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NERVOUS D. 2021

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Hello! Yes, I am planning to finish chapter four this weekend hopefully. I’ve unfortunately been busy because of my registration for summer courses and it’s been a pain to find the courses I need. I’m halfway through chapter four, but I’m really excited to publish it soon!

I’ve been struggling in making sure our canon characters aren’t occ! Especially for Aerion and Lyonel, but mostly Aerion if I’m being honest! He’s not someone that’s a ‘ good guy ‘ or that has proper manners. He’s a brat and an asshole that takes advantage of being a prince. So I’m finding it difficult to write him as a romantic even though he isn’t? Honestly the relationship between him and nimue will be pretty dark.

As an apology here’s a little bit of chapter four as a teaser!

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She found a strip of roasted meat next and tore into it with an enthusiasm that made the man sitting across from them pause mid sentence and stare. She did not notice. She pulled it apart between her fingers first, inspecting it the way she inspected everything new, and then ate it in three decisive bites and made a sound low in her throat — not the purr, something more intimate than that, the sound of a woman that had reached a certain ‘ peak ‘ of pleasure and was just riding it out.

The man sitting across from her blinked, slowly. His fork was still poised above his own plate, forgotten.

A whistle cut through the noise from somewhere to Dunk's left, sharp and appreciative. Two men laughed the kind of laugh that had an elbow in it and a knowing look attached. Leering eyes found Nimue from three different directions and stayed there with the unhurried appreciation of men who had been drinking since midafternoon and had misplaced their manners somewhere around the second cup.

Dunk felt the heat crawl up from his collar with slow and merciless certainty, flooding his throat, his jaw, his cheeks, the full burning length of his ears, until he was quite certain he was red enough to be seen from the road.

He stared at his plate.

Nimue offered him another piece of meat without looking up.

Dunk took it.

He did not know why he took it. He had food on his own plate, good food, more food than he had seen in one sitting in recent memory, and he did not need her to feed him and he was aware of every eye in the tent that had opinions about the fact that she was doing it anyway.

He took it because she was holding it up to his mouth with that patient unhurried certainty and his ability to refuse her things had always been limited and had apparently not improved since the lake.

And there was - something. Underneath the embarrassment and the burning ears and the leering looks from men who had no business looking - something warm that had nothing to do with the fire or the press of bodies in the tent. Something that sat in his chest quiet and stubborn and refused to be mortified away.

A pretty woman was feeding him from her hand in front of half of Ashford and looking up at him like he was the only thing in the tent worth looking at — not the food, not the music, not the lords and their fine clothes and their polished manners. Him. Big stupid Dunk with his mended gambeson and his scarred hands and his ears burning red enough to light the road home.

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Thank you so much! I’m really glad that a lot of people are liking this series. I’m honestly figuring it out as I’m writing it. The idea came to me when I was scrolling through the tags of ‘ A knight of the seven kingdoms ‘ I’m not really sure what it was but I beleive it as about the lore of the world of ice and fire. For example, the wildings, the face less men, etc. It gave me an idea of having a cannibalistic sea nymph that would have most of the male characters falling in love with our Nimue!

Originally, I’ve thought about having ‘ Nimue ‘ as a creature that hailed from Valyria created by blood magic. She was suppose to be a chimera or perhaps a dragon shifting hybrid.

I also wanted to apologize for not updating, I’ve been taking a while in publishing the next chapter due to not being able to make the decision of having Lyonel Baratheon as a character that would also be interested in Nimue. So please let me know if anyone would like that! I won’t lie, I’m leaning towards having him being interested in her, I’ve written down the ‘ synopsis’ for chapter four.

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‘ Ser Duncan the Tall takes Nimue to sup at the tent of Lyonel Baratheon, a lord generous with his wine, and apparently his pearl collection. Nimue endures the tent and the unmated males and the eel who smiles too easily. What follows is a disaster of the particular kind that only the trio could stumble into — a puppeteer with broken fingers, a prince with no patience. And in the chaos a pearl changes hands, and a secret comes loose ‘

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BORN OF CRULER BLOOD

#SYNOPSIS. Rhaenyra Targaryen dies as a dragonlord would in the old days of the freehold in Valyria. She awakes somewhere she does not belong, in a reign that ended a century before her birth. Aenys, the false dragon sits the Iron throne and somewhere in these halls walks his brother, Maegor the Cruel.

#CHARACTER(S). Rhaenyra Targaryen x Maegor Targaryen

#WARNING(S). Implications of Targcest,, it’s Maegor, (this is just a wip!)

Death was fire, and then it was teeth, and then it was nothing.

She would not think too long on the teeth. On what it meant to be eaten alive— ripped apart, reduced to small parts of flesh in a dragons belly.

Her last living son was screaming— or maybe she was.

The distinction stopped mattering very quickly.

The flames had come first, stripping away everything that was soft fleshed, everything that was Viserys and Aemmas daughter before the mangled body of Sunfyre jaws closed and the world became something she could had no words to describe.

What she remembered, in those final guttering seconds of consciousness, was not the pain — though the pain was total, the kind that silences a tongues wagging behind teeth.

She thought of her sons. Jacaerys first, always Jacaerys, her firstborn and her best hope, gone over the Gullet. Lucerys next, her sweet boy, who had not deserved Vhagar's jaws any more than she deserved Sunfyres. Then Joffrey— her darling boy —her stupid foolish boy who had dared to mount her darling Syrax.

Like mother, like son— Stupid and foolish in the end

Aegon, her firstborn with Daemon, who was screaming somewhere behind her now, and she hoped he did not see, hoped he would be given mercy. Thought a small and wretched part of herself wished he would die with her. They would be reunited soon enough— with his little brother Viserys, who had never been able to part away from him anyway.

Oh— and Visenya, her little princess, dead far too soon, who never managed her first breath.

Each and every single of them born and feed to this war, one by one, like wood to a fire that could never be content.

The Dragonpit's pale grey light caught Sunfyre's scales then, gold bleeding into gold, and something in her that had never stopped being Viserys's daughter looked upon the dragon unmaking her and thought — absurdly, with her last guttering breath — beautiful.

Beautiful, she thought— and then she thought nothing kind ever again.

What a fool she had been. What a perfect obedient fool, raised on her fathers softness like a child raised on honeyed milk, fed believes about unity and love and the graduate of the realm that had repaid every Targaryen kindness with a knife. She had sacrificed her hatchlings— her dragons— sons, the future of her house and Westeros had called them bastards— incentious babes born from a mad womb.

Unnatural— monstrous by nature and then called her Maegor with tits for daring to want what was rightfully hers.

Maegor with tits. As thought that were an insult.

She thought— if only she had been born of cruler blood— Maegors blood. Not Rhaenys blood— Aenys blood. Aenys the false dragon, the weak king who allowed the faith Militant to rise and wept and apologized as if tears could fix it. Not Jaehaerys either, the great Conciliator, who had bent the knee to the grey rats and the faith.

Not Alysanna, the Good Queen, who was more andal with Valyrian coloring. Who had prayed for peace and gotten graves of all thirteen children.

Not her own father— her sweet, stupid father. Viserys the Kind— Viserys the Fool, Viserys the Kinslayer, was a more fitting name. Who had filled his daughter head with dreams of a united realm, and lords who would willingly bow to a Queen. Who had cut open his own own cousin-wife for a babe that could not make it part a fortnight.

And her spineless mother— Queen Aemma, who had spent most of her life on her back birthing dead children after dead children.

If the maestors had not been so trusted. If the faith had not been so accommodated with their Father above and their filthy andal customs.

Mayhaps Baelon the Brave would have lived— mayhaps Aemon would have drawn breath long enough to take the throne and this whole wretched story would have been different.

But no— instead there was her. Rhaenyra Targaryen the Cruel— Maegor with tits. Daughter of Viserys, granddaughter of Jaehaerys, blood of Aenys— blood of Rhaenys the first dragonlord who was shot down by dorne, by the descendants of water mages.

‘They called me Maegor with tits’, she thought as the dark finally closed in, ‘and they meant it as an insult’.

They had no idea it was the finest name they could have ever given her.

And then there was nothing.

Until, there was wind.

That was the first thing — the wrongness of her own position, spine pressed against scales, arms thrown wide, hair whipping across her face in a roar of cold air that stole every thought before it formed. The sky above her was vast and pale and she was moving, falling, the ground somewhere below her rushing up at a speed her body understood before her mind did.

Syrax

She was on Syrax's back. They were plummeting — dragon and rider both, tumbling through open air, the earth below them enormous and approaching fast, and Rhaenyra had just enough breath to scream her dragon's name before the wind took it, shredded it, scattered it across a sky that did not care.

Pull up, she thought, or screamed, or prayed — the distinction had ceased to matter. Pull up pull up pull up—

Syrax's wings caught.

Not fully. Not enough. But enough to slow the fall, enough to turn the plummet into something survivable, enough that when they hit the ground it was not death but something adjacent to it — a crash that knocked every thought from Rhaenyra's skull and left her flat on her back in the dirt, staring up at a sky she did not recognize.

She lay very still.

Ribs — present, possibly cracked. Hands — bleeding, she could feel that, the warm wet of it seeping into the dirt beneath her palms. Head — ringing, a high thin sound like a bell struck too hard. She was alive. She was furious about how much everything hurt and furious was good, furious meant alive, and alive meant —

She turned her head.

Syrax lay not ten feet from her, one great wing crumpled at an angle that made something in Rhaenyra's chest seize and pull. The dragon was breathing — she could see it, the slow heave of golden flanks — but her eyes were closed and she was still and silence from a dragon was the worst sound in the world.

Syrax

She tried to move. Her body disagreed. She made it move anyway.

Her darling girl. Her only sister, the one who had shared her cradle before she was old enough to walk, the one constant in a life that had taken everything else from her one by one. The only creature in all of Westeros that had never wanted anything from her — not her throne, not her womb, not her compliance. The only one who had ever simply known her, the way dragons knew their riders, down to the marrow, down to the blood

She groaned. The sound that came out of her was undignified and raw and she did not care — she had left dignity somewhere above the clouds. She rolled onto her stomach first, pressed her forehead against the cold earth for a moment that was longer than she intended, and then she crawled. Hands and knees through the dirt, leaves catching in her hair, mud smearing up her arms, every movement pulling at something in her chest that protested loudly and was ignored.

She could feel the grime of it — the cold wet earth soaking through the knees of her gown, the leaves plastered against her cheek, dirt crusted into the cuts on her palms. ‘A queen’,she thought, with a laugh that came out more like a wheeze.

What a queen she made.

She reached Syrax's side and collapsed against her, one hand pressing flat against the golden scales, and felt the heat of her — the slow rhythmic breath

‘Good’, she thought. ‘Stay. Stay with me’

She heard the horses before she saw them. The thunder of hooves against hard ground, fast and purposeful, the kind of riding that was not curiosity but intention. Someone had seen them fall. Of course they had — a dragon dropping from the sky was not something that went unnoticed.

Then the sun had vanished.

A large shadow moved across the ground like a stormfront, swallowing the pale light whole, and the cold that came with it was brutal. Rhaenyra felt it before she understood it — a tremor in the earth beneath her knees, a vibration that climbed up through her hands and into her chest and settled in her back teeth like the precursor to a thunderclap.

She looked up.

The roar hit her like a physical wound

It was not the roar of a dragon she knew. She knew dragon roars — had grown up beside them, had felt Syrax's call reverberate through her ribs since she was a little girl.

‘Vhagar’, was her first thought, instinctive and cold with dread.

But Vhagar was green— and dead. Daemon had made sure of it.

The shadow that blotted out the sun above her was cast by something black. Black as a sunless sea, black as the space between stars, wings so vast they swallowed the horizon on both sides as it banked low overhead, and the wind of its passing flattened the grass and tore at her ruined hair and pressed her half down against Syrax's flank.

One enormous eye caught the light as it wheeled — black scales, red eye, and a size that made Syrax look like a small hound.

‘Balerion’, she thought. And the word moved through her like ice water.

Balerion the Black Dread

The horses pulled up hard, small clouds of disturbed earth rising at their hooves, and not one of them obeyed willingly. They fought their riders — tossing their heads, skidding sideways, muscles bunching beneath their flanks as every instinct they possessed screamed against moving closer. The riders hauled at their reins with both hands, cursing low, keeping their distance. And who could blame the animals.

There was a dragon here. Wounded and grounded she may be, but a dragon still, and Syrax's golden eye was tracking every one of them with the slow patience of a predator.

One man, however did not stop.

He pushed through the line of spooked horses without slowing, his own mount steady and calm where every other animal was not. He rode until he was close enough that she could no longer pretend she did not know exactly who she was looking at.

Maegor

Maegor the Cruel stood before her.

As a girl she had seen him in the paintings that hung on the walls of Dragonstone. A kinslayer he may be — had killed his own nephews without flinching — but a Targaryen he would always be.

Even in death.

In the paintings he had always been rendered large — broad shouldered and imposing, with a stern face, he was a warrior. But painters were flatterers by trade and she had always assumed they had given him more than the gods had — had added inches to his shoulders and steel to his jaw because that was what you did for kings who frightened you.

They had not flattered him.

And yet it was not the size of him that stole the breath from her lungs, It was the simple and impossible fact of him standing here. Breathing. Alive.

Maegor Targaryen had been dead for over a century.

He was history. He was portrait and parchment and cautionary tale.

And yet— he’s breathing. Alive.

And gods— he was looking at her.

She was still on her knees, she realized. Mud soaked through her gown, Syrax's warmth at her back, blood drying in the creases of her palms. On her knees before Maegor the Cruel on the shores

“ who are you, girl? “

She got to her feet — she was a queen, and queens did not belong on their knees.

Slowly. Every inch of her body lodging its protest, her ribs pulling tight with each breath, her legs threatening to betray her before she had even straightened fully. The ground seemed uncertain beneath her, or perhaps that was her own skull still ringing from the fall.

But she got there. She got to her feet and she stayed there and she did not sway.

‘Have some pride’, she told herself. ‘Stand tall and face him’

She had faced the birthing bed six times. She had watched her children die and drop like flies. Had sat on council with men who wished her dead and still she held strong.

But she was afraid.

She had died— she was sure of it. Burned alive and then eaten.

She had died and she had woken and she was standing on the shores of Dragonstone which was her home and not her home and in front of her stood a man who had been dead for a century.

‘How’,she thought. ‘How could she be here. How was any of this—‘

“ I will not repeat myself, woman “

"Rhaenyra," she said, At least that much was true.

“ Rhaenyra of House Belaerys “

"Belaerys," he repeated. Tasting the lie in his mouth.

"One of the great dragonlord houses of the Freehold," she said evenly, “ As you well know”

SOMETHING WICKED IN THE WATER

CHAPTER 3 | m.list

#SYNOPSIS. Ser Duncan the Tall had only meant to enter the tourney at Ashford Meadow, but the registration clerks demanded proof of his knighthood before he could compete. While lingering near the tents, he meets tanselle whose cheerful demeanor and skillful performance drew him in. Unfortunately, Nimue doesn't share his admiration.

#CHARACTER(S). Ser Duncan the Tall, Aegon Targaryen

#WARNING(S). Dark romance, gore description

The man at the registration had looked at him the way men looked at things they found beneath their consideration — a brief flat assessment, top to bottom, taking in the worn boots and the mended gambeson and the absence of any lord's seal or witnessed document, and had set down his quill and asked Dunk, with the patience of someone who had already decided the answer, who exactly had knighted him and whether said knight was present to verify it.

Dunk had stood there for a moment with nothing to say to that because there was nothing to say to that. Ser Arlan was dead and in the ground and the only other person who had witnessed anything was Egg, who was a boy of ten and a squire and hardly a reliable voucher for a knight's credentials, so he had said thank you in the flat toneless way he said things when he was swallowing something larger, and the man had written something down that Dunk could not read and told him to come back tomorrow, and Dunk had come back out into the afternoon light with his jaw tight and his pride in tatters.

Lost in his own thoughts he nearly collided with a horse — a fine one, pale grey and tall, the kind of animal that cost more than a hedge knight would see in a lifetime, held by a stablehand who scrambled out of the way as Dunk lurched sideways and caught himself.

He straightened up and opened his mouth to apologize and then saw the man holding the reins on the other end and closed it again.

The high born looked at him the way men of his station looked at large inconvenient things that had wandered into their path — a brief flat assessment, not unfriendly exactly, simply absent of any acknowledgment that Dunk was a person rather than an obstacle. He held out the reins without looking at him fully.

"You there," he said, “ Take it to the stables”

“Ser,” Dunk said, trying to keep his voice steady, “I’m not a stableboy, my lord”

The young lord’s answer came quick as a whip crack. “Not clever enough?”

He looked at Dunk then — truly looked — his pale eyes traveling slowly from Dunk’s worn boots to the mended seams of his gambeson, lingering just long enough to make the meaning plain.

Heat flooded Dunk’s face

He had known, of course. He had always known. A hedge knight’s kit was rarely fine, and his was worse than most. No bright silk, no polished silver clasps, no cloak trimmed in fur. Just plain cloth and leather patched where it had worn thin on the road.

Before him stood the opposite of that — silver hair bright in the sun, garments cut and fitted so well they might have come straight from a lord’s own tailor.

The noble ser snorted faintly.

“Well then,” he said lazily, swinging down from the saddle in one smooth motion, “if you cannot manage horses, fetch me wine and a pretty wench “

Dunk swallowed the knot rising in his throat

“My lord, pardon me,” he said, forcing the words out carefully, “I’m no serving man either. I have the honor to be a knight”

The silver-haired lord paused

His gaze slid over Dunk once more, slower this time, as though inspecting something mildly offensive that had been left in his path.

“Oh?” he said at last. The disdain in his smile was thin and sharp as a blade, “Well, Knighthood has fallen on sad days”

And with that, he turned and walked off without another glance, leaving Dunk standing where he was, feeling larger than most men and yet somehow very small all the same.

Dunk stood where he was for a moment longer than he should have, the sting of the exchange still sitting unpleasantly in his chest.

He turned back toward the registration office where he had left Egg and Nimue and found them more or less where he had left them, which was to say Egg was exactly where he had been told to stay and Nimue was standing three feet to his left studying a banner with a sigil on it that had apparently captured her complete attention, her head tilted, the teardrop pearl swaying gently at her brow.

The sound of a small wooden rattle drifted through the crowded market lane, joined by the soft pluck of strings that rose above the chatter of the tourney grounds. Dunk had seen plenty of crowds and tents before, but he had never had the chance to watch a puppet show up close.

Peering through the gap in the canvas he could see a tiny painted figure dancing across the stage, twirling on invisible wires as the puppeteer's deft fingers made it leap and bow in perfect rhythm.

He glanced down at Nimue

She was watching him instead of the puppets

He cleared his throat and looked back at the stage

He glanced down at Nimue again— still watching him

He pointed at the stage. One large finger, very deliberate, “ That," he said, “ Look at that”

She looked at his finger then back at his face.

"She's looking at your finger," Egg said

"I can see that”

"You pointed like she was a dog”

"I was showing her—"

"You showed her your finger, Ser”

"I was showing her the puppet—"

"By pointing," Egg said, “Like a dog”

Dunk lowered his hand. He looked at the stage. He looked at Nimue. Nimue looked back at him with those wide pretty eyes.

"Just—" His hand came up slowly, big and careful, and he cupped her cheek in his palm and turned her face toward the stage the way you turned something fragile and worth being careful with, “ There," he said, a little gruffly. "The puppet. See it?"

She looked at the stage for exactly one moment.

Then she turned her face back into his palm, nuzzling into the rough calloused skin with a purr rumbling low and steady in her chest. She looked up at him with those eyes and her cheeks had gone the faintest pink and her lips had curved into something so open and unguarded it barely resembled the small sharp smile he had grown used to.

She was just — happy. Simply and completely happy, looking up at him like he was the only thing worth looking at in a field full of color and noise and spectacle.

The flush crawled up the back of his neck before he could stop it.

He was not a man women smiled at like that. He was too large and too rough and too uncertain in polite company and he had made his peace with that a long time ago. And yet here she was. Looking at him like that. Like he was something.

A sharp tug at her coat interrupted them.

Nimue looked down.

Egg had the fabric bunched in both fists, his face tipped up toward hers, and he was pointing at the tent with one hand and then looking back at her with the particular expression of a child who wanted something and had decided she was the one to give it to him. He made a sound — impatient and wanting and very young — and pointed again.

She looked at what he was pointing at.

Something settled in her face that had not been there before.

His sire had done the same thing not moments ago — that same large deliberate finger aimed at the tent, that same wanting in his eyes. And now here was his guppy, small fists bunched in her coat, pointing at the very same thing with the very same expression on his small face.

She took his hand.

Egg pressed forward through the small gathered crowd with the focused determination of someone who had decided on the best vantage point and intended to have it, towing Nimue behind him by the hand. She followed without resistance, stepping around land-dwellers.

His eyes moved across the little stage, tracking the painted figures as they danced and dipped on their strings, his lips slightly parted.

Nimue stood beside him and watched.

Not the puppets

She watched Egg's face

The wonder on it. The way his chin had tipped up and his eyes had gone wide and his small hand had tightened slightly in hers without him noticing he'd done it. She looked at him the way she had looked at Dunk in the lake — with that still, certain, unhurried attention of a creature that had found something worth keeping and was quietly deciding never to let it go.

Her guppy

The puppeteer took her bow to a scatter of applause, the little painted figures stilling on their strings, and the crowd began to shift and disperse the way crowds did when the thing they had gathered for was finished.

Egg clapped with the focused enthusiasm of someone who had genuinely enjoyed himself and was not embarrassed about it.

Nimue released his hand and looked back through the crowd for Dunk.

He was already there. He had found them sometime during the second act, large and unmistakable at the back of the small crowd

He cleared his throat

The puppeteer was packing away her figures with quick practiced hands when Dunk stepped forward. "Hello there." He tossed a coin toward her — quick and easy — and she caught it without looking up, fingers closing around it neat as a snap, and when she did look up there was a smile already spreading on her face, warm and unguarded.

"That was great," Egg said, materializing at Dunk's elbow, "How did you do the fire tricks?"

The puppeteer — young, dark haired, paint stained fingers — reached into her kit without ceremony and threw a quick pinch of powder at the nearest burning candle. The flame flared sudden and bright and Egg flinched back half a step before he could stop himself. She dusted her hands off on her skirts, satisfied.

Egg recovered his dignity immediately, “ Is it pollen?"

"Collected on the way," The puppeteer replied

Egg hummed, filing it away in whatever part of his mind stored useful information. His eyes had already moved to the puppets being carefully folded and packed away, large and intricate and painted in vivid colors. "I've never seen such giant puppets," he said, “ Did you make them yourself?"

Nimue cared little for their conversation; instead, she remained quietly watching Duncan.

The way he stood — too straight, too careful. His weight shifting almost imperceptibly from one foot to the other. The hand that came up to rub the back of his neck and then thought better of it and dropped back to his side and then came up again anyway.

She could smell it on him.

Salt and warmth and the particular sharp edge that came with nervousness, rolling off him in waves she could feel from where she stood.

She could feel the heat radiating off him too, that specific warmth that had nothing to do with the afternoon sun and everything to do with the woman standing in front of him.

Her eyes flicked from the dancing objects to the female land-dweller. To the smile. To the way it kept finding Duncan’s face, smiling up at him.

Nimue’s expression fell flat. Her lips curled upward, revealing the jagged points of her teeth, and her head tilted slightly to the side, nose upturned, as though measuring the threat before her.

Her gaze hardened, cold and unblinking. The faint flare of her fins along her ears twitched, rigid with tension, and the faint shimmer along her skin seemed to pulse like a warning.

Foolish land-dwelling female — and a dull one at that.

No wonder she carried no scent of a male on her. For who would take such a plain female? She had no jewelry worth speaking of — no pearls, no luminous things, nothing that caught the blotted light the way it ought to be caught. Only small trinkets hanging from her fins and wrapped through her dark hair like an afterthought.

So instead of finding her own she set her eyes on others— she had set her eyes on a male that was already taken for.

Her mate. Who had taken her pearl and placed it carefully on his person.

How could she let such a male slip from her webbed palms?

Broad, warm and steady as a kelp bed, the kind of steady that did not shift with the current but held firm underneath everything, something you could wrap yourself around and trust to stay. A male who had sired a fine guppy— surely to grow strong and capable, to catch strong prey one day, to make any mother proud.

And no dull plain land dweller with trinkets in her hair and no pearl to her name was going to take either of them from her.

She imagined burying her teeth deep into the flesh of the female land-dweller, feeling in her mind the stringy meat give way beneath her bite. Muscles would tear and pull apart as she wrenched at it, the tough fibers stretching before finally snapping under the strength of her jaws.

In her thoughts she ripped the flesh free piece by piece, savoring the brutal satisfaction of the hunt.

Her kind was no stranger to such disputes— you fought for what was yours or you lost it. You ate or you were eaten.

Nimue watched her with the patient certainty of a creature who had no trouble waiting for a promising hunt.

The waters just needed to thin a little more

SOMETHING WICKED IN THE WATER

CAPTER 2 | m.list

#SYNOPSIS. Nimue joins Dunk and Egg on the road to Ashford. Dunk is honorable. He is decent. He is also a man, and there is only so much a man can be expected to withstand.

#CHARACTER(S). Ser Duncan the Tall, Aegon Targaryen

#WARNING(S). Dark romance

Dunk was not a man who questioned the will of the gods. Scarce as their favor had always been for him — and it had always been scarce, for a boy born with nothing in Flea Bottom had little reason to believe the Seven spared him much thought — he had learned to accept the shape of his life without complaint.

He was a simple man. Honor was the only cloth he had ever owned and he had worn it thin in places but he had worn it nonetheless. So he could not explain, by any logic available to him, how he had arrived at this particular stretch of road to Ashford with a squire he hadn't asked for and a maiden he understood even less, walking beside him on feet that had been a fish tail.

He could not explain it. He had stopped trying.

What he could not stop, no matter how he tried, was looking at her. His eyes had developed a treacherous habit of finding her face every few seconds regardless of what else he pointed them at — the road, the treeline, the back of Egg's head, it didn't matter, they always drifted back.

She was pretty when she was still and she was pretty when she moved and she was devastating when she smiled, which she did often and without warning, and every time she did his cheeks went hot and his jaw went stupid.

Gods, but she was something. Something fierce too, he reminded himself, wincing as he shifted his sword arm and felt the long rake of claw marks pull tight beneath his sleeve — still fresh, still deep, the kind of marks that would scar. He had not entirely ruled out that she had been trying to eat him. He had also not entirely ruled out that he would have let her.

If he hadn't known better he would say she was trying to drown him with the surprising strength in her soft hands. The water surging and swallowing him, closing over his head cold and dark and complete, his feet leaving the lake bed entirely before he had understood what was happening — and then she had pulled him back up just as easily, one hand fisted in his hair, and he had broken the surface gasping while she watched him with those big eyes.

But surely such a wonderful creature wouldn’t dare to cause harm?

He had stood there, gripping the pearl tight in his palm, the claw marks on his forearm burning at the touch of the cold water, and he had thought — perhaps he had frightened her somehow. Perhaps she had panicked. He was large, he knew he was large, he had always known it, and a maiden alone in a lake with a man the size of Dunk had every right to panic.

He could not fault her for that. He did not fault her for that.

But surely. Surely a maiden that pretty, with pearls in her hair and that fine gossamer veil floating around her and a teardrop pearl sitting so delicately at the center of her forehead — surely such a maiden was not the sort to — he had rolled his sleeve down carefully over the marks. She had pressed her lips to his cheek not ten minutes later and he had felt the flush climb all the way to his ears and he had decided, quietly and finally, not to think about the lake anymore

Egg kept pestering him about it regardless. The boy had that look on his face, the particular one where he thought hard and strenuous about something

He had refused to say anything else, unsure how to voice it. He would sound mad if he did. He would not know how to explain such a pretty creature — not to an innkeeper, not to another knight, not to anyone with the sense the gods gave them. ‘ I found her in a lake’ was not an explanation. ‘ She has—had? a fish tail and teeth like broken glass and she kissed me and now she won't stop and I don't know what any of it means ‘ was considerably worse. He kept it behind his teeth where it belonged and watched the road and said nothing.

He had given her his spare shoes and his shirt and his cloak and his spare pants and gods — he had not been prepared for any of it. His shirt on her small frame, the hem falling past her thighs, the sleeves swallowing her hands entirely, and the pants cinched at her waist with a length of rope because there was nothing else for it, bunching at the ankles, and she had looked — he kept his eyes on the road. It was not proper to think about. She deserved better than his old worn things, that much was plain.

She should have had fine things. Silk and samite and embroidered cloth the way noble women wore, the kind of finery that came with wealth he would never have, fabric that caught the light the way she caught the light. Something worthy of the pearls in her hair and the veil and that delicate teardrop at her forehead. The nearest inn, he decided.

Whatever copper he had left. He would find her a dress at the nearest inn they came to if it cleaned him out entirely, because his clothes made him feel the full weight of what he was — a hedge knight with a bedroll and a horse he shared with his squire and not a copper to his name worth mentioning — and she deserved better than that. She deserved better than him, if he was being honest, which he tried to be.

She tugged suddenly on his forearm.

He stopped walking. Looked down at her. She held his forearm in both hands and pulled, patient and insistent, until he understood and crouched down to her level

She pressed her lips to his cheek.

Warm and soft and unhurried, held a breath longer than usual, her small hands still curved around his forearm over the marks she had left there, and when she pulled back she was smiling that small curved smile directly into his face from two inches away.

And then she did not stop.

His other cheek. His jaw. The corner of his eye, which startled him enough that he made a sound he would never admit to making. His cheek again.

She was very thorough about it, cupping his face in both small hands to turn him where she wanted him, and Dunk stood bent at the waist with his hands braced on his knees because she had pulled him down to her height and he was too large to crouch comfortably and too bewildered to straighten up, folded nearly in half on the side of the road while she worked through whatever this was with the focused efficiency of someone completing a task.

His ears were on fire. Everything was on fire. He was a very large man bent double on a road to Ashford being kissed repeatedly on the face by someone that had a fish tail— and he had absolutely nothing to say about any of it.

Then she kissed his mouth.

Brief and soft and simple, the same as everything else she did, like it required no more thought than any of the rest of it, and pulled back with that smile still in place.

Dunk straightened up slowly.

His full height. All of it. He needed it.

"That — I—" He stopped. Took a breath. Tried again with the measured deliberateness of a man rebuilding something that had fallen over. "My lady. Such displays of affection are — they are things reserved for husbands and wives. For couples who have — who are — it is not proper between two people who are not—"

She was looking up at him. Directly at him, big pretty eyes and very close, and he felt the thought he had been constructing simply come apart somewhere in the middle of his chest. The flush was climbing again. He could feel it. "It is not — that is to say — a man and a woman ought not to—" She tilted her head. The teardrop pearl swayed gently. He looked at her face and forgot what proper meant and what it was for and why he had ever thought it applied here.

“ Perhaps," he said, after a moment, in a voice that had given up entirely on authority. "Perhaps not in public”

She smiled

He looked at the road

His ears were red

She patted his chest with one small hand, the way you patted something large and harmless, and then her hands were moving, sliding from his chest to his arms, down to his forearms and back up and she wrapped both hands around his bicep and squeezed with that same slow deliberate pressure and tilted her head like she was taking measurements and Dunk stood there with his mouth open mid-sentence and forgot entirely what the sentence had been.

Her fingers traced the ridges of his chest, pressing into muscle hardened by years of swordplay and labor. The contrast was sharp—her hands, cool as river stones against his sun-warmed skin, mapping him with unhurried curiosity.

Dunk swallowed hard, his breath hitching when she dug her thumbs into the thick cord of his forearm, kneading like she was testing dough. A soft, pleased sound hummed in her throat, something between a sigh and a purr, and the noise sent an odd jolt through him, half embarrassment, half something else entirely.

She lingered over the swell of his bicep, squeezing with deliberate interest, and Dunk’s face burned hotter than forge coals.

She moved up to his bicep again. Both hands this time, thumbs pressing into the muscle with that same slow deliberate interest, and she made the sound again, lower this time, more satisfied, like she had found what she was looking for and approved of it.

Dunk's jaw had gone very tight. He was staring at a fixed point somewhere above her head with the focused desperation of a man trying to think about something, anything, the road, the tourney, Ser Arlan's advice on sword grip, anything at all, and failing comprehensively because she had both hands on his arm and was purring and he was only a man.

"You are—" he started, and had to stop because his voice had done the thing again. He cleared his throat. Tried once more, “ You are very—" She dug her thumbs in again and the word he had been reaching for dissolved entirely. He exhaled through his nose. Long and slow and controlled, the way he breathed before a fight, which felt appropriate because he was losing this one badly.

She looked up at him with those eyes and that small curved smile and her hands still wrapped around his arm.

She looked very pleased with herself

Ser Arlan had never prepared him for this. Then again, Ser Arlan had been only a man too — and perhaps Dunk ought not to have judged him so harshly all those years when he whored and spent good coin on pretty faces. He understood now. He owed the old man an apology he would never be able to give.

She patted his cheek once and walked away toward Egg.

Dunk stood where she left him longer than he should have and watched her go and said nothing about it.

She reached Egg and looked up at him from the ground with that patient tilted attention and Egg looked back down at her from the saddle and whatever passed between them in that moment was apparently sufficient because she reached up and took his small face in both hands and began.

Forehead. Both cheeks. The tip of his nose, which scrunched. The top of his bald head, which she pressed her lips to and held a moment. Egg did not pull away. Egg did not say anything sharp or clever or pointed. Egg, who had an opinion on everything and kept it ready, went very quiet and very still under her hands and his chin tipped up slightly the way a cat tipped its chin up when you found the right spot, asking for more without asking, and his eyes drifted shut and stayed there. She chirped softly.

She smoothed both palms over his head. She tucked his collar up and straightened his cloak and kissed his temple and his cheek again and Egg sat in the saddle and basked in it the way the earth basked in sun after a long winter, openly and without shame.

Dunk watched them and said nothing and looked back at the road.

Something sat in his chest that he didn’t have a name for either.

They walked like that for a time, the three of them, the horses plodding and the road flattening out ahead and the distant sound of Ashford carrying on the wind before they could see it — woodsmoke and voices and the faint bright noise of a crowd gathered for something. She had drifted back to his side by then, close enough that her shoulder brushed his arm when the road narrowed, and she did not move away from it. He did not move away from it either. He told himself it was because the road was narrow.

It was not a narrow road.

“We’ll need to know what to call you “ he said, to the road ahead, because saying it to her face still did things to his ability to form sentences, “Before we get there. Someone’ll ask”

She looked up at him. Patient and unhurried, the teardrop pearl swaying gently at her brow.

He opened his mouth

“Bess,” he said

The silence that followed was considerable

She looked at him. Egg looked at him. Even the horse seemed to have an opinion.

“Bess,” Egg repeated, in the tone of a man identifying a dead body.

“It’s a good name,” Dunk said, with the defensive conviction of someone who knew he was losing. “Common, Tis’ a pretty name ”

“She has pearls in her hair,” Egg said. “She has — “ he gestured broadly at all of her, “ — she looks like that, and you want to call her Bess”

“What’s wrong with Bess—”

“My horse is named Bess, Dunk.”

A pause

“ The horse is named Maester,” Dunk said

“I renamed her. In my head. Just now. So that you would understand the problem”

She was watching them with her head tilted, looking between them

"She deserves better than Bess," Egg said, with finality.

"There is nothing wrong with Bess," Dunk said, “ Bess suits her”

"Bess," Egg said flatly, "is the name of a dairy cow."

"It is not—"

"Or a washerwoman “

"There is nothing wrong with washerwomen—"

She was watching them both with her head tilted and her hands folded neatly in front of her, looking between them with the mild interest of someone watching two dogs argue over a bone. The teardrop pearl swayed. She chirped once, softly, to no one in particular.

"She agrees with me," Egg said

"She doesn't know what we're talking about”

"She knows your tone," Egg said, "Everyone knows your tone."

Dunk looked at the road ahead and said nothing because there was nothing to say that would help him.

Egg was quiet for a moment, the sharpness leaving his voice briefly, replaced by something younger. "My father used to read to me when I was small," he said. "Old stories mostly. He mentioned a name once — Nimue." He looked at her, at the pearls and the veil and the teardrop at her brow and the shimmer of her skin in the last of the light. "It means Lady of the Lake”

Dunk looked at her

She tilted her head at him and waited.

"Nimue" he said

She smiled, wide and slow and warm, and the points of her teeth caught the light.

"You're welcome," Egg said

"I didn't thank you “

"You will," Egg said, with the serenity of someone who had never once in his life been wrong about anything.

They heard Ashford before they saw it.

The noise came first — a distant roar that grew gradually into something distinguishable, voices and steel and the deep percussion of hooves on packed earth, the particular layered sound of a great many people gathered in one place with something happening. Then the banners, visible above the treeline, bright against the pale sky.

Then the gates, and the crowd funneling through them in both directions, people leaving with tired feet and full eyes, people entering still bright with anticipation, and Dunk slowed without meaning to at the sight of it.

Nimue stopped beside him. Her hand found his arm. He let her take it.

He found comfort in such a simple touch. It was not just him here. He had his squire at his back and Nimue at his side and that was — that was something. That was more than he had arrived at most places with. Ser Arlan had always ridden alone at the end, just the two of them, and before that it had been just Dunk.

He was not that boy anymore. He had people now, small as the number was, and they had followed him here and that meant something. It meant he had to be worth following. It meant he had to be what he said he was — honorable, decent, a true knight.

He looked down at Nimue's small hand on his arm. She was not looking at him. She was looking at the gates, at the press of people moving through them, at the banners and the noise and the whole enormous unfamiliar world of it, and there was no fear in her face. None at all.

Whether she had walked on land before, whether any of this was new to her or old to her, whether she had seen a hundred tourneys from the bottom of a hundred lakes — he didn't know.

He knew very little about her and had no way of asking and she had no way of telling him and somehow that did not trouble him the way it should have. She was here.

She had chosen to be here, with him and his squire egg.

Dunk squared his shoulders.

He was Ser Duncan the Tall. He had trained nine years under a good man who had believed in him when there was very little to believe in.

He had a sword that had belonged to that good man— honest about what he was, and a name he had carried down every road he had ever ridden without disgracing it. He was not a lord.

He was not a knight with a castle and a father who had jousted before him. He was a hedge knight with mud on his boots and a squire on a borrowed mare and something that had been a fish not two days ago holding his arm, and yet it meant everything to him.

He walked forward through the gates of Ashford and the noise rose up around him like a tide and he did not flinch from it.

The grounds were everything the road had promised and more. The smell hit him first — horses and sawdust and roasting meat and the particular sharp smell of oiled steel baking in the afternoon sun. Then the sound resolved itself into its parts — the distant ring of steel on steel from the practice yard, the calls of merchants hawking food and favor tokens and sharpening services, the low constant rumble of a thousand conversations happening at once.

Banners everywhere, more than he could count, snapping and turning in the warm breeze. Pavilions stretched in rows that seemed to go on further than made sense, silk and wool and fine linen in every color, each one bearing a sigil outside. Sigils he half knew and half didn't — stags and lions and towers and things he couldn't name.

Squires everywhere underfoot, running errands, carrying helms, polishing things that were already polished. Pages younger than Egg with the harried expressions of boys who had been told to hurry and had been hurrying since dawn. And the smell of the food — gods, the food — roasting meat somewhere close enough that his stomach made its feelings known immediately and without subtlety.

Nimue's hand tightened on his arm

He looked down at her

She was looking up at him with those big eyes, not at the grounds, not at the banners, just at him, and there was something in her face that he didn't have a word for but felt in his chest regardless. He looked at her for a moment that stretched slightly longer than he intended and then looked away because looking at her for too long still did things to his ability to think clearly and he needed to think clearly right now.

"Stay here," he told her, then to Egg, “ Both of you”

Egg looked at him with the expression of someone who had been asked to do something beneath their considerable capabilities. "Both of us," he repeated.

"Both of you”

"So you want me," Egg said, "to stand here. In the middle of Ashford. And watch her “

"Yes”

Egg looked at Nimue. Nimue had found a banner with an interesting sigil and was studying it with her head tilted and the teardrop pearl swaying at her brow, entirely indifferent to the conversation happening two feet away from her.

"And if she wanders?” Egg questioned

"She won't wander”

"She absolutely will wander”

"Then stop her”

Egg looked at him with the flat patience of someone pointing out something obvious to someone who should already know it, “ Ser Duncan, she dragged you underwater. What exactly am I supposed to do?”

Dunk opened his mouth

He closed it.

"If you lose her," he said finally, pointing at Egg, "I will find the biggest stick between here and the Reach and I will clout you with it”

"Noted," Egg said, entirely unbothered. "Off you go then”

Dunk looked at Nimue one last time. She chirped at him, soft and warm, without looking away from the banner.

He ducked through the door of the registration office.

His forehead caught the top of the frame.

He went in anyway, cheeks burning hot with embarrassment.

A WORLD OF ICE & FIRE MASTERLIST

This Masterlist solely focuses on the universe of A World of Ice & Fire related fics. You can find all of my writings for this fandom here

A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS

→ Ser Duncan the Tall

SOMETHING WICKED IN THE WATER

m.list

#SYNOPSIS. Ser Duncan the Tall finds himself with an extra companion on the road to Ashford — a pretty maiden he met in a lake who is not quite human. While he tries to keep her from attracting too many wayward eyes, there are men at Ashford with royal blood who have already noticed her. She is not his to keep. He is beginning to wish she were.

#CHARACTER(S). Ser duncan the Tall, Aegon Targaryen, Valaar Targaryen, Baelor Targaryen, Maekar Targaryen, Aerion Targaryen

#WARNING(S) . Dark Romance, Yandere, manipulative behavior, kidnapping, forced isolation

→ CHAPTER ONE - Ser Duncan discovers something lurking beneath a quiet lake, expecting a large water beast — he instead finds himself strangely enamored with an odd, merling creature

→ CHAPTER TWO - Nimue joins Dunk and Egg on the road to Ashford. Dunk is honorable. He is decent. He is also a man, and there is only so much a man can be expected to withstand.

→ CHAPTER THREE - Ser Duncan the Tall had only meant to enter the tourney at Ashford Meadow, but the registration clerks demanded proof of his knighthood before he could compete. While lingering near the tents, he meets tanselle whose cheerful demeanor and skillful performance drew him in. Unfortunately, Nimue did not share his admiration.

→ CHAPTER FOUR - Ser Duncan the Tall takes Nimue to sup at the tent of Lyonel Baratheon, a lord generous with his wine, and apparently his pearl collection. Nimue endures the tent and the unmated males and the eel who smiles too easily. What follows is a disaster of the particular kind that only the trio could stumble into — a puppeteer with broken fingers, a prince with no patience. And in the chaos a pearl changes hands, and a secret comes loose.

SOMETHING WICKED IN THE WATER

m.list

#SYNOPSIS. Ser Duncan discovers something lurking beneath a quiet lake, expecting a large water beast — he instead finds himself strangely enamored with an odd, merling creature

#CHARACTER(S). Ser Duncan The Tall, Aegon Targaryen

#WARNING(S). Dark romance

The lake had no name on any map Dunk had ever seen, and he had seen precious few maps in his life. It was simply there, nestled between two low hills like a secret the land had been keeping to itself, the surface so still it looked like hammered tin in the fading afternoon light.

Egg had spotted it from the road and declared they were stopping, which Dunk could not rightly argue against given that the boy had mud caked into his hair from a fall three days prior that neither of them had fully managed to wash out. So the horses were tied to a low branch, Egg was told to sit and stay, and Dunk waded in alone.

The cold hit him at the knees first and he nearly turned back, but the heat of the day had settled deep into his skin the way it did after long hours on the road — sitting in it, sweating through it, wearing it like a second gambeson — and the cold was a relief against that, sharp and clean and good in the way that simple things were good.

He went deeper. It crept up his thighs, his stomach, his chest, and he exhaled long and slow as it swallowed the heat whole, the ache in his shoulders loosening by degrees, the dust and sweat of three weeks on the road lifting off him like something he had not realized he was still carrying.

He stood there chest deep with his eyes closed and his head tipped back and the last of the sun warm on his face, the rest of him cold and grateful for it. It was the closest thing to peace he had felt in some time. He might have stayed like that a good while longer, if not for the sound that did not belong to any bird he had ever known.

He turned his head by degrees, water shifting around his chest with the movement, and scanned the far bank where the light was thinner and the reeds grew tall and tangled at the water's edge. Nothing. Just the stillness of the lake and the distant sound of Egg sulking on the bank behind him, kicking his heels against a tree root the way the boy did when he had been told to stay put and disagreed with the instruction.

His brow creased. He looked down at the water and saw nothing but his own submerged hands. The ripples spread outward from where he stood, each one breaking against his chest like a whisper. Then — a glint. Silver beneath the surface, quick as a blade caught in sunlight, darting just fast enough to leave the water smooth and undisturbed behind it. He leaned forward slightly, squinting.

It was pale and luminous, catching what little light filtered down through the water and giving it back tenfold, the way he imagined pearls did, though he had never been close enough to one to know for certain.

He had heard of pearls. Ser Arlan had described them once — small and perfectly round and worth more than a hedge knight would see in a lifetime of riding — but Dunk had never been close enough to a wealthy enough person to know if the description was true.

He reached down anyway, slow and careful, fingers closing around something small and smooth against the lake bed. He brought it up. Held it in his palm. It was no bigger than his thumbnail, sitting in the cup of his big scarred hand like it had no business being there, which it didn't. He turned it in the light. It gleamed the way expensive things gleamed — bewitching

How could something so small be so costly? He could not understand why they cost what they did. It was small enough to lose between the floorboards. Small enough to swallow by accident. And yet Ser Arlan had once told him a single pearl could buy a decent horse, and Dunk had filed that information away in the part of his mind reserved for things that were true and also deeply unfair.

Pretty, he thought, in the simple honest way he thought most things. Just a pretty little thing.

He was still turning it over in his palm, watching it catch the last of the light, when the water in front of him moved. He looked up.

A pair of eyes watched him from just above the surface. Big eyes and very still, the way deep water was still, unblinking and level with the waterline so that he could see nothing else — just eyes, and above them a crown of silky shair spreading across the surface like seafoam. They watched him with an expression he could not name and did not have time to try to name because his brain had already arrived at the relevant information.

A woman

There was a woman in front of him

The colour left his face so fast he felt it go.

"I—" he started, and immediately spun around so his back was to her, which achieved very little given that he was chest deep in water and had nothing on his person that would help matters. His hands moved uselessly. He was a very large man and there was nowhere to put himself. "I didn't — I beg your pardon, my lady, I didn't know — I'm not — I wouldn't have—" He pressed a hand over his face. "Seven hells. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm — I'm an idiot, I'm thick as a stump, I didn't see you, I swear it on my honor, I didn't—"

He was still facing the opposite bank, one hand over his face, the pearl clutched in the other, the back of his neck burning red in a way that had nothing to do with the sun. He could hear the water moving behind him. Small sounds. Close.

"I'm sorry," he said again, to the reeds, “ I'm — I beg your pardon. Truly. I didn't know anyone was — I wouldn't have — I'm not—" He stopped. Tried again. "My name is Dunk—Ser Duncan the Tall. I'm a knight." He said it the way he always said it when he didn't know what else to say, like it was an answer to a question he hadn't quite heard. "I'm honorable. I want you to know that—“

He stood there with his hand over his face and the pearl biting into his palm and the water very quiet behind him and then — something touched the back of his shoulder. Two fingers. Light as anything. He went rigid from his heels to the base of his skull.

He turned around.

She was right there, close enough that he took a short involuntary step back and found the lake bed uneven under his foot and lurched, arms out, and very nearly went under entirely. He found his footing. Barely. He straightened up to his full height with as much dignity as the situation allowed, which was not a great deal, and looked at her face and kept his eyes there and did not look anywhere else because he was Ser Duncan the Tall and he was honorable and Ser Arlan had not raised a fool—

The first thing Dunk registered was how small she was. She barely came up to his chest—no, not his chest, because he was standing in water up to his chest, and she was—oh gods, she was there, entirely unclothed, the water lapping just below the gentle swell of her breasts, the pale curves of them catching the last amber light of the setting sun. Droplets clung to her skin, sliding slow and lazy down the slope of one nipple, dark pink and peaked from the chill of the water. His throat clicked when he swallowed.

She tilted her head, watching him watch her, her smile curling wider at the corners of her mouth. That was when he saw them—sharp little points of white just barely pressing into her lower lip.

Ser Arlan had raised a fool.

He looked at her face. Just her face. He was looking at her face.

He became aware that his mouth was open again.

He closed it.

Heat rose up his neck in a slow, merciless climb, flooding beneath his skin until even his ears burned. It felt near as scalding as the forge fires he had once stood too close to as a squire — only there was no stepping back from this. The flush spread across his cheeks, dark and unmistakable against wind-roughened skin that had known sun and steel but not this.

His mouth had gone dry.

Gods, it was dry.

He swallowed and found nothing there but the thick scrape of his own throat, as though the lake had stolen every drop of moisture from him and left him standing stupid and parched in the shallows. His tongue felt too large, clumsy against his teeth.

His eyes — traitors that they were — had gone wide as a boy’s.

Dunk tried very hard to remember how men behaved around maidens. Proper maidens. Maidens who wore pretty dresses and had pretty things and did not bathe naked in lakes.

He was fairly certain it involved being proper—

Not staring as though he had been struck over the head with a mace.

His heart had begun beating in a heavy, uneven rhythm against his ribs, each thud loud in his own ears. He attempted to square his shoulders — a knight’s posture, steady and respectable — but the water lapped treacherously at his chest, reminding him in no uncertain terms that he was bare as the day he was born.

Seven hells

A maiden — even a bold one — would have shrieked by now. Thrown her hands over herself. Splashed backward in outrage. Called down curses or brothers or both.

He did not know whether he ought to be grateful she was not screaming and summoning half the countryside — or deeply troubled that she was not.

Gods

She was beautiful

The fairest maiden he had ever laid eyes on. And Dunk had seen pretty women in his travels — at fairs, at inns, in castle yards bright with banners and silk. He had thought some of them lovely in their way.

None of them could compare to her.

No candle could match that sort of light.

Dunk had never been a man much sought after by the gentler sex. For all his efforts to speak softly and move carefully, he was still enormous — broad as a door, scarred, looming without meaning to. He knew he could be intimidating. No matter how small he tried to make himself, how mindful of his size, few maidens ever approached him.

He had grown used to that.

But she did not look afraid.

She did not look as though he frightened her at all.

It was only then, in his gawking, that he noticed the rest of her. Pearls threaded through all that silver-white hair in long draping strings, dozens of them, pale and luminous and worth more than everything he owned twice over.

And something else — a veil of sorts, so fine he could see straight through it, the kind of fabric so delicate he didn't know what to call it or how it had been made, held together by tiny pearls knotted throughout like stars in a pale sky, floating on the surface of the water around her. And at the center of her forehead, hanging from a single thread, a teardrop pearl that rested between her brows.

He looked down at the single pearl sitting in his open palm.

It looked very small suddenly.

"Did you drop this?"

He held the pearl out toward her on his open palm and kept his eyes fixed somewhere around her forehead, at the little teardrop pearl hanging there, which was a safe place to look and did not require him to look at anything else. His arm was very straight. He was holding it out at full extension, as if the extra few inches of distance would help matters, which it did not.

"I found it," he said. "On the lake bed. I thought — I didn't know it was — I wasn't trying to take it." He could hear himself talking and could not seem to stop. "I'm not a thief. I want you to know that as well. Honorable, like I said. I'm — if it's yours you should have it back”

She looked at his outstretched hand

She looked at his face

He was doing his very best. He was keeping his eyes on her forehead and his arm straight and his face was still doing the burning thing regardless. He was not a man of the nobility. He could never be. He had grown up in the streets of Flea Bottom where nobody had the luxury of modesty and he had spent his years since on the road.

Sleeping under hedges and eating what he could find, and the sum total of his experience with women of any kind was limited to innkeepers' wives who called him love when they handed him his supper and serving girls who refilled his ale without looking at him.

She looked at his outstretched hand for a long moment.

Then she reached out and gently, with two fingers, folded his hand closed around the pearl.

Dunk stared at his own fist.

He looked up.

She was smiling again. That small sharp smile with the points of her teeth just barely visible and her eyes bright and pleased and her head tilted.

His hand was still warm where her fingers had touched it. He stood there holding the pearl in a closed fist and trying to work out what to do next when he made the mistake of opening his hand again.

"I really think it might be yours," he said earnestly, and held it out a second time.

The smile dropped.

It did not fade. It did not fall slowly the way smiles usually fell. It simply stopped, like a candle pinched out, and what replaced it was something else entirely. Her ears — he had not looked closely at her ears before, had been very deliberately not looking at anything closely — spread outward and fanned wide, long and fin-like, spreading like the sails of a ship catching a sudden wind.

Her lips pulled back. All the way back. And there were her teeth — not just the two small sharp points he had glimpsed before but a full row of them, jagged and irregular and overlapping slightly.

She was not smiling

She was very much not smiling

A sound came from her — though he couldn't believe such a sound could come from a lady — it was low, clicking and sharp, like a warning felt against his bones, and she had drawn herself up in the water in a way that made her seem larger than she was, her eyes gone dark and flat.

The droplets of water cascading down her skin where glittering scales were much more prominent now, catching the last of the light like armor, like something that had always been there beneath the surface of her skin waiting for exactly this moment to make itself known.

They ran along her collarbones, down her shoulders, trailing into the water where he could only imagine they continued, and they were beautiful and terrible in equal measure the way a drawn blade was beautiful and terrible.

He was, he reflected dimly, an enormous fool.

CHAPTER TWO | EYES ON THE PRIZE

→ TO COVET | m.list

#SYNOPSIS. The recoms are tasked with a mission

#WARNING(S). None

#CHARACTER(S). Recom! Colonel Miles Quaritch

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“ We are not in Kansas anymore”

The words cut through the low mechanical hum of the carrier like a blade.

Colonel Miles Quaritch stood at the front of the briefing bay, arms crossed over his broad chest, blue skin catching the cold white lights overhead. The recombinants—recoms—sat in their seats, massive bodies packed into military precision. Identical faces, identical scars, identical discipline. Marines reborn in alien flesh.

Kansas had been Earth. Gravity. Familiar air. Rules that made sense.

Pandora was none of that.

“ Now, I know you’re all askin’ yourselves the same question.”

Quaritch turned around slowly, boots scraping against the metal floor, his Na’vi braid swishing behind him with the movement. The lights caught along the blue of his skin, striping it in harsh white as he faced them again. His hand settled on the top buckle of his belt, thumb hooking there out of habit, posture loose but controlled—the stance of a man who’d commanded rooms like this his entire life.

“Why so blue?”

Quaritch grinned, wide and unapologetic, his tongue lolling out loosely in a mockery of the very bodies they’d been shoved into. The expression was exaggerated, almost crude—and that was exactly the point.

For a heartbeat, the room held still.

Then the recoms broke.

Laughter rolled through the briefing bay, deep and rough, the sound of old Marines finding something familiar to cling to. Some turned toward the men seated beside them, nudging shoulders, exchanging looks that said ‘can you believe this shit?’ Others threw their heads back, sharp blue teeth flashing as they laughed, shaking their heads in disbelief at the absurdity of it all. A few slapped armored thighs or braced their hands against their restraints, still chuckling as they tried to settle.

Even the quieter ones weren’t immune—lips twitching, eyes crinkling, breath huffing out through noses as they smothered it.

Quaritch let it happen.

He stood there, grin still in place, belt hooked under his hand, watching the room loosen just enough

“For our sins in our past life, we’ve been brought back in the form of our enemy”

Quaritch’s voice was steady, almost conversational, as he gestured loosely to his own towering frame—blue skin, long limbs—

“That gives us their size. Their strength. Their speed “

He paused, letting it sink in

“And with our training? That’s a pretty potent mix”

A low murmur moved through the briefing bay as the Recons shifted in their seats, restraints creaking under the weight of new muscle. The realization was settling in—slow, heavy, undeniable.

Lyle sniffed, nodding along as if he’d already come to the same conclusion. He leaned forward and reached down, grabbing one of the dumbbell weights stacked near his seat. With a casual flick of his wrist, he lifted it one-handed, curling it a few times just to feel the pull. The weight rose easily, like it barely mattered.

“Do we have a mission yet?” he asked, still pumping the dumbbell, eyes on Quaritch.

Across from him, Z-Dog grinned and grabbed a weight of her own. She lifted it smoothly, testing the balance, then raised it higher, rolling her shoulder as she did. No strain. No hesitation. Just power. She laughed under her breath, shaking her head as if the whole thing was absurd.

Quaritch watched them with a faint, knowing smile.

“Indeed we do,” Quaritch said, his voice low and deliberate, echoing slightly in the metal confines of the briefing bay. He took a step forward, letting his gaze sweep across the rows of Recons. “Our mission is to hunt down—and kill—the leader of the Na’vi insurgency”

Lyle leaned back slightly in his seat, shoulders broad against the restraints. A low, guttural growl rumbled from deep in his chest, lips curling upward to reveal sharp, glinting canine teeth. His blue eyes narrowed, fixating on Quaritch as if he were already imagining the hunt. The rest of his body shifted subtly, muscles coiling, ready to spring even while seated.

Near him, Spike mirrored the energy. Nodding along to the briefing, he brought a massive fist up to punch his right pec, the force rattling the restraints slightly. A wide grin split his face, teeth catching the harsh white light.

Quaritch let the silence stretch just a moment longer, letting them feel it—the gravity of the name he was about to drop.

“The one they call Toruk Makto… Jake Sully “

Then the Recons erupted. A deep, guttural holler rolled through the rows, bouncing off the steel walls and echoing through the chamber. “Yeah!” The sound was raw, filled with satisfaction, the kind that came from knowing exactly what was coming next. Their voices overlapped, gruff and urgent, a storm of approval.

Some Recons leaned toward one another, exchanging hard nods and slaps on the armored shoulders—a wordless affirmation, a silent pact that they were ready. Others raised clenched fists high toward the ceiling, letting the motion carry their exhilaration outward.

From across the room, a few voices rang out louder than the rest. “That’s what it is!” It cut through the din, sharp and proud, met instantly by a chorus of echoes and renewed shouts.

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“ — I’ve heard good things about you, Colonel,” General Ardmore spoke, her voice smooth but carrying the weight of command, “But a lot’s changed since your tour here. Walk with me ”

She pivoted sharply, the mechanical exosuit hissing and whirring with every movement, servos flexing like a second skeleton. Sparks flickered as robotic spiders skittered across the walls, their tiny legs tapping against steel panels, eyes glowing faintly red. The air smelled faintly of ozone and lubricant, the tang of machinery alive with energy.

“The new ops center is over here,” she continued, gesturing to a massive cluster of consoles and holo-screens to the left. Light danced across the floor as panels hummed to life, projecting detailed layouts of Pandora’s terrain, “That just came online. Fully functional “

Her hand swept toward a row of massive spider-like machines crawling in formation, “ These are our swarm assemblers.” The mechanical arms moved frantically, pulling steel girders and welding components with precision, building structures almost impossibly fast. Sparks flew like controlled fireworks, “They can put up a building in six days. We have done more here in a year than in the previous 30 years “

Quaritch’s eyes followed her gestures, taking in the scale of it all—the humming machinery, the relentless motion, the sense that this base itself was alive.

“We’re not here to run a mine, Colonel,” she said, voice firm, carrying authority that didn’t require shouting, “ As on-world commander, I’ve been charged with a greater mission.”

She led him down a narrow corridor, the walls vibrating slightly under the weight of the equipment around them, until they reached a secondary mechanical base—steel and wiring crisscrossed like a scene out of a simulation.

A robotic arm extended smoothly, gripping a coffee mug and lifting it to her lips. She drank slowly, deliberately, as if savoring each sip, then set it down on a nearby console, “ Earth is dying,” she said. “Our task here is to terraform Pandora. Nothing less. Nothing short of making it the new home for humanity.”

Miles drew a slow, measured breath, the oxygen mask clinging to his neck hissing faintly as it refilled.

“But before we can do that,” she continued, picking the mug back up and taking another deliberate sip, “we need to pacify the hostile”

Her words hung in the air, heavy with implication, as the machinery around them continued its relentless, humming work.

The General led Quaritch and Lyle down the polished corridor, the hum of machinery and servos echoing through the base. As they reached the center of the operations floor, holographic screens flickered to life around them, projecting floating images of Pandora’s terrain overlaid with markers, movement paths, and recent incidents.

“Look at these,” she said, sweeping a hand over the displays. The screens zoomed in on scattered Na’vi activity—ambushes, skirmishes, and sabotaged equipment, “Sully’s raids are becoming bolder. More frequent. Strikes are well planned you’ve got tight coordination between his ground and air assets”

Quaritch’s eyes followed the paths traced on the holograms: ground units moving in formation, aerial creatures swooping in, coordinated attacks hitting multiple targets almost simultaneously.

She gestured toward the most recent assault: a moving supply train ripped apart by Na’vi warriors, crates of weapons and materials ripped from the cars as their riders swept overhead on banshees. Sparks and debris floated in the projection, suspended in midair as if the holo itself had caught the chaos.

“His forces are hitting our outlying sites—mines, pipelines, supply convoys,” she continued, voice steady but sharp. “They’re cutting off our supply chain “

Miles took a slow, deliberate breath through the mask, the soft hiss of recycled oxygen briefly filling his ears as he studied the holographic feed of the most recent attack. Burning wreckage froze mid-motion in the projection—twisted metal, scattered supplies, Na’vi silhouettes already gone by the time the footage ended. His eyes narrowed.

He turned back to the General, “Any intel on Sully’s base of operations?”

General Ardmore gave a single nod. Without raising her voice, she issued a clipped command to the technicians nearby. Fingers moved fast across consoles. With a sharp flicker of light, the hologram shifted.

Floating stone spires loomed in layered depth, mist curling around their bases, sheer cliffs suspended as if gravity itself had been negotiated into submission. Wind patterns and flight paths glowed faintly across their surfaces, red and amber markers blinking where human assets had vanished.

“It’s a cave system,” Ardmore said evenly, “ Somewhere in the Hallelujah Mountains. Exact location still unknown”

Quaritch stepped forward, moving directly into the holographic projection. The mountains phased through his body as he walked, light washing over his blue skin. He paced slowly between the floating spires, head tilting as he studied angles, distances, elevation. One hand lifted, passing through a projected cliff face as if he were tracing possible entry points.

Nearby, Lyle pulled his mask slightly away from his face, drawing in a deeper breath as he stared up at the towering holograms. His chest rose and fell heavily, eyes tracking the drifting rock formations.

“But every time we send our forces up there, we take losses,” Ardmore continued, “Our hardware really stirs up the hornet’s nest.”

With a sharp gesture, she shifted the display.

On a separate holographic panel, new footage burst to life.

Three aircraft cut through the air toward the floating mountains, rotors whining, gunships holding formation. For a split second, everything looked routine—then the sky exploded with movement. Wild ikran surged out of the clouds, wings snapping open like blades, shrill screeches piercing the audio feed.

The pilots shouted over comms, voices overlapping in rising panic.

“Mayday! Mayday— we’re going down—!”

The final aircraft spiraled, engulfed by writhing shapes and flapping wings before the feed dissolved into static.

“ we can only get ten minutes in enemy airspace— they are all over us “

The room fell silent again, the echo of screams lingering longer than the image itself.

General Ardmore turned on her heel, “Colonel,” she said, voice clipped, “we believe your blue team will be perceived as indigenous and will not trigger the immune response”

Quaritch tilted his head slightly, the movement slow and deliberate. One corner of his mouth lifted—not quite a grin, more a knowing curl. Interest sparked in his eyes, bright and calculating.

“And how exactly do you propose we test that hypothesis, General?” he asked, tone almost amused.

Ardmore didn’t hesitate. She gave a short, decisive nod, lips pressing together as if sealing the decision in stone.

“The hard way.”

For a split second, Quaritch was still.

Then his smile spread

It wasn’t friendly. It was sharp—wide enough to bare rows of pearly white, feline teeth, the expression stretching his features into something unmistakably predatory. His eyes narrowed with satisfaction, a gleam of approval flashing through them like a blade catching light.

“Outstanding,” he said, the word heavy with relish.

Beside him, Lyle’s reaction was immediate. He leaned back slightly, arms folding across his broad chest, a smug grin pulling at his face.

The decision had been made.

And none of them looked even remotely disappointed.

ONE SHOT | DISOBEDIENCE PROTOCOL

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#SYNOPSIS. You disobeyed a direct order from the Colonel

#CHARACTER(S). Yandere! Human! Colonel Miles Quaritch

#WARNING(S). Spanking, non consensual, sexual assult, forced proximity, him just being a creep overall, unhealthy fixation, inappropriate touching, hint of voyeurism(?)maybe(?), rest of the tags are on the masterlist

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The lab smelled like sterilized metal and the faint tang of sweat—your sweat. You'd been hunched over samples for hours, fingers twitching every time a distant squesk could be heard. That sound usually meant Quaritch was nearby, boots heavy on the polished floors.

Your spine went rigid when the door hissed open without a knock. The colonel’s shadow swallowed yours whole before he even stepped inside. "Still avoiding me, princess?"

His voice was gravel dragged over pavement, too close now—close enough you could feel his breath on the back of your neck. You didn’t turn. Couldn’t. Your throat tightened around nothing as his hand settled on your hip, possessive and warm.

Then his grip twisted, yanking you backward until your shoulders hit his chest, “ Orders were clear” His other hand snaked up to fist in your hair, pulling just shy of painful, “ No excursions outside the perimeter “ You hissed as he jerked your head back, “Yet here you are, smug as hell, waltzing back in covered in fucking pollen “

You sobbed, tears springing to your eyes before you could stop them. Your chest ached as each breath came out uneven, shaking, as though your body itself was betraying you. The weight of his presence pressed down on you.

Tears slipped free despite your efforts, blurring your vision as humiliation and fear tangled together in your throat.

His nose dragged along your neck, inhaling sharply,“ Smell like them, too”

You bucked violently—but the desk met your hips before you could gain momentum. The pencil skirt trapped your thighs, fabric biting into skin as he leaned his full weight against you. His exhale shuddered against your neck, humid and slow, before his tongue swiped a thick stripe from collarbone to jaw.

"Try that again," he murmured into your skin. His teeth grazed your earlobe, nipping just hard enough to make you freeze. The desk's edge dug into your stomach as he shifted, sealing your hips against cold metal while his free hand slid down your side—too slow, too deliberate—to grip your skirt's hem.

You jerked sideways, twisting with everything you had, but his thigh wedged between yours, pinning you harder. Heat bloomed where his cock pressed against the small of your back, unmistakable even through layers of fabric.

He exhaled sharply through his nose and rocked forward, dragging himself against you in a filthy, unhurried grind, “ Thought you'd like knowing how much this pisses me off”

You didn't answer—couldn't—your throat locked tight around an ugly, rising sob. The weight of him crushed your ribs with every breath, forcing the air out in stuttered gasps.

The sob broke free then—wet and ragged—as you twisted uselessly against him. Your palms burned from scrabbling at his thighs, nails catching denim but finding no purchase. "P-please," you choked, voice cracking mid-word like a snapped twig, "Dont do—”

Cold metal bit into your stomach as his palm slid down your spine—slow, deliberate—before gripping the hem of your skirt. A tear ripped through the air as he shoved it down past your thighs, “ Always knew you'd look pretty like this “ His calloused thumb pressed into the soft swell of your ass, kneading until you squirmed.

The first strike cracked like a gunshot, hissing through your teeth before the sting even registered, “Fuck—!" You arched, heels skidding against the floor, but his free hand anchored you in place, “ Ain't even started, sweetheart ”

His voice dripped honey-thick, that lazy drawl curling around each syllable as his palm came down again, harder this time. The heat bloomed in slow waves, each smack layering over the last until your skin burned raw.

"Help! Somebody—!" Your scream shattered against the lab's steel walls. Quaritch's breath hitched in amusement before his next swing landed with a wet smack, teeth gritted behind his grin, “ Louder, sweetheart. See if I care” Another cry tore loose, and his fingers dug into your hip, delivering two rapid-fire blows that made your knees buckle. The pain was a live wire now, snapping up your spine—so when your next scream choked into a sob, he merely hummed approvingly, rubbing circles into the throbbing flesh, “There we go. Knew you could be quiet when it counted”

Your forehead pressed onto the metal, tears dripping onto the keyboard below. His palm cradled your ass again, kneading the flesh, then suddenly flipped you onto your back like you weighed nothing. The overhead lights blinded you for a second—long enough for his hand to hook under your chin, tilting your face up, "Look at that," he murmured, thumb swiping through the streaks of ruined mascara.

His grip was almost tender now, callouses catching on your damp skin as he studied you, “Ain't you a sight” The contrast was dizzying: the man who'd just painted your ass red now tracing the curve of your cheekbone like it was scripture.

You flinched when his thumb brushed your lower lip, smearing tear-salty and sticky gloss. His nostrils flared, pupils darkening as he leaned in—close enough to share breath, “ Still wanna holler?" That drawl dripped molasses-slow, mocking. His free hand slid down your ribs possessively, squeezing just shy of pain, “ Or you finally gonna obey?” The question curled like smoke between you.

His hips pinning yours against the console’s edge. One jerk of his wrist and your shirt ripped open, buttons pinging across the floor.

Your breath came in shallow gasps, each one hitching as his rough palms slid up your sides, fingers tracing the lace edge of your bra. You shut your eyes tight, focusing—disconnecting—on the hum of the lab’s air vents, the flickering lights overhead, anything but the way his teeth scraped your shoulder.

‘ It’ll get worse if I keep fighting him ‘ The realization slithered through your panic like cold water. You forced your knees apart, letting your thighs fall slack against the desk, even as bile rose in your throat. Grace needed those samples. If I could keep him occupied—stay gentle, stay agreeable—then Grace would have one more day. One more chance to mend what had been fractured with the Omatikaya.

Tears spilled freely down your cheeks at the thought of Doctor Grace Augustine—your brilliant, red-haired mentor with a sharp tongue and an even sharper mind. She was relentless in her devotion to Pandora, to its forests and floating mountains, to every living thing that breathed beneath its sky.

And her students— Oh, how she loved them fiercely. She taught them, challenged them, and raised them. Grace believed in understanding, in respect, in coexistence, even when no one else would listen. Remembering her now made your chest ache— for Grace

His fingers stilled against your ribs, grip loosening. “Oh? Whats this now? ” His chuckle rumbled against your shoulder blade as his other hand slid up your thigh, fingertips skating over gooseflesh.

You swallowed the whimper threatening to spill out, forcing your voice steady, “ M sorry—wont disobey again” The words tasted like ash, but you let your legs fall wider, hips tilting up in silent surrender. His breath hitched—a sharp, satisfied sound—before his palm smoothed up your stomach, thumb brushing the underside of your breast.

Mile’s laugh was low, whiskey-warm as his fingers traced your jawline, “ There’s that good girl I know,” he drawled, dragging his knuckles down your throat. His other hand kneaded your inner thigh, rough fingertips skating dangerously close to where you burned hottest.

His voice dipped lower, honeyed with satisfaction, “Gonna remember this next time you think about wandering off, ain’tcha?” You nodded quickly, swallowing the bile in your throat, and let out a shaky breath, “ Y-yes, sir. Won’t—won’t happen again”

The words tasted like rust, but you forced your hips to stay lax, your thighs parted just enough for his wandering hand to drift lower. It was like watching yourself from outside your body—the way his fingers traced the lace edge of your panties with deliberate, maddening slowness, rough fingertips catching on the delicate fabric.

‘ Grace needs this— the na’vi too’ The thought anchored you, clinical and detached, even as your pulse fluttered under his palm.

The words tasted like copper when you forced them out, “I-I know I messed up, Miles” Your voice cracked—part performance, part genuine tremor—as his thumb brushed the damp lace between your thighs. His grip tightened, fingers digging into your hip just shy of bruising while his other hand traced idle circles on your inner thigh. The contrast was dizzying—the same hands that had split your skin with stinging slaps now stroking like you were something precious.

Miles hummed, low and satisfied, “Damn right you did”

His grip shifted, fingers digging under your knee as he hauled your leg over his broad shoulder without warning. The sudden movement wrenched a gasp from your throat—your spine arched off the desk.

His nose bumped against your damp panties, inhaling sharply before chuckling, rough and dark, “ Fuckin' soaked through," he muttered, tongue already pressing a wet stripe against the lace before you could even process the humiliation. His lips curled against your skin, teeth grazing just enough to make you jerk—but his hands clamped down on your thighs.

The knock came like a gunshot—three sharp raps that made Quaritch go rigid, “ Colonel." Lyle's voice was tight through the door. "We got people. Whole crowd heard the ruckus, we got two minutes” His palm smacked against the metal frame again, urgent. Miles growled, nostrils flaring as his grip on your thighs turned vise-tight.

For one suspended second, you thought he might ignore it—his tongue flicked against your clit through the fabric, teasing—before he snarled and wrenched himself back.

Your leg slipped from his shoulder, bare skin smacking against cold metal as he straightened, adjusting his belt with one hand while the other dragged you upright by your forearm.

His thumb wiped roughly at your smeared lipstick before catching your chin, forcing your watery gaze up, “ This ain't over” The promise curled around you like smoke. Behind him, the door hissed open—Lyle's silhouette tense in the doorway—but Quaritch didn't turn.

His pupils were blown black, gaze raking over your dishevelment as if memorizing every undone button. "Clean yourself up," he ordered.

You hadn't realized your knees were shaking until he stepped back, his tactical vest brushing your exposed stomach as he moved past. The sudden absence of his body heat left you shuddering, fingers trembling against the desk's edge.

Lyle's jaw twitched as Quaritch strode past him, but his gaze—just for a fractured second—dropped to your thighs. His nostrils flared at the sight of your ripped skirt pooled around your ankles, your damp underwear sticking to your cunt making the shape obvious to his gaze.

His throat bobbed as he jerked his head away, but not before you caught the bulge straining against his fatigues.

I wanted to ask if you deleted your Miles Quaritch fanfics? They were my favorites and I can't find them :"(

Yes! I am really sorry about that, I’ve actually made the choice of restarting the series and re writing everything! I assure you it will have the same plot line as it did to the original. I’m currently re writing a oneshot of the series at the moment but I do have the second chapter halfway written that I will be uploading soon!

#SYNOPSIS. You’ve been isekai as the villains mother!

#WARNING(S). Implications of undesired affection

#CHARACTER(S). Duke Kassius Chade, Ain Chade

The teacup trembled against its saucer as Ian’s laughter—warm and bright only moments ago—froze mid-air. His small fingers, sticky with jam, curled protectively around mine beneath the garden table. Sunlight dappled through the wisteria, but the warmth vanished as Kassius’ shadow fell across the rosebushes. “ Father," Ian said, voice brittle as winter twigs. "What are you doing here? Don’t you have petitioners waiting?"

Kassius smiled, a slow unfurling of lips that didn’t touch his eyes. He settled into the wrought-iron chair opposite of us, the legs scraping like knives on stone. "Can’t a husband," he murmured, pouring himself tea without invitation, "cherish time with his family?" The word ‘cherish’ slithered through the air, heavy with unspoken edges. Ian’s knuckles whitened around his spoon; the boy’s gaze hardened into glacial flint.

They sparred in clipped syllables—Ian’s polite inquiries about estate ledgers met with Kassius’ languid observations on Ian’s ‘growing impudence ‘

You kept your eyes fixed on the wilting violets in the centerpiece, throat tight. Every word felt like a trapdoor beneath your feet. The Duke had come— uninvited to your cherished time with the only comfort you know in this stifling manor. When the butler’s discreet cough announced the tutor’s arrival, the reprieve ended— your cherished time with your dear stepson had come to an end.

Ian didn’t move. His small frame remained rigidly planted beside my chair, knuckles pale where they gripped the wrought iron. Kassius traced the rim of his teacup with one finger, a predator savoring hesitation; "Run along, boy," he murmured, velvet over steel. "Your mother and I require... privacy “ The pause lingered like a blade unsheathed.

You forced your lips into a curve that felt brittle as dried petals. "Go, darling," you whispered, brushing a crumb from Ian’s sleeve. Your fingers trembled against the fine wool, “ As your father’s heir, you should behave as such“ Ian’s gaze flickered between us—suspicion warring with reluctant obedience—before he bowed stiffly and retreated. His footsteps echoed too loudly on the gravel path, each one a hammer blow to your composure.

Silence pooled thickly between you and Kassius, broken only by the distant chirp of sparrows. He leaned forward, elbows resting on the iron table, and the predatory stillness in his posture made the teacup rattle against the saucer again.

“You soothe him so effortlessly now,” Kassius observed, his voice a low hum that vibrated in the hollow of my chest. His dark eyes, sharp as obsidian shards, traced the path Ian had taken. “Yet you flinch when I enter a room.” He lifted his own cup, sipping slowly, never breaking his gaze, “ Is your kindness only reserved for my son? “ The question hung, weighted with a dangerous curiosity. Sunlight caught the silver threads in his doublet, making him look less like a nobleman and more like a coiled serpent basking on cold stone.

You clutched the fragile porcelain tighter, focusing on the intricate pattern painted on the cup, “Children require gentleness, my lord,” You managed, the words thin and unconvincing even to your own ears, “ Ian is… young” A bead of sweat traced a path down your spine beneath the heavy silk of your gown. The scent of roses suddenly felt cloying, suffocating.

Kassius chuckle was a low rumble, devoid of true amusement. He set his cup down with deliberate softness, the sound unnervingly precise, “Young,” he echoed, tilting his head. His gaze, sharp and unnervingly perceptive, swept over your face, lingering on the tremor in your hands. “And I, Wife? Am I too old for such tenderness?” He leaned forward fractionally, invading the scant space between yourselves.

His voice dropped to a murmur barely above the rustle of leaves, “ Neglect is a poor mantle for a Duke to wear. Perhaps it’s time I shed it. Devotion... marital duties... they require a certain... proximity, wouldn't you agree?" His unblinking stare held yours, stripping away the pretense of the garden, the teacups, the wilting violets.

A sparrow landed on the gravel path where Ian had stood, pecking at invisible crumbs. You watched it, desperate for any anchor.

“ Yes, My lord “

CHAPTER ONE | WAKE IN BLUE

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#SYNOPSIS. Death was never the end for him

#WARNING(S). None

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Darkness first.

Then pressure.

Then—

A low hum buzzed in the back of his skull. His eyelids flickered open, heavy like they’d been glued shut. Blurry shapes hovered above him, white suits and glossy masks with fogged-up visors. His ears rang, the sound like muffled shouting underwater. His throat felt dry. Foreign.

“—ere he comes “

The voice was male, filtered through a rebreather mask. Too far away to pin down. A bright light flashed across his face, making his pupils contract. He flinched, groaned.

“Pupil reflex is good,” someone muttered.

“Stay still,” said a woman, more gently, the corners of her eyes crinkling behind the clear faceplate, “You’re okay, just breathe. You're safe “

He stirred, his muscles sluggish, heavy—wrong. Something itched under his skin. Too tight. Too loose. Too different. His hearing sharpened just enough to catch the sounds of monitors and breathing tubes. A heartbeat that wasn’t just his own thumped in the room.

“Get that out of his face “

The voice was deeper. Unmasked. Closer.

The flashlight vanished. The humans stepped back as a tall shadow crossed into view—too large. Too tall. Blue.

A Na’vi.

He tensed

“Colonel?” the Na’vi asked, looming over him, “ Can you hear me?”

A hand, pressed against his chest. The touch was meant to be grounding. It wasn’t. It felt wrong—like being touched by the enemy.

Enemy

His fists moved before his thoughts caught up. He roared—a sound raw and animalistic—and slammed his knuckles into the Na’vi’s face, sending the soldier staggering back. Alarms flared behind his eyes. He surged upward, every instinct telling him he was under attack.

He stood too fast, too unsteady. His balance tilted, feet unfamiliar. Snarling, teeth bared, he lunged at the next shadow. He yanked the dangling overhead light and hurled it at the nearest shape. A tray of instruments scattered across the floor. A monitor crashed. Someone shouted.

Another blue figure tried to subdue him. He met them with a punch straight to the jaw, then reeled to the side, panting, nostrils flaring.

Four of them now. Tall, lean, fast—like predators circling a wounded animal. He hissed, curling into a defensive stance, baring his teeth.

“Colonel!”

“Stand down!”

“Sir, it’s us!”

The voices were warped, familiar yet not. But he wasn’t listening. All he saw were enemies.

Two grabbed his arms. A third wrapped a muscular forearm around his neck from behind, locking him in place. He thrashed, snarled, bit at the air, claws flexing, fangs flashing. It took all of them to hold him.

Then—

“Colonel, it’s me!”

A voice—warm, amused, laced with pain.

He blinked.

The Na’vi in front of him had a split lip, blood dribbling down his nose, but he was smiling. Recognition filtered through the haze.

“It’s Corporal Wainfleet! “

His breath caught. His ears twitched.

“Lyle?” he rasped.

Lyle nodded, “Yes sir — and Z-Dog” he tilted his chin toward the female Recom holding his right side, “ and Spike—“ The one restraining him with a bicep hooked tight around his neck offered a hesitant smile. He blinked—was it surprise or pure disbelief?

Blue.

His soldiers were blue now.

The fight drained from his limbs, slowly. “Alright, let me go” he said, voice hoarse. “I’m all right.” They hesitated, then loosened their grip.

Then he looked down.

His hands—blue, not the warm tan color he remembered. Human shape on alien skin. Muscled arms, unfamiliar in strength. He turned them over slowly, blinking.

Thick fingers. Wide palms. Faint veins beneath skin the color of cobalt. Bioluminescent freckles scattered across his knuckles like embers from a dying fire. He turned them over in the light. Flexed them.

They were strong, big, military. But not his.

Not human.

He stood there in stunned silence, baffled by how blue he was. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t what he remembered.

Slowly, he rose to his feet, eyes fixed ahead. Past Lyle. Past the others. Toward the tall glass wall. Without a word, he brushed Lyle aside and made his way forward, footsteps unsteady but certain.

He stopped inches from the panel, lifting a hand to touch the cold surface. His palm flattened against the glass.

Mouth parting, he dragged his tongue along his teeth, pausing when it met a sharp canine. He touched it. Sharp. Predatory. Not human.

A Na’vi stared back at him. Golden eyes. High cheekbones. Fangs glinting in the reflection. Familiar—but not. It was him, and yet it wasn’t.

His ears gave an involuntary twitch. His tail flicked behind him, reacting on its own.

He stared for a long beat.

“Well,” he muttered, voice low and dry, “ain’t this a bitch”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[VIDEO LOG BEGINS]

He was floating. Weightless.

Hands grasped a metal bar overhead, his grip the only thing anchoring him in the softly humming chamber. Everything around him moved in slow, fluid arcs—equipment, personnel, stray cords—and he could hear his own breath inside the recom unit's chamber, too loud, too human.

Then the screen flickered to life.

The face that appeared was older. Scarred. Human. A man wearing an RDA military shirt, sweat glistening on his brow as organized chaos bustled behind him. People were running back and forth in the corridor beyond—urgent, driven.

The man on the screen smiled. It was familiar, cruel.

“In case you haven’t figured it out yet,” he began, voice a dry drawl with gravel behind it, “Your’re Colonel Miles Quaritch. Only younger, taller, bluer… and not nearly as good looking”

He smirked, as if he knew exactly how jarring it would be. And it was. Seeing your own face, older, human,— or who he used to be. Smirking at him like the punchline of a joke he hadn't heard yet.

The video continued.

“In two hours I fly a mission against a Na’vi stronghold,” he said, glancing off-camera as someone rushed past.

“The powers that be thought it prudent I record this backup, just in case. And if you’re watching it—well…” He gave a small shrug, “ It means I got my ticket punched “

Beside him in the present, Lyle Wainfleet floated into view, grasping a bar to stabilize himself as he watched. The silence between them was heavy.

Back in the recording, Quaritch’s expression twisted as he called out, “Hey, Parker… just what the hell am I supposed to say now?”

A man stepped briskly into view—Parker Selfridge, looking flustered and irritable, holding a small capsule in his hand.

“Just remind him how it works,” Selfridge said, adjusting the video screen to get a clearer view of the object, “This here? This holds all your memories. Personality, instincts. We send it back to Earth—where, as we speak, you’re growing in a nice warm lab. Once ready, we imprint it on your new recombinant body.”

Quaritch cut him off, “ Am I doing this or are you?”

Selfridge slapped him on the back and walked out of frame, “ Just hurry it up.”

Quaritch faced the camera again, more serious this time.

“The idea was to get the best of us—hell, the worst of us, the meanest sons of bitches this planet ever saw—into recombinant bodies. Like Corporal Wainfleet over there”

The feed cut to a human Wainfleet stepping out of a pod, cocky as ever. He struck a flexed pose. In real-time, the recom Wainfleet watching the video let out a low, “Hoo-rah”

Quaritch's voice picked up again

“And your humble narrator. That’s you, kid. You're a recom now—loaded with my memories and my charm. What you won’t remember is my death… because it hasn’t happened yet. And I’ll be damned if it will.”

There was laughter in the background. Z-Dog, probably. Even across time, his presence carried through.

“But if it has… and you’re watching this… then you’ll want the same thing I do. Payback.”

The image leaned in slightly. The camera zoomed just enough to make his eyes the center of focus. Cold. Focused.

“Jake Sully will be at the top of that list. He might of punched my ticket. But that ain’t all he did. If you’re really any clone of mine, you'll understand. There’s a separate mission waiting for you. One you’ll handle alone.”

He paused, as if letting the weight of it settle.

“You’re going to retrieve our favorite scientist.”

He didn’t say your name. He didn’t need to. The silence afterward was heavy with implication.

“The poor thing must’ve been led astray by those traitorous blue monkeys. Details’ll be in a secured folder. For your eyes only”

Quaritch straightened, brushing a hand along his chest before speaking one last time.

“Remember, kid—a Marine can’t be defeated. You can kill us, but we’ll just regroup in hell”

A pause. One last smirk.

“Semper fi “

[ VIDEO LOG ENDS ]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The screen cut to black. The chamber returned to silence, only the hum of the recom pod and the quiet breathing of the soldiers around him.

Colonel Quaritch released the bar and let himself float freely, watching his reflection in the darkened screen—blue-skinned, younger, alien.