lestrade stilled, straightened. “Thorpe?”
“The doctor who originally cloned Oliver.”
“I thought he didn’t have anything to do with this, though.”
“So did I.” Mycroft looked grim as he rose from the desk.
“Then why is he dead?”
“Car accident.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“I don’t, no.”
Lestrade considered. “Could be a coincidence?” he suggested.
“The universe is seldom so lazy.”
“So…what do you think, then?”
Mycroft didn’t pace. Mycroft never paced. Mycroft stood and thought and then he admitted, “I don’t know.”
“We should tell Sherlock and John.”
Mycroft looked at him. “Why?” he asked, mildly.
Lestrade blinked. “Why?” he echoed. “Because they should know.”
“‘The doctor who created your clone baby, who has no connection with the recent kidnapping, was killed in a car accident.’ That’s what you want me to tell them?”
“No
known
connection,” Lestrade corrected him.
“He wasn’t connected. He had nothing to do with their plan. He told them of Oliver’s existence. That’s it.”
“Then who killed him? And why?”
“The answers to those questions will haunt John and Sherlock, for no good reason. Because I’m going to keep Oliver safe for them. I promised that once before and I failed them. I will not fail them again, Greg.” Mycroft, decision made, nodded and looked firmly at Lestrade. “We’re not telling them. It has no relevance to them. It’s safer if they don’t do something rash from a defensive position.”
“You don’t trust them, do you?”
“To not take Oliver and disappear entirely if they feel threatened? No. I don’t trust them. I’m aware he’s their first priority, and I approve of that. But I’m not going to spook them right now for no reason. It’s an odd curiosity, but it’s not a threat. Not while I’m watching. Let them settle, let them be happy.” Mycroft paused, and then he almost smiled. “Let their hair grow back.”
Lestrade regarded him. “But if one more out of the ordinary thing happens, you need to tell them immediately.”
Mycroft considered, then nodded. “Agreed.” Then, “Come to bed.”
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Earlier that evening, Arya had gone to speak to Daenerys Targaryen, the new Queen of the seven kingdoms. She found her in the Tower of the Hand with Tyrion, discussing some matter of the court. Arya did not really bother listening in before she entered the room. Whatever they were discussing was of little importance to her just then.
Tyrion stood at once when he saw her, and Daenerys brow furrowed. Arya was satisfied to see the slightest spark of nervousness in her violet eyes.
"Lady Arya...what brings you here?" Tyrion asked.
"I would like to speak with the queen," Arya said. "Alone, if you don't mind."
Daenerys and Tyrion glanced between each other and Daenerys gave him a small nod. Tyrion sighed and paced around the desk to leave. As he passed Arya, he rested a hand on her arm. She was not sure if it was in comfort or warning. Or both. Regardless, she gave him a small nod.
When the door had closed Daenerys turned fully to face her. "I know what you've come here to ask. But it's impossible. I already passed the sentence. To revoke it would show indecision and weakness."
"I know," Arya said. "I did not come to argue with your judgement, my queen."
Her brow knit in confusion. "Then...what does bring you here?"
"You failed to mention how you would carry out the sentence," Arya said. "I wondered if it was because you knew the court would react poorly to your chosen method."
Daenerys hesitated. "No...it was because I was undecided on the method."
Good,
Arya thought.
Then I will help you decide.
"Tyrion advised me that beheading may be the best course," Daenerys continued. "Quick and clean. Prince Oberyn believes that showing the power of dragon fire will be a more effective lesson. I suppose I know which one you would choose."
Arya could not imagine watching either option. There would be nothing left of Tywin after the dragon fire, and it seemed a painful way to go. And beheading...well, even thinking about it made bile rise up in her throat. It was not a poor way to die but...
Bring me his head.
But even so.
"What did you promise the Dornish?" Arya asked after a pause. "Regarding the execution?"
"I promised them that Tywin Lannister would face justice," Daenerys said.
"You did not promise a particular kind of death?"
"No. We did not discuss it."
"Good," Arya said. "Then you won't be breaking your promise if you give me leave to handle it instead."
"Handle it?" Daenerys asked. "I don't quite understand what you're suggesting."
"I'm not suggesting. I'm asking. Asking for your leave to give Lord Tywin some painless execution. He will be dead by dawn and you will not have to choose between those two methods."
"Why..." Daenerys shook her head. "And why would I give you permission to do that?"
"Because I'm the Hero of Harrenhal," Arya said. "I killed the Night King and saved this kingdom for you to rule. I can help you keep the peace for many years, because I have many friends throughout the major families and I know that peace is what is best for the kingdom. This is the only thing I am asking in return, your grace. This one thing...and you will have an ally in me."
Daenerys hesitated...and that was how Arya knew that she had her. Because the Dragon queen
knew
she needed Arya for an ally if she was to keep the seven kingdoms. Arya didn't have to threaten her. The threat was implied in the space in between her words. She had watched Daenerys fretting over how to obtain Arya's support ever since she arrived in Westeros. And here Arya was offering her such a simple thing in exchange for her loyalty.
"You won't break any vows or promises if you give me this, your grace," Arya said, pressing her advantage. "You promised justice. And death is death no matter the method. Please. Give me your leave."
"And if I do not?" Daenerys asked.
"Then that is your decision," Arya said. "But I hope that you will. I think it would be best for everyone if we were on good terms."
"I agree," Daenerys said, pacing toward the windows. Arya watched her thumb and forefinger rub together nervously. "If I allow you this...I have conditions."
"And what are those?" Arya asked.
"That you do not resent me for the trial," Daenerys said. "You must know that I could not let him live."
"I know," Arya said.
"What you said about him during the trial was not wrong," Daenerys turned back to face her. "He was instrumental in my peaceful transition to the throne and he kept his promises. I do suppose...that a painless execution is payment enough for that."
She was rationalizing her choice, though she likely knew this would upset Oberyn. It might even drive a wrench between her and the Dornish. But what did it matter when she seemed to be getting so many more allies in return? She had already promised to marry Quentyn Martell. She had their loyalty through marriage. It was the other houses she still needed to buy.
"So," Arya said. "Will you give me leave, your grace?"
Daenerys nodded. "Yes, Lady Arya. I give you leave. So long as you continue to work to keep peace in the realm."
"On my honor as a Stark and a Lannister," Arya said. "I swear that I will."
It was never a question that she would work to maintain the peace. But that might not always mean serving Daenerys. It was a small thing...but it pleased Arya that she was not made to swear a vow she could not keep.
That was what led Arya to Lord Tywin's room in the dead of night, clutching a small vile in her hand. It almost seemed to burn her skin as she pressed it against her palm. She was painfully aware of the contents of the vile. She had asked Daenerys for this...and yet the thought of actually giving this poison to Tywin...
He will die either way,
she thought.
This way is better.
"More wine, my lord?"
"Yes. Pour yourself a cup as well."
At his instruction, she slowly poured them both a full goblet. It was a familiar motion to her. She had poured him wine at Harrenhal and in his tent during the War of Five Kings. On occasion, she had poured him wine in the Tower of the Hand during their lessons. But it struck her then...that this was the last time.
"I'm not sure I was ever particularly good as a cupbearer," she said, hoping to fill the silence. "It's surprising you kept me on long enough to find out who I was."
"For a highborn girl, you weren't terrible," Tywin said. "You knew how to make yourself small and stay out of the way when you weren't needed. Though you couldn't pass for lowborn any better than you could pass for being a boy."
"I fooled almost everyone," Arya said indignantly, turning away from the table. "And you didn't know who I
really
was until Lord Baelish told you."
"Because at the time, I thought you were still in King's Landing," Tywin said. "No one had told me otherwise."
"Probably because they were afraid to tell you a twelve year old girl escaped them."
"That is likely."
For a moment, a silence fell between them again, and Arya lingered at the table, clutching both goblets of wine in her hand. Then she let out a shaky breath and paced over to where he sat. She uncorked the tiny vile and poured the contents into one of the cups. Then she slowly slid his across the table.
He looked from the cup up to her and let out a long sigh as he realized what she was doing. "Arya-"
"It's all right," Arya said. "I have permission from the queen, granted to me earlier this evening." She drew a letter from her belt. "I had her put it in writing...just in case you doubted me."
"I don't doubt you. I would know if you were lying," Tywin said. None the less, he took the letter from her and read it over a few times before setting it aside. "How did you convince her?"
"I reminded her of my current influence in the realm," Arya said. "And asked for this small favor in return for helping to keep the peace."
"It almost sounds as if you threatened her," Tywin said.
"I didn't," Arya said. "I made her a desirable offer. I didn't need to say much. She desperately wants me as an ally."
"Of course she does. She's not a fool," Tywin said. "But whether she approves of this or not, I can't imagine Oberyn Martell will."
"If he confronts me, I will tell him the truth. That his queen allowed it," Arya said. "He can be angry at me if he wants...but I could not have done this without permission from Daenerys Targaryen."
"So you're hoping to alienate the Dornish from her," Tywin said.
"Not alienate," Arya said. "I'm planting a small seed of doubt."
His mouth twitched. "None the less, you will have to prepare to face the consequences for it. Everything you do now will have a consequence, Arya."
"I know," Arya said. "But I'll handle them. I have a strategy."
"And what is your strategy?" Tywin asked, studying her carefully. It was a test, Arya knew. Of course he would use his last moments to assess her plan. He was so fond quizzing her. He had been doing it ever since they first met.
"Secure the realm," she said. "Make sure that the iron throne is not the only seat of power."
"How will you do that?" he asked.
"The board is already set perfectly," Arya said. "Daenerys has taken the throne but the lords and ladies of Westeros know that it was only a peaceful takeover because you and Margaery allowed it. Your trial was just inconclusive enough that they will doubt her verdict. The only reason they don't protest is because they fear the dragons and there does not seem to be a better option. And because you pacified their liege lords, they won't make trouble until the time is right. They're all too tired to start another war after the Long Night. There will be peace...but an uneasy one."
"What if Daenerys turns the people to her side in that uneasy peace?" Tywin asked. "She's a charming woman. She could win them over and ease their worries."
"She can try all she likes. I'll still have more allies," Arya said. "The West is a given. So is the North. Robb rules there and my brother would never side with any queen against me. Not even if we somehow grew to hate each other. Honor won't allow it. I'll also have the Reach because once Mace Tyrell dies, Willas Tyrell will become the Lord. And my sister is married to him. I've seen enough of their interactions to know that Sansa will hold a great deal of sway in the realm. That means, in war, the resources belong to us. Not to mention Sansa did well gathering information with the women of Winterfell during the Northern civil war. I'm sure she could manage it on a larger scale."
"It wouldn't be a poor investment," Tywin said.
"Then I have the Riverlands," Arya said. "The Tullys will back our side because of my mother. And since they are most involved in the rebuilding of the Vale, I suspect they will have a great deal of influence there. The Stormlands, once Margaery charms them all, will be on my side. Margaery may have given up her throne amicably, but I know it wasn't her first choice. She will gladly take any offer that sees her son back on that throne. I won't have the Greyjoys but they will be spending all of their energy building back up their navy. I'll make sure that the Farman navy outpaces them."
"And the Dornish?" Tywin asked. "You certainly won't have them. Not after the marriage alliance and your actions here tonight."
"No. You're right," Arya said. "But the Dornish against the rest of the seven kingdoms? That doesn't seem like much of a contest. They would have to attack and they've always been most effective when they defend their territory, if history is correct."
"What about the Unsullied and the Dothraki?" Tywin asked.
"The Dothraki won't stay in Westeros," Arya said.
"You sound sure of it."
"I am," Arya said. "They're nomads who are used to vast grasslands and warm temperatures year round. Even this far south, this winter is hard on them. And their way of life will not mesh well with that of the lords of Westeros. To keep the peace, Daenerys will send most of them back to Essos to continue her work there. I'm sure the unsullied will stay and become Daenerys' royal army. I won't dismiss them as a strong fight force. But they won't bare any children which means they will age and their forces will eventually deplete."
"They may not be her only allies," Tywin said. "You're right to say that most of the major families would fight for you. But their bannermen, if they saw the war as unjust, might turn to serve their queen rather than their lord."
"
If
the war is unjust," Arya said. "I wouldn't attack unless I'm given cause."
Tywin folded his hands together. "Say that it did come to war then and you did happen to win? Who would you place on the throne?"
"You know the answer to that," Arya said.
"Your brother, from what I have observed, has little interest in ruling," Tywin said. "He would need a queen with a talent for politics, as well as a good Hand and council."
"Just like Tommen did." An idea came to Arya just then. "Margaery is currently unwed is she not? And she only has one son. That puts the Baratheon line in a precarious position, considering she has no spare children."
"That is true," Tywin said. "And how would you solve that problem?"
"Well, she would need to remarry someone who could give her more sons to bear the Baratheon name. Jon is noble and from a good family, but also, according to most of the country, a bastard by birth. So his children by her could be given the Baratheon name. And if later...some proof is found that Jon is the trueborn son of a different family that would make things less complicated."
"That it would," Tywin said. "And do you think your brother would agree to such a match?"
"He's been legitimized now. He'll have to marry eventually, like all high born lords," Arya said. "A Stark and Baratheon match is wise for diplomacy. And what man would really deny Margaery?"
"Very few," Tywin said. "Do you foresee any other threats to this strategy of yours?"
"The dragons," Arya said. "They will be a problem as long as they live and follow their mother. It is possible that the green one can be turned now that Jon has ridden it. Dragons do not usually take a second rider until their first has died. As for the other...well, we'll find some way." She exhaled. "Then of course there's Lord Varys. He has eyes and ears everywhere. I brought Merwyn with me just to be sure that no one could walk this hall without me noticing. But then...you did say he played his role as expected."
"Yes. And he did," Tywin said. "His confession put him in Daenerys' good graces. But it happens that he has been watching you for some time and he has faith in your ability to keep the realm stable. You may hear from his little birds from time to time."
Arya raised an eyebrow. "So I have eyes and ears in King's Landing then."
Tywin nodded once, standing from his seat and pacing over to the window. "It's not a bad plan. Though you're focusing a great deal on the country as a whole without remembering the crucial first step."
"The first step?" Arya asked.
"Consolidating power in the west," Tywin said. "Strong ties with your allies mean nothing if your bannermen are unhappy. Your brother's situation in the north must have taught you as much. Some of the lords will have doubts about you and Jaime, especially considering that neither of you plan to go to war over my execution. They will see that as weakness."
"How will I convince them otherwise?" Arya asked, standing as well and venturing toward him.
"I've left a letter for you in the Tower of the Hand. Tyrion agreed to keep it for me," Tywin said. "It bares my seal and handwriting and it insists that I order you and Jaime to stand down. Many will accept that." He turned back to face her. "However, they may not settle completely. Some will test Jaime to see if he is as strong willed as I was. And many of them will try to ignore you all together. There's the problem of the mines as well...but Jaime will explain that to you later. Regardless, if they show opposition, you must strike fast and hard to assure them that House Lannister remains just as strong as it was. Do you understand?"
"Yes. I understand." Arya swallowed hard. "What about...the rest of the strategy. Did it pass your test?"
Tywin studied her for a long time, an almost sad look in his eyes. Then, by way of answer he returned to the table and picked up his goblet, raising it slightly. Arya flinched when he did. She had felt a sudden urge to smack it out of his hand. But even as she took a step forward, he had already raised the cup to his lips, drinking deeply. It was too late now. It was done.
When the wine was finished, he set the cup on the table. "How long?"
"Not immediately," Arya murmured. "But...not very long either. It should be...painless." Arya lowered her head, shutting her eyes tight as she felt the tears start to rise. "It was... the only thing I could do."
"It was more than I deserve," he said. A heavy silence fell upon the room and he sighed. "Arya, look at me."
She lifted her chin, cracking open her eyes again.
"You've done more than enough for me," he said. "You can leave now, if you'd like. It's done. You don't have to stay."
"Yes..." Arya's voice cracked and she steeled herself to try again. "Yes I do. It's the last name on my list. I have to see it through."
"Your list?" Tywin asked.
Arya turned back toward the window, wrapping her arms tight around herself. "I started it ages ago after my father died. I said the names every night before I went to bed. Names of people I was going to kill one day...when I got the chance. When I got strong enough. I added to that list over time." Her nails dug craters into her palms. "Cersei, Joffrey, Merryn Trant, Illyn Payne, the Mountain, the Hound, Polliver, Walder Frey, Roose Bolton, Ramsay Bolton, Euron Greyjoy." She swallowed hard. "Tywin Lannister."
There was a long silence behind her and she did not turn to look at him. It felt like something of a confession...that he had been on her list all of this time but she could never bring herself to take him off one way or another.
"You added my name when we met, I'm sure," he said.
"Yes," Arya said.
"And now I'm the very last on the list," Tywin said. "You've been working at that list for seven years. Every name ended up dead, one way or another."
Arya nodded once. "I'm more patient than you think, my lord."
His voice held no anger. It did not seem to surprise him at all. Slowly she turned back to face him, and she found him looking at her with almost a sort of...pride. "Then I have faith in your ability to complete anymore lists you might create."
She wished she could smile at that, but her heart hurt too much. "I thought about removing your name...more than once."
"I'm glad you didn't. It means you have some sense. I did nothing to deserve being removed from your list," Tywin said. "I don't think I did anything to deserve your tears either."
She was crying again, wasn't she? She could feel it. She cursed herself inwardly as she hurried to wipe them away. "Maybe not. But...we don't get to choose what hurts us."
"I know," Tywin said. "I've tried."
Of course he had. Tywin had lost much in his many years. Parents, brothers, grandchildren, a daughter, a wife. But he had a reputation for feeling nothing. If he could have chosen what hurt and what didn't...he surely would have cut out what was left of his heart long ago.
"Tell me about her," Arya said. "Your wife."
Tywin seemed surprised at her command, and honestly, Arya was surprised as well. It was impulse that had driven her to say those words.
"You've never asked about her before," Tywin said at last.
"I was always curious. Just too afraid to ask," Arya admitted. "But you're about to die so...if I don't ask now, I'll never know."
"I haven't spoken much about her in years."
"That's because
everyone
was too afraid to ask."
"I suppose that's true," Tywin crossed to the table, pouring himself the last of wine from the pitcher and drinking long and deep. "What exactly do you want to know?"
"I'm not sure. What was she like?"
"Stubborn," Tywin said.
"That's the first thing you remember?" Arya asked. "Stubborn?"
"It was something I liked about her," Tywin said. "She was one of the few people in this world who was not afraid to question me or fight back when she disagreed. After what happened with the Reynes...sometimes even my own family was not quite sure how to speak with me. She never seemed to have that problem."
"I didn't think you liked being challenged," Arya said.
"It depends on the situation," Tywin said. "And the person. But she was often quite vexing and impossible to argue with. Perhaps because she only argued when she had a point to make. She was an intelligent woman." He tapped his fingers against the edge of his mug. "And she was good with people-even the ones she hated. She never forgot her courtesies."
"She was a proper lady then," Arya said.
"Oh, yes. She excelled at most of the activities of proper ladies," Tywin said. "Though she would rather be damned than keep her mouth shut when she had opinion. Some might have considered that improper."
Arya couldn't help but grin. She seemed an interesting woman. She had been dead for such a long time now...she could not help but wonder what Tywin might have been like if she had lived. "I think I would have liked her."
"She would have liked you," Tywin said, setting down his cup. "There. Does that satisfy your curiosity?"
"Enough, I suppose. I have a better picture of her," Arya said. "I'm sorry...for prying."
Tywin tilted his head to the side, observing her. "I really don't believe that you are."
He was right. She wasn't.
"I...haven't prayed to the seven in some time," Arya said. "But I did always like the idea...that we could see the dead again when it's all over."
"It's a comforting thought," Tywin said, drifting back toward the table in the center of the room. "Though...if the septon's vision of the seven heavens and seven hells is correct...I don't believe I will be seeing her."
Arya swallowed hard as she watched him. He was standing a bit strangely, and she knew the poison must be advancing. "Well, maybe they're wrong. There are so many different gods in this world."
"Which do you believe in?" Tywin asked.
"I'm not sure. After all I've seen, I'm really not sure," Arya said. "But my teacher always said that...Death was the only true god. And the only thing we say to Death is 'not today'."
Tywin considered the phrase. "Interesting. Did he tell you what to say to death if it unavoidable?"
Arya shook her head. "No. I'm afraid not."
"Pity."
Tywin swayed for a moment then, resting his hand on the table to catch himself. Arya rushed forward on instinct to grasp his arm and help him into a chair. He blinked hard as if to clear his vision. It was happening. Seven hells, it was happening.
That thought hit Arya like a punch to the stomach and she sank to her knees in front of him. She wanted to run and find help. She wanted to do
something
besides watch. Tears of panic pressed at her eyes, and she clutched at his hand as if that would do any good. As if she could keep him there through such a simple gesture.
"Tywin...I..."
"It's all right," he muttered. His voice, despite everything, was still steady. Calm. She had no idea how he could be so calm.
"It's not," Arya choked out. "I'm not...ready for this yet. Please."
"Yes. You are. You'll be all right." She felt his other hand rest against her cheek as the tears began to spill over. "Arya."
She looked up at him, tears spilling down her cheeks. He shook his head.
"I'll never be able to understand how I earned your grief. I was one of the worst things to happen to you...even though you were one of the better things to happen to me."
Arya let out something between a laugh and a sob. "You weren't...the worst, my lord. Believe me."
His thumb grazed along her cheek, wiping away a few of the tears. "They've given you quite a few names...since you killed the Night King. Nightslayer. Hero of Harrenhal. But I heard an interesting one some time ago. Winter's Fury. You named your sword that...I believe."
His breathing was labored and Arya hated to hear it. She wanted to tell him to be quiet and rest, but she also wanted to keep talking to him.
"Yes. That's what I named my sword," she said.
"You earned its name then."
"I did, didn't I? And it only took me a few years."
His mouth twitched into a small smile. And gods how it ripped through her to see that expression on his face. "And now comes the harder part. Living up to all of your names as time wears on." He let out a long sigh and seemed to sink back into his chair. "Don't be...too reckless."
"I'll try," Arya mumbled, grasping his hand tighter, as if that could keep him there with her.
He nodded, as if satisfied by her answer. Trying was all that she could promise. She wanted to promise other things as well. That his legacy would continue. That the west would be stable. That she would manage everything. But when she looked up at him again, she realized that his eyes had closed.
Her heart clenched. "Lord Tywin?" He did not respond. "Tywin are you..." her voice cracked. "Please don't...not yet. Tywin, say something else. One last thing.
Anything
."
He was silent and still in his seat. And Arya realized that his hand had gone slack in her grasp. She stared up at him for a long moment, hoping that he might open his eyes again. Hoping he might respond.
And when he didn't she let her head fall to rest against his hand. And she cried. She cried as a daughter might for a father.
Because, despite being so terrible a man, that was what Tywin Lannister was to her in the end.
Jaime and Tyrion had decided to spend the night drinking together instead of sleeping. It was Tyrion's offer and Jaime had gladly accepted. He had left a note in their room telling Arya where to find them if she wished to join them in their sorrows. He knew she would not be sleeping tonight either.
"Why did she come to speak with Daenerys?" Jaime asked.
"I don't know. The queen hasn't summoned me back to discuss it," Tyrion said. "Though I suspect it might have something to do with father."
"Will Arya's words do any good?" Jaime asked.
"No. Once the sentence is passed, a strong ruler cannot revoke it. That would show too much indecision," Tyrion said. "But maybe Arya is doing what father wished and trying to establish a cordial relationship with the queen."
Jaime's mouth twitched. Arya doing as their father wished...that was a funny thought. Well, it was the end of his life. Perhaps she wanted to give him that gift before he died.
"I don't think I want to go to the execution tomorrow," Tyrion said. "No matter what the method. It's just...not something one really wants to watch."
"If she plans to use dragons, I won't go," Jaime said. "I watched the Mad King burn enough people alive. I won't watch the same happen to our father."
Tyrion shivered. "No...but I think that she will take a more merciful course."
Jaime hoped that she would. He hoped that she would choose to appease new allies instead of the Dornish. "Even if she does...it's hard to imagine watching him die."
"Yes," Tyrion agreed. "I'm sure all men struggle to watch their father's die. Even when their fathers were terrible men. I can't
imagine
what we would feel like now if our father was any sort of decent person."
"Oh neither can I," Jaime said. "But if our father was any sort of decent person...a lot of things would be different."
"That they would." Tyrion raised his cup and drank deeply.
Jaime sighed. "I suppose...Arya would know. She watched her father die. And Ned Stark was a decent man and father by all accounts."
"Must have been terrible for her," Tyrion murmured. "So young at the time. She probably didn't think her father
could
die."
Jaime didn't reply. Somehow, he hadn't thought his could die either until recently. Logically he knew that all men died at some point or another. Yet Tywin Lannister still seemed...different from the rest. What a foolish thought that was.
"At least she has experience with this sort of thing," Tyrion said. "Should make it easier this time around."
"I'm not sure it will," Jaime said. "It seems it's just...bringing many bad memories back to the surface for her."
Tyrion nodded once, pouring himself another cup of wine. "Has she been to see him yet? To say goodbye?"
"Not yet. She's been putting it off," Jaime said. "But she'll go. She would never forgive herself if she didn't."
"I'm sure she wouldn't," Tyrion said. "You know...none of us should go tomorrow. We should all stay right here in this room, hiding away."
He was half joking, and yet half not.
"That would show weakness, wouldn't it?" Jaime asked.
"I don't care," Tyrion said. "I think it's better this way. I'd rather leave things as we did in that room than leave them on the executioner's block."
Jaime studied him. "Did you really leave things so well?"
"Not perfectly," Tyrion said. "He didn't exactly fall on his knees and beg forgiveness. I would have
hated
him for it if he did." He shook his head. "I already hate him a bit...for saying that he didn't blame me for what I am."
His brother's voice cracked slightly and Jaime reached out to rest a hand on his shoulder. "That's the closest to an apology you could get from father, isn't it?"
"Yes. He's a terrible man in that way." Tyrion drank again. This was his third cup already. "I hate myself for wanting him to live."
Jaime felt the same. He loved his father as most sons would...even despite everything that had happened between them. And his father had lived a longer life than most. He had outlasted nearly all of the lords who reigned in the time of Robert's Rebellion. And it was not as if he was paying for crimes he did not commit. He was guilty. Jaime knew it. But selfishly...he still wanted him to survive.
"It will be over soon, I suppose," Tyrion said. "I wish it already was."
The door creaked open and Jaime looked up to see Arya slipping through the door. Her expression was numb but when he looked closer, he could see that her eyes were red. Had she just come from seeing Tywin?
"My lady," Tyrion said. "Welcome. I'll pour you some wine and you can join us."
She didn't reply. She just managed a single nod but did not make a motion toward the table. Jaime rose and went over to her, resting a hand on her upper arm. She was trembling. Had visiting his father really left her in such a state?
"Arya," Jaime murmured. "Are you all right?"
She nodded again. A lie. Such a terrible lie.
"Listen...you do not have to attend the execution tomorrow," Jaime said. "I know you think it would be weakness, but it's not. We'll say you took ill. You don't have to put yourself through this."
"I already did," she said. Her voice was so soft that he almost didn't hear her.
"What?" Jaime asked.
"I already...attended it." Arya swallowed hard. "Daenerys gave me permission...to take care of it painlessly."
Jaime took a long moment to process the words. He looked from Arya to his brother as it dawned on him what she was saying. And when he looked back to Arya he saw her numb expression begin to crack.
"He's...he's gone," she muttered. "He's already..."
Her body seemed to collapse beneath the weight of her own words and Jaime caught her in his arms, holding her tight against his chest.
Daenerys gave me permission.
That was what she had gone to speak to the queen about. Not saving Tywin...but giving him some painless end. And she had given it to him herself.
He's gone.
Jaime slowly sank to his knees, still holding Arya close. Tears that he hadn't cried in some time burned at his eyes. He felt his brother behind him, gripping his shoulder tight in his hand.
He's gone.
And now the last of his children bore that fact together.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Drummer wasn’t too convinced that the outcome of that operation was entirely positive: three dead, three wounded, a lot of blood in the warehouse. It would’ve been six dead if they didn’t decide something soon, and then Shepard suggested involving Hogarty. How quickly she wanted to drag her into this mess, but it was the best option. Fred wasn’t a doctor, and they couldn’t turn to anyone else they trusted.
While Hogarty was on her way to the warehouse, Shepard managed to close off and divert traffic from anyone who might show up. She did it discreetly, without any big announcements or signs. The medic arrived about fifteen minutes later, having finished at the clinic and on her way to the apartment when she got the message. Drummer guessed this would be the first time Shepard had seen her after the incident, and she felt a bit of anticipation to see how both of them would react.
“What the hell?” muttered Hogarty as soon as she arrived. She wanted explanations, but she didn’t stand around waiting for them. She pulled out everything she needed to close up and stabilize the wounded. “Shepard, what is all this?”
Shepard shrugged and crouched down to help her with the first injured one. Of course, it was the Earther, the one with the most information.
“Settling accounts with Fred,” Shepard finally replied, tying the UNN officer’s hands to prevent him from doing anything suspicious while they worked on his knee.
Hogarty quickly dismissed him. “He’ll live,” she assured, moving on to the next: the belter who’d tried to shoot Drummer. Shepard couldn’t restrain this one, so she gave him a massive dose of sedatives to knock him out until she could secure him somewhere. Drummer watched how the two of them worked side by side and felt a little envious.
“I’m not even gonna ask about those new bruises you’ve got on your face and who knows where else…” Hogarty continued, glancing at the commander while looking for some gauze to clean the belters blood-covered face.
She moved on to the next injured one, the one who’d taken a shot to the side. This one was going to be harder; the bullet had hit one of his internal organs, and the blood was pouring out in torrents when Hogarty removed her hands. Shepard, without being asked, pulled an instrument from her bag, which the doctor used to cauterize and drain the wound. The belter let out a roar of pain, catching all three of them by surprise. Drummer grabbed another sedative and injected it into the man’s neck, without asking for permission.
“The three of them are almost ready, but I’m not leaving here until I know exactly what happened,” Hogarty announced while cleaning her hands with a liquid.
“You’ve still got one more,” Drummer croaked, pointing with a head motion at Shepard.
Hogarty didn’t get it at first, but then she realized where the blood on the commander’s head was coming from. She thought it wasn’t Shepard’s blood since she hadn’t complained.
The doctor pushed back her hair and saw the raw line. She tried to hold back a wave of anger but couldn’t. She muttered through clenched teeth as she grabbed Shepard’s jaw and squeezed it hard.
“I think I’m gonna join your fight club,” the medic muttered through her teeth while pulling out some gauze and adhesive stitches. “That way I can keep an eye on you, and while I’m at it, I can vent a little myself. I’m getting tired of helping and being the one who fixes and heals. For just one damn moment, I’d love to destroy, break, and shoot too.”
With the injured ones, Hogarty was extremely careful and acted with all the delicacy possible. With Shepard, delicacy disappeared, and she didn’t care whether she caused more pain.
“By now, you must be used to it,” she scolded her between her teeth. “You probably won’t even know what hurts the most,” she kept saying while stitching her up. “And you’ll carry a nice memory, because that hair isn’t gonna grow back here,” she finished once she was done and disinfected the wound.
Drummer held back a smile and, for the first time, crossed her arms, amused, raising her eyebrows. Shepard looked at her with curiosity and a little disoriented.
“Ke? Your ankwala’s right,” the belter replied dryly, raising her arms and opening them in the air. “Forget about the hair there.”
They searched the dead for any useful information or clues and then threw them out into space through an airlock. The wounded were kept in a container in another sector for interrogation. By then, both Hogarty and Fred were already aware of what had happened, and Fred said he would handle the hostages. Shepard and Drummer objected at the same time, and seeing they agreed on something, they decided to let Fred do what he had to do.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Jefferson doesn’t expect to run into New York’s newest Spider-Man right away; after all, he had actively looked to arrest the last one to hold the mantle and never once seen him in person. Taking into account his past luck, Jefferson assumes
Operation: Stop Spider-Man
wouldn’t actually get headway for another ten years.
“Hey, Officer!”
… But it seemed lady luck has other plans. The one interrupting Jefferson’s on-foot patrol was just the spider he was hoping to see, waving amicably from a nearby rooftop as if it were completely normal.
Officer Davis chuckles, turning and walking towards the young wall-crawler’s perch. “Good to see you, Spider-Man!” he calls up.
“Hey! Good to see you too! Uh.” Spidey hops up on the roof wall’s ledge, scratching at his chin and looking off to the side. “Think you could help me out a second, man? I’m kinda new at this, so I’m not sure about, like, procedure or anything…”
Jefferson takes a moment to look around, but no one seems all that interested in the loud conversation the pair were having with several stories between them. Never change, New York. “What do you need help with?”
Spider-Man’s eye lenses crinkle up at the bottom, giving off the impression of a pleased smile. Hopping back on the roof, Spider-Man makes his way to the other side of the building, opposite the street.
Officer Davis feels like following what was technically a masked criminal into an alley isn’t the smartest way to end his patrol, but this Spider-Man didn’t exactly come off as a malevolent schemer. Jefferson remembers big eye lenses blinking up, remembers two small arms wrapping him in a hug like he was the safest person in the world. He remembers Spider-Man, and steps into the alley.
Only to drop his jaw on the floor when he turns the corner, and is met with the sight of a man, wrapped from his neck to his ankles in web and strung up between two walls.
“Okay, so like, I know Peter used to leave the bad guys for you guys like this, but I don’t know if like,
he
called the police or let someone else do it or... I didn’t really just wanna leave him here, ‘cause what if no one finds him? He’d just be stuck here, right?” Spider-Man talks from where he’s sticking to the wall, looking thoughtfully at the ‘bad guy’. “So I was wondering if you guys had like, a procedure or a system with Peter that I should start following--”
“The
procedure
is to call nine-one-one and leave it to the
police,
” Jefferson says, hands on his hips.
Spidey’s eyes widen for a second. “But if I did that, then this guy would have-- oh, hold on.” He hops to the opposite wall and starts picking at a bundle of webs. “He was gonna mug someone with this, they would have been blasted into next week if I just-- Oh!” Spidey pauses, hitting his temple with his palm.
“I should have told the victim to call the police! And I forgot to leave one of these.” Spidey stops pulling at the bundle of webbing and turns, slapping the forehead of the guy stuck like a fly in a web. When he pulls back, there’s a sticker reading
Courtesy of your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man
in colorful bubble letters.
To his credit, the man doesn’t say anything, letting out only a tired sigh as if resigned to the idea he deserved to be humiliated by a kid in a onesie.
Jefferson holds up his hands, feeling his patience start to thin. “Hey, hold on son, you can’t just go around webbing up folks all willy-nilly.”
Spidey finally pulls apart the bundle, losing his balance slightly when he needs two hands to hold whatever he has. “Yeah, I know! I didn’t! He was gonna use this on someone!”
Dropping onto the ground in front of Officer Davis, Spider-Man shows what’s in his arms. It’s large and gun-like with a sort of claw at the barrel. Jefferson feels his heart stop when he realizes it’s some type of weapon.
“Put that down! You don’t know what’ll set that thing off!”
“Don’t worry! It’s super busted, so I’m just gonna take it and--”
“You are
not
taking that thing!” Jefferson can feel the situation spiralling out of control, like a helicopter with a missing blade. “You are turning that into the
police!”
“But I know I’ve seen something like this before! If I find out where it came from, I can stop it at the source--”
“That is
not
your job!”
“It is my job,” Spidey curled his hand and did the ‘web shooting’ gesture a couple of times, “I’m Spider-Man!”
Jefferson pinched the bridge of his nose. “You don’t have to be.”
“Well what else am I gonna do with freaky spider-powers?”
At this moment, Jefferson realizes
Operation: Stop Spider-Man
is less of a game plan and more of a mission statement. How, exactly, did one stop a kid with superstrength? It wasn’t like Jefferson could ground him.
Persuasion was really the only option. “You could do something else. Like focus on school.”
Spidey’s eye lenses flattened at the top, and Jefferson got the impression that the kid wasn’t super jazzed with the conversation’s turn. “I got straight A’s.”
“Then you could use your powers for something else, right? Like, I don’t know, dance?”
“...Dance.”
There was a moment of silence, and then, from the mugger currently webbed in the air, “I think dance would be a good idea. Like ballet maybe--”
“No one asked you, man,” Spider-Man sighs, shifting the claw-gun so that he was holding it with one arm. “Look, I can’t just stop being Spider-Man. It’s like Peter Parker always said: with great power comes great responsibility.”
“The performance arts are very responsible! And very legal!” Jefferson taps at his temple.
“Okay, so I’m just gonna take this thing--”
“Don’t you dare.”
“--And let you figure this guy out.”
Officer Davis crosses his arms. “You aren’t leaving here with that thing.”
Spider-Man gives an overly dramatic sigh, tilting his head back as if asking the heavens for patience.
“Well, you got me. Guess I--” Spider-Man cut himself off, pointing frantically. “Look behind you!”
Jefferson does not, in fact, look behind himself. Instead, he looks down at Spider-Man, putting on his best unimpressed-dad-glare learned from thirteen years of experience with--
Pop!
Jefferson
doesn’t blink
. He
knows
he doesn’t. He would swear in front of a judge he doesn’t. Spider-Man straight up disappeared. Right in front of Officer Davis, taking the weapon with him and frolicking off to throw himself into who knows what kind of trouble.
Not the smoothest start for
Operation: Stop Spider-Man.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with him!”
“Mmhm.”
“How am I supposed to help him if he can teleport or disappear whenever he wants?”
“Are you sure you saw that right,
Mi Amor?”
Jefferson and Rio sat on their couch, TV flickering in front of their eyes. Rio is at least trying to watch, one ear on her show and one on her confused mess of a husband. Jefferson, on the other hand, is too preoccupied to enjoy it.
“Come on Dad, everyone knows Spider-Man can’t teleport,” Miles looks up from his seat at the dinner table where he is going through some of his textbooks, taking his time home for the weekend to organize a bit.
“
Se volvió un ocho hoy
. Don’t worry about it, Miles,” Rio says, giving her husband a teasing smirk.
Jefferson let himself relent a bit, making a show of rolling his eyes through the fond smile on his face. “
Everyone
knows, do they? How do you figure that?”
Miles shuffles through his books, pulling one out and showing the cover. It’s a Spider-Man comic book, crumpled and torn and generally in poor condition. “‘Cause all his powers got put in here.”
“Where’d you get that?” Jefferson asks.
“My roommate gave it to me.”
“Yeah. And you know those comics are about Peter Parker, right? I’m talking about the new kid.”
“Spider-Man’s still Spider-Man.”
Jefferson hummed, turning back to the television and letting Miles get back to his work. Maybe there was some truth to what his son said; Peter Parker or no, Spider-Man had never…
not
been a vigilante. Jefferson wasn’t going to get anywhere with the new Spider-Man if the only thing he said was ‘say no to crime and stay in school’ like a D.A.R.E. officer.
But he couldn’t just let it go, either. Spider-Man nearly died taking on the Kingpin; it was only a matter of time before another super-criminal came along. It was one thing when Spider-Man was an adult making (poor) decisions. It was an entirely different thing when the new Spidey probably couldn’t even drive yet. If you’re young enough to have a bedtime, you’re
way
too young to be fighting the ‘Hypno Hustler’ or whatever villain New York decided to spit out that week.
But Jefferson knew from experience that
his
way, the way that came naturally to him, with strict rules and consequences, would only serve to push Spider-Man away until he was unreachable. No, he would have to do something else, say something different--
“You gotta say it back.”
Jefferson startles, twisting to face Miles, who was leaning on the back of the couch with a lazy smile.
Seeing his dad’s confusion, Miles repeats, “I said ‘I love you’. You gotta say it back.”
Jefferson smiles and ruffles at Miles’ hair with one hand. “Love you, son.”
Miles’ expression drops a fraction, almost imperceptibly. For a moment, he opens his mouth to say something, but the moment ends just as quickly, and Miles pushes away from the couch.
“Goodnight, Dad.
Y buenas noches, Mami
."
Miles turns with a yawn, grabbing his books and heading to his room.
“Don’t forget about tomorrow!” Jefferson calls, as an afterthought.
“Wouldn’t dream of it!” Miles says, expression brightening in anticipation. With one last goodnight, Miles closes his door.
Since Aaron died, Miles noticeably became more friendly with his dad. Jefferson is glad for the change in attitude, but can’t help but feel like something was off this the way his son was now acting. It was less ‘tectonic plates drifting oceans apart’ and more…
It was like Miles was putting on a show. There were more smiles and ‘I love you’s and hugs, which seemed perfectly genuine on their own...
But with no tears, no frowns, no negative attitudes or teenager-y moods, it started to feel a bit-- not fake, that wasn’t the right word-- but not perfectly open either.
Miles and his uncle had been birds of a feather. Jefferson knew that Miles loved Aaron, but since his death, Miles had neatly sidestepped every conversation involving him. Jefferson just hopes that spending some time with his son tomorrow will help break down Miles' act into something Jefferson can work with.
“
...was spotted at midnight last night during a home invasion in Brooklyn. Witnesses say this ‘new Spider-Man’ had electrical powers, unlike Peter Parker…”
Jefferson did his best to ignore the news playing in front of a nearby food truck, widening his stride. Miles had to speed walk to catch up, backpack hanging off one shoulder and using the other arm to stifle a yawn. As much as Spider-Man’s daily escapades threatened to send Jefferson into cardiac arrest, today was Miles’ day.
As part of his at-home mission (
Operation: Be More Supportive
), Jefferson had made the effort to find Miles a nice, privately-owned wall to put up some of his art. A coworker mentioned having a cousin with a bodega in Midtown looking to bring some color to the brick on the side, so Jefferson showed off some of his son’s work and
boom!
A responsible, supportive father-son activity all set up for the weekend.
Jefferson remembers how Miles teared up at the idea, and wonders why he didn’t think to do something like this sooner.
After arriving at the bodega and having a quick word with the owner, they were all set to go.
“This spot’s actually pretty nice,” Miles says, hopping to the wall and pulling his backpack off his shoulder.
“What, you think I don’t know how to find these spots?” Jefferson watches as Miles pulls out what must have been a million spray-paint cans in vibrant hues. “You’re dad’s still hip.”
Miles flips through his sketchbook, stopping occasionally to consider a design. Under his breath, he mumbles something like, “You’re so old, man.”
Jefferson wants to be offended, but his son’s soft expression tells him the comment wasn’t mean spirited, so he lets it go.
Jefferson’s never seen Miles work before. Well, that wasn’t exactly true; he busted Miles in his squad car once when he was in the middle of tagging the back of a street sign. He grounded Miles for two weeks and had him scrub the sign clean.
But this was different. Watching his son dance around, picking each can and spraying with what looked like recklessness but was actually practiced precision, Jefferson found himself almost baffled. He knew Miles had talent, but what he was doing now went way beyond what Jefferson had ever been able to do in his time.
“Hey, Dad, could you help me out a second?” Miles holds a red can above his head, stretching his arm as far as it could go while he stood on tip-toes.
“Sure. What do you-- woah!”
The second Jefferson was near the wall, Miles scales his dad like a cat climbing a tree, jostling his glasses with his knee. Jefferson stumbles a bit, trying to regain his balance as Miles continues with his work perched on Jefferson’s shoulders.
The scene is at once familiar, and Jefferson feels as though he were viewing his own memory through a stage curtain. The nostalgia hits him like a punch in the gut, and he has to swallow before he tries to speak.
“You know, your uncle and I used to do this kinda thing.”
The hiss of the paint can stops.
“I know, Dad.”
“Except I was the one standing on his shoulders.”
Miles doesn’t offer any commentary, noise of the spray can resuming.
“I used to be half his height, can you believe that? Never imagined I’d grow to be twice his size.”
Miles hops off his shoulders. It has Jefferson scrambling for a moment, worried Miles would hurt himself, but he lands easily.
“I got my essay back,” Miles says, switching the red can for black. “Got a ninety-six percent on it.”
Jefferson’s first instinct is to say something like ‘I expect you to keep that up’ or ‘shoot for a hundred next time’. Or maybe he should point out the obvious subject change. But part of
Operation: Be More Supportive
is pushing past old habit to offer encouragement, which is also a new rule written in the family code.
“Nice. I knew you’d show those teachers what’s up.”
“And I didn’t get any write-ups last week,” Miles says as he leans in to the wall, about to spray paint only inches from his face.
“Whoa, back up. Don’t want you breathing that stuff in.”
“Sorry.”
“Yeah-- just, be careful.”
Jefferson is sure three weeks ago, Miles would have at least rolled his eyes. Heck, three weeks ago, he was getting a call home every other day about Miles running from the principle or pulling some girl’s hair or saying something smart to a teacher. Miles’ attitude had seen major improvements, and Jefferson can’t help a smile from growing on his face.
The two of them step back to take in the day’s work. It’s beautiful; big and vibrant and full of life in the Midtown walkway.
Jefferson nudges his son’s shoulder. “I’m proud of you, Miles.”
Jefferson was starting to think weekends were far too short. Sunday came and went in the blink of an eye, and soon Miles had packed for his week away at school.
“
Te quiero mucho, Miles,
” Rio says, kissing her son on each cheek and tightening her hug.
“
Te quiero tambien, Mami."
Miles says, pulling away and hopping down the front steps.
Jefferson calls after him, “Bye, work hard, love you!”
Once he lands on the sidewalk, Miles turns and calls,“Love you, Dad!”
Rio and Jefferson stand on the porch and watch until they can’t see Miles anymore.
He’s only halfway into his Monday when Officer Davis is called to an altercation. Spider-Man is fighting armed men through the streets of Williamsburg, and that’s all the information he gets before he has his siren is on and he’s headed to the scene.
Civilians gather to watch like it’s a street performance and not a
highly dangerous
crime in progress
.
It takes Jefferson all of two seconds to assess where he’s most needed, and starts ordering people to clear out.
Spider-Man has enough to worry about as it is. There are about five armed men focused on trying to take him down, two taken down and webbed up, all wearing what Jefferson recognises as the same claw-gun Spidey ran off with last week. Only these are less ‘busted’ and clearly functional, leaving both gashes and burns in the pavement. Spider-Man was dodging and flipping and drawing fire from the crowd, but seemed to have trouble getting close. Officer Davis feels his heart skip a beat when gunfire lands
way
too close to Spidey’s head, and soon he finds himself biting his nails over the fight in the street.
“You got this, Spider-Man!” Jefferson yells, almost without realizing.
Spidey’s head turns, and when he catches sight of Officer Davis, the lenses of his mask crinkle upward.
It takes them more than a minute, but Officer Davis keeps civilians out of the way. And Spider-Man wins.
Later, after ample backup has arrived and arrests are being made, Spider-Man bounces on top of Jefferson’s squad car to say, “Thanks for the help again, Officer,” with a quick salute before swinging off.
The whole interaction has him thinking. Back home, with Miles, Jefferson had a whole new system of doing things. Not just scolding and consequences, but encouragement and compromise. Maybe he could cross his at-home parenting with his, er, on-the-job ‘parenting’.
And so,
Operation: Stop Spider-Man
was amended to
Operation: Offer Spider-Man Encouragement and Help Where Needed In Order To Eventually Soften The Kid Up To The Idea Of A Less Terrifyingly Dangerous Extracurricular Activity.
Or, to shorten things up,
Operation: Be More Supportive 2.0.
When a Brooklyn bank is robbed, Officer Davis only has to cut open some webs and make arrests. His job is made easier, so he makes sure to thank Spider-Man on his way out. Spidey practically glows at the praise.
A few days later, the police get a call about a disturbance involving the Shocker in Lower Manhattan. When Jefferson gets there, Spidey seems to have the whole thing in the bag already, so he just cheers him on from the side. A few other officers get in on it, and the next thing he knows, Spider-Man has a mini audience. He seems to enjoy the attention.
Jefferson is on break Thursday of that week, enjoying the sun on the patio of a sandwich shop he likes. When Spider-Man swings by, rustling the umbrella of his table, Jefferson offers a wave. He doesn’t expect Spider-Man to drop down on the pavement looking for conversation. They don’t talk about much more than the weather, but it’s nice anyway.
The next time Spider-Man happens to swing by, he and Jefferson exchange a high speed high-five that has his hand stinging for hours.
Scorpion is fighting Spider-Man, tearing through a neighborhood in Queens, and Jefferson is the first officer on the scene. He ran about ten red lights to make it happen, and has to try to calm his racing heart before he runs out to meet the scene. Because Scorpion was a
real, established
supervillain that gave Peter Parker plenty of trouble, and the thought of this new Spider-Man going at him alone has Officer Davis’ stomach rolling.
Scorpion and Spidey are going at it on a nearby roof, metal stinger glinting each time it comes down. Spidey tries to get in closer, but the Scorpion’s tail has better reach than he does, and he’s kept at too much of a distance to shock. With only one bad guy, one good guy, and no civilians in the way, Officer Davis might be able to get a shot in.
Pulling out his service weapon and pointing up, Jefferson makes his presence known. “PDNY, put your hands up!”
Scorpion, of course, doesn’t acknowledge him, only continuing his attack. But Spider-Man breaks his concentration for a moment to swivel his head and call out. “Hey, Officer! Nice to-- oof!”
Jefferson nearly has a panic attack when Spidey’s knocked off the roof, but instead of a hard landing, he manages to stick to the trunk of a nearby tree. Without Spider-Man in the way, Jefferson has a clear shot at the Scorpion. He takes it, and manages to hit the villain’s shoulder. Scorpion drops to his knees with a strangled, furious sounding yell, gripping his injured shoulder.
“Hey, man,” Spidey says, a couple of small branches stuck to his costume. “I lost my webshooters down here somewhere, could you--”
“¡Te mataré, insecto!”
Scorpion calls from the roof.
“--could you help me look for them?” Spider-Man finishes, tugging a bit at the tree he’s stuck to.
Jefferson nods and begins his search a little further out from the tree, looking in the grass for anything that could be a webshooter. “Sure thing, Spider-Man. Just be more careful, please?”
“Sure, sure, I’ll just, uh,” Spidey starts to sound a little out of breath, tugging harder where his hands and feet are stuck to the bark of the tree.
Jefferson squints at the odd scene. “You doin’ alright there, Spidey?”
Spider-Man continues to tug more frantically. “Yeah, fine, just kinda stressed out and not very relaxed, so--”
Spider-Man’s lenses go wide, taking up nearly half his face. With one last violent tug, he rips away from the tree and flips away just as it explodes into splinters. When the dust clears, a very pissed-looking Scorpion is left standing in the lawn.
The treesplosion causes Jefferson to stumble back, tripping on a bush with a yelp. He’s sure the moment looked clumsy and ridiculous, and hopes the two dueling superhumans were too busy to notice.
Something in the bush glints and catches Officer Davis’ eye, and he picks it up and turns it around in his hands. It’s made of metal, red and circular like a bracelet. Jefferson is pretty sure that’s what a webshooter would look like, and turns to Spider-Man.
Spidey and Scorpion had moved to the street, Scorpion’s back to Jefferson. That made things easy. Jefferson lifts the webshooter, waving it around until it caught Spidey’s eye. Spidey’s eyes crinkle up in a smile, and he throws the ‘peace out’ sign to Scorpion before--
Pop!
Spider-Man disappeared, leaving Scorpion confused and disoriented. And Jefferson. It leaves Jefferson confused and disoriented, too.
“Thanks!”
Jefferson leaps back with a yell when the empty air in front of him speaks and plucks the webshooter from his hand. A strand of webbing thwips out, catching the Scorpion on his back, and Spider-Man materializes as he’s launched through the air. It only takes one tap from a super-charged taser-hand before Scorpion is out, and Spider-Man wins.
“Thanks, you really saved my butt back there,” Spider-Man says, shaking Officer Davis’ hand.
Jefferson almost says something normal, but in a world of superpowered children fighting metal insect men in the streets, he doesn’t suppose it’s too out of left field to say, “Why is your hand covered in bark?”
“Hm? Oh.” As Spidey begins to work on peeling tree bark from his glove, he turns to leave. When he does, Jefferson catches sight of something dripping from his glove to the pavement.
“Seriously, Officer, thanks for the--”
“Wait. Pull back. Where are you hurt?”
Spidey hit reverse, walking backwards and showing off where his suit was ripped open on his arm. “It's not bad, really, he just grazed me.”
Jefferson grabbed the injured arm, gently, for a closer look. The gash was about an inch long, bleeding sluggishly.
“Seriously, it looks worse than it is. Probably,” Spidey says.
Jefferson doesn't need to be a detective to understand that Spider-Man is putting on a show, a brave face. There's a slight tremble to the arm Jefferson is holding, and Spider-Man keeps swallowing and rubbing the fingers of his free hand together.
It would scare anyone to go up against a force like the Scorpion. Jefferson feels himself soften, almost ridiculously, at how much guts it must have taken for the kid to not show fear fighting for his life in the suburbs of Queens.
“I don't have anywhere to be. I can drive you to a doctor to get this looked at--”
Spider-Man yanks his arm out of Jeffersons grip. “No doctors!”
“Do you want that getting infected?” Jefferson says, voice rising.
Pop!
Now that Jefferson knows it's invisibility he's looking at, not teleportation, he throws his words out as quickly as he can before Spidey has the chance to run off too far.
“Fine, we don't have to go to a doctor! But you can't just leave it alone, either.”
Jefferson spots another blot of red on the pavement, and follows it nearer the clump of police cars in the street.
“My wife’s a nurse. Let her look at it, please?”
There's a few more drops of red behind one of the cars. Jefferson moves until he's standing a few feet away.
“She won't ask questions, you won't have to pay anything. And I won't be up all night wondering if you're alright out here.”
There's a few moments where Jefferson fears Spider-Man is already long gone, not having heard a thing of what he's saying.
But then big eye lenses swim and flicker into view, blinking up at Jefferson with more trust than he feels like he's earned.
“I guess…” Spider-Man grips his injured arm with one hand. “I guess that's a good idea.”
It’s hard not to sound confusing when you’re calling your wife to tell her you’re bringing a superhero to her house to bleed all over the furniture. But Rio’s always been the type to take things in stride, and she’s already at the door when Jefferson pulls in front of the house.
“Uh, hello. Ma’am,” Spider-Man says, putting on his ‘grown up’ voice. Jefferson has to stifle a laugh.
Rio gasps, seemingly unable to help herself from letting out a soft, “
Qué lindo,"
as big bug eyes blink up at her. Catching herself, she says, “Sorry, it’s just,” Rio leads Spidey inside, motioning for him to sit at one of the kitchen chairs.
“I didn’t think--” Rio opens the family first aid kit, kept large and well stocked at Jefferson’s insistence, “I thought you’d be...”
She pauses, holding her hand up, parallel to the ground.
Taller.
Spider-Man's eye lenses go flat and slanted near the top, generally unimpressed like he heard that a lot. This time, Jefferson really does laugh.
Rio starts to poke at the gash, clucking to herself and leaving to grab a towel. Spidey watches her with curiosity, kicking his feet back and forth while he waits.
“Where do you usually go when you get hurt like this?” Jefferson asks, taking a seat in one of the chairs.
“Usually I just sleep it off and I’m fine.”
“What.”
Spidey starts to pick at his suit, not meeting Jefferson’s eyes. “Yeah, I think I have fast healing, so that’s, uh.
Really
convenient.”
Rio shares a look with her husband as she walks back over, wet towel in hand.
“Well, normally this would have needed stitches. But I can see it’s already starting to heal over,” Rio says as she works. “I’ll just clean it and put a bandage on, and you should be fine.”
“Ah, but next time something like this happens, you know where to find us,” Jefferson adds.
Rio nods in agreement. “Yes, you’re welcome here anytime. Oh!” She motions Jefferson to the desk. “We’ll give you our number, too! Just in case!”
As Jefferson moves to write down the number on a sticky note, Spider-Man clears his throat and says, “Thanks. You’re-- that’s really nice.”
When he’s all bandaged up and ready to be on his way, Spider-Man hops down the front stairs of the house as Rio and Jefferson say their goodbyes.
“Be careful out there!” Jefferson says as Rio waves.
“I will,” Spider-Man says, turning with a wave. “Love you, Dad!”
Everything freezes as the words sink in. Jefferson feels his eyes widen, and Rio’s grip on his shoulder slackens.
Pop!
“He called me
Dad,
” Jefferson says later, as Rio rubs his shoulders.
She gains a teasing look. “Should I call up Miles and tell him he has a new brother?”
“This is serious! What if he gets hurt out there--”
“Jeff--”
He lets his head fall in his hands. “I feel responsible enough for him as it is!”
“Jeff!”
Attention caught, Jefferson peers out at his wife.
“I know you’ll do right by that boy. Just have patience.”
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Confinement comes with complications.
He doesn’t want to be seen. He has not been seen, as of yet; he has kept his body carefully concealed for years, swathed in long-sleeved shirts and clothes that hang slightly too large.
But now Ryuzaki is preparing him for his stint in a lonesome room and he has no other option.
He has thought of this, while making his plans. He had deemed it unavoidable. Nonetheless, the moment of truth feels different.
He had not known that he would be so scared.
“Turn away,” he says, when he comes time to strip out of his clothes.
They are in a concrete room, the place that will be his home until Ryuzaki decides to set him free. It’s only the two of them, alone apart from the cameras that will be watching him indefinitely. There is nothing in here but a bed and a toilet, which presumably he will have to use in full view of whoever happens to be observing him, a humiliation that had not in fact occurred to him but which he will have to bear. It’s lit by harsh fluorescents and everything beneath it will be as starkly visible as if on an operating table.
This request is his first and final bargain, his only hope that he will be able to keep his secrets hidden. Ryuzaki might afford him some modicum of privacy.
But Ryuzaki only laughs, low. “You know I can’t do that,” he says. “Light-kun might have hidden anything in his clothes.”
“Pat me down, then,” Light says, but it’s of no use; Ryuzaki has made up his mind.
He will be looked at. He will be known.
It would only be delaying the inevitable, anyway — the cameras would have caught him.
With Ryuzaki’s eyes fixed on him, he unbuttons his shirt. Then he strips it away.
And there he is, on full display.
His scars, silver against his skin; the cuts that haven’t quite healed, bright red. They’re scattered across his left arm in perfect straight lines, like a ladder leading upwards to his shoulder. The ones on his upper arm have healed thicker.
His body, hollowed out — he knows this, even when his mind begs him to be thinner, thinner, thinner. His ribs are visible, his stomach an empty bowl. His elbows are knobs in sticks of arms.
It is humiliating.
He meets Ryuzaki’s eyes. He makes his own hard. He wants it to be known that he will not accept pity.
Ryuzaki has gone very still. His eyes flicker up and down Light’s body.
Light waits for him to say something.
Instead, he only looks.
At last, he says, “Light-kun should fully undress before putting his new clothes on. That way I can be sure he hasn’t transferred anything from one outfit to another.”
“Of course,” Light says. His voice comes out bitter.
He isn’t sure what he’d been expecting. Kindness? Surely not. Ryuzaki has never shown that before; he is a harsh creature, practical to the point of cruelty. Still. He had supposed —
He strips out of his pants, too, then puts his new clothing on. Ryuzaki has given him dark pants and a black shirt. Long-sleeved, thankfully — his wounds will not be on display. He slips into them, glad to be hidden once more.
Something occurs to him for the very first time.
“Don’t —” he starts, and is ashamed to hear how his voice wavers. “Don’t tell my father.”
Ryuzaki’s eyes flick towards the cameras and Light understands that he already knows. He can’t decide if its a kindness or a cruelty when Ryuzaki says, very softly, “Of course not, Light. I wouldn’t dream of it. It has nothing to do with whether you’re Kira or not.”
It is the closest he’s going to get to gentleness. Not that Light had expected any; that’s not what this is about. It’s nothing as mundane as a cry for help — it’s only the necessary condition of his confinement, his secrets spilled, his privacy thoroughly destroyed.
He waits for Ryuzaki to lock him away.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
The next few weeks were uneventful, because even though Rikina was free to get up and move around a lot more, there wasn’t much that they could do outside because it was winter. Or, at least, there wasn’t much that the men would
let
Rikina and Kagome do. The two hanyou made sure to bring in plenty of game and firewood and to keep what little snow that had accumulated cleared, even from the shrine, so the women didn’t leave the house very much. Rin returned to the village and took care of the sicknesses going around, which fortunately there weren’t many of this particular winter.
Kazuya didn’t get to spend as much time with Rikina as he would have liked, but he still looked forward to coming home and seeing her while they ate their meals. She always greeted him with a big smile and asked him about his day, and was more than happy to share what she spent her day doing.
Rikina started some of her “training” with Kagome, which revealed some interesting comparisons between the two miko. Kagome hadn’t been formally trained until she was older, most of her skills being in the healing arts; and while she had a lot of power, knowing what to do with it and when was something she wasn’t able to hone as effectively. In many ways she still didn’t know everything she was capable of. Rikina, on the other hand, hadn’t been taught hardly anything when it came to healing, but when it came to using her reiki, she had more specific knowledge than Kagome. But they were both very happy that they could learn something from each other.
Rikina said she was particularly looking forward to learning how to shoot a bow.
After another day of getting a crash course in herbs and teas and such, Rikina had gone to bed early and Kazuya fully expected her to fall right to sleep. It was the night of the new moon, though, which meant no sleep for both him and his father. While what they ended up doing instead on these nights varied, they both often ended up sitting in the main room, quietly commiserating in the mutual loss of their youki.
Tonight, they were both sitting against the wall outside of their respective bedrooms. InuYasha didn’t want to disturb Kagome and usually stayed outside their bedroom so she could sleep, but always insisted that he didn’t need anyone to stay up with him. Kazuya knew his father better than that, and knew he liked having some sort of company as long as he didn’t have to talk much, so he would find a spot close by, but not too close, to wait until sunrise with him.
Rikina, however, also seemed like she couldn’t sleep tonight. Kazuya could hear her moving around even with his human ears. After a while, he heard her footsteps – she quietly opened her door and went over to the water bucket to get a drink. The house was dark and she didn’t seem to notice that they were there. Kazuya was content to let her get her drink and go back to bed, but then the sound of Tessaiga rattling in its sheath disturbed the quiet. He wasn’t sure if InuYasha moved on purpose or not, but the end result was the same.
Rikina froze, then slowly lowered the ladle back into the bucket before turning around. She didn’t move or say anything for a moment, but then turned and looked out the window. Kazuya smirked. She figured it out.
She exhaled in relief, then grabbed a couple pieces of firewood off the nearby pile and brought them over to put on the dying fire. She stirred up the coals with the poker.
“Can’t sleep?” she asked softly.
“Keh, I almost never sleep on these nights,” InuYasha answered quietly.
“Why?”
“Habit. In the past, humans or youkai wouldn’t hesitate to try to kill me if they found me like this.”
Rikina was quiet for a moment, watching the wood in the fire pit catch and flame. “I guess I didn’t think someone as powerful as you would have to worry about something like that.”
“Yeah, well, I ain’t so powerful right now. That’s why our human nights are our most closely-guarded secret, so keep this under wraps, okay?” His voice got harsher and a bit louder as he went, indicating that he really wasn’t okay with Rikina knowing it, but he wasn’t okay with
anybody
knowing.
Rikina nodded. “I won’t tell a soul. I’m going to make some tea, would you two like some?” She turned to make sure Kazuya had heard her as well.
Kazuya got up and walked over to the fire without saying a word. InuYasha didn’t respond right away, but after a moment simply scooted over to the side of the fire pit. Rikina kept looking back and forth between them, probably comparing their features. Kazuya had an idea of what she was seeing.
While they looked so much alike, there were several more subtle differences. InuYasha obviously experienced a lot of hardship in his life and it showed, both in his expressions and in his eyes. He was aloof, although not nearly as much as his brother. This was a warrior, a fighter; he never completely let his guard down, and there was a fierceness in his eyes that never went away, even when he looked at his wife and son – that fierceness just took on a different nature when his gaze turned to them. But those eyes also held a lot of other things, like sadness, and a lot more wisdom than a lot of people realized.
Kazuya, on the other hand, wasn’t battle-hardened – his eyes were warmer, and overall he showed more emotion than his father. His expressions and the way he carried himself were more like his mother. One could sense that he was a gentle soul if you could look past his claws and fangs and amber eyes. However, he was capable of the same fierceness his father had. He’d protect Kagome with his life just like InuYasha would.
Rikina silently poured the tea for each of them, not saying a word as she let it steep. After a few moments she handed a cup to each of the men before settling into her own spot as close to the fire as she could get to stay warm. They sat and sipped their tea in companionable silence.
InuYasha downed the last of his tea. “I’m going to go lay down, try and get some rest, at least. Thanks for the tea,” he said before standing up and quietly going to the room he shared with his wife.
Rikina and Kazuya sat silent, but it quickly grew awkward. “You usually can’t sleep on these nights, either?” she whispered.
“Nah, but it’s not from lack of trying. It’s just hard to relax when you can’t smell and hear and see as well as you’re used to.”
“So you’re not afraid of people coming after you?”
He shook his head. “Not really. My dad’s had to fend for himself ever since he was a kid. I grew up in this village with my parents to protect me, so I didn’t have to worry about stuff like that as much.” Kazuya knew he was very lucky – he had a better upbringing than what most hanyou had experienced.
Neither one spoke again for a while, just watching the fire lick up around the wood in the fire pit.
“I’ve… I’ve missed you sitting outside my door at night,” she said softly, without looking up.
Kazuya glanced at her but quickly looked away again. “It’s not necessary anymore, you’re better now.”
“I know, I… I just didn’t know how comforting it was until you stopped doing it.”
Kazuya could feel the blush creeping into his face. He cleared his throat. “Well, um, I’m right next door if you need anything.”
“I know… thank you…” She then quickly gulped down the last of her tea and said a shy good night before going back to her room.
Kazuya still had most of his tea left. He just stared at her bedroom door for a moment, then turned to glare at his parents’ bedroom. He jumped up and walked the few steps to their door and yanked it open, just in time to see InuYasha and Kagome scurrying back to their futon.
Kazuya growled at the eavesdroppers. “Enjoy the show?”
At least they had the decency to look embarrassed that they got busted. Before they could manage a response, Kazuya closed the door with a bit more force than necessary and returned to the fire pit to drink his tea in one swallow. Instead of trying to go sleep in his room, he decided to sit outside Rikina’s room since he doubted he’d get any sleep, anyway – and just maybe she would appreciate the gesture. He certainly wasn’t doing it because he wanted to. Nope. No way.
Spring finally arrived. It was early afternoon when the four of them were sitting around the fire pit, just having finished with their lunch and were now sipping at their tea and relaxing. Rikina pulled her sewing over and set it out on her lap while they chatted. She was putting the finishing touches on her new miko outfit so she could look the part when she got introduced to the villagers. It had been raining for several days – a light rain was tapping on the roof even now – and they planned on taking Rikina around the village for a tour and introductions as soon as the weather improved.
Kagome was saying how much she couldn’t wait to introduce Rikina to Miroku and Sango, and once again started to describe them both to her. Kagome had told her about the monk and taijiya several times, and while every now and then there was a new story or bit of information, most of the time she ended up repeating something that she had already told her several times now. But Rikina listened with the same amount of interest every time.
Finally InuYasha gently nudged his wife with his elbow. “Oi, you’ve told her this story already.”
“Oh, I have, haven’t I?” she said as she put her fingers to her lips and a look of embarrassment came across her face.
Rikina gave her a reassuring smile. “Yes, but I don’t mind. I can’t wait to meet them. Maybe someday you can tell me the whole story about the Shikon Jewel, from start to finish. I’d love to hear it.”
InuYasha snorted and rolled his eyes but Kagome beamed. “I’ve been thinking about writing it all down,” Kagome said, earning a sideways glance from her husband.
“Knock yourself out,” InuYasha muttered.
“InuYasha, can I ask you a question?” Rikina asked, getting a grunt in response. “Those beads you wear, do they serve a purpose?”
Kagome started giggling, and even Kazuya had to stifle a snort. InuYasha narrowed his eyes at their antics.
“Yeah, I kinda tried to steal the Shikon Jewel from Kagome when we first met, so this old lady miko put these on me so when-“
“-I say the magic word, they pull him to the ground,” Kagome finished with a big grin on her face.
Rikina looked back and forth between them for a moment, perplexed. “Beads of Subjugation? Why haven’t you taken them off him?”
“He won’t let me.”
InuYasha was shaking his head. “As humiliating as they are, they’ve saved my hide more than once. Besides, I can be a hard-headed jerk sometimes and it’s a quick way to set me straight.”
“I don’t even remember the last time I used them,” Kagome said.
“Well, maybe one of these days I’ll get to see the beads in action,” Rikina said with an amused tone.
The couple was exchanging glances out of the corners of their eyes, communicating with their eyes and expressions only. Kagome’s gaze was pleading while InuYasha’s was irritated but resigned. Kazuya had a feeling he knew what was coming and was trying very hard not to laugh.
Finally InuYasha growled, “Fine, do it – but it doesn’t count against my streak!”
Kagome looked more excited than she should have been. “You gotta stand up so she gets the full effect.”
InuYasha winced and rolled his eyes at the same time. “Fine, but just this once…”
Rikina looked back and forth. “What are you…?”
“You said you wanted to see, so InuYasha has agreed to a demonstration,” Kagome said. Meanwhile, InuYasha was grumbling as he set his sword on the floor by his wife and stood up. He took a couple steps back and gritted his teeth. When he gave Kagome a single nod, she said the dreaded word: “Oswari.”
The beads glowed and pulled the hanyou down to the floor by his neck with a resounding
thud.
Rikina stifled her laughter as best she could, but Kagome and Kazuya weren’t as considerate. InuYasha groaned and pulled himself off the floor, brushed off his clothes, and returned to his seat by his wife with a look of mild embarrassment and irritation.
Rikina took a deep breath to regain her composure. “I thank you for that, InuYasha, I’m sure that wasn’t pleasant.”
“It isn’t, but she took it easy on me this time,” he grumbled. “She’s made me leave some pretty deep craters in the past.”
“Oh I’m sure,” Rikina said, still trying not to laugh.
InuYasha must have decided that a subject change was in order because he turned his attention to Kazuya. “So are you gonna take off again this year? Or are ya stickin’ around for a change?”
The question took Kazuya off guard even though he knew they were going to ask it eventually. The truth was that he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. These last few years he had left as soon as the snow melted to go seek his adventure, and normally he would have been cagey and looking forward to stretching his legs well before then. This year, however, he felt more anxious about the idea of leaving – he had no idea where he wanted to go or what he wanted to do. The thought of running around the country picking fights with random youkai didn’t hold the appeal that it once did.
And if he was honest with himself, he also hated the idea of leaving Rikina.
Schooling his features, he tried to act nonchalant when he shrugged and said, “Dunno yet.” Then he downed the last of his tea and abruptly got up and walked out the door.
It was a bit chilly outside, but the rain had subsided for the moment. He walked over to the bench that his dad had built for his mom. It was out in the part of the yard that had the best view of the village and forest beyond. Not caring that it was wet from the rain, he sat on it, cross-legged as usual.
He knew that getting up like that was rude, but he hated the tone in InuYasha’s voice. Like he was almost daring him to leave again. He knew his parents hated that he was out trying to fight when that was the last thing they wanted him to do. After what happened with them and Moroha, they only wished peace and a normal life for their son. They even gave him a name that meant “peace.” He was their end goal after all that they had been through and how hard they had fought to be together.
But he couldn’t help but feel like he wasn’t worthy to be part of this family. He was trying to figure out his place in the world just like all young adults do, and he felt like he had big shoes to fill.
The sound of the door opening broke into his thoughts, soon followed by footsteps and Rikina’s scent drifting towards him. Rikina walked over to the bench. Kazuya’s ear flicked her direction but he didn’t turn his head or say anything.
“Want some company?” she asked, rubbing her arms against the cold. Kazuya shrugged, which Rikina took as permission to sit next to him. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
“Okay, well I’m right here if you change your mind.”
Kazuya tensed as the silence grew longer. He didn’t want to talk about it, really, but it wasn’t the type of thing he would ever be ready to talk about. But the silence was getting louder and he found himself gritting his teeth trying not to break it.
“Everyone else in the family has done something great except me,” he said in a rush.
Rikina’s eyes flicked to him, not understanding him since he spoke so fast. “Everyone else…”
Kazuya sighed and spoke again, but more slowly this time. “Everyone else in my family has done something great, they tell legends about what they’ve done and how powerful and amazing they are; but I haven’t done anything. Everyone knows who my parents are. Everyone knows who my uncle is. Everyone knows who my sister and my cousins are. But nobody knows who the hell Kazuya is.”
Rikina waited for a moment before responding. “Did anyone tell you that you had to? To live up to the family name, so to speak?”
“No… when I was younger they told me they didn’t want that kind of life for me. But I still feel like I need to do
something
…”
The young miko watched the emotions play out on his face and in his eyes, despite his best efforts to conceal them. “I imagine every parent wants their children to have a better life than they did,” Rikina said.
“Yeah, but they’re not the ones that are going to get forgotten a few generations from now.”
Rikina turned and gently placed a hand on his arm. “I know it’s not what you were going for, but you did do something that made a difference: you saved me. You changed
my
world.* And if it’s any consolation, it’s something I’ll tell my children and grandchildren, if I have any. At least
I
won’t forget you.”
At first, all Kazuya could do was look at her hand where it rested on his arm. Eventually he got up the courage to pull his gaze up to meet hers, and even though he expected the onslaught of emotions that would rush through him, he wasn’t prepared for it.
All he had wanted was for her to get healed up and get away from her oppressors. It seemed simple enough at the time – just get her out of there and get her to his mom. He’d done that, no big deal – at least, it wasn’t a big deal to him. It never really registered to him that he really did change her entire life for the better, that what she was experiencing was far beyond simple relief. Rikina was strong and hid her emotions well since she was used to having to guard herself, and he didn’t realize until now much him saving her meant to her.
But he saw it now. Those brown eyes of hers were not only beautiful, but had so much depth, and he could see the sincerity of her words in them.
His eyes dropped back to her hand, and he pulled his opposite hand out of his sleeve to set it on top of hers. “Thanks…” he said softly.
“I’m the one that should be thanking you,” she said.
Rikina’s hand was also freezing cold, so Kazuya pulled his hand away and sat up straighter in order to take off his suikan and put it around her shoulders. He pretended not to notice how she tried to be subtle as she pressed her nose against the fabric and inhaled deeply. She liked his aura, now she liked his scent, too?
As they watched the sun set, he wondered if he really did want to go out and become a legend in his own right. After all, his parents had done all that fighting in the hope that he would never have to. He saw how much they worried about Moroha and how they longed for her to find a life of peace. Why did he insist on adding to that stress?
Even if you took his parents’ feelings out of the equation, what did he really want? Did he really want to fight, to endanger his life? And even then, what was he fighting for? He had nothing to fight for other than his own ego and the ridiculous notion that he had to in order to fit in with his own family.
At least he had made a difference in one person’s life, and in that moment, he decided that that was enough. No more recklessness.
But then the question became what he did want to do instead, which he already knew the answer to: he wanted a normal life, one with a loving family surrounding him. He wanted his legacy to be him having been the first one in his family that didn’t have to fight to find and know peace.
He sighed. Now how was he going to go about starting this family of his? He wasn’t in a huge rush, but his father was almost a couple centuries old (if you include the fifty years he was pinned to the Goshinboku) when he met his mother, and kami-knows how old Sesshomaru was when he married Rin. Kazuya wasn’t sure if he liked the idea of waiting that long.
But then again, wouldn’t such a woman be worth the wait?
He couldn’t rush it, it couldn’t be helped. He’d either stay in this village where he was known and respected and safe until
she
came into his life, or he would go travel the country again and figure out where he wanted to settle down and maybe they’d find each other in the process.
During this entire thought process, visions of Rikina flickered unbiddingly through his mind. Rikina sharing a home with him. Rikina doing her rounds through the village and Kazuya following her, just like his father did with his mother. Rikina cooking the meat he harvested for them. Rikina sharing his futon, Rikina having his children…
He tried to push the images out of his head. He told himself he needed to be open-minded, that he couldn’t put her face on his fantasies when his soulmate was somewhere else out there in the world. That wasn’t fair to Rikina. She had only just gotten her freedom and she needed time to think about what she really wanted. And besides, having her fall into his lap the way she did almost seemed too easy. He thought he’d have to do something to earn his woman.
Then again, it had only been easy for
him
. Rikina had been through hell.
He spared a glance in Rikina’s direction. She was too busy watching the last of the sun dip behind the horizon to notice him looking at her. The oranges and pinks of the sky reflected off her skin and in her eyes, and seeing her clutching his suikan warmed his heart. Something about this just felt right.
It might not have been hard-earned on his part, but something told him he would be a fool if he let an opportunity to be with Rikina get away.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Only an iron will and commitment to his custom kept the blacksmith working through the following days of wretchedness.
He’d locked away the journals with their writing, thrown the prototypes they’d worked on in his scrap heap, and countless times was on the verge of flinging both into the fire, only to curse his own cowardice when he pulled back from the flames at the last minute.
He worked with a fury, hammering and quenching and pumping the bellows from before dawn to after dusk, exhausting his body that his mind would be likewise empty, falling into dreamless sleep as soon as head met pillow.
What little spare time he left himself, through lack of orders or waiting on supplies, he threw into studying, repairing, cleaning - no task was too small, no chore too tedious if it promised the possibility of distraction.
All proved in vain.
The entirety of his shop and home seemed infected with the memory of the couple - a new flower blossoming would recall the lady’s discussion of color, a request for some delicate piece of machinery bringing to mind an idea suggested by the gentleman.
Mercury would spend his mornings and evenings at the shop window, eyes fixed on the lane, and gave the smith puzzled meows when his former favorites did not arrive.
Even the smith’s hands betrayed him; oftentimes when he’d idly sketch on some scrap of paper he found himself tracing the patterns of the lady’s jewelry, or the designs of the gentleman’s staff.
The offending paper would be quickly flung to the fire or rubbish heap, but memories are less easily discarded, and thus the rest of the day would be spent in bitter reminiscing.
Market day brought blessed relief as an excuse to leave home and rejoin the human race.
That morning he at last gave his long-neglected beard and hair a trim, put on fresh clothes, and overall made effort to be fit for society, in dim hope that external care would bring internal composure.
With a full wagon of wares he set out, trudging alongside the ever-dutiful Hammer.
Market day proved busy as usual, the flow of customers, peddlers, and gossipers coming so fast and thick to the smith’s little pavilion that for brief moments he forgot his troubles in the hubbub of talk and trade.
But at last sunset finally came, and the blacksmith knew he must pack his remaining goods and leave.
Unable to bear the thought of going back to his empty cottage, he delayed his return further with a stop at the town tavern.
The tavern was in every sense - geographically, historically, metaphorically - the heart of the village.
No amount of mopping or spread sawdust could keep ones' feet from sticking to its flagstone floor, nor could any length of airing and cleaning keep its ramshackle furniture and aged timber ceiling from smelling of whatever had been cooked the previous two weeks - tonight’s aroma bringing forth past menus of fish stew, roast chicken, and the first sausages of a fresh butchering.
But the food was good, the ale better, and the company best of all, which were perhaps the only things that a proper tavern truly needs.
To the blacksmith’s good fortune the tavern stocked exactly the company he needed that night.
The innkeeper’s eldest ran the kitchen and tap, her short pink hair bright against the browns and blacks of her surroundings.
At the bar sat the young lady of the manor in her hunting greens and greys, bow and arrow set beside her, while kneeling at one corner of the hearth were the innkeeper’s youngest and the bookseller’s son, drawing on a shared piece of paper with chalk and crayons.
Merchants both visiting and local filled the rest of the main room with the rumble of conversation, enjoying the day’s windfalls with well earned drink and board.
The innkeeper's eldest halloed loudly when she recognized the blacksmith walking towards her.
"Where have you been?
I've forgotten your usual, you’ve been away so long!”
Even so she drew a pint of his favorite dark stout, and had it sitting at his preferred stool near the fire by the time he reached the bar.
The blacksmith thanked her with all his heart, realizing with guilt just how long it had been since he called on the tavern and his old friends.
Not that he had ever been a proper regular - he tended to prefer the comforts of tea with a good book to the noise and smell of a public house - but he had been so wrapped up with his enigmatic visitors, he'd lost all interest in the society of others.
The young lady of the manor brought her own stool up next to the smith, greeting him eagerly and likewise asked where on earth he had been keeping himself this summer.
The blacksmith attempted to deflect her interrogation by claiming he had been “busy”, but he and the young lady had known each other since he was a boy, and she was a baby, and her curious nature was not so easily deterred - and besides, when she had the brashness of the innkeeper’s eldest to back her up, she became a veritable bloodhound when catching the scent of mystery.
So haltingly, abashedly, the blacksmith began the tale of the summer.
At first the young lady and innkeeper’s eldest delighted in finding their friend had been courted - by a married couple, no less - and for the first time since that fateful night found himself smiling and laughing, even as they made him the butt of their ribaldry.
Indignation, however, quickly followed when he told of his final confrontation, and to a relief the blacksmith hadn’t realized he’d needed both women were offended on his behalf, that they would treat him so lightly and trust him so little.
Indeed, so harsh did their invectives become against the pair’s conduct that the blacksmith soon found himself defending the two people he’d once sought to forget.
If there was one silver lining to this loss, he reflected, it was that it brought into much sharper view the value of his old friends - their candor, their loyalty, their unaffected concern for him.
Perhaps they lacked the cleverness and erudition of his former partners, but he had grown up alongside these girls and seen them grow up alongside him; they knew well the workings of his mind and heart.
It was, perhaps, the first step towards healing the hurt inside him to know that for all his wallowing he was still not alone in the world.
Soon however, discussion quickly turned to their identities, for there was nothing that the young lady of the manor loved more than a question in need of solving, save perhaps the smile and muscle of the innkeeper’s eldest.
“After all,” she said, her voice an excited whisper, “If they were truly traveling musicians, any of us would have heard of them by now - what news doesn’t reach the manor must certainly pass through the tavern.
Now the problem remains, just who are they?”
The two women pumped the smith for any information he could provide on the pairs’ appearance and manner, subjecting him to further jesting at how overwrought he became in some of his descriptions.
But after ascertaining that neither had seen anyone of their description around, even taking into account the blacksmith’s fanciful lyricism, reasons for such deception became the next topic of debate.
“P’raps” they’re spies?” The innkeeper’s youngest piped up from where she and the bookseller’s son now sat at the bar.
She and the bookseller’s son had come to the bar seeking fresh paper from her elder sister, only for both to engross themselves in the far more interesting and grown up business of the blacksmith’s mystery guests.
“If they were spies, perhaps that’s why they’re in disguise,”
“But what could they gain by spying on a backwoods bumpkin like him?” Snorted the innkeeper’s eldest.
With great anger the blacksmith opened his mouth to defend himself and his value as a target of espionage and with greater anger shut it when he realized he couldn't.
From spies the conversation moved on to criminals and other types of villains who would be inclined to masquerade as traveling musicians.
While the two children quickly embraced the notion of gallant bandits roaming the countryside, the innkeeper’s eldest remarked with the manner of a hardened criminal that no proper thieves would return so regularly and in the same disguise to the same person, for risk of being caught.
The innkeeper’s youngest retorted that her elder sister had no need to put on such airs, since the only thing she’d ever stolen was a tin soldier from the blacksmith’s market stall last spring, and the innkeeper had found it on her a half hour later and made her return it.
The blacksmith (who during this argument refrained from mentioning he had noticed her stealing the toy last spring, and tipped her father off about the theft rather than make a fuss) was attempting to redirect the conversation when the bookkeper’s son pointed to his forehead.
“What happened to your hair?”
Between the dimness of the tavern interior and the blacksmith’s slump the changed strands had gone unnoticed at first, but once pointed out it was impossible for the rest of the party to ignore his new silver blond locks.
“Those?”
The blacksmith shrugged.
“It’s been that way a while now…I’d assumed I was just going grey at my age”
But the young lady took him by the ear and pulled him down to inspect the strands.
“They’re blond not grey,” she proclaimed. “And besides - “ she examined a hair she’d plucked from the blacksmith’s head, ignoring his yell of pain, “It’s too strong to be due to old age.”
She held the hair up to the light for the rest of the party to examine.
All agreed it was blonde, not grey, and not an ordinary blond either but a starlight blond that shimmered in the dim lamplight that fell on it.
Further questioning from the young lady of the manor revealed that it had changed color after the gentleman had touched his hair, and even further inquisition led the blacksmith to pull down the collar of his shirt so all could inspect the flame shaped scar from where the lady had touched him.
His friends goggled at these changes, and how he’d apparently missed them all.
Their chiding at his obliviousness only increased when, pressed about any other oddities in his surroundings, he’d admitted to the improvement of his steel and his garden.
At this the young lady of the manor could not but triumphantly declare that his guests were not of this world.
Over the blacksmith’s protests the rest of the group dissected this claim.
To the young lady, it was increasingly the only logical explanation for their strangeness - their odd comings and goings, their effects on his person, their secrecy.
For as everyone knew, beings from the worlds beyond this one are not apt to reveal themselves to the undeserving and the ordinary, and even to the worthy they take their time in exposing themselves.
So the question now remained, of what class of being these more than mortal wanderers belonged to?
The whole of the supernatural bestiary was discussed from asuras to zephyrs.
Fairies were ruled out at once, for what fairy would want anything to do with a shaper of iron?
Incubi and succubi were considered next, but after much grilling and grotesqueness at the expense of the poor smith, it was reasoned that demons of this nature would have been even more forward in their advances.
Vampires prompted considerable debate as to whether or not they could go outside in the sun, until smith’s stout refusal to be inspected for bite marks shut down this line of questioning.
“You should have stole their clothes to make them stay!” the innkeeper's youngest declared at last.
With incredulous prompting from the blacksmith and her elder sister the innkeeper’s youngest explained her reasoning: “Like the selkie wife!
When the man sees the pretty selkie lady bathing, he steals her magic clothes that make her turn back into a seal, so she’s stuck as a lady.
Then he hides her clothes so that she’s supposed to remain a lady”
“Given how eager they are to throw themselves at you getting them out of their clothes seems an easy enough trick.”
Quipped the innkeeper’s eldest.
“They have sworn no longer to return to my house, so I doubt I shall have the opportunity,” retorted the blacksmith, “And besides practicality that is a vile, cruel thing to do, to hold them hostage!”
“So I suppose that leaves drugging them out?”
Offered the bookseller’s son.
“Where do you get these ideas?”
The bookseller’s son shrugged.
“There’s a fairy tale where the king throws his wife out the castle and tells her she can only take the thing she likes the best.
So she drugs him and takes him home with her because he’s the thing she likes best out of the castle.”
The blacksmith admitted the logic of this, though he still felt that a woman smart enough to think of such a solution was probably better off without such a husband anyway.
Now, it is worth noting that amongst certain friend groups, intelligence and common sense among the involved parties decreases in direct inversion to the number of said parties and the amount of time spent together, and that alcohol has a way of exacerbating such tendencies.
Thus, while individually the blacksmith, the young lady of the manor, the bookseller’s son and the innkeeper’s children were all fairly reasonable and intelligent for their ages and stations in life, when brought together they experienced a sort of mass foolishness and recklessness which they not infrequently later regretted.
Certainly it is this tendency to collective stupidity which can be the only explanation for what happened next.
Between the increasingly empty inn and equally emptying bottles, the trio continued to lose their inhibitions against shouting and stupidity.
The group plied the two youngest for their fairy tale expertise and after a shameless extortion of alcohol (denied) and candy (granted) the bookseller’s son finally suggested a method.
“It’s not someone you ask”, he intoned solemnity through a mouthful of toffee “but something”
“Alright what’s the something I ask?” The blacksmith drained the last of his most recent tankard and slammed it on the bar for a refill.
“The four elements.”
This mysterious pronouncement did not have quite the effect the bookseller’s son was perhaps hoping for, as the rest of the group merely blinked in confusion at him.
He sighed at their lack of comprehension and continued.
“There was a girl who was looking for their lover, because her parents lied to her and told her he was dead but she knew he wasn’t.
So she asked the earth if he was buried in him, the water if he’d been drowned in him, the fire if he’d been burned in him and the air if he’d been blown to bits in him.
And when they all said no she knew he was still alive.”
“But I already know they’re alive.”
“Dummy, you don’t ask the elements if you know they’re alive, you ask the elements to help you find them!”
This announcement was likewise received not with rapturous acclaim but with mild puzzlement.
The bookseller’s son, long used to the idiocy of so-called grown ups, hopped down from his stool.
“You do it like this.”
The bookseller’s son trooped to the courtyard, followed by the increasingly inebriated party.
Arms akimbo he stood in the middle of the courtyard, until a slight breeze began to stir.
Facing into the wind he bellowed out:
“Element of air!
My friend is looking for the identities of two strangers, can you help him?”
The wind came to a stop, but did not otherwise respond.
From the rear, the innkeeper’s eldest snorted.
“What on earth did you think was going to happen?”
The bookseller’s son looked forlorn a moment, only to brighten.
“Well of course it didn’t work he has to do the asking!”
He tugged the blacksmith’s sleeve, who by now had imbibed so much that even this slight tug threatened to topple him.
“Go ask the earth next.”
The blacksmith suspected the results would be equally disappointing, but was loath to disappoint so earnest an expression as the bookseller’s son now gave him.
He consoled himself that if nothing else perhaps shouting at something inanimate would help him give vent to his feelings.
So he wandered around the courtyard, until he found what he thought was a particularly sympathetic looking patch of bare dirt, and leaned down to it.
“Element of earth,” he said, recalling the bookseller’s son’s earlier words, “I am seeking the identity of the two strangers who have called on me all summer.
Would you happen to know who they are?”
Belatedly, he added “ -please”
But alas, soil proved as taciturn as breezes, and the dust gave no answer to his plea.
Sheer politeness kept him from scuffing the patch in frustration, and he stood up.
“Well so much for that notion - “
But the two youngest of the party were not so easily deterred, and the innkeeper’s youngest now piped up:
“Maybe you have to give something?
Like money?”
“And how am I supposed to give the elements money?”
The innkeeper’s youngest pointed to the courtyard well.
“You could throw a penny in there to ask the water.
Like a wishing well.”
The innkeeper's eldest and the young lady of the manor loudly praised this notion, and started pushing the smith to the well.
The blacksmith, by now resigned to looking like a fool, decided more foolishness wouldn’t hurt.
So everyone gathered around the little well at the center of the courtyard, and the blacksmith pulled a penny from his wallet.
Committing as well as he could, he intoned to the distant circle at the bottom reflecting back his face:
“Element of water, I humbly beg your assistance in helping me ascertain the identities of the two strangers who have so charmed and bewitched me, that I may better understand their aims.”
And with a toss of his hand he threw the coin into the well.
The well accepted the coin with a splash, but otherwise remained silent.
This time he did not refrain from giving the well an angry kick, but succeeded in nothing more than giving himself a nasty toe ache.
The innkeeper’s eldest and the young lady of the manor were in danger of collapse from laughing so hard, while the two younger children were crestfallen as they finally had to admit defeat.
Back into the tavern stumbled the quintet, cursing mysteries and foolishness and the strangers in specific and love in general.
With a belated look at the clock the innkeeper's eldest realized it was long past the two children’s bedtime, and near past the time for closing the tavern.
With the young lady of the manor’s assistance the innkeeper’s eldest bundled the children upstairs, bidding the departing blacksmith farewell.
The blacksmith, lost in his thoughts, gave her a mere half-hearted wave.
As he passed by the hearth on his way to the stable, it occurred to the blacksmith that there was one element that he had yet to ask, and that sacrifice of something greater than money might be needed.
Desperation drove him to reach back into his pocket, and pull out his lucky charm.
It was a small thing, a little poppet made of once glittering velvet.
It was all that remained of a great wizard costume that his mother had made for him long ago, whittling the fabric down into smaller and smaller objects for him to keep until it now took its present form.
The blacksmith had other things of his mother, of course, but he kept the charm on him all the same, a reminder of his mother’s thriftiness and craft.
With a sigh he flung the little charm into the fire.
“Element of fire, I give you this precious trinket of mine, and in exchange I wish to know the truth of the two strangers who have woo’d me this summer, and how I may win back my heart from them after they’ve taken it.”
The fire flared up and turned the doll to ash, but as with its three fellows it offered no reply.
Heart sinking, he continued to the stables.
With much cursing and fumbling the blacksmith managed to get Hammer hitched up to his wagon and out on the proper road home.
Hammer set off at an easy amble, and soon the gentle rock of the cart, the warm night air and the evening’s drink all threatened to lure the blacksmith to sleep in his seat.
“May we accompany you home?”
Said a voice at his elbow, startling him awake.
The blacksmith turned to find a handsome stranger astride a fine black horse next to him.
“The hour is late good sir, and three travelers are safer than two or one.”
The blacksmith turned to his other side and saw another handsome stranger sitting sidesaddle on her white mount.
The blacksmith shrugged.
“Do what you will, though I must confess I am not fit at the moment for conversation.”
“I have been told I talk enough for ten people and more, so that will suffice,” said the first stranger cheerfully, and the trio continued out of the town, the strangers on either side of the cart.
Were the blacksmith less drunk and distracted, he might have become abashed at the finery of his companions.
The first stranger wore a splendid charcoal grey doublet and hose, studded with rubies and topped by a magnificent cavalier hat trimmed with red feathers, which he wore at a rakish angle.
The second wore a dove grey riding habit, studded with sapphires about the bodice and neckline, her hair wrapped in a net of fine pearls.
They’d attired their horses in matching livery, and were Hammer a more jealous fellow he might have envied the glossy hides and well-groomed manes of their mounts.
There was something familiar about the first stranger’s kind eyes and warm voice, and the second one’s delicate features and gentle manner, but the blacksmith’s sluggish mind could not place it, too consumed with his own troubles to notice anything else.
“We could not help” continued the first stranger, “Overhearing your dilemma and offer our sympathies, friend and brother.”
“My dilemma?” The blacksmith thought, and blushed at the spectacle he and his friends had made of themselves.
“Oh.
Well thank you, though I must admit I didn’t expect anything of all that, really.
Just a vent of unhappy feelings.”
“Still,” said the second stranger, “To be crossed in love is no pleasant state.”
“Very unpleasant, but I shall get over it eventually,” The blacksmith lied. “I daresay the mystery of it all will bother me more than the heartbreak.”
“I suppose so,” said the first stranger, “I have always had a weakness for mysteries myself, and more than once my burning curiosity has landed me in hot water.
“Indeed it has,” added the second stranger dryly.
“But the conversation of the young boy on the matter of fairy tales,” said the first stranger, “Did bring to mind a few additional ideas for discerning the identity of your lovers.
If I recall the hero of the Twelve Dancing Princesses faced a similar dilemma of trying to follow mysterious beauties without being caught.”
The blacksmith frowned. “But the man in that tale had an invisibility cloak given to him by a friendly little old lady on his journey.”
He gave a sweep of one hand to the empty fields on either side of them.
“Sadly there is a dearth of little old ladies besides roads in need of assistance.”
“In that case, friend and brother” said the second stranger, pulling her horse to a stop “Let us be an acceptable substitute, and offer you help of our own.”
The blacksmith blinked, realizing they were now outside his house.
He could not recall ever arriving at home so quickly from the inn, nor ever telling the strangers where he lived.
But instead of asking these questions what came out was:
“Why do you want to help me so badly?”
“Because you asked us so nicely,” replied the first stranger, “And because, friend and brother, we have more than the usual stake in your happiness.
Here,”
From somewhere within the folds of her gown the second stranger withdrew something and held it out to the blacksmith.
Without thinking he took it, and studied the strange object.
It was a curiously wrought sphere of silver the size of a walnut, bisected with gold along its equators. On one side where the bands intersected was set a beautiful blue gem, round and shiny that peered out like a curious yet friendly eye.
Beneath his fingertips he felt the shape of runes etched into the surface, and even in his drunken state he sensed the ball was not solid, but rather contained some mechanical elements.
The blacksmith examined it for sometime, unable to keep from admiring the workmanship, then held it back out to the second stranger.
“Well, this is certainly a pretty bauble, but apart from collecting dust on a shelf I must confess I can see no purpose to this trinket.”
“Its purpose,” replied the second stranger, “is to bring you closer to the lady and gentleman of whom you speak so highly.
You need only speak your request to guide you to where you wish to be, and it will lead you there and protect you from harm in the meantime.”
The gentleman started at this, then anger flared.
“What - do you aim to mock me now too?”
“Not at all, friend and brother, not at all!” Said the first stranger, soothing. “I do not blame your doubt, however, so let us offer these as proof of our good intentions.”
Into the blacksmith’s still open hand the first stranger dropped the poppet that the blacksmith had burned in the fire, while second dropped the penny he’d thrown in the well.
And before he could even begin to think what to possibly ask or say, he felt a blast and heard a splash, and they were gone.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Six Months Later
Points one and four had been completed, and considering that she knocked off two goals on her five-year plan in just six months Aele’nor considered that good progress. Good enough that the remaining three points faded into the periphery of her mind.
But four had been accomplished the very night she’d made the list (the wonders of modern technology and being able to order a vibrator directly from your phone) and the apartment was a listing she had been eyeing for a while. She had the means for it, sure, but could never justify taking the plunge and actually submitting the application
Even if it meant spending more money on rent, there were some unforeseen advantages to solo living. Emerald Grove Preparatory Academy was a comfortable walking distance away, which made her Saturday routine even easier. While grading papers wasn’t impossible to do in the apartment, school was dead silent on the weekends. No distractions to knock her out of focus. Tests were graded quicker, the administration was happier, and students either pleasantly surprised or mildly annoyed.
It served a dual purpose, however.
Aele’nor returned the stack of now-graded Physics homework to her desk, results logged and submitted into the computer system. She rose from her chair, now aware her dress had completely ridden up in the back. Dammit. She had high hopes for this one. Or perhaps her posterior was just too powerful.
She tugged the hem of the electric blue sweater dress back down and sighed. Saturdays also offered her the chance to test out new outfits. Bright colors, different fabrics, slightly lower necklines that still fit within the confines of the dress code policy. It wasn’t as though anyone who mattered was going to see her in a just so slightly too short dress, right?
It seemed right at least, as she stepped into the cool autumn air. As she traversed the winding sidewalk to the edge of the campus, she noticed something out of the ordinary for her going home routine. A group of kids--mostly Tieflings--kicking around what would either be considered a soccer or football (depending on your region within Faerun) in matching purple T-shirts. Little League, she assumed. Adorable.
Then, Aele’nor proceeded to make a series of mistakes.
First, she cut across a bit of grass. Surely there was no reason for the walkway to be
this
long and winding? Second, she heard a pre-adolescent voice shout “look out!” And most critically, her brain hadn’t processed that the warning was for her.
With a resounding
THUNK
the ball struck her on the nose with equally impressive velocity and precision. This eleven year old had Olympic potential for sure. But that didn’t change the fact her glasses went flying, her vision briefly became a flicker of stars, and when Aele’nor came to she was flat on her back in the grass.
Shakily, she sat up and felt the warm trickle blood leaving her nose. More ominously, a very blurry shadow hovered over her. A very blurry shadow with big shoulders and a deep voice the synapses in her brain hadn’t yet recognized as speech.
The smudge of colors then did something odd. It crossed its arms over its head, and held a wadded-up gray hoodie to her bleeding nose. A very helpful non-Euclidian shape indeed. The ringing in her ears subsided just as she managed to retrieve her glasses.
“Shit…” The now unfuzzy figure muttered before turning over his shoulder and shouting to someone Aele’nor couldn’t see. “She’s got a wicked nosebleed.”
All she could do was blink vacantly. Humans were cute. She enjoyed their little round ears and large noses. But even she could tell that this was a supremely attractive human, with a square jaw and full lips and obnoxiously long eyelashes. Having handed her his jacket, the stranger was left in just a black tank top that clung to a statuesque chest. Aele’nor hoped she could blame staring at his biceps on the minor brain injury she’d possibly sustained.
"That sure is some raw talent you're working with. My nose is a small target." She finally spoke.
The yet unnamed man laughed, and the corners of his brown eyes crinkled. “Glad you’ve got a sense of humor even with the potential brain-swelling.” He leaned in, gripped her forearms, and effortlessly hauled Aele’nor back to her feet. The closeness made her heart rate respond accordingly. His hands lingered there a moment as she regained balance, and blood rushing to her cheeks seemed awfully counter-productive when plenty of it was leaving her body.
With only minor stumbling Aele’nor was guided to a bench, and fixed up properly with some gauze, an ice pack, and an incredibly damp bottle of water. Now properly patched up, the kicking-attack culprit made themselves known: a gangly Tiefling girl with an unkempt blue-black ponytail and watery all-black eyes.
“Oh my gods I’m so, so, so,
so
, sorry.” She shifted anxiously on her feet, tail quite literally between her legs. “Am I in trouble?” Her gaze flicked over to the man, face scrunching up as though bracing herself for a tongue-lashing.
“Accidents happen, I know you didn’t mean it.” Aele’nor interjected before he could respond. The girl perked up like a wilted flower just watered, a weight clearly off her shoulders.
“Took the words right out of my mouth.” He smiled an easy, infectious smile. “Now go get caught up with the others, I think Zev’s running drills.”
The kid’s relieved smile turned downwards, and with a jerky sigh jogged off. Whatever “drills” entailed must’ve seemed like punishment enough.
Left alone once more, the man shifted on the hard steel bench and met her eye. "I'm Wyll, by the way. Only polite to introduce myself before begging you not to sue us."
"Aele'nor." She returned in kind, the ghost of a smirk tugging at the corner of her lips. "Sue you? On a teacher's salary?"
Her remark earned a grin and a short peal of laughter. Gods, he had a smile that put butterflies in your stomach. He had to be some variety of famous. A model or professional athlete doing a public good boost his image… Or to clear up a DUI.
She turned her attention to the bloodied jacket. “I should probably do something about this.”
This far away from the main building, she had to be out of range of the school’s antimagic field. Regardless, she kept her voice low and breathed an incantation. The bloodstain vanished, evaporated into a little dried-blood cloud, and then nothing. The wonders of prestidigitation. Hopefully no one was looking at them too hard, she'd forgotten her Casting License at home. But no one reasonable had a stick up their ass about casting cantrips in public.
"You're a spellcaster." Wyll remarked. "Let me guess: wizard?"
"It's the glasses that give it away, isn't it?"
"You've got a certain look about you, but also yes." He ran his fingers over the fabric where the red splotches had been only moments earlier, before pulling it back on, glorious shoulders hidden from view once more.
“Do you live nearby? I could walk you home, just to be safe.”
Wyll’s offer was sweet, but she’d be fine. Aele’nor rose to her feet, opened her mouth to politely decline, and was then struck by a wave of vertigo that left her wobbling.
He promptly jumped up, and offered an arm which she gladly leaned on. “I think that might be a good idea.”
The walk usually only took twenty minutes, but Aele’nor felt much more comfortable taking it slow. And despite his clearly longer stride, Wyll didn’t seem to be bothered at all.
“So, where are you from?”
Smalltalk. Her mortal enemy. “A small planetoid just beyond the Tears of Selune. Though that answer usually prompts a lot of other questions.”
He frowned and arched one dark eyebrow. “You’re not just pulling my leg for the hells of it, right?”
Aele’nor raised her left hand, right hand flat in front of her as though swearing an oath on an invisible holy book. “Serious as the dead, but er- I can’t imagine you’ve met many Gith.” As soon as the words left her mouth, Aele’nor wanted to kick herself. The guy offers to walk you home and you all but call him ignorant. “Only because there aren’t many of us living on Toril to begin with.”
Wyll shifts back to his golden boy smile, thankfully unoffended by her fumbling and flailing. “Guess that just begs the question: how’d you get all the way from Space to Baldur’s Gate?”
Her mouth pressed into a hard line, gaze fixed very firmly on the backpack of the person in front of them. “On a spelljammer with my brothers when I was a teenager. The Githyanki are…” She exhales, fingers clenching and unclenching at her sides, the repetitive motion a quiet bit of comfort. “Well, they’re brutal. Especially for a kid. The Sword Coast seemed as good a place as any to dock, and Baldur’s Gate the best place for our fresh start.”
When Wyll broke the silence, his tone was softer, a little somber even, and he rested a hand on Aele’nor’s shoulder. “That sounds like… A lot.”
“Ancient history, I assure you.” She replied, perhaps a bit too eagerly. “But that just means I get to turn the same question around on you.”
“Nothing so exciting as yours I’m afraid.” He stretched his arms above his head, and for one fleeting, clandestine moment she had an unobstructed view of a few inches of torso. A view which Aele’nor hastily averted her eyes from. “I come from a long line of people from this city. Got the paperwork to prove that my however many greats grandpa rubbed elbows with old Balduran himself.”
“Something to spice up your dating profile, certainly.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “Nothing makes people swoon like talking about dead guys.”
Aele’nor’s gaze narrowed ever so slightly, and that previous ghost of a smirk grew into a full one. “I’ll have you know that my twenty minute lecture on Jergal and The Dead Three gets me laid every time.”
“Does it now? Maybe you’ll have to treat me to it. For wholesome educational purposes of course.”
Whatever witty comeback she’d been devising all but evaporated at the slight huskiness of his voice as he spoke those words. It had been a long day and Wyll was tired, Aele’nor assumed. People who looked at him didn’t flirt with people who looked like her. Not that he would get much more of a chance to, for better or worse.
“Oh, that’s my building, right there.” She said, gesturing to the brown brick and wrought iron façade of the place she called home. “It was really nice. Getting to walk and talk with you, I mean.”
She turned to walk up the steps, assuming that Wyll would be more than happy to be on his way and wash his hands of the weird lady one of his charges had injured, but his voice caught her off guard.
“Before you go, maybe we could exchange numbers? Er- If you want, that is. In case you change your mind about taking The Owlbears to court for giving you a concussion.”
“Surely you don’t think I would- oh, you’re joking.” Aele’nor cleared her throat, and smoothed down her skirt, staring at the blank contact page as Wyll extended his phone out towards her. It almost didn’t feel real. Things like this only happen in romantic comedies where an ugly duckling lands in the lap of an improbably good looking man.
And yet, here she was, thumbs tapping out her name and number. “I should mention that Aele’nor is spelled exactly how you least expected.”
A smile crept across his face, as he took his phone back, her own buzzing from where she stashed it in her shoulder bag. A text message.
[Wyll isn’t spelled how you expect it either.]
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
The villains of Gotham learned a long time ago that they have a better chance of getting away with shit during the day. Batman only stalks the night after all.
Of course that doesn't guarantee your plans will succeed. It just means there’s a 30 percent chance of Batman or one of his birds showing up too late to stop any real damage.
It’s why the Joker never attacked during the day unless he was planning something big. He wouldn't have the Bat’s attention fully if he did. All the villains knew this and so a lot of their best plans were focused on daytime attacks.
And then
he
showed up.
The signal.
A Bat in bright yellow who patrols the city during the day.
Not only does he make his rounds during the day but he always manages to check and clear areas that would usually be prime real estate for unwilling test subjects. Drug addicts, hookers, and homeless people make great guinea pigs for unstable toxins, tech, poisons, and just about anything else you would need a degree and a permit for.
Unfortunately between him and that infuriating bird Red Robin those particular losers have been getting help and actually doing something with their lives.
It makes Jonathan's blood boil.
How dare he ruin the carefully crafted system the rest of them set up! How is he supposed to test his new fear toxin if there are no candidates! He couldn’t even get to the losers still on the street because they know that if they hang around 7th street then Signal will find them!
Scarecrow has been trying for days to catch just one person but he’s always blocked by that damn Bat in yellow! He’s starting to think he should just use
him
as the test subject.
.
.
.
.
.
.
“Well there’s an idea” he thinks with an evil grin.
“Oh yes I think he’ll work just fine.”
After all, what's a Bat without a healthy dose of fear?
_____________________________________________________________
Duke is near the end of a very long patrol when he hears screaming.
It’s coming from the corner of 7th street where some of the working girls have taken to waiting for their shifts to start. It made Duke glow with pride when he realized it was because they felt safe there.
“Hey O you there? Any idea what's going on at 7th?”
Duke's comm crackles to life and Barbara starts explaining.
“It looks like penguin is trying to kidnap some of the girls.” she says with no small amount of confusion.
“What?” Duke says back just as confused but moving twice as fast.
“I don’t get it either, this could be a trap you know. Didn’t you get one of his clubs shut down last weekend?”
“That club was forging documents to employ 16 year old strippers. He's lucky I didn’t cut his pointy nose off.”
And the only reason he hadn’t is because despite employing the under aged girls, penguin had cut the dick off of anyone who tried to touch them. Still Duke couldn’t let that club stay open, penguin can’t catch every slimy pervert, so he called in an anonymous tip with commissioner Gordon. He also made sure all 12 of the girls he’d had on pay roll found new, decent paying jobs.
“Signal I really think you should wait for back up, this kind of broad day attack is unusual for penguin.”
“And let him take the girls? No way O. I’ll be careful I promise.” besides he was already on scene.
Oracle makes a doubtful noise but concedes.
“Fine but I’m keeping robin on stand by.”
"Shouldn't he be in school?”
“He got suspended for 3 days because some kid threw his sketch book in the toilet so he punched him. And yes, before you ask Batman knows, he's going up there tomorrow. With Nightwing.”
Duke whistles, yeah that kid and his family are so fucked. Principle too.
“Well thanks O I’ll let you know if i need help”
“You better.”
With that Duke jumps from the roof top he was perched on and lands a flying kick directly into the chest of a guy trying to shove Candi in a van, knocking him to the ground where he lands flat on his back.
“Now don’t you know the most important rule is consent? Shame on you man”
The man below him did not find Duke funny. In fact he growled and tried to take a swing at his face. Rude much?
Duke hops off the guy and kicks him in the head before he can get back up. He then turns the scope the rest of his situation.
In total there are 6 guys including the one in the van and the one unconscious. They managed to tie up and gag 2 of the girls before he got here. He doesn't have time to round the van and pull them out or take out the guy in the seat because the other 4 are advancing on him .
He pulls out his nunchucks and extends them so they become his patented “Bat-hatchte” (“Okay who named this” Dick is suspiciously quiet which pretty much answers the question.) and swings at the front tire closest to him before he’s tackled into the side of the van.
The tire pops and Duke throws his assailant into the other approaching attackers before they can get closer. He then turns to quickly slash the back tire. This time he sees the gas release and gets the crushing feeling that his day just got ten times longer.
That's fear gas.
Shit.
“O we have a problem.”
“I can see that just hold on tight and DO NOT breathe it in, I’ll let GCPD know that there's a fear gas attack. In the meantime deal with the rest of your goons and evacuate as many people as you can. I’ve sent robin to help with the last part”
“Roger”
With new found urgency he quickly dispatches his last three assailants and clips the driver in the back of the head with a batarang before he can run away.
“Candi! Are you alright?” Duke turns to find her shivering in a corner. Sadly every gothamite knows what fear gas looks like and most carry cheap and disposable rebreathers. Candi has hers but it seems she inhaled some before she got the chance to put it on. Duke reaches into his utility belt and pulls out one of his four vials of antidote.
“Here on my count, breathe this in okay?” She nods but just barley.
“Okay 3 2 1-” Candi breathes it in and her whole body relaxes as she passes out.
Good, that means it’s working.
Duke fixes the rebreather onto her face just before the police show up.
The police set about getting the gas out the air while Duke goes to evacuate anyone Robin might have missed in his initial sweep. He ends up having to use two more vials of antidote and hand out all three of his back up rebreathers.
After he's done three laps around the street, Duke meets the police and asks about the girls in the van.
“We found one and she was in good condition but the second took off the moment we untied her. We can’t afford to send anyone after the hooker right now anyway, not with all this gas in the air.”
Duke hates cops like this. The ones who treat the working girls as anything less than human. He also hates that he’s right.
“I’ll go find her. She’s probably dosed with fear gas and scared out of her mind. She probably didn’t feel safe with a man, especially not one who hasn’t bothered to learn any of the victims names.”
The officer flushes in anger and embarrassment but wisely keeps any smart comments to himself as he points Duke in the direction she ran.
Duke takes off down the street while asking Oracle if Black Bat or Spoiler is available.
“I’ll do you one better day patrol” she said with what sounds like suspicious glee. Duke just shrugs.
It’s best not to question Barbra Gordon.
______________________________________________________________
Duke finally catches up to his runaway victim a whole 3 blocks away. She’s backed herself into a corner and is shaking worse than Candi was. How much did she inhale?
“DON’T COME ANY CLOSER.”
Duke stops and raises both hands so she can see them. So she knows he's not a threat.
“Okay. Okay I won’t. I’m staying right here.”
Her eyes dart from side to side. She’s looking for something. Someone?
“No one is hiding in the shadows. No one's going to get you.”
“LIAR”
She picks up several nearby stones, about the size of bottle caps, throws them at his face. One after another.
Duke doesn't move, doesn't lower his hands. He just lets them hit him.
He hears the mask crack.
He feels blood trickle down his nose.
When she runs out of rocks she starts shouting.
“WHY WON’T YOU GO AWAY! I DON’T WANT IT. I DON’T WANT YOU. I DON’T WANT THEM. PLEASE DON’T MAKE ME DADDY. IT HURTS STOP IT PLEASE."
She was crying and shaking. Pleading. Her screams eventually dull to a quiet but broken and resigned whisper after a minute.
“Please don’t hurt me anymore daddy. I just want to go to bed.”
And Duke is frozen. Because what is he supposed to do with that? He can’t get close but he can’t let her go on the way she is and where is-
“Signal.”
Batwoman. Kate Kane. God Duke has never been so happy to see her.
“Help me” he whispers. Small and pitiful.
“Do you have an antidote?” Duke hands the bottle over without taking his eyes off the crying girl.
“Go home day patrol. You did good. I promise to update Oracle on her condition later okay?” She says it softly. Like she's talking down a kid.
It’s only then that Duke realizes he's crying. That he can taste his blood and tears. He doesn't move.
“Go home Duke. You’ve done more than enough today.”
She turns to approach the crying girl.
Duke turns away.
_____________________________________________________________
Duke is rounding the last alley he needs to take to get the narrows( the narrows will always be home no matter what) when he runs into Scarecrow.
“You have caused me quite a lot of trouble in the last few weeks, Signal.”
Duke feels every muted emotion dial up to 400.
He pulls out his nunchucks and just starts attacking Scarecrow.
“My my a bit touchy today aren’t we? And no jokes? Where's that dry wit that you like to throw out so often?”
“Why do you insist on making people relive the worst moments of their life? Why do you take them back to times they couldn’t defend themselves? Why do you hate the world so much that you have to make everyone live in a perpetual nightmare?!”
He doesn't answer. Just laughs and evades the next attack.
Scarecrow manages to dodge for 10 minutes because Duke is too emotionally compromised to remember his training.
When Duke finally lands a hit he realizes that he made a few mistakes.
One-Scarecrow never willingly engages in combat with any of them. He knows it’s a losing battle so why did he bait Duke into fighting?
Two- Scarecrows mask was different. It was bulkier than usual. Like there was a rebreather underneath it.
Three- From the moment Duke stepped into this alley he’d been breathing in fear gas.
He recognizes it now. The putrid, tangy, and ominous green gas swirling in the air.
Duke stumbles back and looks around. There are canisters in every corner of this alley quietly emitting the gas.
Duke's mask is cracked.
He has no protection left.
“O” he croaks out.
“Ah ah ah that's not going to work.” Scarecrow is waving a signal jammer in his face. "Couldn't have you calling for back up before the results of my new strain take effect.”
Duke swears as he feels consciousness slip away from him. Since when does fear gas make you pass out? He has just enough time to reach into his utility belt and set off a mini emp to cancel out the jammer.
That unfortunately fucks his comms too, so with his last bit of sound mind he reaches into one of the other pockets and hits his distress signal.
He blacks out right after.
______________________________________________________________
Tim is in a WE business meeting when Oracle calls.
She never calls as Oracle during the day unless the world is ending.
“I’m so sorry everyone, my little brother was just checked into the hospital and I have to go. Lucius is going to take over the rest of the meeting and lunch is on WE today!”
Tim is barely done talking before he's out the door and calling Barbara back.
“Red, I need you to go to the corner of 29th avenue.”
“Near the narrows? Isn’t that Signals spot?” Tim enters his office and hits the lock down button on the wall.
“Signals comms are off. He was in an area where all the tech was being jammed so he set off an emp.”
“Which fried them completely.” Tim finishes for her as he puts in his own com so he can change while still talking. “Why not send Robin or Batwoman? I caught the news before the meeting started. I know they were both in the area.”
“Batwoman is tied up with a victim from the initial attack. Apparently she can’t get her to move and the antidote is wearing off faster than usual.” Tim hums as he pulls on the last piece of his suit, which was hidden behind a false wall in his bookshelf.
“And Robin?”
“Here's where things start making no sense.”
Tim makes a noise of confusion as he walks to the other wall which is an elevator that leads to an underground garage.
“Robin was making rounds on 7th street, the site of the first attack, when he was attacked by several of penguins thugs.”
“Penguin???”
“Exctly! They knocked him out with regular gas but he hasn’t woken up yet. I had to send spoiler to retrieve him.”
Tim finally makes it to his bike. He hops on and drives out of the underground entrance straight toward 29th.
“That’s suspicious as fuck have you notified B?”
“Yeah Clark is flying him back to the states as we speak but you were still-”
“Closer I know.”
“...”
“I’m sure he’s fine, O.”
“Yeah well if he’s not I’m gonna kick his ass.” It's a joke but a strained one.
Tim presses on the gas a little harder.
______________________________________________________________
I can hear mom.
She’s in the kitchen cooking catfish and black eyed peas. She said Big mamma is coming to visit so I have to get my hair braided.
“But mama I don’t wanna.” I cried. “It always hurts when you're done.”
“You’ll be fine baby, you're just a little tender headed.” she says over the sound of frying fish.
I started whining and banging my fist against the kitchen table.
“Now kiddo throwing a tantrum isn’t going to get you out of it.”
Dad. He’s across from me playing sudoku.
“But-”
“No buts kiddo now eat your peas.”
“Fiiiiiiine”
I pick up my spoon and look down.
I start screaming.
There are eyes on my plate.
And fingers.
I hear Mom and Dad laughing.
“Stop it! This isn’t funny!”
They keep laughing.
Over and over and over again.
I look up from my plate of flesh to yell some more when I see that their mouths have stretched so far into manic grins that they're bleeding.
“Mama please this isn’t funny anymore! I’m sorry, okay? I won’t complain anymore and I’ll eat all my vegetables so just STOP LAUGHING!”
Mom dropped the tongs and kept laughing. She laughed until she stuck her head in the boiling hot oil.
“MOM”
She stopped laughing.
“MOM NO!”
I can’t get up. I’m glued to the chair.
“DAD HELP HER!”
Dad just laughed as he got up and walked to the front door.
“DAD! DAD STOP WHERE ARE YOU GOING?! PLEASE DON’T LEAVE!”
Dad laughed himself into oncoming traffic.
I screamed until my lungs gave out and the room bled away to the roof top where a familiar looking girl with dark skin in a black dress and blood red wig was going to kill herself.
“I can’t stay here Duke. I can’t stay in that awful house.”
“Then stay with me! I can get you help just please Sky don’t jump”
“I can’t.” she sways once. Twice. She falls.
I screamed again. This time the room spins into my first foster home.
“Clean that shit up! Do you think we're letting you live here for free? Useless brat. Did mommy never teach you any manners? Look at me when I’m talking to you!”
That’s right. They owned a whip. An honest to god bull whip. I would have found it funny if my back didn’t hurt so much.
They used to beat me until I passed out.
I scream. The scene changes.
I’m in an alley. Watching a girl plead for me to go away. To not hurt her any more. To let her rest. I can almost hear something else over her screaming. Someone else? Those screams sound too deep to be a girl. Are they mine? Am I still screaming? If so, shouldn't I be moving on to another nightmare?
“Duke wake up kid, it's not real.”
Jason?
“Yeah sunlight, come on back to us you're okay.”
That’s nice. Jason can help her. He’s better with the working girls anyway. I can focus on screaming.
“Shit he’s slipping, TIM WE NEED THAT ANTIDOTE LIKE YESTERDAY!"
“WORKING ON IT! KEEP HIM CONSCIOUS FOR ANOTHER FEW MINUTES!”
Robin! He can help!
“Sorry sunflower robins in bed right now but I promise he’ll come see you soon”
Dick? When did Dick get here? Also is he crazy? He just heard Robin so there's no way he’s in bed.
“Damn whatever Crane gave him is really fucking with him.”
“Duke, sweetie I need you to try and open your eyes okay?”.
Bruce. Bruce is here.
But I can’t open my eyes. If I do, I'll see Sky's bloody dress on the pavement. I’ll see Candi’s mangle body. I’ll see the scared and angry faces of my friends from the We Are Robin movement. I’ll see mom and dad laughing themselves to death.
I’m screaming again. The alley is sinking away. I don’t want to see another nightmare. Help. Help me. HELP ME PLEASE HELP ME-
“I GOT IT EVERYONE MOVE”
I can feel people sliding away from me and I almost start crying but then
“Hey Duke, little bro can you hear me?”
Tim?
“Yea sunshine its Tim.”
Robin is here. Finally. I’m gonna be okay.
“Yea you are, on 3 I need you to inhale okay? Can you do that?”
I think so. I’ll try. The girl is still screaming at me though.
“Shhh don’t worry about that, just focus on me. Ready? 1.2.3-”
I inhale this sweet flowery smelling stuff. My muscles relax and the alley melts away to darkness.
There are nails scratching my scalp lightly.
“Sleep
solis
. We’ll be here when you wake up.”
I drift off.
______________________________________________________________
“How did Crane get the gas in the tires?” Bruce asked from his spot besides Dukes cot.
Everyone was in the cave. Clark and Bruce had arrived right as Tim had pulled in with a screaming Duke in the batmobile, which he had to have remotely come to pick them up. Clark had to hold him down so they could strap him to the bed.
Dick and Jason showed up 5 minutes later and Cass appeared when Tim started analyzing the gas from the canisters and one of the tires Jason managed to swipe from GCPD.
Stephanie and Damian came down 20 minutes after Duke stopped screaming. Alfred prepared a light dinner when he realized what kind of night it was. He joined them an hour after he got chicken and dumplings going.
They were all surrounding Duke's cot except for Tim. Tim, after administering the antidote to Duke( and trying not to think about just how grounded he seemed when Tim spoke) , immediately started dissecting Scarecrow's little plot.
“He mixed it with helium. It diluted the effects but it worked.”
“But what about Julia? She was going through it pretty hard.” Batwoman chimes in from on screen.
“The driver that Duke took out with the batarang had a vial of undiluted fear gas tucked away in his sleeve. He broke it before trying to take off." Oracle chimes in.
“And the other woman? Casey?”
“She had no sense of smell, and had her taste buds burned off as a kid. Fear toxin has never affected her and if she's lucky never will.” Tim informs.
“Okay and Penguins goons? Where exactly do they fit in?” Steph wonders.
“Penguin was still a little pissy about his club so he let scarecrow borrow a few guys to throw us off track.” Jason growls. He’d stopped by the Iceberg lounge to have a personal chat with him.
“What was in those canisters, Timmy? Because whatever it was, it wasn't the usual fear gas.” Dick asks, his hand visibly tightening around Dukes.
“Scarecrow had synthesized a brand new strain. One that causes serial hallucinations that switch between the worst moments of your life and your biggest regrets. All while altering the memories to make the outcomes a thousand times worse.” Tim told them while not looking away from the computer.
“According to some of Gotham's underbelly several of the rogues are pissed about Duke's daytime patrol but Crane specifically had a score to settle with him because he’s been helping his “prime test subjects” do better in life.” It was only after he’d finished talking that Tim realized the mouse he was using had been crushed.
From the stifling silence in the room he wasn’t the only one mad.
Clark, who’d been sitting on a couch talking to Alfred, got up and said coldly
“Well I believe I have a Scarecrow to find.” And flew out of the cave. Tim smiled a little. Crane was a dead man walking.
“The kid had a pretty bad reaction. Is he gonna be alright?”
“He’ll be fine Kate. Right now we're waiting for his heart rate to slow down so we can move him to a bed upstairs. Unfortunately Duke is a Bat through and through so even in his sleep he’s got his guard up.” Stephanie replied.
“Then why is Tim sitting at the batcomputer?”
“Huh?”
Several heads turned toward the screen.
“Didn’t you all notice how comfortable he was with him? When he was starting to slip into another nightmare it was Tim's voice that grounded him and made him hold on long enough for the antidote. It was Tim who made him believe he was gonna be okay just by standing near him. Hell he called the kid robin! I know you're all emotionally constipated but surely you know what that means for Duke? For any kid? Everyone has their favorite robins after all.”
Silence.
“Whatever you’re working on can wait. Hood beat the shit out of penguin and I can guarantee that once big blue is done scaring the piss out of Scarecrow he’ll drop him off at Arkham.”
She’s right so why is Tim still not moving?
“Bhai? Are you alright?” Damian says for the first time since he came down.
Tim breaks down and starts crying.
Immediately Jason and Damian flank either side of him. Jason starts rubbing his back who starts soothing him in Arabic. Damian moves around to Tim's front so he can sit in his lap while Tim hugs him. Jason turns the chair around once they're situated but Tim is still sobbing.
“
kiyon ro rahi ho?
” Jason asks switching to league dialect.
“wah ji bahat adas lag raha tha. jise is ne apani zandgi min kabhi acha dan nihen guzara ho.”
Tim replied through gasps and sobs.
“
or phar is ne tasli ke liye meri taraf dekha. jise min sarf wahi chies thi jo dard ko dur kar de gi.”
Damian speaks up from his lap.
“
cunkah wah tam se muhabbat karta hay. aap is ki taarik duniya min roshani hen jas tarah se tod aap ke liye tha or jas tarah garisn mere liye hay.
”
That actually made Tim calm down a little. Sensing an opening Bruce adds in
“My son you are the closest thing to a symbol of peace Gotham has. That is what your brother sees.”
And while that only makes Tim cry a little more he does get up from the chair, with Damian still attached, and perks up on the only free space near Duke, the edge of his bed.
Dick lets go of Duke's hand and Tim takes it gingerly.
“Hey sunshine I know you can hear me so listen up okay? I need you to relax. Allow yourself to dream and I promise it won’t hurt. You’ve had an incredibly long day so take that well deserved nap okay
chhota bhai
?”
Duke's heart beat slows down to comfortable speeds.
Tim smiles.
______________________________________________________________
When Duke wakes up his throat is sore and his eyes are dry. He also has a 125 pound weight on top of him by the name of Tim Drake.
“You’re awake Master Duke?” Alfred says from somewhere unknown.
“Unfortunately”
“I have lemon ginger tea for your throat as well as water. When you're feeling up to it I’d like for you to have a few bites of soup as well.”
“Sure A I’ll get right on that as soon as this koala bear frees me from his prison.”
Alfred chuckles in that old man way of his and says “Do not be too hard on the poor boy. You gave us all quite a freight young master Duke.”
Duke sighs and hugs Tim closer “ I know. I’m sorry”
“Do not apologize, just focus on getting better.”
“Of course”
Duke finally opens his eyes and looks down to see if he can get Tim off of him.
What he finds is a bone tired Red Robin.
When he looks up he finds the rest of the batfamily, Including Barbra and Kate, sleeping on various chairs and couches looking just as exhausted.
“Actully I think I’ll wait on that tea.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah” Duke says, voice thick with an emotion he can’t quite name. “Don’t feel up to moving just yet.”
Alfred, ever the amazing butler and father figure that he is, politely ignores Duke's tears and replies with
“Very well sir, well try again at breakfast.”
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
It was the day after Christmas….
Fujin flew through the sky. He had just finished patrolling Japan, 8 hours of nonstop flying.
Not a single crime… It was weird…
He sighed as he flew over the clouds, flying higher and higher until he stopped.
He could reach space if he wished… But he had no reason to do so.
The Puppet simply hovered and allowed the sound of the wind to fill his ears.
Fujin took out his phone and checked the time, when he saw it, he pocketed the device, dive bombed back to the earth and flew to his destination.
A while later, a hospital came into view, he landed in front of the doors and went inside.
After talking to the receptionist, he made his way to the hotel room and saw two police officers standing guard.
“Sir!” One of the guards saluted him.
“Wanderer.” The other officer nodded in respect. “Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas.” Fujin responded. “I need to go in.”
The guards nodded, Fujin entered the room and saw the original leader of the Shie Hassaikai laying in the bed with tubes attached to his body, conscious.
“... Wanderer.” The Boss muttered. Fujin crossed his arms.
“Chisaki.” Fujin greeted. “I see you’re recovering… Why did you ask for me here?”
Chisaki sighed. “How is she?”
“I’m not obligated to answer that.” Fujin answered.
Chisaki gave him a look. “I know what Kai did… It’s my fault that he did those horrible things to my granddaughter… I will take responsibility, I just want to know how she’s doing.”
The puppet stayed silent before he took out his phone and showed the old Chisaki a picture of him and Fuyumi hugging a smiling Eri.
The old man looked at the picture. “... She looks so happy.” Chisaki muttered with tears pooling in his eyes.
“I adopted her, she's living her life.” Fujin responded. “... Her name is Raiden, Eri.”
“... It fits her… please take care of her.” Chisaki pleaded.
Fujin looked at the man. “You have my word… But I want to know one thing.”
The old man nodded. “What is it?”
“The name of Eri’s biological mother.” Fujin demanded.
Rin was in her small apartment, washing dishes after having lunch.
She sighed as she finished and dried her hands, she looked at the picture of her husband, she frowned deeper and brushed her silvery white hair behind her ear.
Rin soon heard knocking coming from her front door.
Who could it be?
Rin walked up to the door and opened it. Rin gasped as she saw the number one hero standing there.
“Chisaki, Rin.” The hero glared.
“N-no, it's Kusaki.” Rin denied and then tried to close the door but she was blasted back.
“Don't lie to me, I'm the last person you should lie to.” Wanderer stepped into the apartment. “We have a lot to discuss… involving your biological daughter.”
Rin got up. “I'LL CALL THE POLICE!” She shouted.
“Do it.” The tone he used made her freeze. “I'm here because I want you to sign away any rights you have regarding Eri.” He took out a folder and tossed it at her feet. “I want to make sure that you have no ties left with her.” He glared.
“Why… my father is taking care of her.” She spat.
Wanderer scowled. “He's in the hospital and your daughter… no, you don't deserve to be called a mother, Eri has suffered 3 years of abuse.”
Rin froze once more. “What?” She whispered. “You’re lying…”
Wanderer glared and took out some pictures, he knew she would deny it… “Look at these… and then tell me I'm lying.” He growled.
Rin looked and gasped as her eyes widened in horror. “No… no no no no no!” She gathered the pictures and looked at them.
“Your grandfather took in a man… her abuser, he used her as nothing more than a tool for his goals, he cut her up, took blood, flesh, he then used his quirk to tear her apart and put her back together.” Wanderer snarled. “You left her in that hell.”
“I… I didn't know…” Rin felt tears fall as she looked at the scars that adorned Eri's arms and legs.
“Yes, because you left her, abandoned her and for what?” He glared.
“SHE'S THE REASON THE LOVE OF MY LIFE DIED!” Rin screamed at him. “He's gone because of her power!”
“And you abandoned her because of it?!”
“I… I couldn't handle seeing her… not after what she did…” Rin sobbed.
Wanderer glared. “Sign those papers… you'll have no ties to her.”
Rin looked at the folder. “... Why do you care?” She asked him.
“Why do you care about that?” He shot back.
Rin looked at the pictures but he picked them up and used his power to shred the pictures to tiny pieces.
“The only reason I came here is because I want to make sure you don’t come waltzing back into her life and expecting to be her mother again.” Wanderer snarled and dropped a pen in front of her.
Rin gritted her teeth as she took the pen and looked at the folder.
She hesitantly signed the papers.
“Good… now I want you to sit here and think about what you lost… because what you put her through… even if you tell me you did nothing, You left her.” Wanderer took the papers. “Farewell.” With that, he left, Rin breaking down in tears as she could only imagine how ashamed her husband would be of her actions.
“Now Eri, give me a twirl!” Miko clapped as Eri twirled around, wearing a red and white kimono with floral design with her hair being done in a bun. “Oh she looks so adorable! I could eat her up!” Miko squealed.
They were in Fujin’s apartment, getting ready for the New Years Festival “Refrain yourself.” Fuyumi sighed as she walked into the living room. “But she does look adorable.” Fuyumi smiled at her daughter.
“Thank you mom, aunt Miko.” Eri looked down at her kimono happily.
Fujin walked into the living room and saw them. “... Preparing for the festival?” He asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Of course, this is Eri’s first festival after all.” Fuyumi crossed her arms.
“... So many celebrations…” Fujin muttered.
“You only say that because you worked through every celebration in the past, well not anymore! You’ll be part of them with me and Eri.” Fuyumi hugged his arm.
Fujin groaned while Eri cheered.
Miko giggled. “I’m glad you asked for my help Fuyumi.” Miko told the mother.
“I’m not.” Fujin glared at Miko.
“Well, I am glad I asked.” Fuyumi said with finality.
Miko smiled at Eri. “Now Eri, do remember what to do when you encounter a stranger who’s hoping to cause you harm?”
“Kick them in the shin and hit them in their privates!” Eri smiled sweetly.
“ERI!” Fuyumi’s jaw dropped. “No! You call out for me or your father!”
“She has to learn to defend herself.” Miko shrugged her shoulders.
Fujin watched amused. “I don’t see any issue with her advice.” He added his own thoughts.
“Don’t encourage her.” Fuyumi glared at him. “And where’s your kimono?”
Fujin stayed silent.
“Unbelievable…” Fuyumi sighed. “You were right, he forgot.”
“Which is exactly why I brought something for him and Ei.” Miko presented a bag from out of nowhere. “Now put this on Fujin~ It would be such a waste.”
Fujin scowled as he looked at the bag, Fuyumi nudged him and nodded at Eri who looked at him expectantly.
“... Fine.” Fujin snatched the bag, stomped to his room and slammed the door shut.
“Now I should get going, Ei is currently with Faruzan and Himiko, getting her into her own kimono.” Miko walked to the front door. “You should get ready yourself dear.” Miko waved at the two and left.
Fuyumi sighed, she was right.
She wondered how her mom and brothers were doing.
They practically forced her out of the house…
“Eri, go watch TV while I go get ready in your room… Since your dad is using the only bedroom.” Fuyumi rolled her eyes.
He should get a bigger place for them…
Fujin was without his hat… He didn’t like it.
“Fujin, it won’t kill you to not wear your hat.” Fuyumi commented as she saw his expression.
“I think dad looks handsome.” Eri smiled as she held her parents’ hands.
The three were in front of the large shrine to enjoy the festivities, many people were there too, but didn’t recognize Fujin thankfully.
Most were going to pray for a better year, but considering they knew gods… It would just be stupid.
“Me too.” Fuyumi smiled, wearing a white and baby blue kimono.
Fujin blushed lightly, wearing a white and blue kimono. “Thanks.” He muttered.
There was the sound of a picture being taken. “Ah, what a happy family.” Said family turned to see Miko and Ei walking over with Faruzan and Miko behind them.
“Faruzan, Himiko, it’s good to see you again.” Fuyumi smiled at them.
“Same here! What’s going on with your family?” Himiko asked, wearing a crimson kimono with her hair in a single bun,
“Mom, Shoto and Natsuo insisted I come with Fujin and Eri.” Fuyumi sighed.
“They’re just trying to give you two lovebirds more time together.” Faruzan smiled as she waved her hand, she wore a light green kimono herself.
Fuyumi blushed. “Ugh… Not you too…”
“Come on, you two are adorable together.” Faruzan teased. “The stoic and grumpy hero with the sweet snow princess.”
“Ah, such a love story, I should have it written.” Miko teased as well, she was wearing a white and pink kimono that went fabulously with her hair while Ei wore a purple and white kimono.
“Miko…” Ei sighed in exasperation.
“Faruzan…” Fujin sighed with the same expression as his mother.
“Where’s Nahi?” Eri looked around, frowning at the absence of her best friend.
“Hehe.” Eri turned to see Nahida behind her, wearing a bright green kimono. “I’m here.” She giggled.
“Nahi.” Eri hugged her friend, who hugged back.
“Now the family is all here.” Miko smiled sweetly. “Shall we?”
The group walked up to the shrine and started to look around. Eri and Nahida were playing games in the small stalls with Himiko supervising.
The adults just walked behind the kids, Fujin enjoyed watching Eri have fun, Fuyumi was happy to see Eri so happy.
Miko noticed something and smirked. “Ei, Fujin, why don’t you two take a picture there?” She pointed at a stall that had a fake cherry blossom prop.
“What?” Fujin frowned.
Ei looked at Miko “Why?” She asked.
“Why not?” Miko smiled. “A Mother and son picture.”
“Go on.” Fuyumi nudged Fujin and Miko gently took the mother and son to the stall where she paid to have a picture taken.
Fujin took an umbrella prop and Ei sat on a chair. “Okay, now smile!” The photographer called out.
Fujin gave a smile while Ei just kept her passive look.
“Amazing.” The photographer smiled, he then noticed. “Wait… You’re-” But Miko put a hand on his shoulder. “Why don’t you keep it to yourself, they’re here as family, not celebrities.” Miko smiled sweetly.
The photographer gulped. “Yes ma’am.” He stammered.
Fujin put the umbrella down, mother and son walked away from the booth and saw Miko, Fuyumi, Faruzan and Himiko looking at the pictures.
“You two look cute together.” Fuyumi smiled as she showed the picture.
Ei’s eyes softened as she looked at the picture then at her son. “It’s lovely.” She smiled, then it dropped. “I wish… Makoto could see this…”
Fujin let out a chuckle. “She’d be on their side.” He told her.
“Excuse me?” Faruzan crossed her arms.
Ei’s expression turned blank. “Quite…” She couldn’t help but agree, Makoto would start teasing her if she saw this…
“Dad, mom!” Eri took her parents’ hands and dragged them to the stand. “Let's take one together!”
“Of course sweetie.” Fuyumi smiled and went along with it as did Fujin, mostly because it was for Eri.
The family of three took the picture, Eri between Fujin and Fuyumi, all were smiling.
It was 1 hour before the New Year.
The Todoroki family, Raiden family along with Faruzan, Nahida and Himiko were all in the Todoroki household.
And there was a surprise guest.
“... Are you sure it's okay for me to be here?” Enji muttered as he walked into the living room with Rei beside him.
“Yes, we should all be here as a family.” Rei smiled kindly.
Enji looked at his sons, Natsuo didn't glare but nodded at him, while Shoto ate his cold soba.
“... Where's Fuyumi?” Enji asked.
“Oh she's with Fujin in the kitchen, making tea.” Rei responded.
Enji saw Ei reading a book on the sofa. “... You're Wanderer's mother.” He muttered.
Ei looked up. “I am… and you're the number two hero.” She hummed. “I am quite impressed with your work, although my son is superior, I can see the dedication you put into your work.”
Enji blinked, she was… blunt…
“Ei, there's something called Tact, please learn it.” Miko walked up to Enji. “I apologize for her, but she has little filter and doesn't know any social cues…” Miko sighed. “I'm Yae Miko, her close friend.”
“You already know who I am.” Enji crossed his arms, examining the woman in front of him, the two women gave him pause, they had an aura that told him to keep his guard up.
“Yes, the flame hero, your control over flames is quite impressive.” Miko smiled.
Enji hummed. “Compared to Fujin's aunt?” He asked, quite curious.
Ei hummed. “I haven't seen Murata in a long time… my sister knew better… but I was told that she had precise control over her flames, even setting her hair ablaze.” She informed him.
Enji nodded as Fujin and Fuyumi walked into the living room, Fuyumi gasped. “Dad?” She asked.
“Hello Fuyumi.” Enji greeted in a gruff tone.
The young woman smiled. “It’s good to see you here.” She told him.
Fujin gave him a respectable nod.
Outside, Himiko was sitting on the floor, looking at the moon, her expression blank as she was in deep thought.
“Are you alright?” Himiko looked at her mom who had two cups of tea in her hands.
“Yup… Just… Thinking…” Himiko sighed.
Faruzan sat next to Himiko and put the cups down. “Is it about that?” Faruzan asked.
Himiko’s silence was enough of an answer.
“... It’s your choice.” Faruzan told her. “I can’t make it for you.”
“But… What if I wait too long? What if… What if I mess up?” Himiko teared up.
“You have time, I know this is a big decision.” Faruzan pulled Himiko into a hug. “And I’ll be with you every step of the way.”
Himiko hugged her back. “I love you mom…” Himiko whispered, glad to have Faruzan in her life.
“I love you too, my little vampire.” Faruzan smiled, she always imagined having a student to teach… But having a daughter was just as amazing.
Inside, Fujin watched as Enji was attempting to reconnect with his family, Nasuo wasn’t giving hateful glares, Shoto was talking to Rei, Fuyumi talked to her father while Eri helped Nahida braid her hair and Miko was talking to Ei.
Fujin hummed as he looked at the clock, Faruzan and Himiko came in just in time for the countdown.
5….
4…
3…
2…
1…
A new year… New challenges.
Fujin knew that the peace wouldn’t last…
Fujin was in his office, preparing for the interns' arrival.
He has 5 to deal with now…
More trouble to deal with.
Fujin paused. What… was going on?
He felt something off.
It was quiet… way too quiet…
Getting up, he took his hat and put it on, he walked to the doors of his office.
Opening the doors, he saw that the whole floor was empty.
Narrowing his eyes, he made his way to the elevator and saw a sticky note on the panel… Conference room 3?
Entering the elevator, he pressed the 12th floor and descended.
Everything was normal when he came in… Although, Faruzan was a bit distant…
Maybe something was amiss?
As the doors opened, he walked down the hall to the conference room.
He opened the doors to Conference room 3, ready for anything… Anything but this.
“SURPRISE!” Fujin jumped and drew his sword.
The puppet blinked to see everyone he knew in the room, decorations all over.
And he meant everyone: Fuyumi, Faruzan, Burnin, Manami, Jin, Kaina , Tensei, Fatgum, All Might, Gran Torino, Nezu, Present Mic, Midnight, Aizawa and more.
“... What… is going on?” Fujin asked, confused.
“Well!” Tensei wheeled up to him. “We finally know the age-old secret! Your birthday!” The former hero grinned.
Fujin’s eyes widened.
“Thanks to your mom.” Fatgum pointed to Ei who stood with Miko and Nahida in the back. “We were able to plan this out!”
“We know you don’t like big celebrations.” Midnight stepped forward with a smile. “So only those who are close to you were invited.”
Fujin looked around, Fuyumi walked up to him, Eri behind her, a rather large gift in Fuyumi’s hand. “This is from both of us.” Fuyumi handed him the gift.
Fujin took it and stared, he slowly opened it and his eyes widened.
It was a hat… Exactly like his but it looked brand new.
“You’ve had that hat for… I don’t know how long.” Fuyumi sighed as everyone laughed a bit. “So… We had this one made… We weren’t sure what else to get you…” Fuyumi admitted, but stopped when she saw something.
Fujin took his old hat off and put the new one on, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“Umm… Is anyone else seeing this?” Manami whispered.
“Boss?” Burnin blinked.
Why…
Why did his chest feel so… weird?
He never celebrated his day of birth, why should he? It was the worst day of his life…
But… seeing all these people, fellow heroes, subordinates… friends and family, new and old…
Fuyumi pulled him into a hug. “We accept you…” she whispered, knowing what he was thinking, he hugged her back, Eri then hugged his leg.
Ei came up to them. “... Son?” She called out, Fujin pulled away and Fuyumi pulled Eri back, Ei hugged her son and held him. “I'm sorry.” She apologized.
Fujin knew what she was talking about, he sighed.
“I forgive you…” The puppet pulled away from his creator, his mother, then turned to everyone else. “I never celebrated my birthday… it was due to… bad experiences.” He explained.
Fujin gave them all a genuine smile. “But seeing you all here… I can say that today isn't a bad day after all… Thank you… all of you.”
“Geez boss! No need to get all sappy.” Burnin grinned. “We love you! You changed our lives!” She walked up to him. “You made me the hero I am today, I could be a pro on my own but I want to stick by your side and help make the world better.”
Jin stepped up. “You helped me when I had nothing, took me in and gave me this… family.” He smiled. “I owe you everything!”
“You and Faruzan helped me out of my spiral, I wouldn't be the confident young woman without you boss!” Manami smiled.
“You took care of me and helped me become more sure of myself… thank you.” Layla smiled softly.
“You pushed me to be a better sidekick, even if I can't do much, you gave me the tools to be better.” Bubble Girl nodded with a smile of her own.
Himiko stepped up. “Uncle Fujin… you helped me… you saved me… i wouldn't be here without you… you're my family… Happy birthday.” Himiko put a hand on her chest with a gentle smile.
“You made a huge impact on these people.” All Might was the next one to step forward, placing a hand on Fujin's shoulder. “You gave them hope and helped them be better… Including me, you helped me see a better future, thank you.”
Fujin snorted. “You all… damn it..” He wiped away his tears. “I didn't do much…”
“I beg to differ.” All Might grinned as he patted Fujin's shoulder.
Ryukyu chuckled. “This is the first time anyone's seen you cry.” She noted.
“Well this will be the last time anyone speaks a word of this or I'll make you disappear.” Fujin threatened but everyone just laughed it off.
All Might took a glass of what Fujin could only assume was wine from the table and raised it. “To the Wanderer or as we all know him… Raiden, Fujin!”
Everyone else raised their glasses in a toast. “Raiden, Fujin!”
“Hey Fujin! How old are you?” Mic asked with a grin.
“That I'm keeping to myself.” Fujin rolled his eyes.
“Aww come on!” Mic whined as mostly everyone laughed.
All Might looked at Ei who had a pleasant smile on her face and Nahida, looking very proud.
He knew the truth of Fujin's past, young Midoriya helped fill the gaps and it's safe to say… Fujin deserved to be happy.
Eri watched her dad talk to his friends, she looked at the old hat he left on the table and walked over, she took his old hat and put it on her head, she stumbled before she felt someone grab the hat, she looked up as the hat tilted to see her dad giving her a fond look.
Eri smiled at her father while Fuyumi giggled.
The atmosphere was joyful for the rest of the party.
But after today, work will begin again.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
*
The walls of Leyndell have collapsed for the first time.
It is on the devastated city that the queen's firstborn declares the end of a war, in the most miserable of ways.
Now they are allies of their enemies: a pitiful solution, that the Roundtable Hold cannot accept as definitive.
He cannot say he is surprised, he has never trusted the Golden Order enough, to believe that it was capable of managing such a conflict and indeed, the golden prince seems to him perhaps the most incompetent of all.
The crowd praises him, because he has demonstrated his value as a commander, he was able to eliminate the
Calamity of Leyndell
, Gransax.
This is said of him, while the capital is still on its knees, the losses are innumerable, among soldiers and civilians and this damn ... demigod opens the doors to them, these slimy animals of questionable intellect.
«The Golden Order certainly seems to have fallen very low.»
Vyke can only share Alberich's opinion, who is certainly not renowned for his analytical skills. He sneers, irritated by the obligation imposed from above on the entire Roundtable: to welcome another of their ruthless invaders, as a sign of non-belligerence and not in any place,
but in the first church established for their worship
.
There was no shortage of protests but, since the Queen did not show particular hostility to the idea, Godwyn the Golden took advantage of it, to continue with his own
peace project
.
As if they hadn't already done enough.
The mere mercy shown, in not having exterminated them all, after their defeat, should have been enough. Instead, the noble commander of the army, now even speaks of
friendship
with an ancient dragon.
Pathetic.
Leyndell is doomed, if it remains in the hands of these court jesters for long and a cursory glance at the first draconic church of Leyndell is enough to demonstrate their incongruity. Cloaked in undeserved splendor: light irradiates the environment from every side, the banners of the new cult, embroidered in gold, are fixed on the series of columns, the side chapels welcome effigies of ancient dragons and the presbytery, artfully crafted, is dedicated to the altar, for the ceremonies with the draconic rites.
At this point, one wonders how much it is worth remaining under the command of the Order. Perhaps Alberich is right: all this is an unbearable waste of time.
But the trumpets announce the arrival of the Golden Prince and the Tarnished warriors, as ordered, stand at attention, on the sides of the central nave.
The church door is forced open by the guards, barely scraping on the marble.
It is always a singular experience, to be able to observe even just one member of the royal family. Their presence alone is enough to feel the weight of their nature and since the Golden Prince has been able to demonstrate his value, even if his methods are far from those of his father, the feeling of oppression, in looking at him directly, is even more suffocating.
And in fact the members of the Roundtable cannot help but bow in deference. Even Alberich.
But Godwyn the Golden is not the only one to make his triumphant entrance and to keep him company is not what Vyke expected to see.
There is no dragon.
The prince offers his arm to the slender figure of a woman or at least, what seems like one. Following them, a patrol of Leyndell soldiers, equipped with armor bearing the draconic crest.
Whoever she is,
she is not human.
Pale skin, two curved horns on her head, so intensely white that it seems alabaster, and her face hidden by a silver veil, from which long pale locks protrude. She is barefoot, her toenails, like small claws, barely touch the ground. She wears a long dress of fine workmanship, decorated with the typical motifs of the Erdtree, almost as if to emphasize her necessary alliance to the Order.
Yet she demonstrates a noble temperament. She advances, as if aware of having every right and command over everyone in the church. Even over Godwyn, who in fact, rather than leading her, limits to accompanying her.
He smiles affably, proudly shows her the result of his work. He brushes her thin fingers, which rest on his forearm.
"Noble Lansseax"
He calls her.
«Everything you see here is yours, if it is capable of arousing your interest.
The church is dedicated to you and your people. And after this, my lady, there will be many more.»
She’s one of the ancient dragons…
But Vyke cannot convince himself, not even when he glimpses her long white tail, which slightly protrudes from the skirt of the long dress.
Alberich tries to hold back a hysterical laugh, but this time, Vyke doesn’t indulge it, he remains marble. Perhaps it is the surprise that paralyzes him, he did not believe this race was capable not only of reasoning, but even to imitate them.
Or that they had hierarchies.
Or that they could be like this—
«They are our faithful warriors of the Roundtable Hold, distant descendants of my father's lineage.
And as they have known how to assert themselves on the battlefield, so, I am sure, they will know how to guarantee you protection.»
The dragoness in her peculiar humanoid form walks in front of each Tarnished, now leaving Godwyn's forearm, to move completely autonomously and he reveals to her their names, following praise for their deeds, which Vyke cannot be sure how sincere they are.
The veiled creature seems to become even more regal, in bowing her head slightly, declaring herself happy to make their acquaintance.
But more than a simple introduction, stuffed with pleasantries, it seems like an examination, as if she is looking for something.
Or someone.
Is she trying to recruit one of them, for real? Perhaps she still fears for her safety, much more than the Golden Prince would dare to declare.
Ridiculous.
Who would ever accept being in the service of a dragon?
«I wonder if the draconic cult is enough to desecrate the Order.» It is not clear whether Alberich is hissing it more to himself than to Vyke, but for some inexplicable reason, the comment annoys him. He would cut out
his
tongue, right now, if he could.
And the dragoness advances, her thin hands are clasped on her belly, she looks towards them. She is now so close, that he can glimpse the features of her face, hidden by the veil.
The prince is right behind her, he has just the time to introduce her to the disturbed wizard of the heretic sorceries, that he prostrates himself before her with emphasis, without any comment.
The
Noble Lansseax
simply nods, as in the other cases, and declares herself honored to make his acquaintance. Then, she walks in front of Vyke.
«The most promising of the members of the Roundtable, my lady.» That’s how he gets introduced and for once the Tarnished cannot deny that he feels truly honored. «His skill and courage are a credit to the entire capital. He fought bravely during the siege, and all of Leyndell is indebted to him.»
It is instinctive that he goes to his knees, head down, and realizes too late how he has chosen to act.
There is something strange about her. Perhaps it is this unusual sensation that has convinced Marika’s firstborn to make a pact with the ancient dragons.
«Please, there is no need to show such reverence.»
But he remains on his knees, his gaze fixed on the marble floor. Of all the voices he expected hearing, this is perhaps the one he least imagined could belong to such a creature.
Her tone was nothing but a caress, capable of making his skin numb and the inexplicable desire to want to hear it again touches his mind in secret.
«Stand up, Sir Vyke.»
And this time he obeys, as if his name, spoken by her, has made him feel bound to her will. He raises his gaze, however with difficulty and that sense of awe does not diminish, especially when he looks at her face still hidden by the silk. It is this, perhaps, that troubles him in particular.
He fears to see her face, because she is hesitant to reveal herself.
But the dragoness, as if having understood his discomfort, brings her hands to the base of her horns, on which are knotted the white ribbons, which hold the veil, and carefully unties them.
And Vyke trembles.
Two eyes of a vivid red seem to scrutinize him to the very core, while the milky face, of a bewitching harmony, smiles at him affably.
«Tell me, Sir Vyke.» she addresses him again, unexpectedly taking his hand and caressing it gently. «Would you like to be part of the draconic cult?»
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
It had taken far longer than she cared for it to, but Ana's lungs, it seemed, were functioning once more. Lexi was still making routine check-ins to ensure she hadn't keeled over unexpectedly, but with some prodding and pressing she'd been permitted to return to her lessons and usual activity...within the bounds of the new facility of course. She declined to mention that she still felt the slightest bit dizzy as she came down from her unexpected bought of sickness. That wasn't unusual to her nor was it serious enough to warrant the excess attention bringing it up would net her.
"Your dad teach you how to do this sort of thing?" Dyson's voice rumbled out beside her like an old car engine. Her gloved hands didn't stray from where they carefully maneuvered hair thin wires into the mouth of cutters under the square magnifier lens.
"Are you kidding? He would have switched me to learning knot tying instead after the first minor spark." She smiled as she spoke, eyes carefully following her work as she snipped the head of the flawed end. Dropping the cutters her hand wandered to where she had left a small pair of needle nose pliers, finding them without looking. Careful motions began to peel the insulation back from the wire. Damaged, slightly, but that didn't mean their potential was lost.
"We picked up a book that included sections about some of this back in Irwindale years ago. I remember dad thinking it was weird I wanted to take it with us when it weighed almost as much as I did, he carried it for me."
She rolled back her seat to shake off the stray bits of insulation from the pliers into the can below them, rolling back once more to return to her process.
"The rest I just felt out for myself. It was a place where people needed help, and I liked learning it. I still shock myself sometimes though, the cost of learning through pages rather than experienced hands."
"I'll do my best to warn you if it looks like you're about to Frankenstein yourself." Dyson supplied from where he worked at his own dimly lit desk. "Most of this won't be in any usable state, but we don't have the supplies right now not to at least check if any of it can be flipped."
She crimped the exposed sections together, moving to wrap them tight to secure them onto the piece of metal she was using as an attachment piece for testing. A tight press kept them planted firmly, it was the best she could do beyond insulating the portion she'd altered, but that required more luxury resources than they could pull.
"I've often been surprised by the resilience of some of this old technology. It can sit in the dark for years but still hold a charge once you dust it off and give it some needed attention."
"Or it blows up on you for having tried. Have to be careful with them, time can make them more volatile than when they were new."
"I guess—"
The conversation was cut short when the commlink on Dyson's desk began to blink and chime. Placing down his work the replicant pried off a glove with teeth, freeing his hand to retrieve the device in question.
"Yeah." He droned into the implement, "Huh? Yeah I've got her here, we're— Hold on— Hey, I told Atlas where she'd be don't—"
There was a pause as the person on the other end spoke. Ana moved preemptively to secure her work, sensing that she'd be moving soon. Just as soon as she finished tucking away her tools Dyson's voice returned.
"I see. Yeah. Yeah alright, I'll walk her over. You want me to...say something? ...Alright. We'll be there in a sec."
The replicant leaned back in his seat, dragging a hand over his face before moving to remove his other glove, tossing it onto the desk.
"Good news, I take it?" Ana smiled gentle at him, her expression wavering slightly when the man didn't reply.
He stood, the chair creaking as he did. Finally giving her his attention he replied, "Come on kid, I've been told to deliver you elsewhere."
She moved to follow as he shuffled out of the dark space, cutting into it as he opened the door and the fluorescents of the hall poured in. The walk itself was uncomfortably quiet, not that she ordinarily considered Dyson a talkative person, but even for him the silence was daunting.
That was broken when they emerged into the common area, a small spattering of replicants gathered already in the space talking amongst themselves. She didn't flinch when heads turned upon their entry. The same eyes following her as she went as always did.
At the other end filing in from the hall that led to the exit shaft, a small group entered, dusty and dirty and bearing patchwork ballistic fabrics she recognized pieces of from the refurb room. Some she recognized, some not. At the very back Freysa spoke heatedly with a man who was still in the process of shedding the recycled plating protecting his form. By the time she thought to ask Dyson why they were there her eyes caught the flash of light against the helmet lens that the man wore as it was removed, freeing a mess of brown hair colored with flecks of grey here and there.
"DAD!" She darted forward like a bullet from a chamber, giving him only enough time to give Freysa a look that had her begrudgingly accepting the helmet as he offered it for her to hold, allowing him to free his arms before the girl all but leapt into them.
"Hey kiddo. Sorry I took so long, got held up by work." The words were inadequate no doubt but he hugged her firm in his arms as if it was possible to pour in the difference through the motion. She didn't respond, instead opting to press her face into his coat and know that he was
there
with her, physically.
With a bend, he gathered the girl fully into his arms. Stepping back to heave her up with relative ease and only some protest in his knees.
He turned to Freysa, "I'm gonna take this one, unless I need to debrief right this second. We need to talk."
"That isn't—" She paused, taking the moment to glance at the girl still firmly planted in his arms. She sighed. "Yes, alright. Her room is 14C. Through the door and down the hall."
The shift in his shoulder where her head was buried told Ana he'd nodded at that. She elected to remain that way as his heavy steps under her carried them out of the space, spared from the looks as they went.
"Hate to interrupt the tunnel you're digging there. You might have to help me find my way kiddo, new layout."
"s'notnew"
"Hmm?"
Her face lifted slightly from the surface of his coat, her voice coming out clearer this time
"Its not new. We have been here for a month now."
He didn't wince at that, but the crinkle of his eyes was a near thing.
"Yeah alright. It’s new to me. So unless you want to wander the halls for an hour I'm gonna need a hand."
She turned her head to follow their path, "Left here and then a right, it is near the end of that hall on the right."
Sure enough the branching path he'd been given eventually delivered them to the accordingly numbered door. She moved finally to slide out of his arms and pushed open the door, Deckard moving forward quick to take over for her from the top of the panel and ushering her in instead. Whiskey perked up from where he'd been napping on her bed and moved fast to greet the man he hadn't seen for some time with much enthusiasm. Deckard had just enough time to shut the door before he was pushed against it by the force of the animal jumping on his hind legs to see him.
"Hey there old boy, easy now." He ruffled the thick fluff of the dog's neck before pushing him down off of him. He continued to follow close to his heels regardless, tail high and wagging.
"I tried to divide the space up for us. Some of the things are missing though, I do not know what happened to them in the move." She moved to sit at the edge of her own bed, glancing around the room that felt suddenly inadequate despite her best efforts.
"I might have had something to do with some of that," Deckard spoke as he shuffled around to free himself from his thick coat, underneath a small satchel was revealed. He moved over to sit beside her as he felt through it for something, eventually succeeding and pulling his hand out to offer a familiar figure to her.
"You had it? I thought it was lost..." Her eyes brightened just a bit as she took it, feeling along the wooden curves and edges that had long been smoothed from years of care and handling. A thumb ran over the head of the horse in her hand mostly by habit.
"It was my travel pal, while I couldn't be with you. Didn't mean to keep him from you so long."
"Sure." Was all she responded with to that. For once, Deckard didn't immediately jump to try and explain and apologize a thousand and one times for his absence, and when her eyes flickered back to his face she was momentarily halted by the look of deep thought he seemed to be caught in.
"Is something...wrong?" She asked carefully, moving to hold the horse in her lap as she ran a nervous hand across its spine slowly.
He didn't respond right away, running his hands together with elbows on knees before giving her a look as if he was studying her for something momentarily. Whatever he was looking for he seemed to find it eventually, or maybe it was just his own nerve.
"Ana we... we need to talk. About something serious."
Her full attention went to him then, her hands clutching the horse tight.
"Okay...?"
He was quiet again for another moment before finally continuing.
"Something ah... Something happened, today. Something bad, kiddo."
The silence that followed the comment from the boy that sat with hands carefully folded in front of him in his kitchen had probably extended too far by now Sapper processed.
The boy. Because with his glasses on there was no question that was a child, with strangely alert but tired blue eyes set in a face rounded by youth in a jacket that clearly didn't fit his smaller form and everything that he had been running through in his mind as possible scenarios when he'd spotted the spinner had been thrown into chaotic confusion.
Not a blade runner? Not even an officer. Nobody else had remained in the vehicle outside that he'd seen. Nor was anyone else in the home with them by his best observation, the space not nearly large enough to accommodate much in the way of hiding. Maybe outside, somewhere he hadn't seen because nothing else made sense as far as why—
"Are you lost...? This land isn't open to visitors, but if you need help...?" He hazarded a reply finally, staying firmly planted in front of the sink.
"Are you Sapper Morton? Civic number NK680514?"
Again he was thrown by that, the kid apparently incapable of saying things that weren't incredibly disconcerting. Civic identifiers were public record, but that didn't make the question any less bizarre. He was expecting someone to come around and ask him that just not...
"Did someone...send you here, kid? If someone is making you do this, it’s okay, I can help you. What is your name?" He was trying to formulate a reason, there was no context legally where a child this young would be going places alone to ask someone questions like this, so whatever was happening was not above board. Maybe it was the greatest insult of all to his ability, to pay some uninvolved desperate kid to come around and ask questions in exchange for scraps. The feeling made his gut churn.
The boy didn't seem phased at all by the question, still switching between intense study of the man in front of him and the space around them occasionally.
"What do you farm?" The boy asked in place of an answer, as if Morton hadn't spoken at all.
Recognizing that he wasn't getting anywhere with his own questions he moved carefully to kneel at the child's level, the space of two bodies between them but a look of sincerity hopefully making up the distance.
"This is a protein farm. You've probably seen the packets before, I think they put a character on the kid's ones. This is where they come from. Some of them at least. Can you tell me who sent you here? Did they rent you that spinner?"
"Is that what you're making?" The child's eyes moved briefly to the stove top where a pot was still bubbling steadily. He didn't react visibly with the mild disappointment of another unanswered question. Smaller ones, maybe. It was more than likely that he'd been told he couldn't share who'd sent him.
"That's just for me." He straightened, moving over to a cupboard where inside his compact hydroponic system carefully nourished a humble supply of tiny plants, some small flowers already forming. It had been jostled quite a bit in transit but the important pieces were intact. After a moment of consideration he moved to pluck one of the small blossoms off with careful hands before returning to him. As he spoke he offered the bloom to the kid who eyed it.
"Garlic. Are you hungry? I can get you something." He looked it, but then, all kids looked a little too hungry to Morton. Such was the way.
"No. Thank you." He accepted the flower despite that, turning it over for a moment before just as quickly returning his focus to the man, "How long have you been here?"
"A while. Operation went down for a little bit because of some financial trouble but I'm getting back up and going again now. Do you have someone taking care of you? A family? They must be worried about you by now don't you think?"
"But you haven't always been farming."
He choked a little, internally of course but he had no doubt the tension in that moment was palpable. What script had they given this kid? He wasn't talking like he just got picked up for a job, he was talking like...
"Your bag. Is that...military? Medical use. Heat resistant... Were you on…” He seemed pulled into thought for a moment, “Calantha?"
The neutral friendliness he'd been making an effort to employ in his face bled away with that, his eyes flickering down for just a moment to the satchel in question. Alarms returned in his head. Not that they made much sense, if they expected a runaway replicant sending a kid only really gave him a warning and time to disappear again. Even one that must have worked with them before. Really, in light of the fact that his position was evidently compromised he needed to start moving. He did his best not to let his frustration show. This was supposed to be a safe place, the first and last one. He had only just started rebuilding it and he was already being made to abandon it once more.
He didn't love the idea of being the reason this place got tagged as a suspicious area. Nor would Freysa, a part of him told him that he needed to stay, get rid of what remained here and leave no traces.
"...I think it’s time for you to go. I don't know what they told you, but you don't need to be involved in any of this."
The boy moved to deposit the tiny flower on the table beside him, folding his hand into the huge pocket of his jacket.
"I'd be happy to, I just need one thing first..." He spoke as he went, eventually retrieving an item and standing as he brought it out between them. With a click the device activated.
"Could you look up and to the left, please?"
A beat.
He laughed, before he could stop himself.
"Is that a joke? You aren't a runner, kid. You need to go. Now."
"As soon as I receive a retinal scan I'll be happy to. Are you refusing to comply?"
The humor of the situation was rapidly leaving, replaced instead with irritation. He really didn't care for how involved they'd gotten this kid, it was sickening to use someone who couldn't even fully understand the position they were being put in. Equally so he was less and less sure of what to do about said kid.
The kid in question had stepped closer again, still firmly holding the retinal scanner that had gotten unpleasantly near to him at that point.
"I don't know how you wound up here but—" He moved a hand to take the child's own away from his face, halted when the hand not gripping the device came around suddenly to stop him, taking a surprisingly firm hold of his wrist.
"I would appreciate it if you don't make this more difficult than it needs to be, it’s technically my first day." For a moment Sapper thought there was supposed to be humor in that, for him it only brought bewilderment.
"I'm not going to fight with you kid—" He moved to jerk his wrist back from him, still trying not to hurt him if he didn't need to, only to be halted as his hand was twisted into a painful position and pulled down to the ground, forcing him into a lower position.
He made a sound as pain laced its way through his hand and lower arm, at the same time the hand with the scanner pushed his forehead back with far more force than made sense for the little body it came from.
Something clicked in his mind when his vision hovered at the edges of the jacket sleeve above him partially obscuring his vision. The smell of tank chemicals clung to it, and familiar old splotches dotted it in areas that would be random to anyone else.
With that once more the boy repeated, "Up and to the left, please."
He moved quickly to bring his free hand around to grip the back of the jacket he now recognized as his own and in one concise move, hurled the kid across the room toward the entrance.
He groaned as his wrist was released in the motion, moving to rub the feeling back into it and the pain still prickling away as he stumbled to his feet fast.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me."
From where he'd landed, the kid— the replicant? Was already making a swift recovery as red painted the edge of his nose, not quite running yet. He was more concerned with retrieving the scanner from where it had escaped him on the floor.
"What the fuck are you? Some new model they made to look like that? Or did they actually go and make a fucking…!" He spat out with venom at whoever had been so boldly fucked in the head as to intentionally make that. It was an insult to everything he'd witnessed in his lifetime.
"I'm—" The little replicant made it back to his feet with scanner in hand once more, "Trying to do my job."
He was quick to set upon him once again, walking with purpose toward the man. He elected not to give the other a second opportunity to get a hold of him. He was strong no doubt, but with how he towered over the other, Morton was still undoubtedly stronger.
The first seeking hand that came his way was easily halted, still he hesitated to do anything with that advantage, a part of him insisting that the other replicant was what he appeared to be.
That hesitation earned him a firm kick to his knee, old injuries long scarred over screaming at him as he involuntarily fell into a kneel. He had the presence of mind to see hands once again moving to try and restrain him as soon as he landed, taking the moment to turn away and blindly swipe to try and push the other down with considerably more force than before, pain driving him.
He managed with equal part luck and sheer force to bring the other down to the floor, keeping him there with two hands firmly planted on his chest and shoulder.
“Fucking—new models—reward driven—” He grunted as fingers scrabbled for his face, turning to keep them away from his eyes, “murder dogs—”
A foot collided with his gut in what felt like a bruising blow, only pillowed by the odd angle it came from.
“Would you—fucking STOP.” He released some pressure from the replicant’s shoulders, but only enough to slam him back down as soon as he moved to rise. His head made a resounding thunk against the flooring that Sapper winced at internally despite himself.
His grip softened the barest amount with that, but it was enough. There was an unnatural whirring sound before a flash of white light beneath him came and pain laced its way through his chest, sending a numbing buzz through his arms down to his fingertips.
He tried to keep his grip but the sensation had his arms pulling inwards against himself like the death curl of a spider making them easy to shove away as the two replicants rolled positions.
The world around him blurred as he choked for air momentarily, not preventing him from feeling fingers prying at his eyelid and a familiar flash of blue at the corners of his stunted vision. His system flooded with panic against itself and he clambered blindly with tingling fingers for where the contents of his satchel had scattered in the ensuing tumble, managing to take a weak grip of a familiar thin metal handle and thrust it forward with as much strength as he could still summon.
Adrenaline did him the favor of sparing any reservations as the blade of the scalpel sunk through the jacket and into the smaller replicant’s arm. It did him little good though as the boy hardly blinked at that, and he was rewarded with a grip on his forehead slamming his head into the ground in a way that felt like retribution for his own attack prior. The knuckles slamming into his windpipe were a more calculated motion, leaving him gasping once more like a fish on land as his eyes rolled in their sockets despite himself.
The flash of blue returned, this time overwhelming what little of his sight remained as he wheezed short breaths in, convulsing slightly as his body struggled to right itself, still shaking off the traces of electricity that pulsed through him. The weight against his chest all but disappeared as the other stood, stumbling slightly as he went, and tucked the scanner away finally. In his other hand the unidentified object revealed itself to Sapper, no longer sparking but unmistakably dangerous in the other’s grip. Blood oozed lazily from his nose down his chin and he moved his now free hand to remove the scalpel that still loosely hung from the gash he’d managed to create in the fabric, the depth of the injury beneath unseeable.
Slightly strained by shallow breaths, the shorter replicant’s voice returned as he moved to make some space between them, “Please…don’t get up.”
Morton rolled himself over to settle on shaking hands and aching knees as the return of oxygen slowly granted him a modicum of strength once more. There was a ringing in his ears that persisted and for a moment he swore he felt burning sands whipping at his eyes once more.
How many years he’d clawed and crawled through with only a desperate hope to keep existing. To hear music dancing on keys and see tiny leaves pushing their way into the world from twisting branches. To see little hands, so small, smaller than he’d ever seen and all at once terrifyingly fragile in his own comparably massive ones that cradled a bundle in them like he was holding a porcelain star. Growing bigger and stronger with time in a way that he’d have never thought was possible for them if he hadn’t been blessed to see it himself.
“…’s not right…them making you like that.” He wheezed out through thin breaths, “It’s cruel. Holding our softer parts against us so you can kill your own kind more easily.”
There wasn’t any more distinguishable shift in the young replicant’s face than there had been up to that point, but he responded all the same.
“They aren’t my kind, my model doesn’t run. The older ones do.”
He hauled himself up on unstable feet, cradling his chest with one arm as if that might help dispel the remaining ache of electricity.
“They get stronger and stupider every generation.” His lip curled with that, “You new models... You’re happy scraping shit.”
His lips cracked over bloodied teeth as a grin painted his features unbidden. He thought of the face of a young girl, in some ways so like her mother’s and yet so different. A person all her own.
It didn’t matter if the road to her safety was marred by tasks he might have preferred to not fall on him to undertake, anything that had to be done would be. Nothing else mattered. There was no reason to try and run when he’d already promised a long time ago that he would stay and fight.
“Because you’ve never seen a miracle.”
He charged forward with everything still in his reserves, steps clunky but sure.
It didn’t come as a surprise when the other replicant ducked under easily, they’d probably lined his bones with diamonds to the plain old steel they’d deigned Morton’s line of models worthy of to complete their service in their time. Still, the whirring sound that came only a moment before another flash and sheer agony in his knee had irked him. The kid had been paying attention after that first strike, and as he fell once more the device began to whir higher with a click of a switch on its side. It was pressed to the center of his torso before the shock dispersed once again with a click, this time nearly blinding him as pain gave way to a full body numbness unshakeable.
Only his eyes remained in his command, following the figure above him blurily as he switched off the rod finally, tucking it back into his coat and stepping over to kneel at Morton’s side.
Cruelty came in numbers it seemed, as small hands with only some hesitation found purchase around his neck. As they pressed inward with that strength that defied his size he was powerless to do anything else but lay and witness. Darkness came slowly, they’d built him to last after all.
The last thought that graced him before his mind abandoned him was how strange it was that the little blade runner after all of that had felt it necessary to look away when the pressure in Morton’s pounding skull became all but unbearable. It was probably an ugly sight.
Then the darkness swallowed him.
“I understand it's a big request, Nyles, it's
urgent
.” Mariette hissed into the comm as her eyes followed the rain streaking along the spinner’s window. Nails colored by chipped paint tapped rapidly against the interior as she spoke.
“One diversion signal in a tiny grid isn’t going to raise any flags, you’ve said yourself those automated security stops trip on their own all the time. Just dress it up like one of those and let us do the rest.”
There was quiet on the other side save for the clack of keys telling her the call was still connected, then finally a reply came through scratchy with static, she was quick to respond.”
“Yes. Yes, I nabbed the digits on reentry, here–“ there was a rustle as she pulled back the sleeve of her coat to locate the pin copied in ink on her arm.
“A647-29B-HQ3. Read it back for me.” There was a pause as the sequence was echoed back to her steadily, “Perfect, how long until you can make contact?”
She sucked a breath through her teeth at the response, "That's cutting it real close Ny, can you do it any better for us?”
The reply she earned for that had her moving the device a little further from her ear to field the louder pops of static.
“Right. Moving signals. Control tower contact. Got it. That's as good as it's getting.” She sighed, dragging a hand over her brow, “Send me the landing coords once you’ve got them. Yeah. Yeah of course.”
She examined a nail, chipping off another small chunk of color as she did, “I’ll be sure to let her know, you know she loves hearing from you.”
Her nose wrinkled at the next response, “You can tell her that yourself thank you. Go work some magic for me, blinker.”
With a few parting words she ended the call, letting her eyes drift restlessly back to the storm outside.
She was granted peace for an incredible five minutes before the comm was jingling once again. She let it sound twice before answering.
“I need progress signs from you.” Freysa’s voice crackled through.
“You shouldn’t be making direct calls on here, should you? Protocol and all.” She couldn’t resist noting that, though her voice carried absolutely no humor.
“
Now.
” Her voice hissed through harshly.
“Yeah, I called it in. But if he’s riding along with a runner you’re putting us in a hell of a position. These are moles stationed here, not martyrs.”
“Every garden has pests. They’ve seen Root. It is not any more complicated than that. You need to take care of it.”
“And the kid–“
“Don’t make me repeat myself.”
She took a moment to process that.
“That isn’t funny.”
“It isn’t a joke. I am not letting a torch be held to everything for one scab.”
“I can do an extraction–“
“I am not telling you again. He should have never been there in the first place but
you
went over my head and sent him there and this is where we are now. Clean it up and touch base as soon as it is done. I’ll take the extended report in person, someone will be dispatched to take your place shortly.”
She wasn’t given the space to answer, the static going silent immediately and leaving her alone once more. She swore to herself quietly as her paint picking was exchanged for her skin instead. That was her ass on trial then, it seemed, fair enough.
By the time she touched down in the dark, half flooded lot a small congregation of replicants had gathered. Doxies and laborers and other invisible cogs of the city all in ranging states of concern.
“What are we doing here, M? Nobodies telling us nothing.” One of the girls with scarlet hair tied back tight stepped up to ask, jutting out a bony hip to rest her hand on.
"Something good I expect if FD is pulling from out of network on this short notice." Came the grumbling tone of a replicant whose arms and hands were still dotted with blackened grease stains presumably from the work he'd been abruptly pulled off of.
"I was told to pull together as much as I could in the time I had, otherwise I'd have sent a proper party invite." Mariette replied as she came to a halt within the group, trailing her eyes along the force she'd gathered. Some fourteen strong as far as her headcount could tell, and there wasn't really time to wait for better numbers.
"You're all already aware that several of our districts got moved to red and haven't been taken out of it as of yet. You're here because the situation causing that has escalated to emergency level cradle." She didn't pause as the mild concern that had been dotting the group quickly turned to alarm.
"I'm not going to go into excessive detail here, we don't have time and it wouldn't benefit you lot anyway. The important part is we've been given our orders, there's a transport headed through that will be touching down for us in a designated area. There's a runner inside in possession of sensitive information who needs to be prevented from arriving at their destination."
There were whispers around her all at once, several voices sounded at her.
"A fucking blade runner?"
"Why are
we
being sent after runners?"
"What did they do?"
"You're just sending us off to die then?"
"Was someone-"
"WE," She cut in resolutely, "Are the only ones near and available within the window we've been given to prevent this from escalating into something much worse. We have a ground advantage, all goes to plan we'll be there and done before it can turn into a fight."
She grinned, an ugly toothy expression that didn't match how she was feeling.
"I didn't think I had to beg for someone willing to retire a runner of all things. Doesn't matter what you thought you were here to do, if its at cradle level it affects all of us the same."
The chatter died down in favor of a silence equally lacking in reassurance.
Finally one of the laborers spoke, "Just tell us where we're going already, M. We don't have to like it but I'm obviously not walking off on that kind of shit."
The mutterings and grunts of agreement that came slowly from the others around her didn't have her feeling terribly confident, but she'd be kidding herself to expect any level of enthusiasm.
A jingle from her pocketed comm interrupted the space and she fished it back out to read over the message received on it.
"Good timing blinker." Her tired eyes dragged over the coordinates illuminated on the small screen.
She tucked away the comm once more, hand involuntarily brushing against the emanator also resting at the bottom of her pocket. She held there for a moment, in thought but still acutely aware of the stares fixed on her.
Finally she continued.
"There's one more thing, part of the orders." When some faces turned sour she was quick to add, "This part is easy don't bitch. There's a kid on board, got pulled into this when he shouldn't have been."
She pulled a long breath in and released it through her nose before finishing.
"He's to be extracted unharmed if possible. He probably won't love that idea so I'm bringing my own failsafe for that. Main takeaway is if you see someone under five foot don't shoot."
"Why the hell is a kid riding with a blade runner?" Questioned the red haired doxie.
"Does it matter? If I wasn't clear at the start this is very time sensitive so if it’s all the same to you we need to move to point."
That earned her a skeptical look from the female replicant, she elected to ignore it for the time being in favor of more pressing matters. She moved back toward her own spinner.
"No more than two bodies per transport, and no closer than two blocks by vehicle, I want the approach on foot and silent. I brought what I could but don't expect much in the way of munitions, we aren't assembling an army here. If it has to get messy so be it, the only priority here is an end one way or another."
Steady hands guided the door shut as silently as was possible, leaving the young girl to a restless sleep. Tears still clung to her lashes and her cheeks were splotched red. By her side her dog rested steadfastly, eyes following Deckard as he bowed out of the room quietly but remaining in place obediently.
Stepping away into the hall he retraced the path from before slowly but steadily, exhaustion seeping into his bones equal parts from the travel and the less than pleasant talk that had come on the back of it.
He had been on the road when the call had made its way through to his group. Splintered, encoded, and lacking much context but it was a designator he recognized.
TIMECHECK: 2223
UNIT G463 PKIA, REDOUBT ROOT LOCKDOWN NO LONGER ACCESSIBLE AVOID ANY TRAFFIC IN AREA, HIGH POLICE PRESENCE.
Presumed, because nobody had actually managed to get eyes anywhere near that fucking farm and Morton the big bastard wasn't responding to even the most urgent contact attempts. Deckard didn't need to guess what it looked like, he was familiar with the aftermath of a retirement and what processing took place.
The common area was all but empty, a combination of the late hour and the somber news that had followed the envoy putting a damper on most late night activities. For a moment he debated if it was worth it to pop his head out for a smoke, for once though lockdown felt worthy of observing.
Not that that should mean a dry night, digging through his pocket for a moment a slightly beat up and bent cigarette was produced closely followed by a worn but well cared for golden lighter. He toed around the door leading to the bunker's exit as he smoothed the bone straight again before raising the lighter into a cupped hand, bursting it to life with a press and burning the end of the cig.
The glint of the gold in his eyes held his focus for all of a moment before a voice behind him had him glancing over his shoulder.
"Indoors, must you?" Freysa questioned without her usual heat from where she leaned against the doorframe leading back to the maze of halls.
"It didn't seem like a night for nature walks." He replied simply, as he spoke she stepped closer, gesturing for him to join her at a scratched up table lined by cheap chairs on the side. A card game had halted mid process on its surface, the dealer was showing ten. He imagined if there had been money on the line walking away for the night hadn't been a hard negotiation.
Freysa leaned back, causing the flimsy chair to squeak slightly in a protest that was resolutely ignored.
“I am still trying to decide in my own mind if we need to take more severe steps with this.” The cigarette was offered to her and she accepted it between weathered fingers wordlessly, “Move further still, dissolve the cells involved and start over completely.”
She dragged from the cigarette as Deckard replied, “Further we move the harder it’s gonna be to stay supplied. We’re already toeing around a wasteland here.” After a pause he added, “We don’t know what all they found yet.”
“We know what they will find. What they may learn. I am tired of being caught off guard, if they haven’t yet we may only have this precious time to prepare.”
“We can’t keep uprooting her like this. She needs to be able to settle somewhere for once.”
That earned him back some of the heat she’d seemed too tired to summon before, “It is the cost of keeping her alive if you’d forgotten. We can’t feign normality anywhere anymore, Morton is proof of that much.”
There was a heavy silence that settled between them with that, Freysa pulled from the cigarette once more before returning it to the man.
“Maybe it was conceited that I thought us old bastards were untouchable by now. It’s a hell of a thing to make it this long and have to die there of all places.” Deckard turned it around in his fingers absently as he spoke.
“He got more time than most do. We forget that we’re the exception, not the standard.”
His mind flashed momentarily to a crate lowered as carefully as possible into the ground. Of the weight of a shovel in his hands and the wails of an infant inconsolable to the fact that the warmth she’d been stolen from was missing and the push of ashen earth over and over and over and over until it was far from sight but still clinging to his memory like a stain.
He remembered the chaos that filled his senses, experiencing his greatest joy and worst anguish simultaneously in a way that left a yawning pit in his stomach that he couldn’t shake save for a brief second when his child was pressed carefully into his hands still stained with dirt.
“We’re never going back there, are we?” He asked simply, to the air more than anything.
“...I don’t imagine much will remain there once all is said and done anyway. Only ghosts now.”
He swore quietly, moving the cigarette back to his lips.
“I have a unit taking care of whatever dog they sent out there. Small comfort but I do not prefer to get distracted chasing revenge in stupid places. This one has more to do with security than anything, while we are still able to slow the flow of information.”
“There isn’t a universe where Morton told them a damned thing.”
“Even so, it is better to remove threads wherever possible.”
He tapped off some of the ashes against the side of the table as the conversation lulled briefly.
“You'd best not be waiting for any disagreement. I’ve never asked that you spare a runner before, Freysa.”
“No temptation? ‘Don’t kill the messenger’?” She suggested in a dry kind of half humor.
“It’s a bit more involved than that. I don’t know any of the bastards doing it now anyway, the ones I knew are all long dead.”
After a moment Freysa spoke again, raising a hand in search of the shrinking smoke.
“To the dead.”
He moved to trade off the cigarette to her once more after a final draw, blowing out the smoke as he leaned back.
“To the dead.”
K shuddered awake suddenly as the console of the spinner pinged to inform him that he was nearing his destination. His eyes flickered open to lock on to the small evidence bag that rested in a divot of the console wherein an eye stared back. He blinked, moving his focus back to the center away from it, instead electing to study the small map tracking his journey.
He’d spoken briefly with the lieutenant once he’d returned to the spinner; she'd declined to receive a full verbal retelling in favor of a written one back at headquarters, explaining that it wasn’t really protocol to take them over the phone regardless of how eager to report he might have been.
The only noise around him came from the hum of the spinner and the patter of rain against the windows. It provided little distraction for him but he elected to take the opportunity to focus on the sound, counting the taps against the windshield almost meditatively, despite his efforts thoughts came to him unbidden.
He’d almost left without noticing them, the tiny flowers under the tree. But the flash of color against the gray wasn’t hard to spot from the vehicle and so he’d investigated. They rested now in their own evidence bag as well on the console, trapped in the plastic.
The same as the ones in the kitchen. The replicant had placed them there, why? A sentimental gesture, one usually associated with grieving.
The scan had helped to illuminate that, now he simply found himself wondering what or who the apparent grave still trapped under the tree was for. He supposed it wasn’t his place to wonder now, he’d been ordered back home.
He was beyond ready for that, the idea of finally being released back to his apartment seemed more appealing than ever now. It felt like he’d been gone for a week rather than the day and a half he was pushing by that point, Joi would have words no doubt.
The ride remained monotonous for another twenty or so minutes. Before he could begin to nod off once again there was a shudder from the body of the vehicle making it rock slightly as it cruised.
On one of the other screens on the console a flicker caught his attention, bold letters decorated a popup on it that had him squinting to ensure he’d read it right.
SECURITY CHECK IN EFFECT PLEASE STANDBY
In line with that, the spinner seemed to be slowing rapidly all of a sudden. He cast an eye out the window to try and locate any sign of a traffic officer or even a Pilotfish above him initiating the stop, his brow wrinkling when the gloomy sight yielded nothing of that nature. No flash of red, no new sound beyond the continued downpour as it began to pick up and fall in sheets.
It was when he began to descend that K started to run through scenarios in his mind, that the ride had accidentally triggered some traffic infraction and the grid system was processing that charge back to its owner. Ideally not, he didn’t want to have to explain a ticket to the lieutenant the first time he was permitted to ride alone. Still, those were designed to happen without the rider even noticing, a silent ping on a network that processed before you even knew you’d failed to signal. He’d read extensively on it at one point in a packet he recalled, the inner workings of LA traffic systems and the jobs of the officers that enforced it. If it didn’t indicate an error on his part he might have found it interesting to see firsthand rather than abstractly on paper.
Having all the proper documentation wouldn’t make it any easier to explain what he was doing and where he was going, he’d prefer the robo-system to that if the choice was in any way his to make, it wasn’t but the point stood.
Above him the little light that still came from the cloud cover above and the glowing product displays was steadily swallowed by towering buildings as he sank deeper and deeper from the sky toward the ground.
It didn’t make sense to be completely grounded for a traffic issue.
‘Security check’ wasn’t a very useful descriptor to try and form an answer from either. It was generic, unspecific, a placeholder.
The spinner finally touched down on a dim street, a slosh accompanying the landing as the pooling rainwater was momentarily dispelled only to return quickly to the thin streams that ran through the curbs. He stayed firmly planted in his seat for a moment, still half waiting to see if the responding unit had just been lost to him in the rain. When a full scan of the street as was visible to him revealed nothing of the sort he began to explore the possibility of a technical failure.
He couldn't send out any messages for assistance, the console was useless as it still brightly proclaimed the security check status in progress that prevented him from making any inputs. Several attempts to do so anyway proved as much to him.
Sabotage? He wasn't going to feign the impression that it hadn't also occurred to him. He was transporting sensitive materials, possessed sensitive information. More than anything he was trying to place where he'd managed to be noticed as such.
Sitting in place in a non operational vehicle and waiting for the problem to escalate didn't seem like the best course of action, and that realization was enough for him to move a hand toward the inside release handle.
It was a small mercy that pressing the handle brought the usual hiss as the door began to open, he'd half expected the entire spinner to be locked down. Nothing else revealed itself immediately to him with the barrier gone and so he did the most logical thing in that moment.
The evidence bags were gathered swiftly and buried in deep pockets gently, his function above all else in that moment was to ensure it was secured and would make it back to headquarters as expected. With that he took a tentative step out into the rain.
The only useful source of light this far down came from his own tail lights, the usual neons of the city advertisements hovered far above him, the street appearing to be largely residential. There were a few spatterings of screens here and there but they looked out of date and damaged, flickering slowly in a way that granted brief flashes of other darkened corners around him before just as soon returning to darkness.
He supposed if he started walking he could eventually find his way back to a more populated area and see about making contact with someone or securing an alternative way home. Then again the spinner he'd been sent in was the property of the LAPD and thus necessitated his presence to ensure its condition. He didn't have the good graces of anyone to be abandoning vehicles for anyone on the street to go through.
Indecision left him in the center of the street, glancing between the spinner and the stretch of road before him suddenly unsure of what best to do. The rain was soaking into his boots by that point, the rest of him long having been drenched.
His internal wrestling match was interrupted by a sharp explosive sound from the darkness somewhere, turning to try and locate it rewarding him with a sudden sharp pain in his shoulder.
A glance down told him he'd been shot, though the radiating discomfort helped to clarify that as well and for a moment he stumbled. Then his brain caught up and he moved fast to pull himself behind the still open spinner for protection, only momentarily slipping in the mud-slicked street.
The wound that then began to paint the already soaked jacket in crimson earned his attention for another brief moment as he determined in a snap judgement that it was ignorable for now. His focus returned to the surrounding area enough to begin to make out voices through the rattle of the rain. Far too distant to discern the words but loud enough he could tell they were moving closer.
His uninjured arm fumbled at his waist for where his only form of defense remained. Retrieving the wand did little for him though, revealing itself to be drenched just the same as him. An attempt to fire it up produced the warbling hum it normally made sans any sparks, the humming dying down just as quickly as it gave out with a flicker.
Not an ideal situation, he couldn’t tell how many opponents he was facing and he wasn’t in amazing condition for a fight without any defense aside from his own ability. Not to mention he was stuck with evidence in hand that he had to keep safe, not doing so wasn’t an option that registered anywhere in his mind, the results that would come of that were crystal clear.
In light of that he thought that a ditched spinner was comparatively more forgivable than evidence lost to unidentified assailants. The thing was inert at the moment anyway, with luck it would stay that way until an officer could recover it.
Resolved finally, he twisted his uninjured shoulder around to hurl the now useless device over the vehicle as far as he could away. As soon as it made audible contact with the street he bolted in the opposite direction as fast as his legs could carry him, rain whipping his face as he went.
There was a cloud of voices echoing after him, shouts and footfalls he still couldn’t discern as he put as much distance as was possible between him and them. The bland gray of the housefronts around him slowly bled away to near utter darkness, the slight glisten of the rain against asphalt his only guide beyond the occasional flash of white from another half powered advert that flooded his sight momentarily before dispelling.
He just needed to break through to a more populated place, he could disappear if he managed to get that far. Danger was heightened in quiet streets without curious eyes to witness.
Unfortunately it seemed some of the voices hadn’t given up their chase, on the contrary they were much louder now along with the accompanying footsteps echoing down the street. He pushed forward, eyes catching where the street finally intersected with another that appeared far better lit and hopefully much busier.
He took the slightest wrong step, a sizeable divot in the street that had gathered plenty of water within it that was all but invisible in front of him until he was suddenly in it and he stumbled, urgently attempting to recover his steps and keep moving.
That was halted by a hand shooting forth from the darkness behind him, wrenching him by the back of the soaked jacket to the side and sending him tumbling down onto cold wet asphalt. Not missing a beat his fingers scrambled for a hold of something, finding a clump of what was probably mud mixed with detritus and whatever else eventually found itself dissolved into unrecognizable mush on the side of a street. Kicking and scrambling to put any distance between him and the figure that had tumbled down with him he hurled the chunk in the general direction of what he hoped was their face.
The sputtering gag and half choked swears that he was rewarded with confirmed he’d succeeded. He pushed off of his feet to shoot forward once again but was stopped again by another body tackling him down hard, fire screaming from his injured shoulder. In a moment two more sets of hands came from the dark to help the person restrain him as he struggled against them with a violent thrash. His eyes flickered back to the temptingly close lights of the intersecting street.
Just as he opened his mouth, to…shout? Call for help? He wasn’t overly sure what he’d been about to say, a hand took a firm grip of it blocking any noise from escaping. He didn’t hesitate to bite down hard against it, there was a curse and then the hand moved, pushing him down into the street.
“Fucking christ! M, you better round up your shitkid, he doesn’t wanna go down easy.” Somewhere above him came a man’s voice. Beside him another one came as well, a woman, one of the ones helping to restrain him.
“He’s a fighter, can’t blame him since your dumbass shot him.”
“It was dark! I figured the runner would be first out.”
"Stupid."
His face was partially submerged against the flooding street in a way that he really didn’t care for, his vision half blurred by the collecting rainwater and a strange cocktail of copper and silt in his mouth. Somewhere behind them the rapid clack of heels sounded getting louder as they approached.
“
Give me space
, give me space—I’ve got a—hang on.” He recognized that voice, it came to him like lightning at the same time that bodies shifted slightly allowing the face of the orange haired woman from the street to come into view. In her hands she fumbled with a roll of plastic, unraveling it to reveal a dainty syringe filled to the brim with a clear fluid.
His gut sank at the same time that his twists and turns increased in intensity, air pushing out of his nose hard like a charging horse.
He was stupid for ever speaking to her, stupid for straying from precise orders at any point, the lieutenant had known better. That eyes had been following him from the start and like an idiot he had invited them to at nearly every turn.
And as more and more hands joined the others to hold him back and move him into a more pliant position he continued to tumble down that thought process, trying to parse where exactly he’d begun this downward spiral into profound under performance.
There was a prick in his neck, minor relative to the other injuries he carried at that point that already pulled exhaustion through him in waves, and the woman’s voice again.
“Just relax, kid. I’m not—I’m not trying to hurt you.” She stumbled over that part, maybe sensing the irony of it in light of the blood painting the water around him. Regardless, he had no choice but to comply as his system began to chew on what it had been given.
As the world spun and shrank away from his vision he thought of glassy eyes in a heavy frame, veins painting sclera red and a sudden unexpected non desire to see the subtle but quick shift from there to gone.
Then the darkness swallowed him.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
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You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Se sentía con el cuerpo pesado, la cabeza le dolía como si le hubiesen golpeado con un tubo de metal, el cuerpo no le respondía adecuadamente. Se incorporó poniendo una mano en la pared de ladrillos y respiró hondo mientras sus piernas temblaban ligeramente como si estuviesen de miedo. Eso le molesto un poco, pero le dolía tanto la cabeza que no podía pensar en otra cosa que librarse de las garras de la resaca.
Sintió nauseas pero las contuvo. Se puso un gorro rojo que tenía guardado en el bolsillo de su chaqueta porque el sol le molestaba la vista como si unas agujas entrasen a clavarse en sus retinas. Caminaba por las calles tratando de buscar un local para tomar por lo menos un café matutino que no era tan matutino que digamos, eran las once de la mañana.
Entró a un recinto en donde servían café, postres, vendían pan y uno que otro plato para matar el hambre. El local era en cierto modo agradable, no obstante, había algo que no lo era. Él mismo era consciente que su mera presencia incomodaba a las personas, y no era por su rostro serio y rasgos afilados, o su 1,86 cm de altura que combinado con su ropa un poco vieja y sucia le daban una apariencia intimidante, sino que en esa zona de la ciudad no se acostumbraban a ver ‘’extraños’’. Cuando la dependiente le pregunto de buena manera que era lo que iba a pedir, el hombre se quedó mirando un rato el apartado de los cafés buscando el más barato. Se quedó así durante un rato, solo para pedir un Café Expreso y un sándwich de jamón y queso.
-Em, disculpe la pregunta que le voy a hacer, señor, pero… si tiene dinero para pagar su comida, no? – Dijo la señorita con una voz suave para no parecer maleducada.
El hombre miró a la señorita un poco sorprendido, pero no la culpaba. Si él estuviera en su lugar también preguntaría eso a alguien como él.
-Sí, tengo el suficiente dinero para poder costearme un café y un sándwich, señorita. – Dijo el hombre sin parecer ofendido
La señorita asintió e hizo la factura. El hombre le entrego unos billetes maltrechos y un poco arrugados a la joven, la cual los vio con un poco de desconfianza. ‘’Puede revisarlos si desea, no tengo ningún problema.’’ Solo atinó a decir el hombre en aquel instante. La señorita cogió los billetes y los analizo sin hacer gesto alguno para no poner la situación un poco más tensa de la que ya estaba. La joven asintió y acepto los billetes del hombre y le entregó la boleta en un papelito que el hombre no se molestó en revisar. La señorita le pidió su nombre, a lo que el hombre se lo dio sin ningún problema.
Cuando el hombre se sentó en un rincón apartado, bebió un sorbo de su café mientras veía a todos de reojo. Algunos murmuraban cosas que él no llegaba a oír, otros lo miraban con disgusto y unos cuantos lo ignoraban pero sabían que él estaba ahí.
Al hombre no le importaba lo que pensaban de él, sin embargo, esas miradas y esos murmullos eran difíciles de ignorar teniendo en cuenta lo que su presencia significaba para ellos: un ser diferente que solo atraía consigo malas miradas, mal presagio y mal augurio.
Siguió tomando su café mientras miraba por el ventanal a las personas ir y venir en su rutina diaria, algunos hombres de trajes con un periódico en la mano, otros con un café, pero muchos con un maletín yendo al trabajo. Pero sobre todo le llamó la atención la presencia de un grupo de jóvenes con uniforme y mochila. Eran adolescentes que disfrutaban la vida y paseaban de camino al instituto. Se preguntó a sí mismo como habían sido esos años para él; si de verdad había disfrutado aquellos años que hoy en día se veían tan lejanos en el tiempo. Y no era para menos, sus años de adolescencia fueron hace 40 años, años más, años menos.
Cerró los ojos tratando de que su mente por si sola hiciera el trabajo de traer los recuerdos a su mente, pero, su consciencia traicionera como siempre, solo trajo pensamientos malos: Muerte, destrucción, gritos y más gritos. Pero había algo en el fondo negro de todo aquello que lo estaba observando, un ser desconocido que lo estaba acosando, trayendo a su vida desgracias y pesadillas de aquel día. Abrió los ojos, su piel escarapelada y su corazón latiéndole a mil por hora; solo fue un minuto pero pareció una eternidad. Miró a su alrededor, el local casi vacío.
Se miró las manos, eran duras y un poco rasposas como piedras. Su rincón estaba un poco sombrío, como su alma y su existencia. Dio un mordisco a su sándwich.
‘’Mi alma es el sándwich, y ÉL, poco a poco se está alimentando de ella.’’ Pensó para sí mismo. ‘’Lo disfrutas, no? Sé que me escuchas maldito imbécil de mierda.’’ En eso, sintió un gran dolor en su pecho. Se agarró de la mesa para soportar el escozor que lentamente se desvanecía, haciendo que la mesa se mueva ligeramente, derramando un poco de café. ‘’Hijo de…’’ Se aguantó decir la última palabra. Sangraba por la nariz, pero era algo leve. Se limpió con el antebrazo y dio otro mordisco a su alimento. Él respiraba pesadamente en un intento por aguantar el ligero dolor que ya estaba desapareciendo, pero que aunque sea casi costumbre, nunca estaba preparado para ese tipo de experiencia. ‘’Hay que terminar esto de una vez por todas.’’
Terminó su sándwich y su café y se levantó de su asiento, saliendo del local con la mirada perdida y los pensamientos vagando por cómo iba a afrontar el día a día.
La señorita que lo había atendido estaba ordenando unas servilletas y se le acercó una compañera de trabajo.
-Bien raro, no crees? – Dijo la otra chica.
-¿El qué? – Respondió la señorita
-Aquel hombre. Viste su ropa? Parecía sacado de una película de apocalipsis o algo así, toda andrajosa, maltrecha y sucia. – Dijo la chica mientras reía suavemente – Dio un poco de miedo cuando entró. Estuve a punto de llamar a la Asociación de Héroes para reportarlo como un delincuente local. Uno nunca sabe.
La señorita volteó a verla mientras doblaba un par de servilletas y las colocaba sobre la mesa junto a otras.
-A mi tambien me intimidó. Pero sabes algo? Cuando investigue algo sobre ese hombre, me pareció un poco extraño lo que me encontré.
-Qué fue lo que te salió? Es un gamberro del distrito? Un simple vagabundo? Un reo que escapó de prisión? – Preguntó la otra chica un poco ansiosa mientras miraba fijamente a su compañera.
-No me salio nada – Dijo finalmente la señorita. – Es como si nunca hubiese existido.
La otra chica pareció sorprenderse ante la declaración de su compañera, la cual, examinaba la boleta de pago dejada por el hombre.
-¿¡¿Qué?!? Como es posible? Cuál es el nombre de ese señor?
-Ludwin Crowhurst. Ese fue el nombre que me dio.
…
Saitama estaba en su apartamento, viendo la televisión un rato en lo que llegaba Genos. En las noticias, ve lo de siempre, unos cuantos monstruos atacando, unos nivel de desastre menor, otros no tanto, pero no tan relevantes para él. Pero algo llama su atención, un reportaje que habla sobre la Guerra del Sur Báltico. Iniciada hace 32 años con la invasión de la bahía al oeste del archipiélago de GreenField. Una guerra que termino con el acontecimiento de ''La masacre del Valle Rojo'', se le puso ese nombre porque en el lugar donde se decidió el enfrentamiento entre ambos bandos, había tantos cadáveres que por poco y la tierra se teñía de un oscuro color rojo de la sangre derramada por aquellos infortunados soldados. El reportaje aseguraba que no hubo ningún sobreviviente, ni bando ganador que se alzara en victoria en aquel lugar. Solo se encontraron muertos.
El conflicto se resolvió con un tratado de paz entre ambas naciones dos meses después de aquel acontecimiento. Las noticias tildaron al conflicto como un esperpento en todos los sentidos, reflejo del salvajismo y crueldad del alma humana, como siempre ha sido. Los grupos protestantes y conservadores, conformados por estudiantes universitarios, grupos de ultraderecha y personas pertenecientes a la alta aristocracia republicana pedían las cabezas de los altos mandos militares que iniciaron el conflicto y mandaron a morir a obreros, padres, amigos, hermanos, vecinos e hijos. Las madres lloraban con fotos de sus hijos en sus brazos, exigiendo justicia, pidiendo a Dios, clemencia y justicia.
Después de que termina el informe de noticias y la televisión cambia a historias mundanas y segmentos de entretenimiento que tienen poco interés para él, Saitama se inclina hacia atrás en su silla, perdido en sus pensamientos.
Cuando Saitama apaga la televisión, Genos llegaba al apartamento con nuevas mejoras en su equipamiento ciborg. En su mano derecha, había una bolsa con víveres que Saitama le había encargado el día anterior.
-Buenos días, Saitama-Sensei. Le traje lo que me ordeno. - Dijo Genos mientras dejaba la bolsa en la mesa. - ¿Ocurrió algo en mi ausencia?
-Nada importante, Genos. – Saitama se volteó para ver a su discípulo. Lo que pudo notar fueron sus mejoras que le habría proporcionado. – Te ves genial.
Genos asintió ante el cumplido de su maestro y se dirigió a la cocina a dejar las cosas.
-Me ha llegado una nueva información de la Asociación de Héroes. Solamente fue para los héroes clase S. - Dijo Genos mientras ordenaba las cosas.
Saitama levanta una ceja con cierto interés.
-¿En serio? ¿Qué hay de nuevo? - Se recuesta en el sofá, su habitual apatía se desvanece un poco mientras se pregunta qué podría ser tan importante como para que la Asociación de Héroes restrinja el flujo de información solo a las clases más altas.
-Aún está por confirmarse, pero se lo diré de todos modos. - Genos se puso un poco serio mientras miraba a su maestro. - Blast, el héroe Clase S número 1, podría haber muerto en batalla hace algún tiempo.
La expresión de Saitama permanece estoica mientras procesa la noticia, pero su mente se despierta repentinamente con una curiosidad morbosa.
-Blast, muerto? Eso es... inesperado. ¿Cómo sucedió? - Se incorpora un poco más, entrecerrando los ojos mientras mira a su discípulo.
-Como es una información reciente no nos dieron muchos detalles. Pero de que Blast haya muerto, es probable en un 90%. - Dijo Genos mientras dejaba la bolsa a un lado y se centraba en su maestro. - Quien sea el que lo derrotó, sigue suelto por ahí.
Saitama se inclina hacia adelante, con los codos apoyados en las rodillas, mientras considera esta revelación. Un poderoso héroe de Clase S, derrotado y asesinado. Es algo poco común, y uno que despierta una chispa de interés en él.
-¿Sigue ahí fuera, eh? - Reflexiona en voz baja, casi para sí mismo. - Me pregunto qué clase de oponente podría derrotar a Blast. Debe ser una pelea durísima... - Sus ojos brillan con un destello de emoción ante la perspectiva, algo raro de ver.
-Por cierto, Sensei. La noticia no debe ser revelada por nada del mundo. La población podría entrar en pánico ante la noticia de la muerte de Blast. - Genos miró fijamente a Saitama, como si lo examinara. - Se lo cuento a usted porque sé que es alguien de confianza para mí y que con su fuerza no tendría por qué preocuparse por encontrarse a alguien así.
Saitama asiente lentamente, pensativo.
-Lo entiendo, Genos. No voy a contarle esto a nadie. -Hace una pausa, considerando sus siguientes palabras con cuidado. - Pero tienes razón, con mi fuerza, dudo que tenga mucho de qué preocuparme... - Una pequeña sonrisa, casi melancólica, se dibuja en la comisura de sus labios. - A menos que, tal vez, este oponente desconocido que derrotó a Blast sea finalmente el desafío que he estado buscando. - Ríe suavemente, negando con la cabeza. - Pero bueno, incluso si los encontrara, probablemente no tendría ninguna oportunidad contra ellos. No con Blast ya derrotado. - Se encoge de hombros; su momentánea emoción se desvanece tan rápido como apareció, reemplazada por su apatía habitual.
Después de un rato, Saitama entra a ducharse mientras que Genos preparaba el almuerzo. El agua caía en cascada sobre su cuerpo, su mirada se posaba sobre las paredes blancas, un reflejo de sí mismo actualmente. Recordaba cómo era hace dos años. Él, con pelo, débil ante los monstruos pero dispuesto a pelear aun si tuviera que sangrar. Miró hacia un lado, en la repisa al costado de la ducha había un empaque de jabones de la marca ‘’The soapy whale’’, en el empaque salía una ballena sonriente tenía burbujas a su alrededor, con un lema debajo en letras azules: ‘’Lava tu cuerpo, limpia tu alma.’’
''Si pudiera soltar toda esta fuerza y quedar a merced del destino, lo haría.''
Más que un pensamiento fue una plegaria que llegó a oídos sordos. Se miró las manos, aquellas que en su momento dolían por cada golpe, hoy como dos rocas indestructibles que apenas se inmutan ante el más formidable enemigo.
Saitama sale de la ducha, pensando aún en su conversación con Genos y las noticias sobre Blast. Se seca mecánicamente, con la mente distante y preocupada.
Al salir a la sala, encuentra a Genos ya poniendo la mesa para el almuerzo. El olor a comida flota en el aire, pero no le despierta el apetito.
-Genos, ¿alguna vez te has sentido... inútil? - Pregunta de repente, con la voz teñida de una emoción casi desconocida. Se desploma en el sofá, hundiendo su corpulenta figura en los cojines mientras mira al techo.
-¿Inútil en qué sentido, Sensei? - Dice Genos mientras acomodaba las últimas cosas sobre la mesa y giraba para ver a su maestro.
Saitama suspira profundamente, sus manos descansando sobre su estómago.
-En la vida, Genos. Como si simplemente estuviera vagando por la existencia, sin una razón o un objetivo real. - Gira la cabeza para mirar a su discípulo, sus ojos llenos de una rara vulnerabilidad. - Soy la persona más fuerte del mundo, pero ¿qué sentido tiene si no tengo a nadie contra quien realmente poner a prueba mi fuerza? ¿Si no tengo nada por lo que luchar o proteger que realmente importe?
Saitama se sienta, sus codos descansando sobre sus rodillas mientras se inclina hacia adelante.
-A veces me pregunto cómo sería simplemente... dejarme llevar. Exponerme, luchar con todo lo que tengo hasta que no pueda luchar más. Sentir algo, cualquier cosa, incluso si es solo el dolor de la derrota. - Sacude la cabeza, una risa amarga escapa de sus labios. - Pero sé que eso es imposible. Soy demasiado fuerte. Siempre saldré victorioso, pase lo que pase. Es... agotador.
Vuelve a mirar al techo, con voz suave y cansada.
-A veces pienso que sería más fácil si no fuera el héroe. Si pudiera ser normal, como todos los demás.
Genos no sabía que responder. Era un dilema moral por el que Saitama atravesaba desde que lo conoció. Realmente era algo que arrastraba desde hace mucho.
-Sensei, no lo ve como una ventaja?' - Dijo Genos, pero sabía que era todo lo contrario, como un castigo divino que lo flagelaba por dentro y destrozaba el alma, carcomiéndole la mente hasta el día de su muerte. Si Saitama quisiera tener el mundo a sus pies, riqueza, fama y reconocimiento ya lo hubiera tenido, pero su vacío iba más allá de eso. SU VACÍO no podía ser llenado por cosas tan mundanas como los bienes materiales.
Saitama mira a su discípulo con una sonrisa triste.
-¿Una ventaja, Genos? - Ríe suavemente, negando con la cabeza. - Si ser capaz de destruir todo y a todos a mi alrededor de un solo puñetazo es una ventaja, entonces no la quiero. - Se levanta del sofá, camina hacia la ventana y mira la ciudad abajo. - Lo he intentado todo para llenar este vacío dentro de mí… pero nada funciona. - Aprieta el puño, el cristal de la ventana vibra ligeramente por la fuerza. - Lo único que me hace sentir vivo es la emoción de la batalla, la oportunidad de poner a prueba mis límites. Pero incluso eso... ya no es suficiente. - Se gira para mirar a Genos, con los ojos atormentados. - A veces me pregunto si siquiera tiene sentido vivir, si esto es todo lo que hay en mi existencia. Un ciclo interminable de lucha y victoria, sin nadie que realmente me desafíe, sin nadie con quien realmente pueda conectar... - Su voz se apaga, su voz está llena de desesperación.
Genos se queda en silencio, ya no puede decir más. Le sirvió a su Sensei y ambos se sentaron a comer en silencio. Después de terminar de comer, Saitama se puso a jugar videojuegos, pero a los quince minutos lo dejó. No tenía ganas de nada. Se echó en el suelo, viendo el resplandor del pequeño foco, el cual, tenue y débil, se apagó solo. Como un alma que se desvanece entre la penumbra del ser humano, reemplazado por un vacío claustrofóbico.
Mientras la luz se desvanece y la habitación se sume en la oscuridad, la mente de Saitama sigue vagando, absorto en pensamientos sobre su propia insignificancia y el vacío que lo consume. Yace allí, inmóvil, con la respiración apenas perceptible en la quietud de la habitación.
Las horas pasan, y Saitama permanece inmóvil, con la mirada perdida en el techo. El peso de su propio poder, el peso de su existencia, lo oprime, asfixiándolo con su inmensa presión. Se siente como un dios entre los hombres, bendecido con habilidades más allá de la comprensión humana, pero maldecido con una vida carente de verdadero significado o propósito.
Se pregunta si así será el resto de su vida: un desfile interminable de batallas ganadas y desafíos superados, solo para quedarse con el amargo sabor del aburrimiento y la desesperación.
Saitama cierra los ojos, ve oscuridad, ve la nada. Su mente empieza a adormecerse hasta dormirse.
Era un sueño extraño, él veía las estrellas, el universo, y nada más. No podía hablar, no podría moverse, solamente veía en la asombrosa belleza que el universo le ofrecía. Se encuentra flotando en una vasta extensión de estrellas y galaxias, observando en silencio el nacimiento y la muerte de los cuerpos celestes. Mientras navega por este reino etéreo, una profunda sensación de aislamiento e insignificancia lo invade.
No respiraba, eso lo agobió durante un momento, pero se tranquilizó cuando se dio cuenta de que no lo necesitaba, de hecho, no tenía manos, piernas, torso ni rostro, era como el viento en medio del espacio.
Saitama despierta repentinamente de su sueño, con el corazón latiéndole con fuerza en el pecho. Se incorpora, frotándose los ojos mientras intenta alejar las extrañas visiones que habían llenado su mente.
Saitama se incorpora, con el corazón latiendo con fuerza en su pecho mientras intenta despojarse de los restos de su sueño. Las vívidas imágenes de las estrellas y galaxias aún persisten en su mente, dejándolo con una sensación de desorientación e inquietud.
Mira alrededor de la habitación, sus ojos acostumbrándose a la oscuridad. El tenue resplandor de las luces de la ciudad que se filtran por la ventana es la única fuente de iluminación. Respira hondo, intentando calmar su corazón acelerado.
Mientras se levanta y se estira, no puede evitar reflexionar sobre el significado del sueño. La profunda sensación de aislamiento e insignificancia que sintió en la vasta extensión del espacio parece reflejar sus propios sentimientos sobre su vida y su existencia.
Se pregunta si esto es un vistazo a su propio destino: vagar por la vida, separado y desconectado, un dios entre los hombres, pero en última instancia solo.
Sacudió la cabeza, su mente dando vueltas en esos pensamientos deprimentes no era algo propio de él.
‘’Carajo, parezco un estúpido.’’ Pensó Saitama. ‘’Entrene para ser fuerte, no? Esto es lo que busque y al final es lo que conseguí.’’
Saitama buscaba no encerrarse en una esfera propia de pensamientos triviales y que lo distrajeran. Sin embargo, esa tristeza persiste, aunque sea mínima.
Saitama respira hondo, apartando la melancolía que lo asediaba y tratando de concentrarse en el presente. Sabe que se está exigiendo demasiado a sí mismo, dándole vueltas a estas preguntas existenciales.
En cambio, se dirige al baño, echándose agua fría en la cara para intentar salir de su melancólica ensoñación.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
It had been almost a week since the satellite outpost was hit.
Every man stationed there, all under Negan’s rule, was now dead, and no one was saying much about it.
The whole thing was serious. Nothing this big had happened before. It wasn’t just a few people—it was a full outpost wiped out overnight. Negan told (NAME) not to worry, that it was just another group of enemies who’d be dealt with eventually.
She’d overheard bits and pieces in the hallways, fragments of conversations when the lieutenants didn’t realize she was close enough to hear. It wasn’t random or sloppy. It was planned.
A hit like that meant someone out there was building the kind of resistance Negan always claimed couldn’t exist anymore. And it made her feel weird, in a way.
She sat alone on the rooftop, legs pulled up to her chest, drinking from a half-empty bottle of gin she’d swiped from Negan’s stash.
The alcohol didn’t help much. She wasn’t even sure why she was drinking it.
Below her, the yard was busier than usual, Saviors hustling back and forth. It seemed too late for a run, the sun already settling into the horizon. They were preparing for something.
She took another sip and then heard the rooftop door creak open.
She turned to see her father, Lucille in hand.
“You’re bein’ quiet today,” he said.
She took another sip, eyes still on the movement down below.
Negan looked at her, then at the bottle. “I mean,” he continued, “you’re never this quiet. Especially when you’re stealin’ liquor that doesn’t belong to you.”
“I get it,” he added, tone a little drier now. “Back where you’re from, maybe that’s normal. But here? Drinking something that ain’t even yours? Not exactly somethin’ to be proud of.”
That got her to speak. “It’s not stealing if nobody notices.”
“Oh-ho,” he let out, a small grin forming. “That what you’re tellin’ yourself?”
She took another sip. “So when are you planning on telling me what’s got this place so busy today?”
Negan crouched beside her, bat slung over his shoulder again. “It’s gonna be a
loooong
night.”
“And why’s that? You going somewhere?”
“Let’s just say we’ve got a little conversation lined up—”
“—
aaand
I’m obviously not invited,” she interrupted.
“You’re gettin’ tipsy.”
She set the bottle down. “I know it’s about the satellite outpost. You found out who did it, didn’t you?”
He watched her a moment, weighing whether to be honest or play games.
“Yeah,” he said slowly, “We did, a few days ago.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you ain’t part of this,” he said, dismissing the question, but then an idea sparked in his mind.
Negan eyed her for a few more seconds before letting out a quiet breath. “But you know…”
“Maybe it is about time you put yourself to use 'round here.”
Her eyes cut to him, now that got her full attention.
“I mean real use. Not just sittin’ up here drinkin’ shit you didn’t earn.” He gave her a look. “Nobody gets the luxury of doin’ nothing around here except you.”
She muttered, “I didn’t ask for luxury. You were the one that gave it to me.”
“So now you’re sayin’ it’s my fault you’ve been sittin’ on your ass doin’ nothin’ but making yourself a junkie?”
“I didn’t say that.” she turned away slightly.
“You didn’t ask for it,” he repeated, slower. “But you damn sure took it.”
It was almost fully dark now. He stood up straight and headed toward the exit.
At the threshold, he glanced back. “It’s gonna be a long night for us,” he said, tone softening. “You’re not comin’, but when I get back, you and me are gonna have a talk about what the hell you’re doin’ with yourself.”
The door clicked shut behind him. She just sat there, unsure what he meant.
Dizziness hit her as she stood, the world tilting slightly. She steadied herself against the wall and forced her steps down the stairs and into the building.
She passed the main hallway near the common room and almost missed her: Arat, leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, a half-eaten protein bar in her hand.
“I figured you’d come down eventually,” she said.
(NAME) rolled her eyes, kept walking. Of course Negan left someone behind to “watch” her like a child and not an almost eighteen-year-old.
“Hey.”
“What?” she snapped, turning with an annoyed expression.
Arat finished the rest of her protein bar and pushed off the doorframe. “Come with me. We got work to do.”
“What?” Her eyes widened in surprise. Work? Was this Negan’s idea?
“You’ve been up there drinking all week,” Arat said, walking past her like she didn’t need to agree. “Negan told me I should do something with you.”
(NAME) scoffed. “Work? With you? No.”
“Too bad,” Arat shot back, grabbing her wrist. “You wanna keep being dead weight? Fine. But one of these days, you better start acting like someone worth protecting.”
That one stung.
(NAME) hesitated. Her legs ached, vision still a little off, but something in the way Arat didn’t look back made her follow.
They moved in silence through the halls, past the mess room, the empty guard post, and through a door leading to the factory side of the Sanctuary.
A crate sat against the wall, loaded with supplies. Arat pointed.
“Grab that end.”
“What is this?”
“I’m prepping for something. You’re helping.”
“You’re making me do box-lifting now?”
“Yeah.”
“You call it your first shift? It’s about time you did something around here, even your daddy said it.”
(NAME) scoffed but grabbed the other side anyway. It was heavier than she expected.
“You think this is gonna make me a Savior or something?” she muttered.
“It’ll make you useful for once.”
They lowered the crate to the ground. Her arms were already aching anx it was just one crate.
“You done yet?” she asked, breathless.
“That kicked your ass more than it should’ve.”
“No shit? I can’t even see straight and you’re making me do this,” she shot back, though the edge in her voice was thinner than usual.
“No one likes doing work,” Arat said. “But we all ended up here anyway. We do it to survive. You? You were born lucky. Negan handed you a place for free. Most people would kill for that."
“But I never wanted to be in this,” she muttered.
“Too bad,” Arat said. “You’re already in it. Doesn’t matter if you’re not a Savior. You’ve got his protection. So yeah, maybe it’s time you figure out a way to contribute.”
She’d fallen asleep on the couch again.
Not in her room, just one of the worn-out leather ones near the hallway by the rec room. She must’ve laid down sometime after dragging crates with Arat. Her arms ached.
It was the sound of voices, multiple people, that woke her. She blinked awake and squinted at the nearby wall clock: just past six in the morning.
Way
too early. She was never up this early.
She sat up slowly, yawning and rubbing her eyes and for a second, she considered laying back down.
But then—
SLAM
.
A door downstairs, loud enough to shake the floorboards. It looked like Negan's back. And he's not quiet about it either. That in itself wasn’t strange, the man didn’t know how to enter a room without announcing it, but something was different, they were louder than usual.
“Get him inside! Move it!” She heard a Saviour's voice yell from downstairs.
'Who the hell was '
him'
? Did they have a new prisoner again?'
She thought, the
rest she couldn't make out, but it didn't matter to her, it was way too damn early to give a shit.
She got up eventually, wanting to get to her room and rest more there in her own bed.
As she walked down the hall, not paying attention to everything around her because she
physically
couldn't when it's this fucking early, she nearly walked right into him, Negan — who was just standing there like it was any other morning. Like he hadn’t just gone off to hunt down the people who wiped out one of his outposts. Lucille was slung lazily over one shoulder, the barbed wire covered with blood.
But it was him that stopped her. He was smiling. Fucking cheerful, even.
She froze at the sudden sight of him.
And he did too, then let out a low whistle and smiled even wider. “Well I’ll be damned.”
“Look what the cat dragged outta the wine cellar.” He laughed, clearly entertained. “You’re actually vertical before noon. Didn’t think you knew what seven in the goddamn morning looked like.”
"It's six." She rubbed her eyes, correcting him, wanting to go to her room but Negan blocked her way.
“Details, details.” He waved her off, stepping closer with a theatrical shake of his head. “I mean damn, if I knew all it took was a little bloodshed to wake your ass up early, I woulda cracked some skulls months ago.”
Her eyes dropped to the bat, looking at it with disgust, it wasn't just blood that was on there. Whatever the fuck it was, it looked disgusting.
He noticed. Of course he did. “
Heeeey
, don’t get all squeamish now,” he said, voice light but with that edge, meaning he wasn’t entirely joking. “Bat’s seen worse. Hell, so have you.”
“What the hell did you do—” she started.
But Negan didn’t even hear her. Or maybe he did and didn’t care. He looked at her like he’d just won the goddamn lottery. “Well shit,” he cut in, loud and lazy. “You actually look… alive this morning.”
Her mouth stayed half-open. The question caught somewhere between her throat and her pride.
“I mean it,” Negan went on, oblivious, still riding the high. “Color in your face, looking like you actually got some rest — if I didn’t know any better I’d say you finally got your shit together.”
She narrowed her eyes, gaze flicking back down to the bat. But he just kept going.
“See? I leave for one morning, and you decide to stop sulking around like some half-dead housecat. Maybe I should head out more often.”
“
Negan—
” she tried again.
Negan finally seemed to hear, noticing the way she looked at him. “What?” he asked, still half-grinning. “You got a problem with a little goddamn justice?”
Her arms crossed. “You came back smiling,” she said flatly. “With blood all over that thing.”
He scoffed, leaning his weight on Lucille like it was just a walking stick. “I handled business.” He stopped mid-step, “
Aw
, c’mon,”
“Don’t tell me you actually care.”
“Just answer for once, would you?”
“You wanna know? You really wanna know whose blood it is?” He didn't let her answer, “It's one of Rick’s,”.
"And who's... Rick ?" She looked at him, confused at the unfamiliar name.
“
Riiiick
... You know, the people who killed my men.”
“The ones who hit the satellite outpost?”
He nodded, “Now we're askin' the right questions!”
“They snuck in like little rats. Thought they were doin’ the world a damn favor. Killed good people.
My
people. Guys you’ve eaten dinner with, sweetheart. People who bled for this place.”
Before she could press more, he laid a hand on her shoulder, the leather of his glove cool against her bare shoulder.
Then, gently, he leaned down and kissed her forehead, a thing he rarely does that almost made her forget what she’d asked. “If you want more answers, sweetheart, we’ll talk at breakfast, okay?”
Then, just like that, he turned and walked off, humming like nothing happened. She looked at him for a second, then rushed to her room.
When she got there she closed, no,
slammed
her door, immediately began taking off the tank top from yesterday she ended up sleeping in. Her feet moved quickly across the room as she rifled through her clothes, and put something on.
She was already halfway down the hall before her door fully shut behind her.
Negan wasn’t that hard to find. If he wasn’t barking orders in the yard, he was exactly where he was now, holed up in that dark room near the back of the compound, the one no one else ever stepped into without knocking first.
She didn’t knock, never did, just opened the door and there she saw him, sitting at the small table with a rag in one hand and Lucille laid out in front of him.
Negan glanced up from the corner where he was wiping down Lucille, he looked too calm for a man who had clearly just done something violent.
“I told ya to wait for breakfast,” he muttered, like it was the first rule of the day and she’d already broken it.
“I’m not hungry.”
Negan gave her a look, not angry, but familiar. The kind you give someone you’ve known their patterns long enough.
“
Rightttt
,
” he muttered, wiping the last bits of blood off Lucille and setting the bat down. “You’re not hungry. Like always.”
“(NAME), sweetheart, you live off shit food and alcohol you steal from me, maybe the occasional pill if I don’t keep the cabinets locked.”
She ignored his last comment. Her eyes narrowed. “You said we were gonna talk.”
“Oh hell yes we are,” he said, stretching his back like he’d just gotten up from a nap,
“But I figured you’d let me eat first. Or do I gotta sit down and teach you patience before I teach you anything else?”
“Patience isn’t the issue here—”
“No, it ain’t.” Negan cut in, his voice sharper now.
“It’s the way you think. That's the issue 'round here.”
For a moment, she just stood there, Her eyes went wide, like how dare he actually say that out loud, infront of her. Her mouth opened a little, half to speak and half in shock.
“But here’s the thing,” he continued, voice rougher now.
”That ‘home’ you keep talkin’ about? The one you so desperately want to go back to? It’s gone. You ain’t never goin’ back. And that’s a fact you gotta swallow.”
"The world changed, it's been four goddamn years since this shit started, you have to accept it."
He pushed himself up off the chair. “Listen here, honey, I love you like you’re my own blood. You weren’t born my daughter, but you sure as shit
will
die my daughter. Don’t you forget that.”
He took a slow step closer, leaning in just enough so she’d feel the weight of his words. “But love? It don’t mean a damn thing if you don’t do somethin’ with yourself. You’ve been miserable for for all the time I've known you, you never been fuckin' happy."
"Soo... Either you get up and start livin’, or you keep rotin’ in that misery, and it ain’t gonna fix a damn thing or make you happy.”
(NAME) didn't know what to say back, she knew he was right and didn't want to admit it, his ego would only get fatter from that.
She sighed, not looking him in the eye, “And what exactly do you want me to do? Work? Fight? I can't do that. I
won't
be doing that."
Negan let out a breath, rubbed his chin, then turned his back to her and grabbed Lucille off the table. “Two days from now, I’m headin’ over to Rick’s little clubhouse to get our shit.” There was a pause. Then, with a sideways glance, he added, “And you’re comin’ with me.”
"Seriously?" That made her laugh, not liking the idea of it. “Why the fuck would I want to go there on one of your runs?”
“You don’t have to want to,” Negan said, slinging Lucille up over his shoulder. “Just be there. Stand by me, maybe go take a walk. It’s about time you go out into the real world and see how other people survive.”
She stared at him, not knowing how to react.
“Just be there. With me. For you, that’s enough.”
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Morgan Kinsano remained in the cockpit seat of her Cyclops with the roof hinge open. Three other pilots were arranged around her in the back of the Pelican. They were moving fast and didn’t have time to secure the Mech-Suits, so the the next best thing was for the pilot to remain in the cockpit with the mag boots engaged while the the Pelican was in flight.
They’d been in the air for only fifteen minutes when a message flashed across her dash, an incoming announcement from the Pelican Pilot.
“Attention crew, we’re making a little detour on he way back to the Spirit. We’ve picked up a distress signal from the ground. We’ve cleared it With the Spirit. Isabel says the signal’s legit so we’re gonna swing by and see if any of our people are there.”
“Do we have a lot of MIA on the Arc?” Kinsano asked. The Banished didn’t usually take prisoners. When they did, they didn’t last long. Most of the time, anyway.
“There’s a few. But they didn’t go missing near this site,” the Pilot said.
The pelican dipped and began to descend. The Pilot continued. “We’re headed to a
site that the UNSC used briefly as an outpost. But it was hit hard by the Banished before the Spirt got to the Ark. Scouters had reported that the area was burned out and anything of use that wasn’t nailed down was looted.”
“Did Isabel pick up a IFF?” Kinsano asked.
“No. Just a signal.”
“So it could be a banished trap,” Another Cyclops Pilot said.
“Could be. If it is. I’m sure they weren’t expecting four cyclops fighters to show up.”
Morgan grinned.
“If it is a trap someone’s about to get more than they bargained for.”
***
The facility in question was in a small clearing on the edge of a wooded area. Isabel reported the treeline had been scanned and cleared. All signs pointed to the place being abandoned.
The Pelican hovered above the treeline and the back door dropped open. Morgan jumped out. Her Cyclops thudded feet first into the ground, sinking half a meter into soft earth. She climbed up and out of the small craters she’d made. One other cyclops crashed behind her. The other two would remain in the Pelican as it withdrew to a safer distance and circled.
Morgan scared the area through he clear hood of the cockpit and then glanced at he hud. There were not life signs around them. Just a half burned down building fifty yards ahead. It looked like it had been hit directly from above.
She advanced to the ruins of the site while the second Cyclops stayed back to cover her. It was a good thing for her that the walls and roof were blown open. If it had been intact she probably wouldn’t have been able to fit the cyclops inside.
She opened a channel to the Spirit. “Spirit of Fire actual, this is Colonel Kinsano. I’m at the site of the distress signal and don’t see anybody so far. Can you give me any directions?”
Isabel the AI answered her.
“Colonel, the signal is coming from approximately twelve meters ahead of you.”
Kinsano marched into the ruble. Melted metal metal and wood crunched beneath her feet. She glimpsed PreFab frames with four bolts a the joints. This wasn’t a Forerunner Construction. Their structures were seamless. This was a UNSC building.
“What were your scientists doing here before the banished showed up?” Kinsano asked as she reached the spot the signal should be coming from and began used her mechanical arms to clear the rubble in search of a hollow table or tablet.
This site was a day facility used by herbologist studying a fungus and mold ecosystem in the the woods nearby. They believed the local fauna would have medicinal value for humans as well as Ungoy. I regret, I do not have copies of their data and whatever they learned before the Banished attacked was lost. The scientists lived at a base seven clicks away and this was only on site that they worked.
“Do you know if any of them survived the attack?”
“Twelve of the team of twenty were confirmed killed in the attack. But many of the teams on the Ark were civilian. They didn’t have IFF for me to track. Approximately Two hundred and seventeen people are unaccounted for according to my data.”
“Did they have another Smart AI?” Morgan asked. It didn’t look like she was going to find a person in the rubble here. But the spartans found Isabel through tracking a distress signal to an abandoned UNSC site. So maybe they’d get lucky.
“As far as I know I was the only Smart AI assigned to UNSC operations on the Ark,” Isabel said.
Kinsano moved the charred remains of a table top aside and found a tablet. When she picked it up she saw that it had a weak charge.
“I found a tablet. I’m guessing this is the source of the signal.”
She opened the hood and took the tablet out of the Cyclops metal arms.
There was a button on the screen with the UNSC symbol. She pushed it. It indicated a call connecting.
“Hmmmm.”
This could be a tra-
The screen filled with a pale human face. “Uh. Hello?” The man’s eyes widened. “Oh God you’re human!”
“I am. Colonel Morgan Kinsano. Nice to meet you.”
“Oh thank god. Colonel. Great. Taby! Taby wake up! We’re rescued. Hold on we’ll come out.”
The screen went black and a moment later she heard the ruble shifting nearby. She saw a door swing up from the ground a few yards away and the man from the screen emerged. He was tall, white with black hair and startling blue eyes that she hadn’t noticed on the tablet. Behind him was a black woman with strong cheek bones and hair in long braids. They were both thin and wore dingy, torn jumpsuits.
Scientists. Not UNSC.
The man and woman looked from her mech suit to the cyclops watching them from the drop.
“Nice to meet you. Are there any more of you?,” Kinsano asked.
“No,” the man said. “We’ve been hiding here for, I don’t know how long. You’re the first human we’ve seen since the attack.”
She leaned into her comm.
“I got survivors. Two. Look like scientists from before the Banished attack.”
“Really!” Isabel said, sounding more excited than Kinsano had ever heard her and for a moment she felt a flash of sympathy for the AI. Isabel lost everyone she’d had on the Ark before the Spirit showed up.
“”Yeah. Bring the Pelican back down. We’ll head home.”
She looked up at the two new humans. “We’ll head back to the Spirit of Fire. Are either of you hurt?”
They both shook their heads.
“We’ll, get you checked out anyway. And well get you guys some food and clean clothes.”
The Pelican swooped low over head and began to drop down for its landing.
Morgan allowed herself to smile. Sometimes the Universe threw you a bone and for the first time since they’d gotten to the Ark almost two years ago. A pelican was returning to the spirit with more people than it had left with. It was one tiny thing to be grateful for.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
“Well, I’ve got good news and bad news.”
Dimple, for some reason, is
also
poking his face. Is poking faces some crucial part of the curse-analysis process? Reigen glares at him and bats at the hand. Power flares out from his fingers in a fan, and the spirit dodges back.
“Hey, watch it! You could exorcise me in that state.”
He lets himself smile darkly. “Tempting, but let’s talk about the curse first.”
“Hmph. You’re lucky Serizawa’s less of a menace than you are, or there’d be no getting my help on this.”
Serizawa clears his throat behind them. “Speaking of which, you said something about good news and bad news?”
Reigen takes a second to shove his hands in his pockets and just feel
bad
for the guy. Sure, his powers have never brought him anything but trouble, but without them, he’s left relying on his mouth, like Reigen. And
unlike
Reigen, he doesn’t like opening his trap. Plus, it’s not like that body’s a prize even without the powers. Short, only undiagnosed with COPD because he doesn’t have a PCP, to say nothing of the
dysphoria
Serizawa’s probably dealing with… Reigen really owes him a nice dinner or something after this.
“Yeah. So, good news is I can get rid of the curse.”
‘Yes!’
His desk phone tears itself loose and bangs into the wall. “Perfect! So – “ he almost raises his hands, then remembers and keeps them where they are “ – what are we waiting for?”
“Well, that’s the bad news.” Dimple wags a finger half-disapprovingly. “If I get rid of the curse, it’ll just leave your auras intact where they are – that is, stuck in each other’s bodies. Granted, it’ll stop whatever corrosive effect it’s
having
on you, but…”
“But then it might be even harder to switch us back,” Serizawa finishes with a groan. “Okay, anything else you can figure out about the curse?”
“Hmm.” Dimple approaches Reigen again, this time leaning over to – taste? Ick – his shoulder. As far as he can tell, his shoulder doesn’t look any different from the rest of Serizawa’s body – that is to say, swathed in something he can
sort of
see if he crosses his eyes just right, that isn’t blue and isn’t yellow but somehow
definitely isn’t
green. He glares at the spot Dimple’s licking, and for a second, it looks like that bit of the coating is paler and swollen, like it’s inflamed. But he’s probably imagining it. “Well,” he muses, “it definitely doesn’t seem
strong.
I’m guessing it’ll wear off in a day or two.”
“And that’ll switch us back?”
“Dunno. Maybe.” He licks again, and Reigen
very carefully
does
not
get irritated. Irritation’s just going to wreck something in his office. Again. “It’s kind of hard to tell if the swap is related to the curse directly, or just a result of the psychic force of both of you getting cursed at once – think of it like a cyclone picking you both up and putting you down at random.”
That sounds like nonsense, but Serizawa’s nodding, so it probably isn’t. Reigen lets Dimple get in another lick, then makes a show of taking his right hand out of his pocket. The spirit gets the message and backs off. “What about the corrosive part? Does it look like there’s any way to prevent whatever that is? No, let me guess,” he adds, raising the hand not
quite
to Dimple’s level for safety’s sake. “You can’t tell.”
The spirit bobs in a way that Reigen interprets as a shrug. “That’s pretty much it. You
can
see it like this, right?”
“Sort of?” He looks more closely at his shoulder. The little inflamed spot is still there. “Not sure if I’m imagining it.”
“Well, maybe take a look at Serizawa. It’s on his back, so you should have a pretty clear view.”
Sure enough, the dark blues overlying Reigen’s grey suit like a poorly-chosen tie lighten to a pale lavender just under Serizawa’s scapulae.
‘Is my back really that bony? No wonder people think I’m a pushover.’
He can’t help it – he pokes it. Much to his surprise, he feels something akin to a shiver, but localized entirely to his fingertip. “Huh.” He pokes again. "Does it feel like that because of the curse, or is that just what auras are like?”
“You’re asking like I could tell,” Serizawa replies with a sardonic look over at Reigen. Point taken – he needs to stop prodding people like an esper and figure out their next move.
“Okay, so!” he forgets his resolution and points two index fingers dramatically at Dimple, who dodges an abrupt burst of green energy. “Uh, sorry. Anyway: what do we do now?”
Another kind-of shrug from Dimple. “Well, that’s where the weird feeling around the aura comes into play. I’m guessing the kid mentioned it?” They both nod. “Maybe it’s because he hasn’t seen too many curses like this, but I have a hunch that that desperate, clingy vibe is what’s keeping it there.”
Reigen doesn’t know what that means, but judging by the worried look on Serizawa’s face, that isn’t a good thing. “Translation?”
“It’s a sympathetic curse. Basically, it gloms onto things that have its vibe, and the stronger the similarity, the stronger it sticks.” He pokes Serizawa’s back again, and Reigen waves him away. He snorts and waves at the spot. “Apparently, you two aren’t losers to quite the same degree as whoever cursed you, but you’re pathetic
enough
that it found something to relate to.”
“So, what does that mean for us? No, wait – you don’t know.”
“Actually, I
do.
Sort of. If you want the curse to come loose on its own, you need to reduce your emotional resonance with it. That might help with the corrosive effect, too.”
He can’t help groaning aloud. That
is
bad news. He has a fairly realistic assessment of himself, but Serizawa? The poor guy’s spent the better part of his life either trapped in his room or indoctrinated into an evil megalomaniac’s cult. He has the self-esteem of the protagonist of every film ever written, except the powers have done
nothing
to help.
“Okay, so what if we
don’t
reduce our ‘emotional resonance’?”
“Based on how it looks? Maybe nothing. Maybe it gets worse. Maybe it stays like it is, and you’re just stuck in each other’s bodies forever.”
There’s a distant screeching sound, and it takes a second to recognize it as the forks in their small kitchenette grinding as they’re twisted together.
Dimple gives them a double thumbs up and a cheery smile. “So just think positive! Remember how great you are and how much you love yourselves!” He smirks and the thumbs quickly become middle fingers. “Your favorite.”
Dimple sarcastically pats him on the shoulder (or maybe he’s just feeling for the energy again – what’s
with
that?). “There, there.” He snickers, and before Reigen can decide if he has enough control over Serizawa’s powers to just
threaten
Dimple, he’s gone.
They look at each other.
‘Wow, are there always bags under my eyes like that?’
He forces a smile and a deep breath. “Hey, don’t worry. We can do this. This is Spirits and Such, and we’re the greatest psychic team of the century!” Serizawa smiles back, but the worried look doesn’t leave his eyes.
Reigen can’t blame him.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
You are given a chapter. Your job is to craft ONE WRITING PROMPT such that the provided chapter could plausibly serve as a strong example response to that prompt.
CHAPTER:
Chapter Text
Y/N was in the middle of a tough week. She had multiple reports to work on, and what was worse—there would be a quiz on Thursday in her least favorite class. It was still Wednesday. Since you were living alone, you had to do all your chores yourself, including cooking, but you tend to skip eating when you’re busy. That week wasn’t an exception, and you recognised that you haven’t eaten anything for the past 7 hours, in the dead of night, while you were studying. As soon as you noticed that, you felt a severe hunger. You stood up, stretched out your body, and looked for something to eat. There was meat in your fridge which would expire soon, so you took it out and placed it onto a cutting board. Feeling a slight gilt for eating such a thing in the middle of the night, you grabbed a knife and started cutting. Because of hunger, exhaustion and lack of sleep, your hand seemed to have somehow lost control. The moment you sneezed, you felt an intense pain on your thumb. It was bleeding. The knife had cut your thumb a few centimeters wide. You took a deep breath and pulled out a bandage from a med kit. The cut seemed not so deep, so you warped your thumb with a bandage, hoping that it would stop the pain and the bleeding. You tried putting pressure on the base of your thumb, but that didn’t stop bleeding. The pain was becoming much worse, and blood started dripping from the bandage. Your instinct told you that this is not something you can handle by yourself, so you decided to go to a hospital.
Driving through the dark with a bleeding felt forever. All the roads were familiar for you, but that night, they all seemed like somewhere you’ve never known. Not knowing how long you had driven, you finally arrived at the Forks Community Hospital. The hospital had nighttime medical care. You opened the door, and entered. After filling all the papers, a familiar name called your name from the examination room. As you raised your head up, you saw Carlisle standing by the door of the room. You blinked from surprise, and talked to him as you walked to the room.
“Hi, ”
You said quietly, trying not to express too much joy of meeting him again. You knew you liked him at first sight, but you didn’t want him to know that yet.
“Hi, I didn’t expect you here, Y/N.
He replied with a gentle smile.
“So, you seem to have injured your thumb.”
Carlise lead you in the room. You both sat down. Feeling half embarrassed, you explained to Carlisle.
“I was clumsy and accidentally cut myself.”
“Accidents happen.”
Carlisle looked you in the eyes.
“Now, I’m going to take the bandage off and take a look at it.“
You nodded. Carlisle took your hand, and started taking off the bandage very neatly. His hands were cold, but as far as you knew, doctors' hands are normally cold for some reason. The wound appeared. It was still merely bleeding. Observing the wound, Carlisle started talking.
“It needs to be stitched, the cut is too deep to be healed naturally. Your decision was right to come to the hospital, Y/N. You must have felt intense pain, didn’t you?”
“Uh, kind of, the pain wasn’t so bad at first, but it got a lot worse after a few moments."
“That’s because of the adrenaline.”
“Adrealine,”
“Yes, and you’ll be needing that for the treatment too. I’ll use
anesthesia for stitching, but I’m sorry, injecting it will hurt.”
“Okay, I get it.”
Carlisle received all the equipment from the nurse who was next to him. He grabbed a syringe filled with a liquid. Taking your hand gently, he asked you. He seemed to have observed your reaction very carefully.
“I’m going to inject this now, okay?”
“Yea...”
The next moment, you felt the needle.
As you felt a strong pain in your thumb, you closed your eyes.
“It’s over now”
Hearing his calming voice, you opened your eyes.
He took out a needle and a thread from a tray, using scissor-looking equipment.
“It’ll probably leave a scar, but I’ll do my best not to make them stand out.”
“Thank you, Carlisle.”
“It’s just my job. Tell me if you feel any pain.”
He looked at you once again, and pinched a part of your skin with a tissue forceps. Holding the skin with the tissue forceps in his left hand, he pushed the needle into your skin. You felt the needle and the thread going under your skin, but there was no pain.
“It was such a surprise that you came here today, Y/N.”
He started talking.
“Totally. I mean, we've run into each other by chance for like, um, this is the third time, and it's crazy isn’t it?”
“It truly is.”
Carlisle laughed. He looked up and saw you as he finished knotting the first stitch. The way he looked at you didn’t seem like just observing the condition of a patient. It seemed to have contained certain kinds of feelings—but you didn’t recognise that. Being with him made you feel like spending time at a cozy home.
“Feeling alright?"
“Yes, there’s no pain at all.”
“Good, then I’ll continue.”
Carlisle re-gripped the tissue forceps. Normally, you weren’t really fond of casual conversations, even knowing that could provide a good relationship development. It consumed a lot of social energy because you think too much about how people feel and think when having conversations. However, Carlisle wasn’t like others, he made you feel comfortable with having casual conversations from the moment he talked to you. Intending to have more conversations with him, you decided to chat a bit while being treated.
“So, Carlisle, are you interested in old books?”
“Yes, I am, especially western books.”
“Oh, me too, the legends and folklore are really interesting, aren't they?”
“They really are. By the way, when we first saw each other at the bookstore, what book were you holding?”
“Oh, that, it was Dracula.”
“The classic storie of vampire.”
“I was looking through the bookshelves and—I thought that I’ve never read Dracula before I thought it might be interesting.”
“Was it interesting?”
“It really was. Vampires are kind of creepy but at the same time, they seem quite attractive.”
“Maybe that’s one of the reasons why there are many stories about vampires.”
He cut the thread from a tide knot as he spoke.
“Now, I’ve finished stitching your wound. Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m totally okay, thank you so much, Carlisle and it was fun talking to you.”
“I’m glad you said so. I am looking forward to seeing you this weekend.”
Carlisle smiled at you. After he explained how you have to treat the wound at home, it was time for you to go home. Carlisle stood up and opened the door for you, saying to drive carefully.
“Thanks so much, Carlisle”
“No problem, I’ll see you on Saturday. Good night.”
“Good night.”
You left the hospital and started driving home. Outside was still dark, but the light in your heart—which was Carlisle, was brightening the roads.
Requirements for the writing prompt you produce:
- It should be a standalone assignment-style instruction (e.g., “Write a short story about…”).
- It must be satisfiable using only what appears in the chapter (no external canon required).
- Calibrate the prompt’s scope (length, POV/tense, tone, genre) to match the chapter so the chapter reads like a correct/ideal answer.
- If the chapter’s content implies sensitive themes, include a brief, neutral content note in the prompt.
- Avoid naming specific characters or franchises; use generic roles (e.g., “a queen and her sworn protector”).
- Keep it concise (one or two sentences), actionable, and classroom-ready.
Output your question within <begin> and <end> tags.
Guidance:
- Match the chapter’s core elements (e.g., f/f romance, rivalry-to-allies, slow burn, post-battle comfort, political intrigue).
- Mirror its narrative stance (e.g., third-person limited past tense), and approximate its length (e.g., “800–1500 words”).
- If the chapter centers a scene type, make that explicit (e.g., “a reunion scene after a long separation” or “an argument that turns into confession”).
|
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