#*tamgenia

ask game: send MORTAL for a scene from my muse's past in which they had a brush with death, either themselves or someone close to them

On the other side of the darkness, she is the first and only thing he knows.

An impression, foremost. The cadence of her voice carries to him, wisteria on the wind, sweet and elusive. He draws nearer to parse out her words and finds, regretfully, that they are not meant for his ear at all. She does not assume such tones with him, no matter that he would enjoy it if she did.

"The High Lord is to be disturbed no further tonight," she orders. "Nor come morning, save that I am sent to tell you otherwise."

The chord is perfectly struck. Regal and commanding. No argument can be brooked, yet no offense can be taken. It took him a long time to find that balance. Even now, he finds himself discordant more often than not.

Especially now.

"Yes, lady."

Lady.

His lady?

She must be. She is. He brought her here, and here she stayed, and stayed, and stayed, even when she could have gone.

His lady.

it confronts pretty much every single prejudice genia was raised with in autumn :•) but weirdly i think the way beron amplified and warped these beliefs makes her really willing to attune to other ways of thinking. like microdosing acceptance. she wants to believe that beron can be wrong about things because if he was wrong about anything at all, then maybe he was wrong about her—wrong for what he did to her.

i don't think she bats too much of an eye over tamlin having a sexual relationship with rhysand, in part because she feels the homoerotic tension between tam and lulu almost immediately. she knows faeries enjoy all sorts over their long lives and high lords are entitled to liberties others are not—but these are only sexual proclivities, passing entertainments, for autumn is a fertile and virile court, serving ever the mother and the father, and so procreation is expected of its folk. so it's the fact that there was love between them, or could have been love between them, that rocks her shit because to her, love is the future. the endgame. something to treasure. something to hold tight to.

she turns it over and over in her head. in autumn, such a thing would be taken to the grave. she thinks of outcasted faeries—faeries who found refuge in other courts to spare themselves of the trial by the people. she thinks of her assumptions of them and compares them to tamlin. tamlin, who is assured of self, even after such a thing is exposed/admitted. tamlin, who is broad and burgeoning with his might. tamlin, who loves so fiercely he fears leaving marks. tamlin, who loved a male in the same way he loves (or could love) her.

honestly i think she goes so uncharacteristically quiet that tamlin looks out from his contention surrounding his past with rhysand and over to her—is reminded starkly of lucien when he first found out. (lucien who knew well that certain faeries could be fucked at leisure but to love them spelled only doom and death and demise. and is not that what happened between tamlin and rhysand? but i digress.) his experience with lucien helps him understand what she must be thinking. you'd be surprised how many things are different outside of autumn, he says to her. she looks back to him, those round, shimmering eyes, always of a depth mismatched with the youthfulness of her face, and they soften. no, she murmurs, so warm, so fond, so encompassing. not anymore.

okay well now i'm just getting horny about tamlin (see: experiencing Emotional Love For Her and transmuting that into physical closeness) pulling iphigenia astride his lap and her sitting there with her fingers twining in the hair at his nape and asking him if it's different with a male, and how it's different, and how it's the same, and could he explain it to her, what it's like? and as he answers, tamlin is floored over again by how many experiences were taken from her and how he wants to show her everything there is to see and how much life he wants to return to her, and he asks if she'd like to see for herself. and iphigenia goes stiff and green and envious immediately—but also there's no disguising her arousal at the proposition. is that what you want? she asks him, which is her way of asking whether she's not enough, whether he'll have this male and dispose of her. he shakes his head. you, he says. you're what i want. so iphigenia has him detail what he would do to a male while he brings her pleasure, and at the end she very tentatively agrees.

ohhhh i think she’s really torn because she would want the comfort of the known but also the encouragement of a new beginning—which is why i have tamlin get her a hybrid blend of autumn and spring fashion from the summer atelier lucien frequented in renascence. but she’s not going to do something like that for herself because she innately views the courts as very separate and individualized entities that aren’t to be blended. (thank youuu autumn propaganda!) so i think she wears whatever the current fashions of the city are to best blend in, especially if she’s nesta-style operating independently, and feels extremely out of place for it. at first she would lean toward whatever the more modest and structured fashions were (corsets HIGHLY favored) but as she grew more comfortable and was able to separate her personhood and body from what beron did to her, she’d lean towards the freer flowing styles.

sex would beee interesting and very dependent on her mindset / whoever she primarily interacted with wherever she was. just for comparison’s sake, the reason she and tamlin work sexually is because he enforces her boundaries for her until she’s able to put them back up, specifically without drawing overt attention to the fact that he’s doing that. if he drew attention to it, she’d feel Bad because something’s wrong with her now, her life has been impacted, she isn’t who she was before—and if he weren’t so noble, she would perpetuate dynamics expected of her by beron, then become really depressed and really angry and not be able to figure out why because she refuses to admit her trauma.

SO without that in the mix, she could trend towards a hypersexual, intrinsically dubcon, sex-as-self-harm type arc just as easily as she could trend towards a getting extremely hostile towards anyone who showed her sexual attention arc. most likely it’s both jumbled into one. she accepts the attention she receives—because it makes her feel special, not sick to her stomach, of course not—and she drinks until she doesn’t tense at the touches to her arm—because she’s found a taste for the alcohol of this court, not because this male, unspecial and regular, is touching her the way only royalty once could—and she has sex with him—because she wants to, because she was once a girl who wished she could, and that has not been taken from her. but she doesn’t know how to say no or i don’t like that or not there, here, and the high lord always crowds her thoughts, so in the mornings she’s either gone or she’s absolutely scathing.

badly :•) i’ll say i don’t think either of them are the type to full stop say i’m not doing this anymore/i can’t do this anymore or even i need a break because they’re both 1) tenaciously loyal and 2) have #abandonmentissues BUT i could see some sort of misunderstanding or miscommunication occurring early on in their relationship that would leave them feeling like their budding connection was in jeopardy or the other didn’t want to be with them anymore. maybe tamlin getting angry about something and not handling it well—either with something she’s done directly or misattributing his anger with something else onto her—and withdrawing because He Will Always Be This. alt maybe iphigenia withdrawing into herself because she thinks tamlin has eyes for a lady or overhears someone advising him to seriously pursue a bride, which is of course code for stop trifling with an autumn female, and tamlin assuming she’s grown tired of him. maybe even something where lines get blurred sexually and tamlin feels like he’s taken advantage of her and pulls away and she doesn’t understand what she’s done wrong and panics.

no matter what i think they’re both doomspiraling. tamlin is prone to self-isolating when his emotions are heightened so he probably fucks off into the woods in his beast form for a while to fend off his thorny self-injurous thoughts. iphigenia tends to spool out her thoughts a lot but can’t stomach the feelings and emotions that arise from them whatsoever, so she’s Desperately trying to fill her time and out-busy her brain. they’re both assailed with some flavor of: of course they don’t want me, i’m undeserving, i did what i always do and it disgusted/hurt them, i’m too angry—too rotten—too heavy-handed—too weak-willed—too little—too much. it’s probably their first interpersonal fight so they aren’t attuned yet to how the other copes/what the other needs by way of comfort, so they’re both Especially volatile and vulnerable. his physical avoidance makes her feel like he doesn’t want to be around her. her willful preoccupation of her time makes him feel like she isn’t as bothered as he is.

thankfully ! neither are the sort to be spiteful in a situation like this. they both do have the capacity to move spitefully when upset—we see it with tamlin at the high lords meeting after he’s been duped, hurt, and betrayed, and genia’s not at all above being petty or lashing out—but in a place of sadness and hurt and vulnerability where they care about the other person, neither is going to like . go try to fuck someone else or make an irreparably nasty comment or anything. i think most likely genia tries to anxious attachment style profusely apologize or maybe tries to have sex with him about it, the latter of which is usually tamlin’s go-to—foster intimacy and closeness physically to avoid emotional discomfort, then maaaybe in the aftermath touch on that issue he’s been avoiding. but that won’t work with iphigenia! tamlin is too good of a male. he wants to fuck her every single time she Uses Her Training On Him, but he sees it for what it is: a fawn response to survive beron. he simply won’t take advantage of that. it doesn’t even occur to him to.

which means, now that she’s made an effort, he has to use his words. which is hard for him! and it’s hard for her too! obviously!but if he doesn’t—if he resorts to old patterns and tries to have sex about it and ignore it until it goes away but doesn’t really go away—then he actively hurts her. and no matter what he thinks about himself post-feyre, he’s not the guy who actively hurts people. so he tries. clumsily. the way i spoke to you— or you—wouldn’t talk to me or you didn’t want to. gets frustrated with himself. gets angry with himself, then visibly deflates. but genia isn’t afraid of his anger by this point. nothing ever comes of it. and the fact that he’s speaking to her, a conversation, like her high lord never afforded her, is so incredibly heartening. it bothered me not at all how you spoke to me, she says. but how you left me alone after. or a tart, no. i thought i best to allow you your space to court a wife. or ? i did want to. for you. with you.

this is probably best case scenario though. say like—an advisor encourages tamlin to seek a wife. the advisor arranges a ball or a presentation of marriagable ladies of some sort. tamlin, thinking he has no opportunity with iphigenia, attends and participates but is down bad thinking about her the whole time. she’s uhhhhhhhh well . she’s crashing out. she’s literally showing up already drunk because her thoughts were cacophonous spinning out his future with someone else and nothing would quiet them but the eventual drink deryn pressed into her hand, and honestly truly she’s behaving perfectly proper and courtly to any onlookers—except to tamlin, who can tell she’s drunk by the way her lashes are lowered and pissedt by the set of her mouth and why is she leaning so close to that male why is she smiling up at him like that why is she letting him put his hand on her waist even though tamlin can Smell the abrupt jolt of her fear why is that fear turning to arousal—

what can be said in defense of the rabbit who does not flee, who does not even freeze—but instead forces her way between the jaws of the wolf and prays he will eat gently of her brazenness? [ . . . ] in defense of the rabbit: the wolf, with its thick fur and generous tongue, eats always more tenderly than the viper.

oh baby baby this comes up in renascence! i’m going to be so brave and write canon characters i have no voice for but i will be safe in the limited pov of iphigenia so i will not crash out<3

but generally speaking—not well! as azriel’s spies report spring’s borders being better defended, towns rebuilding, intercourt trade picking back up, feysand are both like 🤨 it isn’t long after that word of the autumn female comes, then that they arrange to get more information about her/even arrange to see her. because they don’t trust her, of course! she must be a spy, a ploy, a honeypot. they don’t trust tamlin either. is he mistreating her? is he suffocating her like he suffocated feyre? but then … nope! they just love each other. they’re just mindful with each other; they just move forward informed by regrets of the past so they don’t repeat old cycles but instead navigate new ones together. their journeys just came at the perfect time to heal one another—and with themselves, the spring court as well.

feyre especially has feelings of like—why was i not worth trying for in that way? why could he not have been that for me? tough thing to share with your mate who you’re happy with, so i think it goes largely unspoken between feysand, but they share a brain so rhys obviously Knows. they naturally have sex about it. for rhys i think it’s more the homoerotic resentment that comes of tamlin moving on finding happiness after what was done to feyre + to his family. it makes rhys feel good when tamlin is suffering—it makes him feel like the better male. it’s hard to maintain a better-than posturing when your opp is a golden adonis with flowers sighing his name and his new female is 1) so otherworldly beautiful she caught the eye of not one but two high lords 2) a match for any verbal/intellectual sparring thrown her way 3) just as ready to post up on behalf of her mans as he is for her

i also feel like most of the courts are willing to accept tamlin back into the fold far easier than they were with rhysand. not autumn or night obviously but definitely summer (tarquin is pragmatic with a good heart) and winter (if nothing else, kallias hates night so much as to treat with tamlin just to spite rhysand)—a little tougher in dawn (Neutral Court™ might look down on tamlin going undercover with hybern?) and day (secret ally with night) but not impossible by any means. they know tamlin was put into an impossible situation by amarantha and there are still resentments, especially about his subsequent crashout, but they also know tamlin is a good male—was a fair ruler—could be both again. genia being of autumn raises some brows and some suspicions (lying with the enemy again, tamlin? kallias drawls. tamlin would have foregone the entire meeting had iphigenia not surreptitiously touched his forearm and said, those are more the dealings of the solar courts, are they not, high lord?) but with this DIME PIECE at his side things go much more smoothly. so there’s definitely resentment there as well from rhys. how quickly everyone forgets what he’s done, he murmurs to feyre. she says, we haven’t. we won’t. meanwhile they’re still facing opposition and suspicion and even outright hostility for his 500 years worth of Evil Guy masking + utm activities.