#tdod

I have decided that re-uploading /The Betrayer/ is unnecessary at this time but have added the Intertwine chapters spanning "The Debt" to "The Quill is Mightier..." to their rightful positions.

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“Nevermind!” Hope interrupted whatever else Aphrodite might have to say. “I’m leaving this place. I’m not afraid of a mere mortal. And I’m big enough to face that warrior-witch now! I’ll do it myself!”

The goddess slapped a hand over her own mouth to stifle a guffaw. “You’re big, huh? …Ha!” she burst out anyway. “You have the same little-dog attitude your mother does! Oh, you two are too-”

Hope’s hunger hit her in a sudden, all-encompassing pang, and she threw herself at Aphrodite just as Gabrielle had the night she gave Hope up. “What’s she like, Aphrodite? Don’t just tell me anymore! Show me!”

And in another echo of that night, the goddess sighed and put a hand over searching, imploring eyes. “Fine.”

A slideshow of some of Aphrodite’s favorite iterations of Gabrielle revealed themselves to Hope. The recklessly brave young girl tricking a cyclops and bossing around Titans; the dork whacking herself in the head with a quarterstaff in Amazonia, then playing a pan flute while doing a goofy jig alongside Xena and Argo, later conducting a chorus of stalagmites; the little hothead telling off the ex-Destroyer of Nations multiple times, whacking Joxer countless times, and uselessly trying to put the pinch on a barman; the reverent meeting Aphrodite for the first time; the sweetheart reassuring and soothing people wherever she went; all the characters contained in the same small person whom Aphrodite had come to adore flickered and danced in the darkness of the goddess’s cupped palm.

“So, anyway-”

“More!” Hope commanded, wrenching the goddess’s gauzy shawl in her fists and making Aphrodite nearly fall, desperate to be closer to Gabrielle.

/

“H-hey, kiddo. Rough night?” Aphrodite was partway through asking when the bard whipped around at her touch, took her in for a tenth of a second, and then squeezed her tight, sobbing into her neck and inner shoulder. “Oh, sweet pea,” she breathed past the forming lump in her own throat. Her curly head rested against a silky one while one of her hands lifted to pet the girl’s honey-blond tresses for several minutes. “Woke up and realized you were stuck with us, huh? I hate when that happens!” A true grin spread across her lovely face when Gabrielle stopped crying so hard and began to chuckle ruefully.

“Yeah, realizing I might be stuck with y- Ares for the rest of my life is not a happy thought, you know?”

“No kidding! Imagine having to live with the big meanie for a thousand years like I have. That’ll really wreck your day!”

The pair laughed hollowly some more. Words abandoned them all too soon, however, as each struggled over whether to say more or nothing at all.

When Aphrodite could not stand the awkward silence any longer, she declared, “Well, let’s try to get back to sleep, yeah? Maybe we’ll wake up, and this’ll all just be a bad dream.”

“Yeah…” Gabrielle agreed. “…Yeah.” But she did not move from the spot or extricate herself from Aphrodite in the slightest.

yes!!! I’m going to do it as long as people send me words! ✨😌 and I swear to GOD I’m gonna reveal all of these titles soon. that way people know what stories I’m talking about without me having to vaguely describe them 🤦🏼‍♀️

“hunt” — CotN sequel:

Then, Carlisle eyed her. “If you’re volunteering to return to the field after this trip, you better call Emmett up and tell him to swing Josie around here.” Then, he smiled. “That way you can see her before you’re gone for a bit.”

“Already ahead of you,” she smirked, “I texted him an hour ago. Their movie doesn’t let out for another twelve minutes. They’ll be here around eight.”

“Leaves me with just enough time for a hunt,” Carlisle seemed pleased at the information. Alice knew that the man barely had the time to go on hunts now. “Either of you willing to join me?”

Jasper nodded absently, his eyes meeting Alice’s. At her responding blank stare he raised an eyebrow. “Coming?”

“light” — reylo fix-it fic

The woman looks like she wants to say something, but in seconds she’s gone. Rey blinks and it feels like she was never there to begin with. And maybe she wasn’t. Rey’s no stranger to the things the desert can do to your psyche. And if she is starting to go crazy it would only make sense.

Lifting her arms she pulls at the force, not even knowing what she’s reaching for. She pulls and pushes just to experience what it feels like again after so many months of small gestures and light touches between the force. She can hear the vaporators in the distance all groan in unison as she manipulates the force around them.

“safe” — human jalice AU

“Thanks,” Jasper grumbled, still feeling too awkward about this entire thing to really look back at him.

“And please, please be careful,” he cleared his throat softly, shuffling on his feet. “I mean, make sure to be safe. Use protection, and please get—“

“Carlisle,” Jasper had to interrupt before he burst with acute embarrassment, “it’s not like that.”

The man didn’t waver. “That’s what your sister said the first time we let Emmett stay over.” He didn’t need to elaborate there. Especially since Jasper had been the one to walk in on them back when they were eighteen and Rose had insisted she and the boy visiting from school were ‘just friends.’

This was different though.

“laugh” — the death of dusk

As Bella made her way out of the door, a producer stepped into the room directly after her, “Don’t go too far!” The man called after her retreating form. “We take the stage in five minutes!”

Bella simply snapped her fingers and held a thumbs-up over her head. Jasper grinned at the nonchalant gesture and the producers subsequent exasperation.

“We’re coming now,” Esme nodded. “Let me just double check everyone.” The words were more muttered to herself than to the producer. Reaching up, she adjusted another piece of hair on Jasper’s head and he had to bite back the urge to laugh. He was positive that he looked exactly the same, but whatever helped make Esme feel ready, he would go along with.

“No! Hope!” Just as she had leapt into the fray to stop Meridian from killing Khrafstar, Gabrielle used her staff to pole-vault herself to Xena and Hope.

“Well, you get this clear, Xena. No matter what she is, she is my daughter. Don’t come between us…”

But rather than take out a doomed aggressor, she charged the supposed victim. But in that move, she once again snatched her baby away from her best friend’s deadly intent. Screaming Xena’s name, she tumbled with her child into the lava pit.

/

Hope erupted from magma an hour after her mother tackled her into it.

Only one living thing remained in her father’s darkened temple. The lump curled up on the floor between the chasms stirred weakly. Black fury marred its face when its fluttering eyelashes snapped apart. Jumping and contorting into a crouching position, Seraphin prepared herself to kill her childhood friend.

Hope sent the mortal away with a flick of the wrist the second the zealot leapt up to shove her back to her death. “Peace, priestess,” the daughter of darkness muttered.

“Goddess!” Seraphin cried, instantly lighting up where she lay in a heap on the floor, a smear of blood from her side creating a trail to her. She again shot to her feet and then further jumped for joy. “I knew the betrayer couldn’t finish you!”

“Yeah, betrayer,” Hope agreed dully. Her face slumped into her hands as she released a weary sigh.

/

The swoop in her stomach told Gabrielle that she was still falling to her doom, her daughter no longer in her arms.

But her feet were on hard ground. Slippery-with-the-dew-so-often-found-in-the-forests-of-Britannia ground, but hard ground nonetheless. British foliage surrounded her.

Apart from her, Xena and the person the bard had been several months ago sat around a campfire eating quietly.

Much sooner than she usually would, Past Gabrielle stopped. The spoon she had brought to her lips hovered in the air for a moment; the next, it fell into her bowl which too fell to the dark earth.

Xena once more took up the unfamiliar role of trying to strike up conversation. “That bad, huh? Let’s just go with what we were talking about before and leave the cooking up to you from now on, hmm?”

Her friend nodded listlessly.

Xena sighed. “I’ll clean up. Why don’t you go lay down and get some rest? May-” One of her hands dropped her own bowl to grab Gabrielle’s as the girl pressed past her. “It will get better, little one. I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but it will. Pr-”

A shadow of a smile tugged at the bard’s mouth though a cramp pinched in her cheek. Too, she pressed her fingers over lying lips, not wanting to hear another promise that would soon be broken. “Good night, Xena,” she said, the first thing she’d uttered since echoing the warrior’s own words back to her about the results of becoming a killer. Her hand very briefly caressed her friend’s cheek but fell before the woman could hold it to her face. Gabrielle trudged the few paces away to their bedrolls and collapsed onto them without waiting to hear a return greeting.

The Gabrielle unnecessarily hiding in the bushes watched as light blue eyes filled with tears until the warrior had to close them.

The pale face they were set in lost more color. And as the life drained from Xena, her lips began to move again.

For the first time ever, Gabrielle witnessed her friend pray over her, her light and spirit, a second time. Too bad they’d already been squelched, the bard thought dully.

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Guess what! I just thought of another theory and related story idea that might fix all the major plot points I’ve been so concerned about and held back by all this time with my fic series. Yaaaaay!!!

Ladies, celebrate + get back to work with me!!! 😀 / 😝 ...I’ll, uh, follow in a minute. haha

“Hope! What’s happened?” the blond goddess asked more loudly, sassily once she found her quarry.

Hope grunted. “That half-assed old man! He caught me coming for Solan.” Attempting to exploit the immortal same as she had done to her mother, she played up her own pitifulness. A beseeching look on her sweet face and small hand reaching out, she wordlessly asked for help.

Callisto was nothing like Gabrielle. “So, you had to kill him,” she said in her own version of a taunting sing-song. “And look what it’s done to you; weak as a little kitten. Which means, Solan; is mine!” Or she was exactly like Dahak’s chosen one.

Anguish surged through Hope at the sight of another woman walking out on her. Even worse, she was once again unable to stop it from happening. “No! You have to get me out of here!” she tried to speak Callisto’s language both orally and nonverbally, her facial expression and tone imitating combative threat as best she could in her drained state.

But it didn’t work. Amused and disbelieving, the blonde once more turned to leave.

—

The bard watched the haunted warrior numbly stumble toward the place where her son would be waiting for her. Gabrielle couldn’t face the boy. And she had her own searching to do. Wanting both to find her own child and to never see the girl again, she tore through the village, sidestepping the guest hut until she could avoid it no longer. “Fayla!” she shouted, the false name Hope had given her leaving a bitter taste in her mouth, and threw open the door to the place where she had told her daughter to wait for her.

It was empty.

Hazily, Gabrielle again envisioned herself as Pandora with a broken box. And a second time, she knew that hope had not been left to her, was not hers to keep.

—

Deciding not to call her child out on her lies and manipulation, the young mother dully mused, “You… knew Solan’s name, Hope. There’s no way-”

“Yes, there is! Xena and the centaur said it right in front of me! You even pulled out a chair to give me a front-row seat to that conversation! Don’t you remember? How do you think I knew to go to the Ixion caves to-” Hope gasped.

Gabrielle felt her own life drain away yet again with the unnecessary admission. “You killed Kaleipus, didn’t you? Didn’t you?” Unable to shake or strangle her daughter, she dug her fingernails into the girl’s clothing.

Her child sniffled, losing hope too. “I had to, mommy. He found me.” Her hollow tone hurt her mother even more than the truth did.

“Because you were there to kill Solan.” Again, tears fell down the bard’s bowed face onto her baby’s. “Oh, Hope… How could you?” How could I?

“I’m sorry, mommy,” the girl whined petulantly. Then she remembered her rage, which gave her another fleeting spurt of strength. “But Xena deserved it! She took you from me! Father’s let me see! It’s only fair that she suffer like we did! I hate her, mommy! I’d kill her son again if I could, and her too!”

Gabrielle stared into the setting sun, blinded by the light and getting lost in darkness. Bleakly, she realized her old lie had come true.

“It’s- beautiful expression of sweetness just turned into this, this hateful snarl and; and it was like looking into evil itself.”

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idek what chapter this is tbh

happy Monday yall! I won’t be posting this anywhere else but here for several months (or at least until I write more between this story and WitD) but since it’s been a while since you got any fun Jasper POV stuff, I figured y’alls patience deserves some reward 💖

It always amused him whenever they had to do something like this. Human production companies typically never had any clue what to put in the green rooms. Where human guests would get theirs filled with snacks and overly-expensive drinks, they usually just filled theirs with extravagant flower bouquets. 

It was a nice enough gesture, but some days the flowers stank. And today was one of those days.

Of course, it had been the first thing Rosalie had complained about, nice and loudly for a few of the PA’s to hear—and subsequently shoot each other panicked looks about—then, after she’d realized there was only one bathroom in the room, she’d gathered up her bag and made for the hallway, declaring that she’d just get ready in the hall bathroom.

No matter what uncertainties lay ahead for the remainder of their afternoon taping, Jasper could always count of Rosalie to dial up the dramatics when it came to public appearances.

Esme had assured the two young women that the flowers were lovely and had thanked them profusely. She and Carlisle had shown up ready, as had he and Edward. But Rosalie had rolled her eyes at the whole lot of them.

“The whole idea is to show up wearing something different than what you’ll be recorded in, change upon arrival into the real show-stopper, and then change into something else on the way out.”

“Babe, you are the show-stopper.”

Edward had rolled his eyes and gagged audibly as he scrolled through the TV stations across the room. Eventually he’d settled on some local newscast and he and Esme had been watching the local weather report for several minutes now.

He quickly busied himself with the random piles of reading material left for them on the coffee table in the middle of the room. 

Ever since he learned what gossip magazines were he’d learned to despise them with his whole and entire being, but that didn’t mean he would let himself go unaware of what the general public was saying about himself or his fellow Protectors.

The PAs must’ve vetted these, though. Because there was nothing bad written about any of them in any of the glossy publications he thumbed through.

“Light reading?” Carlisle asked, amused as he went to pick up a magazine of his own.

“Of course,” letting the final one flop back onto the table, he straightened up, eyeing the clock on the far wall. Noting the absence of the production team, he turned toward the older man. “You know they’re going to lose it when they aren’t allowed to ask questions.”

Carlisle grimaced as he inhaled. “Yeah, I know. We’ll get out of here swiftly.”

“And not give Rosalie enough time for her third outfit?”

Carlisle cracked a smile at that. “I’ll apologize back at the house.”

“I was going to give everyone a run-down but,” he turned and also glanced at the clock, “it looks like we might run out of time to adequately do that.”

“It’s nothing that we don’t all know.”

“Alice, too?”

Carlisle was silent at that. “It’ll be okay.”

“She’s not known for reacting lightly.”

“It will be okay,” he spoke again, a bit firmer this time. Jasper wanted to roll his eyes. Optimism was no match for a 4’10 emotional hurricane, but he’d let his comrade believe whatever he wanted. He was the one giving the speech. Let him deal with it.