Karolina

Actually managing to do this on time this week, how wild. Enjoy the beginning of the smut I am working on now ^-^ it starts slow but I am looking forward to the climax so to speak.

Tucked in the glass corner of The Greenhouse was a well-placed booth. It offered great views of the city behind and the bar around it, while being hidden by cleverly placed foliage and decorations. Annalise usually commandeered this booth when she could, and tonight was no different. She was waiting for Virgil tonight and feeling a slight bit of worry for what she was going to ask him. It isn’t exactly… taboo to ask to learn the powers of the other clans… but some guard them more jealously than others.

Her fingers tapped against her crystal stem wine glass, eyes idly scanning the other patrons of the establishment. There was a slightly warmed snifter of blood waiting next to her on the table. She had found out a few years into their acquaintance what her Ventrue coteriemate's particular feeding restriction was, and it had shocked her in a way that she had yet to share with him. It was of course still a sore spot that Annalise was at one point slated to be the childe of Virgil, but someone had changed that in order to allow Zeke to embrace her, and the way they slotted together sometimes put more salt to the wound. Their feeding restrictions were another such matter. When Annalise had asked Virgil what his particular taste was, he had informed her that he was only able to feed off of the physically fit… to which Annalise had to hide her shock. She shared the same restriction, having found out the hard way that feeding off those outside of this demographic was painful and embarrassing after she had gotten rid of the blood and felt only hungrier afterwards. She kept that similarity to herself, lamenting occasionally what could have been.

The elevator doors’ subtle chime sounded, barely audible over the din of conversation thanks to Annalise’s awareness, and Virgil stepped out into the hall next to the host desk. Annalise licked her lips as she watched him speak lowly to the hostess who was standing there. His blonde hair was perfectly styled, green eyes piercing as they swept across the bar. He was wearing a three-piece suit, ebony black and lovingly tailored to fit his frame. The soft tap of his loafers sounded as he was led to her corner, and she locked eyes with him through the foliage, his pearly white teeth flashed in a small smile.

“Virgil,” Annalise offered in greeting, gesturing to the round booth and snifter in invitation, “thank you for coming to meet with me.”

Dividers by @diableriedoll

Turns out Virgil and Annalise have had the same feeding restriction this whole time and it was entirely unintentional on both mine and my husband's parts. Which does only make it more... tragic(weird?) that Annalise was embraced by Zeke instead of Virgil.

Does anyone want to get a sneak peek of the actual smut? 👀

As for tags! @crownedinmarigolds @kavalyera @porcelainseashore @mrsqadiral-asmai @mortifying-macaroni

Everyone in TTT is  mourning and talking about how even if all that they hope for does happen,  they have already lost or will eventually lose everything that made their life worth living.

Faramir lost his brother, The Ents lost the Entwives and are doomed to inevitably die out, Aragorn and Arwen fell apart after neither of them wanted to see the other die, Theoden lost his son, Rohan and Gondor are decaying, Frodo is slowly losing his own humanity and realizing that even if he survives the quest he will still be destroyed, Sam is watching Frodo slip away from him… to quote Elrond, even if the war is won everyone will “taste the bitterness of mortality.”  

The book is split into two sections covering roughly the same time period: the first part is the rest of the Company, and the second part is Frodo and Sam. And they cheat in the movie. They end it halfway through. (Plus, you know. Changing shit, but I’ll leave that for now.) 

In the book, we do not end with the Triumph of Helm’s Deep and an Uneasy Note. In the book, we end just after Pippin’s looked into the Palantír, and also just after a Nazgúl has swooped down on the encamped Rohirrim. Gandalf grabs up Pippin onto Shadowfax and takes off for Minas Tirith under that omen and we’re left with Merry kind of watching them leave in the dark in the terrified camp with no idea what’s going to happen next for anyone. 

And in the book we do not end with even the real version of Faramir giving Frodo and Sam good provisions and a pointer in the right direction (or, in the book, his INTENSE UNHAPPY UNEASE ABOUT THE WHOLE THING because FFS NOOOO … . but crap no okay I DON’T have a better idea but CIRITH UNGOL BAD OKAY? IT’S JUST BAD.) 

No, no: in the BOOK? In the book we end after Shelob. We end after Sam’s stabbed her, and she’s crawled off, and Sam thinks Frodo’s dead so he takes the Ring and then discovers that Frodo’s not dead when the orcs come to pick him up and then tries to run after them into the hallway but misjudges distance and so instead runs into the locked door to the Tower and knocks himself out. 

And that’s where The Two Towers ends. 

Commission: VTM Nosferatus be Prowling

Some vampire commission I did. Rather pleased how it turned out.

some people don’t deserve fanfics, much less for free.

also even if authors didn’t tag any specific warnings but they used the “creator chose not to use archive warnings” tag, then that is your warning.

Don’t get me wrong, what Eowyn did was badass. No argument.

But uh… Lemme point a thing to you.

So Eomer gets banished, right? Takes two thousand of his men, and rides through the Westmarch, killing Uruks as he goes.

Gandalf rides up, and basically says, “Hey, I fixed your uncle, but the Uruk-hai are marching to attack him at Helms Deep; he needs you, or he’s gonna die.”

So Eomer rides two days, nonstop, and then him and his men dive right into a battle against 10,000 men. And they win.

They march back home, spend a day celebrating. Gandalf rides off, and Eomer thinks, “Hey, maybe I can relax for a bit now.”

Nope. Two days later, the beacons are lit. Eomer is sent to rally the men of the countryside, then meet Theoden. They’re there approximately two days, in which time, Eomer -as Marshal of the Mark, the king’s nephew, and now heir -presumably helps with planning, logistics, and inspection. He rides three days, breakneck speed, into the battle of Pelennor Fields. They crush the orcs…

BUT THEN… the mumakil (elephant) riders show up. So without taking more than a few deep breaths, he rallies his men to turn and keep fighting.

In the books, during that battle, he finds Theoden, and basically says, “Protect his body, we’re gonna get him off the field. This is important.” Then he finds his sister, and basically Hulk rages out, and runs off alone, slaughtering as he goes until he runs into Aragorn, and they then have a Bro It Up slaughter-fest.

Finds out his sister is still alive after the battle, and stays by her side until Aragorn calls him to a meeting. It’s at that meeting when the suggestion of taking their few remaining men, and marching on the Black Gate is suggested.

And Eomer… This dude probably hasn’t slept in at least two days, slept in a horse for almost a week before that, who had maybe two or three days of non-fighting/non-planning. Who fought a massive battle he was supposed to lose two days ago, and another massive battle against a force that out-numbered him a week before that, with only two days of down time in-between…

That dude right there says, “Fuck it. Let’s do it. I’m down.”

Like this dude had the fortnight from Hell, and he still marched into every battle, fought like an absolute beast, survived, and then was down to march into his third unwinnable battle in less than two week’s time.

And what makes this even more impressive? His men loved him enough to go, “Hell yeah dude. Let’s do it.” All three times.

Éomer comes across Théoden’s bodies and tells what the book frames as his “knights”* off the field while extemporising a mourning poem[1] (while also crying, despite starting it with “mourn not overmuch”). 

Shortly thereafter he does indeed find what he thinks is Éowyn’s dead body and does in fact lose his shit for a while in a “you wouldn’t like me when I’m nihilistically enraged and believe everything is hopeless” and kills a lot of the enemy but he also manages to get himself WAY over his head and ends up surrounded on a small hill with more or less his werod/knights backing him up and the rest of his people kinda scattered, and shakes off some of his Hulkout and realizes huh, MAYBE that wasn’t wise. 

But. BUT. 

Then we have this: 

[Éomer] let blow the horns to rally all men to his banner that could come thither; for he thought to make a great shield-wall at the last, and stand, and fight there on foot till all fell, and do deeds of song on the fields of Pelennor, though no man should be left in the West to remember the last King of the Mark. So he rode to a green hillock and there set his banner, and the White Horse ran rippling in the wind.

Out of doubt, out of dark to the day’s rising I came singing in the sun, sword unsheathing. To hope’s end I rode and to heart’s breaking: Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!

These staves he spoke, yet he laughed as he said them. For once more lust of battle was on him; and he was still unscathed, and he was young, and he was king: the lord of a fell people. And lo! even as he laughed at despair he looked out again on the black ships, and he lifted up his sword to defy them.

In other words when he realized he was totally fucked (and let me be clear: he was at that point totally fucked) Éomer had the same reaction that his sister did (although she had a much more pervasive, soul-eating and all-encompassing pathological sense of “everything is fucked and nothing has any point”) which was “fine fuck it I’m dying fighting to the last breath without fear in a way that would make my ancestors proud even if nobody ever knows about it!” 

And then! 

Because we are not done! 

He looks at what he knows at that point is his absolute doom (the black ships) and basically shouts COME ON IF YOU THINK YOU’RE HARD ENOUGH! at what he knows is the army that’s gonna smash him and the last of his army to red ruin. In verse. 

WHEREUPON. 

Because Manwë is a marshmallow. 

The wind catches the banner on the lead ship. Which is … not the Corsairs of Umbar’s banner. But is, in fact. 

Aragorn Elessar’s banner. Made by Arwen Undómiel, descendant of both Lúthien Meliansdaughter and of the House of Finwë, who made it embroidered with gold wire and mithril and complete with actual gemstones just for extra ability to catch attention to say, in fact, “HEY LOOK MY BOY’S HERE TO FUCK YOU UP”. 

Whereupon Éomer Éomundson whoops, throws his sword in the air AND CATCHES IT, while laughing why in the name of GODS did you not stick to the damn book PJ and cuts his way across the space between him and the landing! So he can go HOLY SHIT DUDE I DIDN’T THINK YOU’D MAKE IT. 

After which not only did he and Aragorn sort of slaughter their way across the field but also, “such was their skill at arms” that neither of them even got a minor wound.

He’s also man enough to admit, at the subsequent meeting, that all this shit is WAY over his head but Aragorn is definitely his bro and he and Gandalf are both very smart and he, Éomer, is pretty good at fighting things and they’re suggesting fighting things so yeah let’s go with that. 

And to be totally fair to him he also took Gandalf going “ … .kid, YOU got to ride around doing shit while everything went to hell, whereas your sister got stuck at home, RIGHT THERE WITH WORMTONGUE, looking after your uncle, with nothing to take any of it out on - yeah, no, Aragorn was not what fucked your sister up.” at him later with pretty good grace for such a horrible revelation. 

*as Tolkien certainly knew but which would have been hella confusing to put in there, “knight” was essentially a later-Old-English remix of the much older werod and hearthwerod, so think less “guys in shining armour” and more “the king’s personal warband” - in sending Théoden’s men to take his body off the field Éomer is both acknowledging their intense personal fealty to his uncle AND HOWEVER at least temporarily losing at least a handful of his baddest ass fighters. 

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