Note: The Third Anglo-Afghan War lasted for a few months in 1919. (The British won... sort of. [Does anyone ever really win a war in Afghanistan?]) It's notable as being one of the first conflicts where airpower played a critical role. But enough history… time for (at long last) some fic!
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War is like love; it always finds a way.
- Bertolt Brecht
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"What do you think?" Alek asks, keeping his voice to a soft whisper.
Deryn lowers the field glasses, ducks her head, and scoots backwards on the rock. Her boots dangle into empty air for a moment, and then she thumps down to the dirt beside him. "I reckon five hundred soldiers, at least," she says, also as quietly as she can.
It's only a guess. In the dark, and from nearly a mile away, she had to count the campfires. Not the most reliable method, but she isn't inclined to move closer for a better survey.
She hands Alek the field glasses again, no longer worried about some sharp-eyed Afghani soldier spotting the glint of starlight on the lenses. Behind this jumble of boulders, they can't be seen from the valley road. "Hard to tell if they're here for us."
"Let's hope they're pressing on to Kabul," he agrees. He hangs the glasses around his neck and tucks them into his jacket again, buttoning up against the cold. "Still, it shall make things rather inconvenient for the Pegasus."
Deryn rubs her hands together and blows on them, too, when the friction does sod all to warm them. She's cold, tired, hungry, thirsty, and barking sick of waiting for rescue. "Aye, if they ever get here," she whispers, scowling. "Sodding British Indian Air Service – can't find their bum with both hands!"
Alek smiles; his teeth gleam faintly in the dim starlight. "I'm sure you'll have them sorted before we reach Delhi, Mr. Sharp."
She smiles back at him. Even spattered with dirt and engine grease (and sporting two days' worth of stubbly whiskers), her Clanker is pure dead handsome. And if she had to be stranded in the middle of Afghanistan with anyone, she'd choose him, every time.
" 'Course I will," she says. "But the next time Dr. Barlow invites us along on a diplomatic mission…"
"Indeed," he says. He glances around at the mountains, looming up against the stars as though the land's hunched its shoulders, and grimaces. "They do tend to go awry."
Deryn starts picking her way across the uneven ground, shivering as the night wind gusts harder. Her jacket and trousers were perfect in the palace, and tolerable in the walker; now she'd rather have her old airman's leathers. "For a such a clever-boots, she's a terrible diplomat," she grouses, still keeping her voice low.
Alek follows her, his shoes skritching in the thin, rocky dirt. "No one could have predicted that the emir was going to start a war now."
Deryn snorts. Any Dummkopf could've predicted it, if you ask her. Especially once they saw the not-very-secret stockpile of old weapons that Emir Amanullah had begged, borrowed, bought, and stolen from the dismantled Clanker empires.
Mere saber-rattling, Dr. Barlow had called it. According to the lady boffin, the emir couldn't possibly be mad enough to take on the entire British Empire with an ill-trained army of fifty thousand men and a handful of castoff relics.
If there's one thing Deryn learned in the war, it's that all kings are a squick mad – and that some are downright barmy.
She shakes her head and makes a small jump down into a dry streambed, landing lightly on sand and rounded rocks which have all but forgot the water that shaped them. Alek is right behind her.
"And you must admit," he says, leaning forward to speak close to her ear, mischief audible, "she's done an commendable job of preventing Volger from murdering our new friend Mr. Eckhart."
"That ninny deserves -" she starts to say, then breaks herself off when she hears a faint skritch.
She and Alek both look up at the same moment, to see two men with rifles coming around a tumble of boulders several yards ahead of them, apparently just as surprised by this encounter.
The men are wearing dirty, travel-stained peasants' clothes, not the splendid uniforms of the palace guards – but unlike the palace guards, they look like they might actually be able to sodding shoot something with those rifles.
Scouts.
So the five hundred soldiers are here to find the emir's missing Stormwalker…
…and the five Westerners who nicked it.
"Bugger," Deryn says succinctly.
The word's hardly out of her mouth when one of the scouts (the one with a bandolier across his chest) raises his rifle to his shoulder and barks something in Pashto that probably means Stop right there or we'll shoot you.
But Alek's already lifted and aimed his compressed-air pistol. He fires with quick precision and the bandolier scout staggers backwards, dropping his rifle as he falls. The other scout exclaims and starts to lift his weapon.
The compressed-air pistol's not too loud. Only makes a bit of a thwup noise. If that rifle goes off, however, every barking soldier for miles will hear it.
As Alek's firing, as the first scout is falling, as the second scout's exclaiming, Deryn's tugging her knife from her boot. She flips it over in her hand, pinching the blade between her fingers. Bends her arm back. Brings it forward sharply, in a straight, clean line. The scout pulls the trigger –
- the butt of the knife strikes him in the skull -
- his arm jerks -
- the rifle cracks like thunder -
- he goes down -
- something punches Deryn high in the side.
It steals her breath for a second. Only a second, though. Of more immediate concern are the echoes rolling through the valley and off the barren, rocky mountains around them.
She swears and jogs over to the fallen scouts, retrieving her knife and stuffing it into her boot again. They both seem unconscious, though the one Alek shot might be dead. "Blisters. We should tie them up -"
"There's no time," Alek says, catching her arm and urging her into a run alongside him. They race along the dry streambed as fast as the dim light allows, following it back to the marooned walker, grabbing each other for balance when they stumble. "Are you all right, Liebe? Did he hit you?"
"Aye, but it's just a scratch," she says. There's a bright line of pain high across her left ribs where she reckons the bullet grazed her. Still, it's not so bad that she can't run for her life. "How long d'you think we have?"
"That rather depends," he says. "Did you see any walkers?"
"No," she says, remembering. "But there were a bloody lot of horses."
Alek swears in German. "We have a few minutes until they reach the scouts. Then –"
Then it'll only be a few more minutes before the five hundred soldiers reach the walker.
The walker had carried them safely out of Kabul and into the mountains, where it came to rest a day ago. Alek had managed to use the last squick of fuel to maneuver the Stormwalker next to a great mound of boulders, but that's the only camouflage the machine has.
Luckily, the Afghani army hasn't got an air service, or they'd have been spotted by now. As it is, their luck is minutes away from running out altogether.
The lady boffin or Volger must be keeping watch for them, because the chain ladder tumbles down as they approach. Deryn climbs up first; the wound in her side pulls as her weight swings the ladder back and forth and her muscles tighten to compensate.
Mr. Eckhart snatches at her fearfully as she clears the hatch for the gunners' cabin. "Gracious Lord preserve us! What was that noise?" he asks, apparently having forgot that he spent the morning lecturing her about the sinfulness of girls wearing trousers.
"A pair of bloody scouts, sir," she says, and continues up the ladder to the command cabin without pause. Pastor George Eckhart is the worst combination: American, daft, and panicked.
"Well – what – are we under attack?" he cries after her.
"Aye, in a minute!" she calls back down. She gets her boots on the floor of the command cabin before her knees go wobbly and she has to lean on the curving hull of the walker. The viewing window's been cranked shut, and the glowworm lantern is casting a light so feeble it barely matters. At least the hatch in the walker's roof has been opened, to keep the air inside from going stale.
"A report, if you please, Mr. Sharp," Dr. Barlow says. In contrast to the pastor, the lady boffin is cool and composed: hair neatly coiled, bowler perfectly settled. The creased state of her dress is the only sign that she hasn't been attending a garden party these last two days.
Of course she's taken over the commander's chair.
"Yes – which of you managed to cleverly alert the enemy to our location?" Volger says, scowling at Deryn. The loris on Dr. Barlow's shoulder snickers.
She straightens, not because of the scowl or the snicker, but because a soldier ought to stand straight when she gives a report. "Best reckoning is five hundred soldiers, ma'am," she says, welcoming Bovril as it clambers onto her shoulder. She gives the count a look. "And it was the scout who fired that shot, not either of us."
"Did you – five hundred!" Mr. Eckhart exclaims from the gunners' cabin. His voice has gone a bit high and squeaky. "Lord have mercy!"
"Excuse me, sir," Alek says, full of princely disdain. There's a shuffle and then the bottom hatch clangs shut, and a moment later, Alek joins them in the command cabin.
Everyone shifts about, trying to find space. Three people make for a tight fit in the command cabin. Four people (and two lorises) is an out-and-out crush. Volger bows to the inevitable and retreats to the gunners' cabin, though not without a scowl.
Alek says, "We don't have long before they arrive, I'm afraid. We need a plan."
"A plan! A plan?" The pastor's head pops up through the cabin floor. His eyes are wide and his walrus mustache is twitching madly. "With five hundred of those - those bloodthirsty heathens bearing down on us -! There isn't – what sort of plan could possibly –"
Deryn steps back and quite accidentally knocks the heel of her boot into the side of Mr. Eckhart's skull. "Sorry, sir," she says. "Tight quarters and all. You ought to get below again."
Mr. Eckhart stays where he is, rubbing his head and insisting, "We ought to run! A plan – that should be the plan! Running!"
"It would be a futile effort," Volger says from below the pastor. He manages to sound a trifle bored with the idea. "We have no food, no maps, and half a canteen of water. They would catch us before we'd made two miles – and if they did not, then the desert would kill us within hours of sunrise."
The pastor frowns mutinously. "God sustained Moses –"
"Quite true, Mr. Eckhart, but we are rather short on manna. We will therefore stay with the Stormwalker. However, we likewise short on fuel and have no weapons," Dr. Barlow says. She steeples her fingers. "What is to be our plan, Mr. Hohenberg?"
"I agree that abandoning our position would be suicide," Alek says. "But the Stormwalker's armor should be more than a match for their guns."
"Aye, unless they aim for the rusted spots," Deryn says.
Alek looks down his nose at her – quite a trick, considering they stand eye-to-eye. He's stubbornly fond of Stormwalkers, even though the old buckets are five years and half a war obsolete. Clanker.
"Or if they have larger guns! Or cannons! – what if they have cannons?" Mr. Eckhart cranes his head to one side, trying to see Dr. Barlow. "Ma'am, really – this decision's too important – it's not a woman's place to lead – and a boy shouldn't be -"
"Stop blethering and let's get on with planning," Deryn says impatiently. She's sorely tempted to give him another kick in the attic. "We'll die for certain this way!"
"Young miss," the pastor says, mustache bristling with indignation, "I think you are –"
She never hears what Mr. Eckhart thinks she is, because Bovril suddenly pops up from its perch on her shoulder, large eyes turning to the open hatch in the roof. It trills and then makes a soft chittering noise that, at first, Deryn can't place.
Then she recognizes it: the sound of roosting fléchette bats.
The other loris flicks its ears forward and then lifts its head as well. It warbles a fair approximation of an officer's whistle and says, "All hands topside, lads!"
"Get that Huxley aloft!" Bovril demands, stretching both wee arms towards the hatch. Alek takes the loris from Deryn and lifts it through the opening, where it disappears from sight.
"Steady on," the other loris says.
"My," Dr. Barlow says, no more perturbed by the thought of miraculous rescue than she was at the thought of a horrid death. "This seems auspicious."
But some folks, it seems, are less familiar with the perspicacity of certain lorises.
"What!" Mr. Eckhart exclaims. "That creature - You'll let a lowly animal escape, but we must stay here to – to – Well, I won't!"
And with that, he ducks down through the floor hatch again.
"Does that Dummkopf think he can just leave?" Deryn asks, incredulous. With five hundred enemy soldiers – and the Pegasus – due any moment?
Evidently, that Dummkopf does think so, because the lower hatch squeaks and squeals and clangs as Mr. Eckhart struggles to heave it open.
Alek swears and quickly starts down the ladder. "Mr. Eckhart! Wait!"
"Let the fool go," Volger says in German. He's off to one side, arms crossed, utterly disinterested in stopping the pastor from wresting the hatch open.
"He'll be killed," Alek says in the same, to which Volger harrumphs. "And he'll leave us vulnerable to attack!"
That must be more convincing, because the count steps in and seizes Mr. Eckhart by one arm while Alek grabs the other, hauling the pastor's bulk up between them. He kicks his feet madly, like a turtle on its back.
"Mr. Eckhart, you needn't worry," Dr. Barlow calls down. "We've survived far more unlikely situations."
The pastor's having none of that. He says, nearly wailing, "I thought the Lord had called me to deliver the – the Good News to these heathen savages, but clearly – it was – it was Satan – tempting my vanity and – my pride!"
Deryn rolls her eyes. Americans.
Bovril chooses that moment to lean over the hatch opening and announce, "S-H-A-R-P!"
Just in case it's needed (and blisters, she hopes it is), Deryn retrieves the flare gun and stuffs it into the back waistband of her trousers before she climbs onto the back of the pilot's chair.
She pokes her head out cautiously, hoping not to get shot by a rifleman. In the distance – but drawing rapidly nearer – are the sounds of horses and soldiers, pounding across the desert night.
They're cutting this one a bit close.
"Where, beastie?" she asks of the loris sitting patiently beside her skull.
Bovril turns to face southeast. Deryn follows its motion and spots the airbeast straightaway. HMS Pegasus, searchlights swirling through the darkness, glinting off the occasional strafing hawk. Unmistakable… though also a squick distant yet.
"About bloody time, too," she says beneath her breath.
She draws the flare gun, lifts it over her head, and fires straight up. The gun kicks in her hands and the flare whistles its ascent. It blazes a dazzling red line across the stars and then hangs there, slowly burning and shimmering as it falls.
The Pegasus' searchlights whip around, follow down from the flare, and pin Deryn square in the eyes.
She twists away, blinking back tears. "Barking -!"
A bullet pings into the walker's side. Then another. Half-blinded, Deryn gets herself and Bovril through the hatch again before the riflemen can try to bounce any bullets off of them.
"Pegasus knows we're here," she reports, a wee bit breathless. More bullets strike the walker; the metal clangs and rings. Deryn rubs hard at the spots dancing before her eyes; the wound in her side throbs in time with her pulse. "Though I may have given away our position."
Dr. Barlow lifts an eyebrow. "Indeed."
The loris on her shoulder sniffs haughtily. Bovril tsks at it.
"Well, we'll not have to worry about the soldiers anymore," the lady boffin says. "The crew of Pegasus can't be incompetent at everything, after all."
"They're pure dead awful at navigating," Deryn says, dubious.
Now Dr. Barlow tsks. Her loris adds "Fah!" for good measure.
Deryn snorts, but doesn't further voice her opinion aloud. Instead, she looks down into the gunners' cabin, where Mr. Eckhart is sprawled, panting and red-faced, on the floor. Exhausted after two minutes of struggles.
Or not that exhausted, because as another volley of shots pepper the Stormwalker, he suddenly darts for the closed hatch. Alek and Volger catch him easily and hold him back as he blethers on about bloodthirsty heathen savages.
"Oi!" Deryn says sharply; the three men look up at her. "Pegasus is nearly here. Mr. Eckhart, sir, if you'd quit carrying on like a ninny, we could get ready to escape."
The pastor sputters indignantly: "Carrying on! I am not – how else should I – with those barbarians trying to kill us!"
Alek rubs his arm across his forehead and says, weary, "The airship will chase them off, sir."
"What if it doesn't? Oh, Lord have mercy – what if we've lured those poor souls to their doom?"
On cue, a large gun whumps outside, but the shell's whistle arcs away from them. Deryn reckons that, far from luring anyone to their doom, the Afghanis are scrambling to defend themselves against the Pegasus.
The pastor yelps in alarm, then buries his face in hands, shaking his head and moaning. Volger mutters something filthy in German that Deryn can't disagree with.
"Further observation is in order, I believe," Dr. Barlow says, taking her skirts in one hand. Her climb onto the chair's back is much more elegant than Deryn's was, even if her loris is squawking like a bollixed-up message lizard the whole time.
Deryn, meanwhile, motions to Alek, who climbs partway up the ladder. She kneels on the floor and bends down so they can whisper properly, nose-to-nose. "If he stays this worked up," she says, meaning Mr. Eckhart, "we'll never be able to get aboard safely. He'll spook all the beasties and half the airmen, and probably get himself shot."
Alek nods absently, frowning at the ladder in front of his face. Then he lifts his head, meeting and holding her eyes. There's something sparking in his, even in the shadowy wormlight, that sends a shiver through her belly. "We need to distract him," he says.
Before she can reply "Aye, but how?" he's turned his head slightly, though he's still looking at her. "Mr. Eckhart," Alek says over his shoulder. "Would you mind performing a wedding?"
Now the shiver is an electrikal current that steals her breath.
They've discussed marriage – barking spiders, they'dve better, they've been exchanging kisses (and more) for almost five years – but Deryn always had the vague idea of a church wedding. Formal and proper. A chance for Alek to look princely; a chance for her ma to stuff her into some horrid dress.
"A wedding…?" the pastor says. Puzzled, at first, and then aghast: "Good heavens – you're not married?"
"A state that some of us have labored to preserve," Volger says drily. "Alas."
Deryn hardly hears him, or the guns firing outside the walker's hull. All of her attention remains on Alek, who's looking worried by her lack of response. "If you don't –" he begins.
She cuts him off by leaning down and pressing a hard, fast kiss to his mouth. His whiskers scrape at her chin.
"Blisters – of course I do, daftie," she retorts, pulling back. She hadn't considered getting married today. Now that it's been mentioned, however, she finds she's rather keen on the idea. "You surprised me, is all. But it's just as well," she adds. "I think I'm up the kyte anyway."
He frowns, confused.
"Gravida," Dr. Barlow says from her perch, much to the delight of the lorises, who start repeating it back and forth. Deryn, of course, has no idea what it means.
"Oh," Alek says, understanding immediately. His ears flush pink and he clears his throat. "I see."
The pastor understands too. "Proof – incontrovertible! – that wearing trousers leads to the grossest immorality!" he exclaims, shaking a fist at nothing in particular. Maybe at her trousers.
Deryn exchanges a look with Alek, who shakes his head slightly, and then stretches up to give her a quick kiss of his own.
"I would have married you regardless," he murmurs.
"I know, love," she says, smirking.
He climbs the rest of the way up, taking her hands as he goes. They stand together, and the light in his green eyes is almost too much.
Happiness aches, warm and bright, in her own chest. It's all lovely if you ignore the cannons and machine guns rattling away outside.
"Young lady," Mr. Eckhart says, "you don't need a wedding. You need to renounce – renounce your sinful ways and beg forgiveness from Our Lord!"
Deryn squeezes Alek's hands and says, "Sod off, sir, and marry us."
Mr. Eckhart's eyes go so large that white shows all the way round. He sputters and gasps and turns an apoplectic purple before bursting out, "Absolutely not! Such indelicate language – to a man of the cloth – I would never -!"
"You will," Volger says coolly, interrupting the pastor before he can work up a good rant. "Resistance to their mad schemes is hardly worth the effort, I assure you."
"I most certainly will not!" the pastor blusters.
On Deryn's shoulder, Bovril cackles. "That ninny."
"Impeccable timing, Your Highness, if I may say so," Volger says, looking up at Alek. "Quite romantic as well."
"Aye, it's pure dead romantic, thank you," Deryn snaps.
Never mind the wound in her side, the grime and hunger and exhaustion on everyone's faces, and the firefight taking place on the other side of a few inches of rusty old Austro-Hungarian metal. It is romantic.
"We did first meet under similar conditions," Alek says, looking about with a small smile tucked in the corners of his mouth.
Volger snorts.
"Well, it doesn't signify," Mr. Eckhart says, frowning fiercely, though his color has improved. "I can't – with all of this, out there – and you don't have a license!"
"The Pegasus is almost directly overhead," the lady boffin reports, then clicks her tongue disapprovingly. "What have their fabricators done to the caudal peduncles… If there's to be a wedding, I shall be pleased to stand witness. As will Count Volger, I'm sure."
"I don't know," Mr. Eckhart says. Now he looks merely perplexed, and not angry or panicked at all. "Couldn't it wait until we're onboard?"
"Please, sir," Alek says. " 'A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband.' "
Deryn gives him a sidelong, suspicious glance, which he ignores with a determined air of innocence.
"Proverbs 12," Mr. Eckhart says automatically. "Well, yes – Well. You're right. And 'she that maketh ashamed –' " he pauses to glare at Deryn's trousers – " 'is as rottenness in his bones.' Clearly you're in need – in very great need – of husbandly leadership, Miss Sharp."
"Aye," Deryn says, still eyeing Alek, who still isn't looking at her. "And he's in need of a barking crown."
"Go on, Mr. Eckhart," Dr. Barlow says, rising on tip-toe to peep over the edge of the hatch as the familiar shriek of strafing hawks on the attack drifts through the air. "Think of the inspiring story you'll have for your congregation: true love triumphant in even the most senseless theatre of war."
"An inspiring story," her loris repeats. "Triumphant."
Bovril adds a soft, scornful, "Fah!" and then both beasties fall to giggling and whispering "Gravida!"
"It's very irregular, but I suppose – if you're certain…" the pastor says, decidedly uncertain himself.
"It's destiny," Alek says firmly.
Deryn doesn't snort, but it's a near thing.
Mr. Eckhart moves to the bottom of the ladder and squints up at them. "Er – if the two of you could stand – Well, you are already… Really, I should be up there –"
"You're much safer down below," Dr. Barlow assures him.
Mr. Eckhart nods, absently touching his temple where Deryn's boot caught him earlier. He spends a moment straightening his jacket lapel and necktie before clearing his throat and looking up at them. "Marriage," he says.
For a moment, Deryn has a strong, dizzying sense that this is all some mad dream – that next minute she'll wake up in her bed in London, like always, and find the trip to Kabul and everything after is only the result of eating some potatoes that've gone off.
Then Count Volger sighs resignedly, and she knows it's real.
Which is quite dizzying on its own, actually.
Mr. Eckhart clears his throat again, more pointedly this time, and repeats, "Marriage." His voice is firm and sure – until the Afghani cannons fire again. "Marriage is what – brings us here – today. Marriage, th-that blessed – Oh, Lord Jesus have mercy –!"
Volger seizes the man by the arm and bears him up. "Carry on."
The pastor's mustache whuffles. "Right. M-marriage… As – as Paul wrote in his letter to the Corinthians –"
Dr. Barlow abruptly ducks down and yanks the hatch closed with a terrific bang, nearly dislodging her bowler in the process. No sooner has she done so than there's another, much louder noise outside – a BOOM that rattles the entire walker like a china teacup.
"Bloody hell!" Deryn exclaims. The lorises echo her.
The lady boffin dusts off her skirts, straightens her bowler, and neatly steps down from the chair. "Excellent news," she says. "In point of fact, the Pegasus is quite skilled in air-to-ground combat. My apologies for the interruption. Please, continue."
But Mr. Eckhart's gears appear to have locked up. He opens his mouth once or twice; no sound emerges.
"Oh, good God," Volger says impatiently, giving Mr. Eckhart's arm a shake. "Say 'man and wife' and be done with it!"
"M-man and wife," the pastor parrots weakly. Then he blinks, several times in rapid succession, and seems to come back to his senses… such as they are. He straightens, clears his throat, and declares, "By the authority of the great state of Illinois and the grace of the Lord God Almighty, I now pronounce you man and wife."
Dr. Barlow claps politely. The lorises cackle. Volger hmphs.
Deryn grabs a fistful of Alek's oil-spattered jacket and kisses him.
She means it to be another brief kiss. Alek, however, puts a hand around the back of her neck and holds her in place, gently but firmly, and she gets a bit lost in the familiar warm taste of him.
Her best friend. Her husband.
Dimly, she becomes aware of a new sound – metal drumming against metal in a hard, uneven, staccato rain. She breaks off the kiss and both of them look upward.
"O Lord! What's that?" Eckhart cries, panicked anew.
Volger sighs.
"Fléchette bats," Dr. Barlow judges. She taps one finger against her chin thoughtfully. "I hadn't considered their use as wedding bells."
Deryn sobers for a moment, thinking of the men and beasties outside, unprotected against that falling steel. Then she feels Alek's fingers weave through hers once more, and warm happiness flutters in her chest despite everything.
"Wedding bells," Bovril says, satisfied. "Mr. Hohenberg and Mr. Sharp."
"I haven't a ring for you," Alek says softly, rubbing his thumb across her scarred, filthy knuckles.
"That's all right," Deryn says. "I've got what I wanted."
"What's that?" Alek asks, though the princely smirk on his face tells her he already knows.
Deryn looks upward, where, beyond the hull of the Stormwalker, an airbeast is hovering, waiting for them to come aboard and leave behind all these worries about enemy soldiers and daft Americans. They're not out of the war yet – she's dead certain of that – but she grins just the same.
"A honeymoon aloft," she says.
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Very Special Note: Oh, the places you'll go…!
When I started "Quite Peculiar," I never expected to make it to 100 chapters and nearly 100,000 words. I never expected to "meet" so many excellent fellow Leviathan fans & friends because of it. I really never expected my little fic to get fan art and its own TV Tropes page!
I guess what I'm saying is that these last two-ish years have been a heck of a lot of fun and full of surprises, and I thank you for that.
It's been awesome, y'all. Here's to another 100! *toast*
