Daily Entertainment, Songfic Edition!

[damncompass]

Happy Friday, everyone! I hope you're all as excited for the weekend as I am. (Or at least excited for the next three days if you don't have a weekend per se.)

In honor of #ficfriday, I'm just going to throw out an oldie but goodie.

Song Prompts! Post in with your characters, and other muns can comment, either with a specific lyric, or something from a playlist on shuffle. Write a short (whatever you deem to be short, probably 2-5 sentance) fic based on the lyric.

Have at! <3

Comments

Tavi - some years post-canon, because I can

[inlovewithwords]

'Home' and 'family' mean so many different things to him.

At a visceral level, it still means Calderon: Bernardholt, Garados and Thana Lilvia looming over the valley, the Rillwater flowing through the rocky valleys, and Garrison standing watchful guard over the border with the Marat. No matter where he lives longest, it probably always will be home. And family, that's Uncle Bernard and Aunt Isana, and kind of Fade (even now some days it's hard to think of them as Mother and Araris). They were and are fixtures--in each others' blood and bones and the land itself.

And for a long time, that seemed all it was. Home was where you came from, or if it was comfortable enough where you lived now. It was what came up when thinking nostalgically of where he'd rather be. Family was blood, of course, but slowly he learned to expand that, mostly thanks to Max and Ehren. (Kitai wasn't even family, she was part of his soul; she was too far in to be just family.) The Legion, of course, taught him that home was a transient concept at best, and that family could mean more than intimate love and trust. It could mean people who depended each other to die for them and who they would die for.

He knows better now.

He knows the feel of the holes left by family he never knew. He knows the feeling of scarred over wounds of loss and betrayal. He knows how to forgive family he's loved the most and who hurt him the most. He knows the way people grow into each other's hearts. He knows the certainty of unshakeable anchors and wary trust. He knows passion and partnership and dependency (it took Kitai a bloody long time to beat that into his head).

He knows love for his people--expanded to be more than just Alerans, to so much more--and for his land. He knows that family has nothing to do with blood or shape, it's about trust and respect and warmth. He knows home is like a tapestry on the wall: changed out, but the structure endures. He knows that home can be wherever he needs, if the effort and love are put into it and family's there to keep it bright.

And now, high in the air as he argues with Kitai over who gets to hold their son, he can see the volcanic ruin of what was once a home for him and for the centre of his people's concept of home--where his family lived and died for a millenium. But he can also see the growing buildings of their new capital; he can smell Desiderius' hair (and maybe Kitai's right, small boys really do need more baths than they want). And he can't help but smile, despite the past.

Family is more than blood or intimacy. It's the people and the land who go through fire together to rebuild and grow new bonds.

Home lies within those new bonds and the life that will grow from them. Home is the future.

Tavi can't wait to get started.


[[ooc: that's short, right?]]