#>> in.

[huntershowl]

@nightmarefuele ( jinx ) said:

this feels like some awful community theater production.

❝ YEAH, NO KIDDING. ❞ THEY SIT TOGETHER on something that could be considered a rafter — a collection of lone beams jutting above the city, tangled up in a skeleton of wires and rickety poles. below, a full-scale gang war. men and rats and slithering eels and flies on the mud. they're all the same in the end, aren't they? out for themselves until the end. always ready to sell each other out for the right price, always opening their mouths and letting in filth and letting in filth and letting in filth.

persephone passes her a hard candy wrapped in chromeish paper, clean and shiny like an alien life form in zaun: all of its darkness, all of its teeth. ❝ enjoy the show. ❞

[gravesung]

" how terrible it is to love something that death can touch. "

❝ ... ❞ ORION'S BRUSH STILLS ON THE CANVAS. presses down a little too hard. it was halfway through an upward stroke completing a wisp of pale blue hair. he hasn't been able to stop working since oboro died; in each of their ways, he and his sibling deal with grief by letting overwork swallow them whole, and they have certainly been doing so lately.

he hasn't looked up at shouta once, because if he did everything would fall apart. ( not a problem he normally has with this particular boy. ) now, though, he actively casts his gaze away. ❝ yeah. ❞ there's a lump in his throat. he hates this. ❝ it fucking sucks. you said it better, though. ❞

water collects in the corners of obsidian sclerae, the white rings of light within darting to the window, to the empty desks under it. he blinks the water away. he can feel shouta's eyes on him; the tips of his ears go red, heat prickling the back of his neck under the scrutiny. ❝ i wish we were all immortal. like... vampires, or something. ❞

[lipsticktrail]

"Present? For meeeee?"

[huntershowl]

“did you ever think about me?” from geto.

THE TEMPLE IS SILENT TONIGHT. persephone finds herself spending more time here than she should lately, though the draw is not the place itself — she's never been spiritual, not really, and the whole thing is a farce anyway — but the one at the center, the heavenly body that pulls all others into his gravitational orbit.

as a rule, persephone finds no comfort in the presence of other people. they are inherently untrustworthy and abhorrent. liars, shapeshifters. every man's a sellout if he's offered enough money for it; no one is safe from the eyes of another. and in the rare case someone else is truly kind enough to be worth persephone's proximity, they tend to die.

geto is one of the two exceptions to these near-universal truths. maybe it's their shared history; maybe it's the way he's had several opportunities to take advantage of her in a near-death state and chose to help her instead, every single time. maybe it's that he's so honest with her about his true feelings on the world. maybe it's all of them. regardless, they find themselves in this situation more and more often lately: time spent together in comfortable silence, geto reading and persephone sitting in the frame of the window, letting the cool night breeze play with the buoyant strands of endless dark hair around her body. they've dragged a small table to the side of their perch so that they can take apart their sniper rifle and clean the parts one by one.

it's a meditative task. gentle clicks, the sound of brush bristles over gunmetal, the barely-audible whir of their arms, the shuffle of turning pages from geto's seat. so much so that the question, breaking the stillwater silence without warning, doesn't cause persephone to jump out of place and throw something at him as most sudden things would.

instead, her hands still.

during which part? she wants to ask, but knows he wouldn't understand what it means. not truly.

❝ yes, ❞ she says, quiet but clear in the empty room. ❝ all the time. ❞

they thought about him during the year he lost himself. it was the same year they left jujutsu tech, slipped away in the night a week before he defected without a word to anyone. they thought about him afterwards, during the brief moments every few years when they came up for air from a new life-altering trauma, and checked up on their old classmates on the other side of the world. they thought about him when they moved back to japan as a completely different person: broken and reshaped, torn to pieces, stuffed with filth and darkness and sewn back into human skin. they wondered, then, if he was still alive.

finally, they chance a look over at him, fighting to keep their customary scowl despite a slight prickle of warmth up the back of their neck. they don't return the question. instead, they tip their head back against the window frame and examine his face. ❝ why do you ask? ❞

[huntershowl]

[CHECK]: after an unexpectedly violent situation, sender frantically rushes to check if the receiver is okay, cupping their face to look closer. // satoruuuuu

@hinodae —

❝ WOAH — HEY, IT'S OKAY. ❞ A SOFT laugh under her voice at the sudden, frantic tenderness. persephone's vision fills with satoru: ozone eyes peer down at her like she's dying, long hands turning her face this way and that to make sure being thrown so hard against the wall didn't do too much damage.

sure, the back of her head is bleeding. sure, the room is spinning, just a little. but who gives a fuck. ❝ sato. ❞ seph leans her face into the touch absentmindedly, as if her body knows what to do when her mind is still catching up. ❝ it's fine. i'm good. we're alive, yeah? 'm not made of glass. ❞

[huntershowl]

❝  i have weathered the anger of gods before.  ❞ (kenjaku post kirby-inhale)

THE TETHER LIKE A SICK THING. like a pulsing wire, like an umbilical cord that cannot be cut. the hound circles him in a way that is in equal measure aggressive and protective, because there will never be anything but this: always the urge to guard, the inevitable following of orders.

wolf to woman, four legs wrapped in smoke to two stepping out of it. and a dark-eyed glare, cut with something else. (always. always.) ❝ not like this one. ❞

she knew satoru gojo back in the day. he was her friend. the poison that spills from her tongue hurts coming up, but that pain is washed over by numbless soon enough. it doesn't matter. nothing matters. fuck it all.

❝ you're banking a hell of a lot on one reaction. you sure you want to take that risk? ❞

[huntershowl]

"i've got you" (geto's strong he can lift them no problem)

send “I’ve got you”  to carry my injured & nearly unconscious muse / accepting

EVEN AFTER ALL THIS TIME, his voice sounds like home.

if it were anyone else finding persephone in this state, it would be game over. call the police, call gojo, hell, call the yakuza and they'll finally clean up the mess hellhound has put tokyo in. it was sheer luck that her victim managed to catch her with a bullet before she tore his throat out with her teeth; it sinks into her thigh like poison and she sways, hobbles, like a wolf with a broken leg.

when geto enters the alleyway, the sight before him is nothing short of barbaric. it's hard to tell where the main body is supposed to be — the pieces are too even, too ripped apart, some crushed into a smear on the asphalt and some tossed against the wall and left there like pieces of trash. blood and blood and more blood, painting the ground, painting the walls, painting the adjacent dumpster. and in the middle of it all a tall woman, breaths ragged from exertion, bloodstained teeth bared, eyes wild and glazed over with rage. they aren't in much better shape than the scene around them. it appears as if they've taken a bath in a tub full of blood — endless tumble of black hair stuck to their neck and arms and back and hips, matted and shiny; face painted crimson from the nose down; the only blood that is her own is what seeps from the wound in her leg, the wound she doesn't seem to notice at all as she takes one, two menacing steps toward geto — 

— and for a moment, it truly, genuinely looks as if she's about to leap at him with the intent to kill. instead, she topples forward and collapses into his arms.

i've got you. his voice a rich tenor, a balm over bruises, and only now does the mist in her eyes clear enough for her to blink up at him through matted eyelashes. ❝ suguru. ❞ a sigh of a name. they're too exhausted to panic about being seen in this state, about the murder and the gore. too damn tired. too damn tired. ❝ how...? ❞

[huntershowl]

❝  i have no need to forgive you. you cannot offend me.  ❞ ( from shoko 🖤 )

THEY SIT WITH THEIR HEAD in @koseigu's lap, and they take her hands and press her palms to their face to remind themself that she's real.

real, alive, unharmed. it isn't unusual for persephone's night terrors to bleed into her waking life. getting as little sleep as she does, hallucinations are a not-insignificant part of her world; distinguishing them from reality is not always so simple as shooting them in the head and hitting the wall. sometimes, it's rushing to shoko's apartment in the middle of the night and waking her to make sure she's alive.

❝ 'm sorry, ❞ they say anyway, they still say, for probably the fourth time so far. the dog at its master's grave, the dog that follows an unbuckled leash. she kisses her palms and rests her cheek on shoko's thighs, and peers up at her with dark hollows under darker eyes. ❝ cool if i stay? ❞

[huntershowl]

What makes you think you're worthy of Aizawa's forgiveness? (I've come to bully her >: D )

❝ I'M NOT. ❞ SHE WOULD BE A FOOL to believe she ever would be, ever could be — that shota's life with her in it would be anything but worse. persephone tries not to be selfish in her relentless pursuit of judgement. they cut ties, they avoid attachments, and any threads of connection that cannot be snapped they keep at arm's length.

@eraserisms was the one thing she couldn't let go. it's selfish to bring him back into her life, especially when he has a kid to protect. the enemy she builds and breaks and screams for would not hesitate to threaten @rcguish to keep shota from moving against him — and it would not stop at a threat. he specializes in fates worse than death. the things parents dream about on their worst nights that wake them in a cold sweat, have them darting into their child's bedroom just to sleep by their side, breathe in their scent, remind themselves that nothing has happened.

selfish. she knows it is. it would have been better to keep this relationship to what it is: an emergency probation. persephone a tool to him, aizawa a means to an end for them.

and yet.

quieter now, resigned. ❝ i'm not. he's an idiot to forgive me for all the shit i've done. and he'll hate me for it one day, i think — when it all goes to hell. ❞

[huntershowl]

“i’ve got you.” from geto. 👁️

send “I’ve got you”  to carry my injured & nearly unconscious muse / accepting

IT'S TOO MUCH.

IT PULSES AND WRITHES AND SCREAMS; it is a hungry ghost in her lungs, a moaning hurricane around her even now as geto lifts her broken body into his arms. before them, an entire city block lies destroyed. the buildings look like they've suffered a battle between great beasts, some blown to bits and some collapsed in on themselves. the streets are empty, littered with bodies, split by tectonic cracks. it shouldn't be this silent.

and in the middle of it all, at ground zero, the creature whose cursed energy caused such a nuclear meltdown. persephone wakes to a low voice. arms holding her up, a scent that strikes her nervous system as safe. a pained grimace reveals teeth stained with blood and cursed ichor as her vision fades back in, out, in —

it is a face she hasn't seen in years. if her body were in a better state, it would cause her heart to leap into her throat. as it is, a metallic hand — calloused and pale and real when last they saw each other — lifts to clutch at the collar-fold of the robe draped over his body. ❝ geto. ❞ hoarse, scratchy from screaming. ❝ ... your hair's longer. ❞

[huntershowl]

“i’ve got you.”

send “I’ve got you”  to carry my injured & nearly unconscious muse / accepting

❝ HOW TH'FUCK ARE YOU CARRYING me, p? ❞

the voice is quiet, hoarse, persephone's head resting on pasha's shoulder from behind as she's hauled on her back towards safety. it's not unusual for seph to end up like this. they get their shit kicked in on a near-weekly basis; it's an occupational hazard when devotion runs as deep as theirs.

because the truth is: persephone would fight an army for her. they would take a hail of bullets and kill and kill and kill and kill and die, if necessary.

they're not sure what happened after they blacked out. they know pasha stepped in, and they smelled the burning atmosphere of her magic, and then they were here — concussed to hell, bloodied to hell, and somehow, on her back with their arms draped over her neck. ❝ stronger than you look... you been powerlifting behind my back? ❞

[huntershowl]

@vsagis.

plotted starter.

❝ MAN, WE HAVEN'T HAD A SUMMER like this in the states for so long. maybe i'll never go back home. ❞

seph's keeping her hair longer than usual lately. it floats and sways halfway down her back in furious defiance of gravity, much more striking in its greater mass than the normal smoky swish around her shoulders. dark eyes find their companion's face where he walks beside them under a surprisingly mellow wash of sunlight: crisp and low-humidity, almost like spring in the middle of august. ❝ yo. you good? you've been quiet for a bit. ❞

[huntershowl]

❝ SHUT UP — 'M FINE. it's just — just lemme sleep it off on my own. ❞

[huntershowl]

❛ you are being so fucking weird, dude. ❜ ( from Katsuki

BAKUGOU HAS ALWAYS BEEN too perceptive for his own good. where no one else dares even attempt to see through the glowering mask she wears, he can tell she's gloomier than usual, and it's fucking annoying.

and clearly, he isn't going to let it go until she fesses up. why has she been gone for weeks? what the fuck happened?

without warning, they whirl on him, hand twisted into his shirt collar, and slam him back into the nearest wall. and it isn't rage guiding their movements. it isn't; he would know, he's fought alongside them enough times. it's something worse, a violent, shaky desperation that in its uncontrolled fervor is almost worse. ❝ my girlfriend's dead, ❞ she snarls, ❝ okay? and it's my fault. so forgive me if i'm acting weird. ❞

[huntershowl]

Oh no! Your romantic partners got caught by a James Bond villain. They are hanging over a tank full of piranhas. You can only save one of them. Who do you save and why?

❝ ... nah. let 'em fall. if they're not strong enough to fight piranhas, they don't deserve me. ❞

[huntershowl]

@koseigu ( sukuna. )

WELL. SHIT.

PERSEPHONE'S EXISTENCE HAS BEEN STRANGE from the very beginning. born an identical twin with enough cursed energy to power a fucking city without the added burden of orion's, without a fragment of a cursed spirit lodged in her soul like a fucking splinter, without the world-ending rage that would come to her later in life and a technique they still don't truly understand, they were never exactly slated for a benign existence.

even so: dying and coming back as an apparition while shibuya burns to ash and bone was not on their bingo card for late twenties life events.

getting used to her new form — forms — took no effort at all. going from woman to many-eyed wolfbeast feels like slipping into a second skin. not quite sorcerer and not entirely spirit, half their perception of themself (anguished, enraged, all vengeance and newly awakened) and half the world's perception of them (monstrous, lupine, revenant and ruiner), persephone HELLHOUND walks the scorched earth for the first time under paws the size of dinner plates and follows what they do not yet recognize as a cursed-energy scent trail.

they are looking for satoru. they have to make sure he's alright — wherever he has landed in this great neo-volcanic mess — and he's bound to be the most powerful presence in this space, right?

but as they bound through pools of shadow and leap between piles of debris that once were the rooftops she so adored, it is not her old friend who stands at the center of this unending storm.

it is someone different. someone far older, and far, far worse.

persephone has never seen ryomen sukuna in the flesh. they've heard stories from their employer, who was alive during his time and remains so thanks to the technique of eternal youth. they've heard of his reincarnation and how it sent the higher-ups of jujutsu society into panic. they've seen paintings, renderings, blurry images.

but the sheer presence of him has her monster-form raising its hackles, a shiver rippling through quills of black fur, many eyes wide and focused for fear of what might happen if they look away.

quietly, she lets the shadow-form melt away to decrease her visibility and watches him approach the dead, flaming disaster curse he has just utterly demolished. watches him regard it as it burns, crumbles, and disappears into ash. watches him turn his head, her living-dead-heart dropping into her stomach as he looks right at her.

so this is the trace given off by the young twins' dead bodies. god, he wasn't remotely this powerful before, was he?

perhaps it was her fate to die today after all. but no — you know what? fuck fate. it tried to kill her already and she ate her way out of the belly of hell because she has a fucking mission to finish. fear melts away into resolve, steely-eyed, calm. a call across the space, from one howling cursed-energy storm to another. ❝ i'm not here to fight. ❞