with a velvet tongue

but you had this look of utter panic in your eyes. terror like the ocean. you grabbed my cheeks. im in a time loop.

i don't know why in movies the first reaction is to deny it. when someone is panicking like that, it's not appropriate to ask them to calm down. it didn't matter if i believed it, what mattered was that you believed it so much that it was consuming you.

so here we are. i pour you some of the dark roast. "you look like utter and entire hell," i say.

you push your fingers into your eyes. "you always say that."

i try to think of something funny to say that i wouldn't have said on previous time loops, but jokes don't land without the proper timing (lol). "remind me to think -"

"-yeah, of a joke that only works in the future. and before you say anything, i know you're pissed i just stole your punchline." you bolt the coffee, which is wild. it's very hot. you don't seem to notice.

i blow on mine to cool it down. i both am very pissed at you and also i can't see you in this amount of panic without wanting to help. but i'm also not really sure what we are, not since i saw you kiss her like that, no offense. it just was like, kind of rude when you knew i liked you.

and besides. i'm just like, barely a person. i write omegaverse fanfiction. i love the concept of a time loop, but what the fuck am i gonna do? send an alpha in there? i open my mouth.

you point at me. "you're about to ask why me. and then say some disparaging shit about yourself. i'm just a nerd who plays dnd or something. that self-own is slightly different each time." you sigh. "i know you think you can't really help me. i don't know who can help me. i only came to you because you fucking believe me." you check your watch, sigh, and throw your head back. you cover your eyes with one hand. "i've come here on 26 separate revolutions," you say. "you have believed me every time. and yeah, i have no idea how you fit into this but i just -" you sigh again. "i just like fucking talking to someone about it."

"do you need more cof-" i start, but you're already holding the empty cup out. i frown at it. "you're not getting any more until you promise not to bolt this one like an animal."

you laugh a little and sit up, pushing your hair out of your face. "okay, that's new dialogue. but to be fair to you, i'm not usually this rude. i'm still pretty new at all of this." you check your watch again. another sigh. i guess you're cruising for a personal best in the Sigh Olympics.

i almost tell you im not an NPC but i've played enough video games to know i'm very much an NPC. i pour you another cup. "so what happens in the loop?"

"really bad explosion." you mutter into the mug. you put your elbows on the table (rude) and bury your face in your arms like an angsty teenager. one hand floats up while you talk, because evidently you literally can't talk without your hands. "i have to save the day and there's this bomb and i have no bomb training and it keeps moving, you know."

"do i die?"

you peek up from your arms. "yeah. bigtime. you keep trying to run or stay or do anything and you always super die."

"oh."

"to be fair, like, everyone dies in it though.... so you're in good company."

i hate that you make me laugh. i hate that being around you always feels tingly and strange, this electric tension between us. something that is evidently (given how you stuck your tongue down a stranger's throat literally 3 days ago) (well. 3 for me) super one-sided. i take a sip of my coffee and close my eyes.

i die today, i guess. a little spark of panic starts at the top of my hands and starts whipping up my wrists.

"shit," you say. you look at your watch and jump to your feet. "i have to go. if i can come back, i will. i am still trying to figure out when is best to do everything, you know? the order of stuff. maybe morning isn't good for us."

i look up at you and think about how you keep kissing me in the back of my car and in alleyways and in the dark. and i can never fucking get a read on you. and i also think about how incredibly panicked you look. how broken. how long have you been doing this? "i don't want to die," i say.

you glance downwards. "well, you're not really dead, you'll come back in the loop."

"but i will have died." my hands are shaking. i am trying really hard to stay calm.

you push your hands through your hair again. "i really have to go. i will have this discussion with the next version of you, though. it is like, something i am thinking about."

"but i don't get a next version," i say. i don't really have the language for this, because i haven't had 26 tries with you. i only have my memories: you, a week ago. drunk and telling me you loved me in my ear. you, kissing her anyway. you, months ago, throwing up on my birthday, whispering to me i ruin everything i touch, always, over and over. please don't ask. i can't ever fucking have that be you.

i run my finger along the rim of the mug. "i don't want to die in this one."

you seem baffled by this. "i get that but - time will reset, you'll be fine, you won't even remember we talked about this."

"but i know now." i stand up too. "i have to live the rest of this day knowing i could die. knowing i probably am going to."

"you could always die, to be fair."

i feel my hands get out of control. "earlier, you said i always say a different insult about myself. what if you're just going through different parallel universes and those are all just different - but real - versions of myself? what if you're not in a time loop, you're in a fucking universe loop?"

"if it helps, i've wondered this too. also, you're hot in all of them. if that helps."

i point at you. "no flirting. i'm trying to figure out if i die today."

"who's flirting?" you catch my wild hands and give me that long, perfect smile. like we're in this together. "i won't let ya die." you check your watch and sigh again. "well. maybe not this time."

i grit my teeth. you are so not making quips at me while i try to explain the existential dread i'm having. "does the time loop reset if i fucking kill you?"

"honestly i don't know how long it continues after i die, because i just wake up. it could be that the loop goes until the explosion for everyone, and we're all in the loop, or it could be that when i die, the loop restarts. when i die i wake up, is all."

i pull away from you and stalk into the kitchen and start doing all 3 of my dishes. "okay, first, you know i was joking. and secondly, this is exactly my point. you don't know if this is just a parallel universe. maybe in the ones where you died, the explosion happened and nobody reset and it's just you travelling." i have to stop and push the heel of my palm into my eyeball. "... how often have you died?"

i look at you. you look at me. you give me this very sad, halfway smile and a little what can ya do shrug. something in that action seems so old and weary that i want to burst into tears.

"i have to go," you say. "really. for real. there's this family of five i save from getting into a car crash. and i know it's like oh but we're all gonna die in the explosion anyway, what's the point. and..." you shrug again. "it matters to me, is all. at least i saved them for now. at least i saved anything."

you pad over to me and wrap me in a tight hug. you always seem so tall against me. i feel your cheek rest against the top of my head for a moment. for a second, it's just us, and the space is warm, and my heart is a little broken hare.

you leave me there, and i stand in my stupid badly lit kitchen with my stupid mugs. i think about you. i start texting my mom that she needs to get out of the city, but it feels pointless.

I will bring you a whole person and you will bring me a whole person and we will have us twice as much of love and everything

I be bringing a whole heart and while it do have nicks and dents and scars, that only make me lay it down more careful-like An’ you be bringing a whole heart a little chipped and rusty an’ sometime skip a beat but still an’ all you bringing polish too and look like you intend to make it shine

And we be bringing, each of us the music of ourselves to wrap the other in

Forgiving clarities Soft as a choir’s last lingering note our personal blend

I will be bringing you someone whole and you will be bringing me someone whole and we be twice as strong and we be twice as true and we will have twice as much of love and everything

Art: “Afrogalaxy,” by Mequitta Ahuja, Enamel On Paper, 96"X104" 2007 

and lyanna is someone who is dead before the story starts, that’s not even getting into the intricate & bountiful connections that for example jon, her son who we spend thousands of pages with, would have. like, the jon baby swapping thing alone puts him in conversation with ned And lyanna from the perspective of feeling like he has no choice but to hurt someone else to protect a child and also facing the reality that whatever his intentions were, he is consistently dismissive of gilly’s feelings and gilly’s personhood. there is no decision he can make here that doesn’t require him to take on blame & a more morally dubious role; he understands the stress his mother (and, imo, eventually, catelyn) was put under, he understands that he is flawed just as ned was. but it’s also like. okay well it doesn’t just end there and that’s fine to talk about. this same situation has several parallels, all of these things can exist. baby swapping and violence against babies is something that comes up a lot with some other key characters; theon, varys, jaime. and like, of course it does, because both theon & jaime are heavily in conversation with jon snow as a character. jon & theon literally grow up together, they are both outsiders, their actions & feelings are supposed to be reflections of each other. of course theon does a child swap for much more selfish, awful reasons in jon’s own home, in a much more violent way. and of course the underlying feeling of using fear to bulldoze over the feelings of a mother is still meant to parallel each other. it’s not like jon is the only person with mommy issues; alannys losing theon directly adds to her current depressive state and he avoids her when he goes home. theon is meant to be jon’s evil little shadow but in being jon’s shadow they do in fact share several similarities. if theon is failing to be what jon is, that pretty inherently means that theon is a little bit jon-like himself, and the reverse is true about jon; they are both bitter, & bitchy, & quick to be judgmental of the other because they covet what the other has, and it doesn’t totally matter what the other does to earn any sort of reputation. both of them are more than capable of seeing the others' flaws, but incredibly bad at self reflection. they have to dislike each other, to have that complete lack of awareness that the reason they dislike each other is because of how uncomfortably similar the roots of their own bitter feelings are. that theon regularly acts on his bitterness & jon strives to prove his doesn’t rule him is like, the point, and it doesn’t mean they both aren’t annoying about their own situation.

it’s the same with jaime. both of them swear their entire lives away as teenagers without really understanding what it is they are doing. both are idealistic about the order they’re joining; the knighthood, the honor of the watch, these are very similar sort of rose tinted dreams about dedicating their lives to a higher purpose, only for those dreams to get dashed coincidentally at around the same age (bc i am fairly positive jon is going to be bitter when he wakes up from being caesar’d). and i mean fuck, just like jaime represents everything a perfect heir can be to his siblings, he is very much what both jon & theon want to be - he was his father’s beloved heir, he was the uncontested oldest male child, and he gave it all up! jaime is intimately tied to the baby killing stuff as surely as ned & doran are; it is his boyish trust in his father’s good intentions that ~get elia & the babies killed. he harbors deep guilt over this. and then fifteen years later he pushes a child out of a window, claims to have been willing to kill arya if he had found her in the woods, and then like jon, like theon, he leverages his position over someone to make them fear him. and of course, very quintessentially jaime, he’s right in the middle of them both - he is trying to stop the fighting because the situation in the riverlands is horrific and bleak. he punishes his own men for terrorizing smallfolk. he is openly contemptuous of his own people who played a part in the unraveling of the riverlands. he is understanding to key northern sympathizers like jeyne westerling & tytos blackwood. he is directly running around entrenching the lannister regime & wrestling with whether he’s helping at all. just like the night’s watch being a shadow of what it was, the kingsguard is an institution that is crumbling, and jaime is wrestling with all this as he’s just actively handing out pardons for heinous shit. he outright abandons the lannister force at the end of adwd to go (unknowingly) chase after another stark. all of this is really purposefully supposed to compare him to what theon & jon are doing - i think it’s important to point out there’s just as much theon shenanigans there as there are jon shenanigans especially when it comes to the killing of children. like, both balon & tywin as delusional patriarchs, weird relationships with their sisters, a habit of fucking the starks over and then using it as a growth point, all of this circles around them being in the middle of the violent sack of a Highly Symbolic Seat and the ensuing fallout that does include the murder of children. the baby trebuchet, the gilly swap, the miller’s boys, the sack of king’s landing, the tower of joy stuff re: ned which feels obvious enough that i don’t have to detail it - this is all a different iteration of the same story. varys seems like the odd man out but well - the pisswater prince story is basically what if theon faked bran’s death on purpose. it is not dissimilar on a treason level from what ned did with jon. it’s directly tied to one of the worst days of jaime’s life. of course the pisswater prince is relevant to all of them, even if it’s just on a thematic level, and not on a plot level.