A double-crack alternate universe in which Leo gets an army and then takes over the northwest.

Black Knight and White Queen from the 9th and White Knight from the 10th and
Red Queen from the 11th,
and Domination,
Captured Knight,
Captured Knight continued,
Chessboard,and several pieces by inventrix – /directly/ after Chessboard.

“It’s been happening for a while.” Cya ate slowly and made herself keep her eyes on Luke. She wasn’t going to justify herself to him, to Addergoole, so she shrugged a bit instead. “You’re not the only one to notice, but so far it’s been in the family.”

“You have a plan?”

She smiled. All these years, and he hadn’t really been paying attention. “I had a couple good ones, ’till you challenged him and got him all wound up. Now… my plan is to assign you to keep an eye on him while I consider the rest of my options.”

She had back-up plans, of course. She had back-ups for her back-ups. But if he hadn’t figured that out about her yet, he’d have to learn it the hard time.

His wings twitched. “You want me to keep an eye on him. Worship — being worshiped — it’s forbidden.”

“The interesting thing, though.” Cya set down her fork and leaned forward, making sure she had his attention. “It’s not against the Law.”

“The Council….”

“The Council has decided we’re too much effort to slap down, for the moment.” That had been a hard battle. Cya had no belief she could take down the strongest, stodgiest of the Shenera Endraae in a fair fight, but if it came down to it, she had absolutely no intention of fighting fair.

She noticed Luke was giving her a Look. “We take care of ourselves. Boom. Cloverleaf. We always have.”

She’d said something similar to him, early her second year of school. I can take care of myself. Boom can take care of itself.

She wondered if he remembered that. All he was showing right now — tight wings, tight expression — was worry. “This is serious.”

“Of course it is. I have an empire, Leo has an army, Addergoole wants to kill us, and the Council will probably come knocking pretty soon. It can’t really be anything but serious. But we’ll work it out.”

If anything, he tightened up. “Addergoole doesn’t…”

“I think I asked you not to lie to me.”

“Well…” his wings twitched. “Regine doesn’t want to kill you. Mike…” his voice caught. “Mike mostly wants to play in your playground.”

“And you?”

“Damnit!” His wings unfolded with a snap, and just as quickly folded back up as his expression twisted in sudden guilt. “I’ve been trying to keep you kids alive for decades now! But you won’t keep your heads down!”

She found she was giggling. “Welcome to my world, Hunting Hawk. I’ve been keeping Boom alive for decades. And we never, ever, stay down.”

—

Luke ate the rest of his dinner in silence. She thought he might be irritated at her. His wings were folded tight, his head was down, and he was stabbing his food.

She wasn’t going to apologize. He was going to have to get used to Boom being Boom, or this was going to be a very long decade-plus. He was going to have to get used to the fact that they laughed at danger, not because they didn’t take it seriously, but because they did.

“Dishes can wait,’ she said, when he was done and wasn’t actually looking for the sink. “Come on. We’re going upstairs.”

His wings tightened further. “Why?”

“Because it’s the only place we can both get comfortable while I go digging in your mind.” She smiled brightly at him, like she was flirting or something.

He responded with exactly the glower she’d imagined he would. “You don’t have to do that.”

“That’s my call.” She didn’t think the calm, matter-of-fact voice would slap him down the way it might a 20-year-old, but it did suffice to startle him, if the wing-quiver was any indication. “Come on. Upstairs.” She tilted her head in the proper direction and waited until the implied order got him moving. “Come o, Luke,” she teased, now that he was starting to think, “some people would be thrilled at the chance to get in my bed.”

“Some people aren’t your senior by centuries,” he muttered.

If he was going to feed her straight lines like this all the time, she was going to get lazy. “Oh, I don’t know,” she retorted to his back. “I’m pretty sure Mike’s a bit older than that.”

At this rate, she wasn’t even going to have to work to see what he was like really, really agitated.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1200388.html. You can comment here or there.

A double-crack alternate universe in which Leo gets an army and then takes over the northwest.

Black Knight and White Queen from the 9th and White Knight from the 10th and
Red Queen from the 11th,
and Domination and
Captured Knight and Captured Knight continued, and several pieces by inventrix, most notably this one, which comes directly before the story below.

When her teleporter brought Luke to her door that evening, Cya thought he looked a little bit like he’d been punched in the stomach.

She’d been expecting something of the sort, so she was pleased not to be wrong in her impressions. “Come on in,” she encouraged him, because she was pretty sure he’d not remembered the threshold portions of being Kept — he had none, anymore; anyone could walk into any place that was his unless she claimed it as hers; in return, her threshold was open to him. “Let’s get some food in you and some first impressions out of you.”

Cya liked cooking. She hadn’t liked it when she’d started, but somewhere along the line she’d gotten very good at making virtues out of necessities. For Luke, whose Mara body (with is enviable healing factor) was still working overtime fixing the rest of the damage Leo had done to him, she’d made a heavy stew and a crusty loaf of bread.

He sat in the low-backed chair she kept around for winged guests and stared at the food as if he couldn’t imagine eating. That was normal enough, although she hadn’t expected it from him. Cya sat down on the other side of the table and started eating her own.

That got him moving. After a few bites, when the flavors started getting through his haze, he looked up at her. “This is good.”

“Thank you.” She didn’t bother with teasing him; he was hardly there enough to notice she was doing it, yet. “How did the army tour go?”

He snorted, mostly to himself. “Army.'”

Cya smirked, because he wasn’t looking at her, and because he hadn’t really internalized being Kept yet. She didn’t know if he would — and she wasn’t sure, yet, how much she’d force the process. “You’re not impressed?” She found it unlikely that was the case. Leo and his army had taken over the Northwest. They were disciplined, relatively clean, and efficient.

He made eye contact with her and seemed to be considering what he was going to say.

That was a habit she wanted to nip in the bud, especially with a Kept two centuries older than she was. “Tell me.”

He made an entirely-unconscious-sounding noise at the order. “It’s not an army, it’s a cult. A well-armed, well-disciplined armed force… and a cult.”

Unlike a younger Kept, he didn’t slap his hand over his mouth. But he did take a bite of his bread as if he wanted to tear something else with his teeth.

“It is,” Cya agreed, and did not laugh at him. “It’s been growing for a while. You should see him when he does a public speech.”

“And he knows it.”

“Yeah.” She stabbed her stew with her fork. “Yeah. He does.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1200350.html. You can comment here or there.