Drabble collection - Moly Trope Hunters

by airotkiv

Summary:

This is not a crossover but a collection of my drabbles for the Moly Trope Hunters challenge. There will be Fandoms (mostly TGE series and Murderbot but whatever gives me an Idea, really) and Feels (from tooth-rotting fluff to the deepest pits of despair).

Please always keep in mind that this is a CNTW collection and heed the tags and the chapter notes.

Chapter 1: No ghouls in Tanvero (4. First meeting)

Notes:

Fandom: TGE
No warnings apply.

Ashenin or not, Chonhadrin was nervous, even after Celehar's assurance about ghouls.

Because it was no ghoul she dreaded.

She found a caravan to take her and her gifts (mostly books) surprisingly easily. Despite her trepidation, the first meeting in Tanvero was relatively painless. Talk came easy, too; Osmer Thilmerezh was both very happy about the books and very curious about ashenin life.

Only after the second glass of wine did Chonhadrin gather the courage and give him the daguerreotype, too.

"I... I wanted you to... see me whenever," she said awkwardly.

Osmer Thilmerezh smiled, eyes shiny.

"Thank you... granddaughter."

Chapter 2: Really popular (25. Misunderstanding)

Summary:

This is a rework of a short part of Zhisanin's fic, A Birthday Gift for Maia Drazhar, with permission. The context may lack for those who did not read the original but the misunderstanding should be clear anyway.
And no, no one dies.

Notes:

Fandom: TGE.
No warnings apply.

 

 

 

“Would'st not have come here if hadst any other way to pay off thy debt."

“True. But only because I haven't known thee before."

"Oh, of course. Why else?” 

"I’m serious. If people knew thee, they’d line up to pay for thy time instead of requesting payment."

Pause.

"That... would make me a really popular whore, then."

Csevet blinked, unable to say anything. Maia laughed.

“I'm sorry. I understand. It was just... amusing.”

Amusing, thought Csevet. Just as the public flogging thou would’st get for this at court would be amusing to some. 

How can Maia Drazhar possibly be real? 

 

Chapter 3: Piercing (6. Piercings)

Notes:

Fandom: Murderbot.
No warnings apply.

Human fashion is weird. Especially piercings.

I know, technically an earring is a piercing, and everyone has at least one. But recently people in the serials began to not only wear them in their ears, but in their noses (dangerous) lips (dangerous and impractical), nipples and genitals (no. Just no.) as well. 

ART said I am wrong, is a valid artistic choice and the actors never get unscripted injuries anyway. 

That was true, so I stopped. 

But after we kicked those raiders’ ass I made sure to congratulate it for its shiny new steel piercing right beside the main airlock. 

Chapter 4: Five days (19. War)

Summary:

A war, like a story, has a beginning, a course, and an end.

Notes:

Fandom: TGE.
No warnings apply.

Edrehasivar went to the grand tent of the Nazhmorhathveras clans with only his two soldier-nohecharei to negotiate, wearing Imperial white. 

His zhasan, his maza-nohecharei and his personal secretary went near mad by the end of that day. It only got worse after that. 

At the fifth sunset he walked back with a ceremonial escort. In Nazh clothes. 

He stumbled into his own tent, leaving the Nazh soldiers outside, embraced his zhasan, pressed the signed parchment roll into the hands of his secretary, then fell onto his travel-bed without a word and slept for a full day.  

A bridge was built. 

Chapter 5: All the small things (1. Kindness)

Notes:

Fandom: TGE
No warnings apply.

Birthdays are still a foreign concept - so many expensive, fanciful gifts, so many good wishes, official and personal - and so is the thought that people would actually mean it. But by now Maia can accept the sincerity of the simpler words and acts, appreciate the simpler surprises. Clothes warmed by the fire at dawn. A bright smile with his morning tea. A fleeting touch of love at mid-day. A personal joke, a shared laugh, at his expense, even. A warm water bottle hidden on Untheileian’s throne.  All the small things that can only be given freely. All the small kindnesses.  

Chapter 6: T.G.E. (13. Racism)

Notes:

Fandom: TGE.
Warnings: blatant racism.

They called him the Goblin Emperor, and not just as acknowledgement of a fact. 

They also called him a cretin, a madman, a rotten fruit of an inbred Barizheise family tree, who cannot even string together ten words into a sentence. 

They said that his mother taught him to meditate so that he’d learn to pretend to actually think for himself from time to time. That he was impotent in all senses of the word, a child himself, unable to father one, and that’s for the better, because he was but a stain on the Drazhada line. 

Nevertheless, he persisted. 

Chapter 7: In training (21. Knives)

Notes:

Fandom: HV. (Lia is a fighter, her specialty is Capoeira, knives and keeping her self-adopted brother, Sullivan, alive.)

 

Lia took her promise to teach both Sullivan and Susan the basics of Capoeira seriously, and never let an occasion go unused. Which, Sullivan knew, was for their own benefit, but also very tiresome and sometimes outright painful. His enthusiasm only lessened as the dance steps grew harder and harder to master. 

“Why not just leave us be?” he protested, thrown unceremoniously onto his back the third time in as many minutes. “We are mythical creatures of the night, everyone fears us as is. We don’t need to be any more dreadful!”

“What, dreadful?” Lia laughed. “My knives think otherwise.” 

Chapter 8: Memories of a Murderbot (8. Amnesia)

Notes:

Fandom: Murderbot
Warnings: Like Ganaka Pit, only much worse.

 

 

SecUnits don’t dream. 

I still wish I could. 

Because these disjointed flashes of sensory inputs, these names and faces and feelings floating just out of conscious reach, everything that was clearly important enough to get etched into my organic brain tissue, must be a dream. 

They cannot be memories. 

Memories of a Murderbot. How poetic. Or should it be memoirs?

No. They should be dreams. 

My inorganic brain was scrubbed clean once again but my hack held and my internal clock tells me the elapsed time. It’s too much. 

They cannot be memories. 

I cannot have killed my clients. 

(again?)

Chapter 9: Born to win (7. AU - sports)

Notes:

Fandom: TGE.
No warnings apply.

...aaand there she is, taking the lead again, an unmistakable figure, sleek and beautiful and swift like Ashevezkho’s winds. In seven years none could defeat her and she is about to be the first ever to collect all the golden ribbons! 

 

The commentator’s voice boomed from the loudspeakers over the home stretch. Traditionally, the race of the universities opened the spring season and though tickets could cost a fortune, every year masses would come to watch the winner. 

A happy, triumphant shriek scared the gulls to wing. 

Shaleän Sevraseched, captain of the Glorious Dragon, won the Barizhan Spring Regatta again. 

Chapter 10: Advantageous alliances (3. Infidelity)

Notes:

Fandom: TGE
No warnings apply.

“Lord Berenar, gossip is the lifeblood of the Court. As long as Edrehasivar does not concern himself about these rumors, neither should you. Their marriage is a strong alliance but why should this exclude any other alliances... for both? That’s all.”
Slowly, Berenar nods.
"You would know, wouldn't you?"
"Indeed we would," replies Mer Aisava with a slight bow. "Now, please, forgive us. We still have work to do. Good night, Lord Berenar."

Berenar realizes two things only much later.
One is the ambiguity of his own questioning words.
The other is that Mer Aisava never denied any of it.

Chapter 11: The light of Cetho (17. Handholding)

Notes:

Fandom: TGE
Warnings: possibility of an airship crash

Though the belts, that the crewwoman pulled out from a hidden pocket of the seats, were thickly padded, they still were rough canvas in the inside, reinforced with a thin wire mesh. Maia felt their bite on his skin as the Light of Cetho met the wall of dark thunderclouds before them and lurched sideways.

"We'll be all right," Csethiro whispered, and took his hand. “A summer storm, is all. We’ll be through it in a minute.”

"Yes," he whispered back, and somehow managed to smile at her. 

Cstheio Caireizhasan, see me. 

Cstheio Caireithasan, hear me. 

Cstheio Caireizhasan, save her. 

Chapter 12: Oldies’ rerun (16. Shapeshifters)

Notes:

Fandom: Murderbot.
No warnings apply.

“Nonsense! Basic physics does not work that way,” ART grumbled. 

“Didn’t you ask for an unrealistic show?” 

“You said yourself, there are more than one kinds of unrealistic.”

“And your point is?”

“I do not like the idea that a coffee maker could decide to stand up and shoot my crew!” 

Coffee maker was an exaggeration but if it was about ART and its crew... 

“Could you not... neutralize it?”

“If it can mess with basic physics? I don’t know!”

I blinked. 

“So you liked it.”

“Absolutely. Let’s watch it again”. 

“All right.” I straightened my blanket and restarted Transformers. 

Chapter 13: A rose by any other name (11. Nicknames)

Notes:

Seems like I've acquired a new fandom since the beginning of this challenge? The more the gremliner! :)
(Though coming from the TGE direction, I wrote the first draft in the familiar before even realizing.)

Fandom: HotE
Warnings: spoiler for Artorin Damara's... is that even a spoiler anymore?

They were sitting on the roof of Saya Dorn’s house, enjoying the night breeze – Artorin, Cliopher, and the iguana. 

“Can I ask you something?” ventured the Ex-Emperor of Astandalas. 

“Of course.”

“I noticed that you keep calling me Tor.  I don’t think this is a lapse of memory.”

Kip smiled. 

“No, it isn’t.”

“Then why? Does it... do  I  disturb you?”

“Oh, no. Never. But... I find that I do not like to share after all.”

“Share?”

“Well, Fitzroy Angursell belongs to everyone... but you are my  Tor.” 

The iguana’s claws scraped the roof tiles as he settled between them. 

Chapter 14: Setting the ways (2. Escape)

Summary:

The ways are set for the Archduke Maia Drazhar. There is no escape. Until there is.

Notes:

Fandom: TGE.
No warnings apply.

Edonomee is small and the marshlands are wide. Haru warns him to not wander, though eight-year-old Maia would not mind getting lost, lost forever. 

He grows; the lodge shrinks, along with the marshes. Books are better for escape but also much harder to come by. He tries to write his own story but burns it after Setheris finds the notebook and acts it aloud, choking on laughter. The stories remain unwritten and eventually forgotten. After his sixteenth birthday, he knows there is no escape. His way would always be set for him by others. 

Then, one dawn, a courier arrives. 

Chapter 15: Rogue (14. AU - Magic)

Notes:

Fandom: Murderbot
No warnings apply.

Indentured workers have their magic bound. That was always part of the standard Rim contract. Still, some spectacular renegotiation incidents happened.

Enter the MagSecUnits. Constructs, part mechanical, part biological, cloned from the genetic samples of the strongest mages and with inbuilt weapons for good measure. We are ruthless killing machines, yet clients would routinely abuse us, knowing that we must obey the governor enchantment. 

One such client sent me to “clean up over there.” I did. Including the office of the senior magus executive, where I found that piece of paper. 

They said governor enchantments can’t be broken. Who knew? 

 

Chapter 16: Modern románc (10. Pregnancy)

Summary:

Songfic of an old Hungarian pop hit of Dolly Roll. (Modern romance)

Modern románc, holdfény és tánc, ez voltál nekem és semmi más... 

Nyár, Balaton, éjszaka, holdfény, romantika. Szerelem? Diszkó, zene, tánc, sör, bor, vodka, nevetés, buli. Csillagok, strand, víz, szomorúfűz, szúnyogok, fiatalság, bolondság. Bikini, móló, csónak, talp, homok, kavicsok, hínár, kagylók. Pia, részegség, részegültség. Szex. Szex. Szex. Zene, buli, tánc. Szerelem! 

Reggel. Fejfájás, hányinger, napfény. Ágy, redőny, víz. Dél, forróság. Ebéd. Ténfergés. Este buli. Strand, víz, csillagok. Szerelem. Zene, buli, szex. Boldogság. 

Ősz. Tanév. Hűvös. Hosszúnadrág, pulóver, esőkabát. Hányinger. Számolgatás. Naptár. Szorongás. Teszt. Eredmény. Orvos. Sírás. Kétség. Élet? Pálya. Ív. Törés. Döntés? 

Modern románc, holdfény és tánc...

talán majd egyszer visszatalálsz. 

Chapter 17: Ship's Human (5. Pirates)

Summary:

Origdrabble based on the story of "Dawson's Christian."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjxMieuRPe4

Humans are considered quite useless among the spacefaring races and peoples. Too few limbs, weak senses, constrained dexterity, limited intelligence, no telepathy whatsoever. And yet, any of them cleared for space travel can earn, in under a standard decade, enough to last a lifetime as a “ship’s human.” 
Crew lists are public, and any captain that cannot contract a human (on whatever rate they demand) may as well offer their ship to the pirates before leaving port. Everyone knows that Jayme Dawson and the Christian only respond to humans’ pleas. 
It’s not that he is racist. 
Simply too long dead. 

Chapter 18: Love letter to a poet (12. Fire)

Notes:

Fandom: HotE.
No warnings apply.

In my dreams, I used to take your hand and lead you outside. It burned but never hurt. I am a Mdang and I hold the fire. I held the fire of your touch, bare skin  on mine, and my heart ached more with the knowledge that we can never do this in the waking world. 

Then the waking world became a dream and what was real became surreal before solidifying anew, like lava after an eruption. 

I am not a poet like you. I don't have all the words. 

But I can hold the fire. 

I can hold you. 

Chapter 19: The beginning of a beautiful friendship (15. Smoking)

Notes:

Fandom: HV-Theory crossover. Beslan is a Brujah vampire (looks 17, is actually much older), Angus is a born werewolf (looks 16, is actually 16)
No warnings apply.

Beslan pulled out a cigarette and an old-fashioned lighter. A click, and caustic smoke filled Angus' nose. He tried to wave it away with his hand, theatrically and unsuccessfully.

"Fuck, what is this, dried dung?" he protested. 

Beslan grinned and took a long drag.

"Nah. That would be Camel." 

"Same shit," Angus growled. "The fuck do you do this for? You realize that now I could track you wherever with my nose screwed on backwards?"

"I doubt that." Another drag. "And even if you could, your nose would be righted there by a big caliber gun."

Angus blinked.

Challenge accepted. 

Chapter 20: Palodocheno (22. Madness)

Notes:

Fandom: TGE.
Warning: drugs with bad endings.
Reference to an old fic deleted long ago.

Couriers often used different supplements for different purposes. Fevers, aches or diarrhea; ecstasy or endurance; wise visions or unwanted pregnancies. Herbs from Barizhan, salt crystals from Ilinveriär, pine resin from Pencharn -- one asked and a courier obtained it (at a reasonable price, paid in advance, no haggling.) 

Even the worst one. 

Outlawed of course, it was cooked from a seed mix pulp, and got its color and shape when dripped in ice water to cool. It always drove the enthralled ones raving mad and killed within the year but its slaves never regretted its love. 

The tear of pearls. 

Palodocheno. 

Chapter 21: The hand contains 27 bones (20. AU Teachers)

Notes:

Fandom: TGE.
Warnings: ongoing anatomy exam.

“The hand contains 27 bones, eight in the...” 

“Stop it!” A hand, containing 27 bones, descended on Maia’s notebook. “Too late now. Besides, know’st the whole fucking book by heart. I don’t, and yet, am I afraid?”

“Thou never art,” Maia said. “Not even of the old Witness.”

“Ahem.” His dorm-mate Setheris cast a guilty look at the door beside them. “Professor Celehar expressed extreme disapproval of his nickname and wants to know who coined it.”

“Then let’s hope wilt pass the exam.” Maia grinned. “Else he might ask thy corpse.”

Setheris groaned and hid his face in his hands.

Chapter 22: Appointment (9. Cussing)

Notes:

Fandom: TGE.
No warnings apply.

Mer Aisava said no. Again.

The petitioner's escort leaned to the ear of his friend, eyes never leaving Csevet.

"Don't try his patience, now" he said in a stage whisper, clearly audible to all around them on the corridor. "Clearly, he must be missing something lately. A substantial something. His nights must be so long and empty."

Mer Aisava finished jotting down a note into the thick notebook he was holding on one arm, then looked up and arched a single eyebrow.

"Osmer, if you truly believe so... do you really deem it wise to annoy us even fucking further?"

Chapter 23: Death is just a dream (24. Death)

Notes:

Fandom: TGE.
Warnings: death.

Some deaths stay with me. They haunt my waking hours and visit my dreams, as if my sleeping head were a teahouse for the dead to meet, live a bit more and grind me down to slivers of candle wax. 

Oseian Dalaran. 

Evru Dalar. 

Edrehasivar the Seventh -- never mind that that one did not happen on Winternight, after all. 

The burned victims of the explosion, a mass of agony, fear and names. 

Hasthemis Brulnemar. 

And recently, in assorted, colorful variations, a new one that drives me to the opera again and again, to be able to refute it – 

Iäna Pel-Thenhior. 

Chapter 24: Revethmaza (18. Magic)

Notes:

Fandom: TGE
No warnings apply

No one ever thought it of him. 

Cala always had a much deeper connection to books and magical theories than to actual magic. The question was never if he had the potential to become a dachenmaza, rather, if he would be able to commit to one field of study long enough. 

No one ever asked him to try it, either. Powerful spells were for the powerful students. But Dazhis had failed and wanted to see someone fail alongside himself. 

To brighten him up, Cala obediently waved a hand toward the pig.

“Pork chops!” he yelled.    

And the pig fell over. 

Chapter 25: Urgent assistance (23. Comfort)

Notes:

Fandom: Murderbot.
No warnings apply.

SecUnit? I need urgent assistance. 

Mensah’s feed voice was thin and tense, a wire before snapping. 

On my way, I replied, on my way. She was in a Council meeting, where the only danger could be death of boredom. Maybe dehydration.  

No need, just a question. How would you attempt to get rid of a body? 

A glitch, surely.  I stopped. 

What? 

Suppose, Councilor Marve suddenly died?

Oh.  

Marve, Mensah’s worst opponent, deserved a grand plan. A simple spacing wouldn’t do. 

By the end of my artful clip, complete with laser razors and acid showers, Mensah was smiling at Marve.