Hello, everyone! When I saw that day 1 of Arcadiatober2023 was Hero, I couldn't help but think of Wake's "When our backs are to the wall and our cities are falling all around us we so rarely become heroes" line. Then I thought of my AU where Ophelia takes on the role of Wake, and this fic spiralled outwards. And then I forgot about it for a month, and quickly rushed to finish it since it's still October 1st.

The other half of the title comes from Romeo and Juliet Act IV Scene i line 79.

As a note on names, I tried to follow naming conventions from The Locked Tomb. Hence, a lot of characters get , while Ophelia gets an unweildly name whose parts come from respectively Romeo and Juliet, the Mexican national anthem, and a Lumineers song. At least I could keep part of her canon name.

That In Gold Clasps Lock In The Golden Story Y Retiemble En Sus Centros La Tierra Oh Ophelia You've Been On My Mind Girl Since The Flood was probably going to die today. She had been prepared to do so for over a year, ever since she had made the deal with the two lyctors to bring the infant child of the Eldritch Queen to the Ninth House and kill it on the threshold to the Locked Tomb. She had known that the beast in the Tomb would probably kill her on its way to go kill Morgana. Ophelia didn't care; it would be worth it to avenge the Earth.

She bit down a curse as she saw that Javier's shuttle had caught up to her. Javier, or maybe his necromancer. Ophelia thought that she would have had more time. She'd have to fly riskily, and there was a chance she'd have to jump out of the ship if he tried to shoot her down. Good thing she brought the haz suit. As long as she could get a little further down, she and Bomb would both survive long enough to make it to the Tomb on the suit's life support.

As she strapped Bomb into the bio-container, its eyes opened. They were large and golden in color. Some part of Ophelia wondered where the Bomb had gotten its eye color. Ophelia's eyes were brown, as had nearly all of her known ancestors. Supposedly, the Empress of the Nine Houses had inhumanly bright blue eyes, where even the sclera and pupil were shades of bright blue. Neither of those were conductive to golden eyes.

It didn't matter. The Bomb would die.

Right as Ophelia finished putting the haz suit on, Javier entered the shuttle.

"Ophelia, what are you doing with our baby?" he said. "Please, we can talk about this."

Oh. He thought the Bomb was his. His, or his necro's. She supposed the time frame made sense, even though Ophelia had been careful to make sure she couldn't be pregnant when she injected herself with the last of the sample. All of Nomura and Stricklander's genetic samples had died, which meant that Ophelia had to birth the Empress's child and undoing the old-fashioned way.

Ophelia could use this against Javier. Make him think that the safest thing for the baby was to let her down to the Ninth House. Maybe he'd think she was hurt and would escort her over to the zombies for whatever messed up so-called healing they could try. She could then make a break for the Tomb from there.

And then Javier's eyes changed, and Claire kicked Ophelia and Bomb out the airlock.

Ophelia made a split-second decision to transfer oxygen to Bomb. Hopefully Stricklander or Nomura would show up to finish the job.

"Hi, Mom," Claire said as she reached her mom's niche. "I wanted to tell you that I'm the Reverend Daughter now. Are you proud of me?"

It wasn't something to be proud of, not really. Maybe if there were more kids around than the now-Tarrnova twins, it'd be an accomplishment to be the best necromancer of the youngest generation of the Ninth House. If Claire really wanted to accomplish something, then she'd have to be the best necromancer of her generation within the entire empire.

"I'm not going to replace you, though!" she clarified. "I don't think the Reverend Mother and Father would ever love me like you do."

Claire knew the story of how she came to the Ninth House like she knew all the bones in a hand. Her mom had mysteriously jumped down the drillshaft, and she only had enough power in her haz suit to save one of them. And because she loved her baby daughter so much, she decided to save Claire instead of herself. When the spirit magicians had tried to call her back to find out who she was, she was so overcome with emotion that all she could do was scream her daughter's name three times.

"I don't think the Reverend Parents ever loved Aja and Krel. I mean, they're so annoying, and it's not like I'd ever love them. Especially Aja. I bet she's gonna try and punch me even more now that I've took her place. I still don't think they deserved to be disowned. And if the Reverend Parents couldn't love their own kids, how could they ever love me even a tenth as much as you do?"

Claire pressed her forehead to her mom's niche, wrapping her arms around it as best she could. "I love you, Mom," she said, and she reached out with her spirit magic to make sure that her mom could hear her.

Unlock the Tomb, a voice said, and Claire jumped away even though she knew her mom would never try to get her to commit such a terrible sin as unlocking the Locked Tomb. She looked around.

"Who's there? That wasn't funny!"

Aja wasn't having a good day, but that was nothing new. She had died stopping Isabella, and Claire had decided to lobotomize herself instead of live with what Aja had done. Claire had made herself think that Aja was Stuart! Stuart, who wasn't a lively fighter, but a pathetic poetic excuse for a cavalier!

But maybe Aja could forgive Claire for that if Claire just came back. Her soul was gone, and now Aja had to protect her body from Nomura.

(Aja had thought that if anyone was going to nearly kill Claire, it would have been the other Claire. The older lyctor. It was weird that they shared a name, but maybe that was something common on the other Houses, to share a name. The Ninth's population was too small to share names.)

A bullet ripped through Nomura's shoulder, knocking her out. Behind her stood Isabella… no. That wasn't Isabella; her eyes were the wrong color. They were a dark brown, while Isabella's eyes had been a shade of red apparently common to the Seventh House.

"Who are you?"

Not-Isabella rolled her eyes. "You came to my niche at least once a week on that damned rock you grew up on. You didn't follow my instructions, though. Instead you became a lyctor and nearly impossible to kill."

"You're Claire's mother?"

Claire's mother raised an eyebrow. "You're my daughter's cavalier? Funny, you have the eyes of the girl she told me about so often. I didn't think she'd kill you considering how she felt about you."

Maybe, before Claire hugged her in the pool, Aja would have disagreed. Claire would have killed Aja for one bone chip.

But Claire had called Aja her only friend. She had also confessed that for years, she had been hearing a voice, demanding that she do the unforgivable.

"That was you, wasn't it? Telling her to open the Tomb."

"So she didn't recognize me. I can't say I'm surprised. It probably wouldn't have worked, but I was even less of a stable revenant then than now."

Aja took a deep breath and hoped her brother would forgive her. Twice since she had left Akiridion she had revealed his greatest secret. Once to the Reverend Daughter, and now to the Reverend Daughter's biological mother. "But it did work. My brother opened it."

"How? It needed my daughter's blood, the blood of the empress! Are you saying that I didn't need to go through nine months of carrying her and I could have just opened it?"

Aja took a step back. The woman had even said herself she wasn't a stable revenant – and what revenant was stable? – and Aja didn't want Claire to be killed by her mother flying into a rage. As it was, she wasn't making sense. Sure, Claire was the Reverend Daughter, but that didn't make her holy. She wasn't the blood of Seklos, and how could she possibly have the blood of the empress? "Maybe Krel did? He had just patched me up after Claire and I fought. I scratched her up when she choked me."

"And the beast in the Tomb didn't come out?" Aja shook her head, and the woman turned around. "Hopefully just opening it was enough to weaken her."

Just as a guide to who's whom in this AU, including some characters who don't show up as well as all the House surnames:

Ophelia: Wake
Javier Dosñez: Pyrrha
Claire Fontnwy aka Claire Javier: Gideon the First. Aside from sharing an appearance and most of a name with Claire Fontaine of the original Trollhunters book, there's not much of a similarity (if only because Fontnwy is a 10,000 year old woman).
Claire Nuñegesimus: Reverend Daughter Gideon Navgesimus
Nomura: Mercymorn
Stricklander: Augustine
Aja and Krel Tarrnova: Two halves of Harrow Nova. In this case, the theorem to kill the Ninth House's children failed and resulted in twins without necromancy instead of one powerful necromancers. Like the Tridentarius twins in TLT, they share a last name which is rare. They probably both had Tarrnonagesimus as their name before they were disowned.
Fialkov Noventis and Coranda Akranonium: Priamhark and Pelleamenea
Stuart: Ortus
Morgana: John. Some of her genetic material was converted so that it could work with Nomura's eggs in case Stricklander's sperm wouldn't work. This was how Ophelia was able to impregnate herself.
Douxie: Alecto