#castillon replies

Hi aullier! It is totally still open to join, thanks for asking! There's an invite link here: https://join.slack.com/t/00qchat/shared_invite/zt-wh2x79hx-xXrY91DLMQIn0WdEHOjg0w

“Are you all right?” he asked. Bond had finished up three days ago but hadn’t checked in; not unusual for him. Q gave him a more careful once-over than he had before, but didn’t see anything new. “Did something happen on your mission?” 

“You wouldn’t know, would you?” Bond asked, pushing into Q’s space, his eyes frigid. “Been a bit busy on your vengeance spree. And even if you did know, what would you do about it? Hopefully not what you did for—.” 

“I would do exactly what I did for 001,” Q interrupted. “I would do my best.” He met Bond stare for stare but could not bring himself to broaden his own stance, to bring his shoulders up, to meet Bond’s apparent anger with his own. He had none left to give. “That’s all I have to offer,” he added. “Just like anyone.” He looked away then. Although not quite a lie, it was not quite the truth either. He hadn’t realized—hadn’t even contemplated…and so he had lost 001 before he’d been aware that he had him.        

But he could take steps to prevent it from happening again, he thought, looking at Bond’s flushed, angry face only inches away from his own. He could start right now. Physical closeness, that was the key. 

“I read all of the mission reports, Mr. Managed-to-Only-Blow-Up-A-Single-Managuan-Dockyard,” Q said, “and if the effort of not blowing things up still has you too tired to find a hotel, then you can have half of the bed so long as you promise not to molest me. I have a king-size.”  

“I see,” Bond said. His face and voice had gone the kind of suavely blank that tended to indicate total incomprehension in experienced agents. 

 “Well, I have the space and the salary for it, so I thought, why not? It’s important to make sure you sleep right when you get to sleep at all,” Q said. He managed a small smile. “So, if you could, er…” He inched toward an edge where Bond wasn’t boxing him in quite so closely. 

Bond stepped back a few feet. “I think I can promise not to molest you,” he said with a wry twist of his mouth.  

 “I am amazed at this unheard-of feat of self-control,” Q informed him. 

@midrashic My 00Q white whale, which I have some scenes and a vague outline for, is the one where Q is psychic in a very specific kind of way: if he touches something (or someone) often enough, then he always knows where they are. He goes through life limiting himself to handshakes, not wanting to be too invasive, and he locates his agents via their equipment, all of which he’s personally assembled so that he can track it. 

Then 001 goes missing, his equipment dumped far away from his body, and they’ve done something---physically destroyed him thoroughly enough, maybe---so that Q can’t find him. Q doesn’t take this well. He resolves to figure out how to get physical with his agents without getting physical with his agents, because he’s responsible for their safety and he owes them every advantage they can get, including whatever quasi-mystical GPS bullshit he was born with. 

One of the 00s gives him dance lessons. Another teaches him self-defense. Anything that involves physical contact. It’s a whole thing. And while Q is putting himself extremely out of his comfort zone in the name of what he calls ‘increased interdepartmental cohesion,’ the 00s are trying to figure out their new, apparently-mental quartermaster. At least his methods, however bizarre, seem founded in loyalty. And they haven’t failed yet, which is enough for them to get on with.  

The mule’s short and stocky, her thick dun coat lightening to cream underneath her round belly and at the tip of the snout she’s got buried in a patch of chickweed. Her legs go dark as mud from knees to hooves, like she’s wearing hose, and if that weren’t enough of a give-away, she’s facing away from him, showing off the unmistakable erect mane of a Kaedweni wild horse. Crossed with a donkey? She must have been bred for stubbornness. 

Her back also shows scars from a lash, which makes Lambert even smugger about knifing the pissants who’d had her before. Only now he’s left with a dilemma: take her to his bastard castle or set her loose? 

“You’re tough, right?” he mutters at the mule. She’s sturdy. Maybe she can handle herself. 

Her big, goofy ears don’t even twitch at the sound of his voice.

Lambert frowns. But. Could be nothing. Could be a mule accustomed to conversation. He claps his hands, loud, to check. 

No reaction. 

He’s about to be back at his roost for winter, plenty of time to make more, so for a final test he pulls a banger out of the pack on his back and tosses it behind him. It explodes in a burst of bright light and loud noise, mostly harmless but good for distractions or scaring off unwanted animals. Horses in particular tend to bolt. 

The mule keeps chewing contentedly. She’s stone cold deaf, no way around it. 

A lump of dread builds in Lambert’s belly. Even a little old lynx could bring her down if she were facing the wrong direction. “Fuck,” he says. He’s not going to leave her here. 

Thank you for asking, @ivydrift! This one is about how Lambert absolutely Will Not take a mount on the path, for moral reasons of refusing to drag another creature into a monster-hunting lifestyle that will get it killed, but also for personal reasons of thinking that if he’s responsible for something’s life then he’ll inevitably fuck it up.

Then Lambert kills some bandits near Kaer Morhen, finds their deaf mule around a corner, and gets to have a stubborn little equine companion over the winter. As a treat, even if he doesn’t realize it yet. 

Thanks for the asks, @sunaddicted​, @greyduckgreygoose​, @yoursummerfrost​! 

When he finally wound his way up the apiary stairs, the silence gaped at him, noticeable now that he had his ears pricked for it. The invaders hadn’t made it this far, but when he opened the door, the skeps lay as still and empty inside as if they had. No bees left to buzz. They had gone. Left out the open window. 

Barmin’s honey jar sat half-open near his rocking chair, the wooden dipper tilted under the lid as though waiting for him to come back for a lick or two.

“Beekeeper’s privilege,” Barmin had always said. 

“Century-club privilege,” Vesemir had sometimes rejoined when he was feeling his age more than usual, and Barmin had let him have a fingerful off of the dipper.

It’s a story about Vesemir after the sacking of Kaer Morhen, trying to figure out what to do with himself now that he’s the only surviving teacher at a school with no new students. What should he be trying to hold onto, and what should he learn to let go of? 

Eventually, he calls the Law of Surprise on the Path and it gives him bees instead of boys, a hive that’s split and swarmed as it looks for a new place to live, which is a helpful hint for a stubborn wolf like him! 

That emphasis on choice, on Doing the Work to care for and value the people you love, is absolutely what I hope to convey in my Witcher writing, and it makes me so happy to hear that you're getting those things from those stories!

The good bits of Elementary's Joan and Sherlock are definitely goals as far as that kind of relationship goes. Those characters have such a strong foundation of mutual respect and care and their own unique ways of showing it. <3

Yeah, I wondered about that---how much are the grown Witchers separated from the trainees? How many lies are told during their schooling? 

Maybe the trainees see the Witchers coming back from the Path looking indescribably tired, faces like stone, and they think, “That’s what happens when you fight monsters.” And maybe they don’t think that humans are going to be among those monsters. 

At the same time, all it would take is one Witcher getting the word out to trainees about The Real World, and it would never be a secret again. (Or one kid, like Lambert, brought in old enough to have seen shit firsthand.) One trainee hearing a Witcher snark about the wound that he took from a pitchfork’s tines instead of a katakan’s claws. Could the reality of Witchering really be kept from curious young boys in such a small community? Even if people tried to keep it from them (out of practicality, or misguided kindness, or cruelty) things leak.  

Maybe the idea of heroism is one of those coping mechanisms that some kids latch onto and others never put any stock in.