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All she ever wanted was for everyone to go away. And when I did she never forgave me.

Jeanette Winterson, from Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal

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Otto Dix: Trichterfeld bei Dontrien, von Leuchtkugeln erhellt (Field of Craters near Dontrien, Illuminated by Rocket Flares), plate 4 from “Der Krieg” (“The War”), 1924.

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I drink to the house, already destroyed, And my whole life, too awful to tell, To the loneliness we together enjoyed, I drink to you as well, To the eyes with deadly cold imbued, To the lips that betrayed me with a lie, To the world for being cruel and rude, To God who didn't save us, or try.

the last toast (1934, anna akhmatova. tr. lyn coffin)

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white boys be like “im gonna make you come so hard” and ur like, what to my senses

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i want so desperately to be finished with desire by sam sax

click for quality + do not remove caption (instagram)

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The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky

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woah this character is so cool i wish they were covered in blood their whole body trembling with a look of absolute horror on their face as theyre struggling to breathe in panic

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Anne Carson The Beauty of the Husband

[Text ID: something about her / blinds him.]

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I will always do more harm than good.

David Jones, from Could You Ever Live Without?

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ooc. thinking about how Bertholdt never got a grave or funeral or any kind of memorial. all that may be left are his limbs and if they weren't thrown in some incinerator or landfill, they are now soaked in formaldehyde and on display in some museum or medical facility.

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“Haunting equals attachment equals an odd kind of love,”

— Audrey Niffenegger, from the introduction to ‘Ghostly: A Collection of Ghost Stories’

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Is it a surprise? Is it truly? Jean scratches his warnings into his arm, digs apart flesh and sinew with dull fingernails. There is no question about what comes next: the coveted fist. Blood drips from his elbow as the soldier tries to flay him, and then there comes the hit he's been waiting for. Four knuckles to the nose. It breaks on impact and his face goes numb. Stars explode before his eyes, pain so bright it blinds him. And he ate it like a dog.

One step back is all it takes, with blood pouring from his face, for Jean to tackle him. It has been some time, since anyone has touched him so willingly, so on purpose. They collide like freight trains, crumbling against each other's frames. He's never considered himself a masochist. He's never licked his chops for another cut, another squall of blood. But like this, pinned to the ground, violence mercifully, hatefully, redirected, he feels each punch like the heat of the sun.

It is a horrid scene and over Jean's beastly wailing, he can hear them all snapping, circling them like dogs. Bertholdt is no paragon of virtue, but he does consider martyrdom. He considers all he has done and everyone who's never gotten a piece of him. Jean has lost much, more than anyone should lose, because Bertholdt was a child next to him. One must consider the math. Math is all you are left with, when a certain death toll is reached. He could lie down and take it, glut himself on punishment. It'd be a blessing, pain so sharp it erases him, carves off his face, and then blackness.

—You remember it, too. Don't you, Jean? How dark it can get?

There was a cell, once, cramped and cold. They poured water over him, made him ready. He remembers shaking so hard his muscles cramped. The bit was a mercy then, keeping his teeth from chattering and slicing off his tongue. The procedure wasn't new. Sometimes they cleaned him up, for their own comfort, or for the sensibilities of some visitor. By then, he'd been so diminished by darkness and silence, that even the voyeuristic glee of onlookers, even the acid drip of humiliation, was better than isolation. He ached for a pair of eyes on him, someone who would, for some brief time, alleviate the pain with their presence.

They brought Jean, once. He remembers. Bertholdt wouldn't know if he clamored to climb down into hell for a visit, or if they made him. Doesn't matter either way. He remembers. Jean's face was a mask of horror, slack-jawed with a miserable awe at the dedication of the torturers. He never even saw half of it, and it was too much. But they were children then, and Jean's grown accustomed to evil, too.

His voice crawls out of Bertholdt's bloodied mouth like a revenant out of a grave. It claws its way to the light, decaying: "None." He rattles the word out with a spray of blood. No steam, no closing wounds for this. Bertholdt remains open. He bleeds for this.

The stillness from the warrior was remarkable, up until now. Now his arm shoots out and catches the soldier by the wrist. He yanks him forward, hard, until Jean has no choice but to catch himself with the other one. Suddenly they are face to face, their breath mingling between snarling mouths. There is a beat, a stillness, when they look each other in the eye. Then Bertholdt bucks his hips, slings his leg back and traps Jean against his hard body. He flips them over in a second, his hands like shackles around Jean's wrists, pinning him down.

Blood rains down on the soldier, splatters on his cheeks, paints his lips. A grotesque baptism, washed in the blood of his enemy. Bertholdt is giving by nature. If it is blood he craves, he can have it. He bleeds and bleeds, from the ruin of his face. The pain is dizzying but rage cuts him clear and sharp.

"You killed two of my children. You nearly killed three." How emergency smooths out the edges, how it streamlines the process. They are his now, because they are dead. He knows them by the loss of them. He loved them and they were crushed to death. Falco's life was bought by sheer luck and happenstance, Pieck's quick thinking.

"Do you think, do you really think, that you still have anything to say to me? You're maybe not worse, but you sure as fuck aren't better than us."

Everybody has a breaking point. The point where it all just gets too much and, when someone won't stop their endless pluck-pluck-plucking at that one remaining thread of patience, restraint and understanding there is left, the only thing left to do is snap.

With his vision red like the blood on his hands, his teeth and fists clenched tighter than the tether that he'd pulled and pulled until it severed, Jean comes launching at Reiner like a man possessed. All heartbreak and rage. Like a wounded bull with the spears still in its side, he charges, horns-first, back towards his abuser—and he'll make him stop.

A blur of dirty beige shrouds over that bloody hue and suddenly Reiner's face is gone. Suddenly there's an impact and it's as if he'd slammed into a wall—with claws—when the not-unfamiliar feeling of fists furl into his jacket and collar; when that collision turns and talons are thrust, coiled tight around his throat. His nails raked instinctively back into the flesh—

Bertholdt...

Jean seethes through his spit while he tries not to choke on it, taking out chunks of the other man's hand as he stares furiously at all the hatred that's burning back at him.

"You have no right." Bertholdt has the nerve to snarl in his face—but he has every right. He has every right. How can he say that? How dare he say that? When Jean had once truly believed they were more than just comrades—Reiner and Bertholdt—they were his friends. They were Marco's friends. So they had both believed. Years spent growing up together, laughing and joking in their bunks before lights out together, surviving together, and surviving from what? The whole time: Them. "Not anymore."

Bastard!

The trenches Jean's dug out in the back of Bertholdt's hand and wrist have done nothing. He doesn't hesitate instead, while he still has enough oxygen going to his brain and violence rushing through his core to do so, to reel back his fist and throw it like a hammer at Bertholdt's face. Socks him hard enough in the nose to stagger the taller man back again, gets the claws out of his neck.

But he isn't done.

"You—" Jean snarls, voice ragged where his windpipe's been crushed, as he lunges for him. Full body throws himself into Bertholdt's midriff and hits the ground with just as much force. Somewhere beneath the deafening rush of his blood pumping in his ears and the frenzied jumble of the fists in front of his face, he can hear his real friends yelling and screaming at them to stop. Neither one of them does.

"No right?!" Jean roars hoarsely at him, the very second he's gotten another chance to grapple past an arm and throw down another fist. He rips him up at his collar—his true colours—and screams what isn't crushed right into shreds in Bertholdt's face, into those cold, dead eyes, "No fucking right?! Bert?!"

Like he could reach someone that had never even existed to begin with.

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ooc. i love being three self defense videos deep for a scene where the movement is gonna take up half a paragraph

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this is such a raw line what the fuck

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“Hunger is the most important thing to know: to be hungry is the first lesson we learn. And the ferocity of what you feel, […] sets you on fire.”

— Miguel Hernández, Selected Poems of Miguel Hernández