One of the earliest truths learned by the children of heroes is the simple, universally accepted fact that Thor tells the best stories.

Kurama just wants to finish his nap in peace. A particularly idiotic human is making that rather hard.

“I slept fine enough,” Jaime grins back. “And I’m sure your daughter won’t have my head for anything that’s happened in the last moon.” “That she won’t,” her father agrees. “And please, the last thing I dared hope for her was that she’d marry someone who would just care for having heirs and not even knowing them. All things considered, I think any woman in the realm would kill to have you for a husband.” “Just everyone’s luck that she waited long enough to run into me, right?” Or: in which Brienne is off being a knight in shining armor and Jaime is in no way shape or form stopping her from doing it.

Wei Wuxian’s life might have been different if his mother had gone onwards to visit the Jiang sect, following a glimpse of that handsome young man she’d met so briefly early on, but in the end she’d decided to go a different way – (Wei Wuxian is one of Jin Guangshan's illegitimate sons, and Cangse Sanren is having exactly none of it)

Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian escape the burning of the Lotus Pier, but they're not alone: along with them, they bring three of their youngest shidi, little children who can't contribute and are only a burden - and who sometimes see (and say) too much. (“– and then shixiong put me down and told me to go back,” he said, crying bitter tears. “He said to tell you that you have to – that someone has to avenge –” “That idiot,” Wei Wuxian said, his lips were numb. “The Wens – they have Wen Zhuliu there! Doesn’t he know what they’ll do to him..!”)

Lan Xichen wished that people in Qinghe weren't so notoriously reluctant to share personal information. It was one thing not to know exactly how old someone was, or what their given name was, but entirely another thing to belatedly find out that there was a new baby in the family.

In which Lan Xichen, nearly thirteen, visits Nie Mingjue, newly appointed Sect Leader - and decide to swap brothers for a day.

The healers said it was trauma. Perhaps he was too young, or too sensitive; perhaps it was only that it had happened in such a way, at such an impressionable time – in any event, Lan Wangji’s reactions to his mother’s death had gone well beyond the normal signs of grief and turned into something much more severe. After some intense discussion, it was agreed that he should be temporarily sent to live as a guest in another sect to see if he would benefit from the change of scenery. From not being around the place where he was drowning in the memories of his mother. They sent him to the Jiang Sect.

Jango's eyes flicker up, down, up again, and it’s meant to be dismissive, but Shaak knows wariness when she sees it, and it makes her smile just a little. “Lady, I just tried to put a slug through that fancy headdress of yours.” With a chuckle, Shaak takes a step closer. “Fett, I've been a Jedi for decades. If I held a grudge against everyone who had tried to kill me, I would have more enemies than you.”

Padme lives. She runs. -- Leia is growing in fits and spurts, eating greedily and crying loudly. She stays in a sling on Padme’s chest when they move, Luke held snug in a sling around Obi Wan’s. Luke gets a whole head of thick brown hair while Leia’s is still patchy and bald, but he never matches his sister’s powerful lungs. When Padme had been sitting in her high senatorial apartment on Corsucant, holding Anakin’s sweaty hand, she had never imagined she’d be murmuring desperately soothing noises to her fussy daughter while she shot around a corner at stormtroopers, while R2D2 meddles with a ship’s blast doors behind her. Luke starts teething on a hot jungle planet where they hunker down for three weeks, sleeping in an abandoned old temple and catching the local wildlife for dinner. Leia takes her first steps in the belly of a Corellian freighter they’ve stowed away on. She wobbles between Padme’s outstretched hands and Obi Wan’s knees and boxes of smuggled luxuries. When she falls down, Obi Wan surges forward, heart in his throat, but Leia laughs.

Ponds is wandering the halls of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, on his way to a meeting with his general, when he finds a crying youngling. He’s clutching his hands close to himself and Ponds abruptly remembers a mission with General Vos, who had an eerily similar reaction to a set of manacles. Ponds can’t help but kneel in front of the kid and offer him his pair of brand new gloves.

“This is incredibly sweet,” Obi-Wan observed with a fond smile. Cody was currently telling the cadets a story and they listened excitedly to his every word. “He just exudes ori’vod energy. The younger ones can’t help themselves,” Alpha replied. “It’s been like this his entire life.”