A meme to shake my brain loose

[neotoma]

Taken from lightgetsin

Pick any passage of 500 words or less from any fanfic I’ve written, and comment to this post with that selection. I will then give you the equivalent of a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what’s going on in the character’s heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you’d expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

My fic at the Archive of Our Own

Comments

[gehayi]

From Homo Homini Lupus Est:

"Now we come to the problem of Castiel..." his eldest brother said.

Gabriel raised his brows and made an encouraging noise.

"I want him selected for Quaestor."

Gabriel frowned. "He's childless: not eligible."

"I aim to change that."

Gabriel let his frown deepen. "How? Dean's barren, he must be." They had been married for years – Sam had grown from boy to young man on the cusp of maturity in the time that his beta brother Dean and their Castiel had been married – but had never had any children from any of Dean's heats.

"Since our brother is stubbornly attached to that Folk beta of his..." Lucifer sighed dramatically, "a subsidiary marriage is the only option that is feasible."

Gabriel looked up at that, shocked. "No family would agree to that, not of the Flock, or even a rising Folk family. It would be an insult to any beta of a good family, to be put in place below Dean – his family is only a generation out of the gutter. Any pack alpha would laugh in your face, if they didn't take it as an insult and challenge!"

"I had thought of that, Gabriel."

Gabriel paused, and then asked, "You're going ask for a delta for Castiel to marry in subsidy?"

"Don't be disgusting, little brother. We're the senior branch of the Seraphim – if one of the lesser cousins wanted to marry a woman, or you wanted to in your retirement, it would be one thing, but Castiel is my second. He must have alpha sons, and betas, and that requires a beta spouse."

Gabriel nodded in agreement "...Well, I suppose you could get a subsidiary marriage inside the family, but I can't think of any unmarried beta cousin. You couldn't even order a divorce, not with the civil situation as it is – we need all the alliances our cousins' marriages are sealing, what with the strife possibly building up again. Hell, we need the alliances to the rich Folk alphas that Rachel and the other deltas in the family are sealing."

Lucifer made a face at the mention of their half-sister; Lucifer often displayed the disdain for deltas that high-Flock alphas showed. Gabriel didn't quite share the disdain, but he had dealt with deltas and even epsilons much more in the course of his life – for one, wet nurses were often deltas from the lowest families and epsilons cast off from the best. The fact that they were single-gendered females made their milk more reliable than a double-gendered beta's.

[neotoma]

Ha! There is so much stolen from ancient Rome in this scene that it's not even funny.

Folk are the Plebian class, Flock are the Patricians, and so Castiel is a Patrician who has married a Plebe -- and they haven't had children yet, even though that would normally be the cause for a divorce. Since Cas won't give up Dean, but needs to have at least one child to be eligible for political office, he needs to have a concubine or second wife. The problem with this is that while Dean's family is rising, (aka they're Equitites, sort of nouveau riche Plebians with extra status), they're not of the same social class as Gabriel, Lucifer and Castiel's family and while normally Dean could be pushed aside, Castiel won't stand for it. Lucifer has decided not to force the issue and possibly insult some other family by keeping it in-house, so to speak.

The other problem is that the gender system among this culture is sixfold -- alphas = werewolves who are male as humans and wolves, betas = werewolves who male as humans and female as wolves, deltas = werewolves who are female as humans and female as wolves, zetas = werewolves who are female as humans and male as wolves, epsilons = non-werewolves who are female, gammas = non-werewolves who are male. I did this because mpreg always makes me go "what are they using for a uterus?"

There is a cultural disdain for marrying women if you can afford to marry a beta -- because the only intellectual equal is another man, so why would you marry a woman if you had an alternative? Betas are pushed into marriages for family alliances, and in old Roman fashion, don't become part of their husband's family, but are a kind of ambassador for their birth family. Also, if an alpha wants sons who are alphas, marrying a beta is more likely to give him alpha offspring than marrying a delta.

The family is Michael (deceased), Lucifer, Gabriel, and their younger half-siblings Castiel, Rachel, and Anna (who used to be Anael, until she was confirmed not to be a werewolf). Gabriel is the only beta, so he gets a lot of the administrative work of running the family like. That's why he thinks Lucifer is asking his advice about who Castiel should marry; he hasn't realized that Lucifer has already made plans.

[alexseanchai]

Hel was straightening him when Kali came in -- she is laying her father out for his pyre. The least Kali can do is help, so she kneels down to do so.

"How may I help?" she asks, and at Hel's raised brows, explains, "He was my friend, and he died because he wanted to help me."

"Thank you, Great Kali," Hel says, and puts her hand to the sword.
Kali holds the body down as Hel pulls the archangel sword from Gabriel's chest. The cold goddess looks at it for a moment, her face unreadable.

[That is an unlucky weapon, great lady,] the ghost says.[It killed its master.]

Hel smiles at the dead man. "Unlucky or not, I need it. If it can kill one archangel, it can kill another."

The ghost snorts, and pulls his wolfskin cloak around his insubstantial shoulders. [It is treacherous and dishonorable. It will turn in your hand.]

"Do not worry yourself, Þórólfur Shield-biter. I know how to handle the treacherous. After all, my kin are Jotuns. This sword will serve me," she says, and tucks it into her belt.

The ghost frowns again, unconvinced.

Hel turns her attention back to the corpse, and begins peeling Gabriel's other wing off the floor to arrange properly -- though it is more difficult because it fell on floor and table, and seems shattered. Kali busies herself with smoothing down Gabriel's hair; she can do so very little for him now, but making him presentable is something.

His hair is fine and soft under her fingers, and Kali remembers other times, happier times, when she had her hands in his hair, her hands on his shoulders and around his waist. He had laughed for her, in days long past, and brought her ghee and paneer and skyr from his northern lands and they both ate the dairy offered by devoted humans in joy.

The little dog barks suddenly, shaking Kali from her introspection with a sharp challenge that descends into growls.

Kali whips her head around to see what has upset the dog. There at the door, two wolves stand, heads down and whining in distress.
"Garm!" Hel chides the little dog. "It is only Geri and Freki. You are not afraid of Odin's wolves, are you, my pet?"

The dog tilts its head and then snorts, holding its head high. The wolves whine again, and slink in like chastened puppies. They sniff around Baldur's wrapped corpse, snuffling unhappily, and then over to Gabriel, where they cringe away the fading remnants of his Grace.

[It's all right, pups,] the ghost says, and crouches down to stroke their ears as if they were hounds. The divine wolves allow this, one going even so far as to lick the dead man's cheek, which makes him laugh.

"Thank you, Þórólfur." Hel says.

The ghost nods to her, [They're just worried, lady. Everything is unsettled, and the eagle-chieftain's death was strange.]

"I do not think one of the archangels had ever died before," Hel admits.