#(and even then his story would forever be incomplete)

[hoodienanami]

since were living in this new age of understanding when it comes to how becoming famous (especially tabloid famous/infamous) at a young age negatively effects your mental health and psychological development i think its time that ppl start reevaluating how they talk about the sex pistols

[blerghie]

the fact that 999 spent maybe less than a month with kdj before he was like “you know what? i now see why they’re so obsessed with him” and then turned against sp

[allfearstofallto]

Nice

Yandere childe x reader

1.7k

Synopsis: He'll buy you absolutely anything your heart desires, but he longs for you to describe things as more than just "nice"

TW: Yandere, abusive themes, bribery, NSFW themes, toxic relationship, Dub-Con

AN: I haven't written in FOREVER so forgive me if it's not awesome or if it feels incomplete. My last account got shadow banned :(, doesn't help that I was already pretty depressed before that. No time for sob stories here, it's been two years since I've written anything and I miss writing, thanks for joining me!

Gems that dazzled and gleamed stars in the night sky, silver that was carved painstakingly from the mines in Liyue, an appearance that was beautiful, but still kept up with the most current fashion trends. He had truly outdone himself with this one, this has to be the one that would take your breath away. The one that would make you leap into his arms and pepper his face with kisses from your sweet lips that he rarely got the chance to taste.

When it came to gifts for you, there was no price tag. Childe would spend every mora he had if it meant he could even get a smile out of you and spend he often did. Money meant nothing to him, being a Fatui harbinger, his paychecks were larger than he knew what to do with. After sending money back home to his family, he still had so much left and nothing that he longed for other than your affection. So, why not spend it on something else he cared about?

Your eyes ghosted over the ring he was showing you, encased in a black velvet box with red satin holding it up. It wasn’t an engagement ring, he’d assured you of that multiple times after you were taken aback by him holding it up to you. He knew you weren’t ready for that just yet, and he was willing to respect your wishes, but he still wanted to give you something to wear on that pretty little finger to show that you were his while you waited for the real deal. Your engagement ring would be much, much larger than the one he was gifting you now and it would incorporate details from both of your home countries.

The expression on your face was unreadable. It wasn’t quite a grimace, but it wasn’t a smile either. It was the usual face you made when you were given something. An equal mixture of discomfort and unease. “It’s…nice.” you mumbled quietly as he slipped the ring onto your finger.

There was that word again. Nice. It made him sick to his stomach every time he heard it fall from your pretty lips. But that was always what you said about his gifts, as if you couldn’t think of another word to describe how you felt about them. Rare spices imported from Sumeru? Nice. A custom hanfu made from only the finest silk to wear to the lantern rite? Nice. Wine aged for almost a decade and shipped straight from Mondstadt? Very nice.

You spoke that one word, but even then it felt like you were straining yourself to say that much. On multiple occasions, your displeasure with receiving such expressive gifts was expressed, but he told you that that didn’t matter. Mora was just an object to him, something that held no value, and yet you still held each gift as if they would collapse under your touch.

“You can tell me if you don’t like it,”

“No!” you quickly retorted back, holding your hand up to examine the ring once more, “Its…” you purse your lips to stop yourself from saying the word, knowing that he would only be upset with your lack of what he considered to be a proper answer, “I like it.”

With a sigh and a dramatic slump of his shoulders, he reached up and cupped your face. His hand felt like solid ice against your cheek. Childe often claimed that that was another thing he loved about you so much. How warm your body was in comparison to himself. He told you that when he someday took you to Snezhnaya to meet his family, you would be his personal heater, that he wouldn’t let you go for even a second during the duration of your stay there.

“You don’t even wear the earrings I got you anymore,” Childe’s long fingers traced from your cheek to the lobe of your ear, grazing the empty hole where jewelry would go.

“You know I can’t wear those at work,”

“Then quit your job,” He spoke those words so quickly, with no hesitation, a part of you was convinced you imagined it. But you working was a constant conflict of interest between the two of you, something you’d even argued about before.

The situation grew heated that day. Both of you, yelling back and forth about what you thought was right. You remembered seeing his eyes glow at the same time as his vision that rested on his hip, making your stomach drop. Childe would never hurt you, would he? But even you didn’t know the answer to that, you could never be too sure about what was going on in the mind of a harbinger. So you backed down slightly, telling him that it was something you would consider, and that answer sufficed with him for the time being.

“Childe-”

“Ajax,” he cut you off. He hated when you used his codename, claiming that as his future wife, you alone should be allowed to call him by his given name.

“Ajax," you exhaled harshly after speaking his name, "I really would like to work and be independent,”

For just the briefest of moments, his eyes went dull, his smile fell, his facade faltered and he was his true self. It only lasted for less than a second, the average person might not have even seen it, but you’d spent so much time with him. You knew his tells. You knew that even though he was smiling again, it was completely fake. He was angry, even if the gleam in his eyes didn't show it.

A cold kiss was pressed against your cheek, just a peck to get his point across. When he pulled away, still making eye contact, he was still so close that you could feel his shallow breath on your skin. He squatted down slightly to meet your eyes and whispered against your lips, “I don’t plan to let my wife work. Why don’t you quit now, have a little practice before we’re wed?”

He said that as a suggestion, but you knew it wasn’t one. With Childe there were only orders and threats, nothing in between. You had no choice on whether or not you’d get to work, on whether or not you got to live alone, on whether or not you married him. In his eyes, you were already his, and there was absolutely nothing you could do about it.

A lump was caught in your throat as you tried to figure out what to say. Could you even tell him that the prospect of marrying him was something that seldom crossed your mind? Something that even when you did think about, it brought a twinge of fear into your heart. That on multiple occasions, you considered leaving him, but your unease around him was what was making your stay.

“I…” you finally met his gaze as you tried to force words out of your tense body. His eyes felt so cold and the hand that he had managed to snake its way down onto your shoulder was gripping your flesh tightly. It was a warning that what you said next would matter, “I should just-”

“You should quit,” he spoke the last part of the sentence for you, not caring about what you truly wanted to say.

Eyes turned downcast, you gave a slow nod. There wasn’t much of a choice with him anymore, he was hellbent on that being your answer. He had given you an order, if you didn’t react the way he wanted you to, you would regret it.

The grip that was on your shoulder loosened, exhibiting that you had pleased him and another kiss was placed on your cheek as a reward. This time his lips touched just below your eyes, where tears were threatening to fall, “That’s my girl,” another peck right against your lips, “How about I buy you something special, huh? For being so good.”

You swallow slowly, trying to keep yourself from falling apart in front of him, clenching and unclenching your fist as a way to self soothe. Your voice was shaky as you delivered your stiff answer, “Sure. That sounds lovely.”

“How about a new pair of earrings,” he followed this up by lightly biting the side of your ear, “or maybe a new necklace,” you felt his warm tongue slide down from your ear to your collarbone, making all the hairs on your body stand up, “Or maybe even a new dress,” he spoke into your neck, his hand reaching down and trying to slide the dress you were wearing up your thigh, exposing your your bare skin to the air.

You jolted your body backwards, your hands placed against his chest in an attempt to keep the distance between the two of you. He was moving so fast. Too fast. Even though it had been a while since you and him had last been intimate, for him to try it again so suddenly was worrisome.

You didn’t dare look at his face. There was no doubt about it that he was upset at your response to his touch, he never liked when you rejected him. The hand that was placed against him, was taken into his. The way he held you was gentle, but you could still feel force behind his movement. The thumb of his hand traced the back of your palm as he held you, before lifting it up and placing a kiss against it. Right on your finger, right on the very expensive ring he’d just bought you, almost as a way to draw your attention to it once more.

“What’s gotten into you? Hm?” he had an eyebrow cocked and a grin on his face, “Pushing me away like that after I got you something so precious? You’re going to hurt my feelings.”

“I just don’t think I’m in the mood for this right now,” you mumbled, switching between looking at your dress you were fiddling with and his borderline unblinking eyes.

Silence fell over the two of you, to the point where you could hear your own heart beat, the sound of blood pumping in your ears, the sound of his breaths that were slightly heavier than normal. Childe was rarely quiet. It was hard to get him to keep his mouth shut. In a way his anger was scaled based on how loud he was, the quieter, the worse.

His large hand came into your sight again, making you flinch about what was coming ahead, but rather than being struck, he used his thumb to trace your lips, “Figure something out.”

[turn3tifosi]

III. my love, my life

logan sargeant x girlfriend/ex!reader

you and logan have been dating since forever, and one day he realizes he doesn’t know himself without you.

series masterlist | main masterlist

There’s a look on Logan’s face, a look you instantly recognize. 

“We should break up,” he says quickly, as if afraid that if he said it more slowly, he might change his mind halfway.

His words hit you like a tidal wave, washing over your entire being. The world around you blurs as you focus on Logan’s eyes, the eyes that once looked at you with so much love and warmth. Now, they’re filled with a determination you’ve never seen before, a resolve that tells you he’s not wavering.

You swallow hard, trying to find your voice. 

“Logan, why? What happened?”

He sighs, running a hand through his hair. 

“It’s not something you did. It’s just... I need to find myself. I need to figure out who I am without us.”

You know that trying to convince him otherwise would be futile. You can’t control him, can’t make him stay if his heart isn’t here anymore. So, you nod, even though it feels like your heart is shattering into a million pieces.

“I understand,” you say, even though you don’t. Not really. But you respect his need for self-discovery, even if it means losing him.

Logan’s shoulders sag with relief. 

“Thank you,” he whispers, as if he didn’t expect you to take it so calmly. 

“I’ll pack my things.”

As he moves around your shared apartment, collecting his belongings, you sit on the edge of the bed, memories flooding your mind. You remember the nights spent talking until dawn, the lazy Sunday mornings, the way his laughter would fill the room and make everything seem brighter. He is your love, your life, and you can’t imagine a world without him.

When he finally zips up his suitcase, he turns to you, hesitating. 

“I’ll always care about you,” he says softly.

You force a smile. 

“And I’ll always love you.”

With a final, lingering look, Logan leaves. The door closes behind him with a soft click that sounds like the end of everything you’ve known. You sit there, staring at the closed door, feeling a hollowness you’ve never felt before. It’s as if a part of you walked out with him, leaving you incomplete.

Days turn into weeks, and you find yourself going through the motions, existing but not truly living. You see Logan’s ghost in everything—his favorite coffee mug, the sweater he left behind, the photos of the two of you still on the walls. Each reminder is a knife twist in the wound, a painful echo of what you had.

There are moments when you almost call him, moments when you’re convinced that hearing his voice will make everything better. But you stop yourself, knowing that he needs this time apart, needs to find himself without you. Loving someone sometimes means letting them go, even if it breaks your heart in the process.

You throw yourself into work, into hobbies, into anything that can distract you from the ache inside. Slowly, you begin to rebuild your life, piece by piece. The pain never fully goes away, but it becomes a part of you, a scar that reminds you of what once was.

You see Logan sometimes, in the places you used to go together. There’s always a moment of recognition, a shared smile that says, “I remember.” But you never approach him, never try to rekindle what you had. You respect his journey, just as he respected yours.

In time, you find a sense of peace. You realize that love doesn’t always mean holding on. Sometimes, it means letting go, allowing the person you love to become who they need to be. Logan was your love, your life, and though he’s no longer by your side, he’s still a part of you, a chapter in your story that will always be cherished.

[vinelark]

what r some fics that shaped your psyche? you have so many good recs im currently rereading the to an athlete dying young series

hello! you sent me this ask ages ago and i've been meaning to get to it ever since. (it took me so long to answer that i'm sure you've reread to an athlete dying young by @sonosvegliato many times over by now but hell yeah, what a good one.)

these are a few fics--dc and beyond--that have been in my "in case of emergency" epub folder (aka fics i want to have on hand immediately to reread on bad days, or good days, or even average days) for a few years now. so here is an extremely incomplete list of fics that have shaped my psyche!

for dc specifically--if i tried to list all of them i would just end up repeating my whole fic rec tag, so these are just a few of the ones i read when i was getting into this fandom that stayed with me/made me want to seek out more for these characters:

📸 surveillance series by @smilebackwards

this series located the tim drake center of my brain and lit it up like the vegas strip.

🎒 like a hinge, like a wing by @bonesbuckleup

one of my go-to rereads for pangs; chapter one is a masterclass in tension. also, one of my favorite pre-robin tim pov fics of all time.

💻 nominal by @unpretty

"you don't get it, batman is a comedy" --conversation i've had with multiple people using this fic as my thesis statement.

🌃 the jingle jangle morning by @audreycritter

the moment somebody in my vicinity says "i love dick grayson" i'm on their doorstep with this fic url.

🚉 a meditation on railroading by @eggmacguffin

there's a moment in this fic known among my friends as "baby wipes jason" and it has successfully converted no less than three people to the fandom.

and then for non-dc fic:

🌌 atlas by @megafaunatic (mdzs & tgcf)

did i read this before i had a single clue who the characters were? yes. did i return to it once i did and lose my mind a little? yes. lore etymologyplayground writes that “so so so in love and pining so hard the lines between us are blurring and we haven’t made a move yet but it’s inevitable” flavor with such a deft hand; it is in fact called the lorezone. if any friends-to-lovers pining i write can achieve even 50% of a lorezone i will have done my job.

🪿 If they caught you by @feyburner (tgcf)

i go back to this when i think about setup and payoff, when i think about subtle misdirects, when i think about the monumental task of creating whole compelling new characters in 6k words.

🧪 away childish things by lettered (hp)

one of the best de-aging trope stories i've ever read; i think of this when i want to take a trope to its maximum potential and then go: no wait, there's even more.

(another fav de-aging fic is grow by @cafecliche; shorter plot but no less pangs 🌱)

🏡 in defiance of all geometry by @idiopath-fic-smile (les mis)

a fic that's a perfect reread when i need something cozy and full of character, and a perfect touchstone when i'm pondering something where the world may not hang in the balance but the stakes still matter.

📔 The Absolutely True Story of the Yiling Patriarch: A Manifesto in Many Parts by aubreyli (cql/mdzs)

paragon of metahumor, basically. i think of this when i want to write something that's funny in both text and form.

🍚 and his wanting grows teeth by @yuebings (cql/mdzs)

masterclass in pangy backstory reveal; the way the first scene loops back around to punch you in the gut long after you've forgotten it will forever be seared into my brain.

also, most answers on this list fit the bill!

(apologies again that this answer is so belated; it took me ages to write up partially because i kept stopping to reread these fics every time i tried.)

[fyodior]

IN EVERY UNIVERSE.

self-indulgent fyodor x gn!reader fluff because my heart is still so so broken :( no warnings! wc: 0.7k (divider by cafekitsune)

“I think that you and I would find each other in every universe.”

“Hmm?” your lover prods, pulling you closer against his chest and tipping your chin up with his finger. His violet eyes glowed in the waning light of the setting sun, slightly obscured by the raven fringe that swept across his forehead. “How do you mean?”

Taking advantage of the early summer weather and your approaching anniversary, you and Fyodor skipped work in favor of dedicating the day to your love. Starting with, of course, sleeping in, followed by a brunch you and him made together, visiting your favorite art museum, and ending the day with a picnic in a sprawling field within a nearby nature preserve.

It was like a movie, the way he hand-fed you strawberries and kissed away the juice that trickled down the corners of your lips with the laugh you could recognize anywhere. Prose and poetry danced off Fyodor’s lips as he read from the tote bag full of books you had lugged with you, reading stories of immortalized love and poems ignited by insurmountable passion as you laid your head in his lap. A few Russian novels had snuck their way into the collection as well, Fyodor gracing you with the heightened level of elegance and finesse in his voice as he spoke in his native tongue.

But now the two of you, pleasantly exhausted from the day, lie on the blanket laid out in the grass, surrounded by sprouts of baby’s breath and daisies in the cozy drowsiness of a summer haze.

You take the opportunity to press the gentlest of kisses against his warm lips, and he smiles softly as he returns the gesture. “I mean that… I don’t think there’s any version of us in any world, in any universe, in any timeline that don’t find each other. That never feel the touch of the other.”

Warmth blooms in Fyodor’s chest and spreads to each of his limbs, painting a rosy red on his cheeks that only you have ever been able to put there. “And why do you say that, my love?”

 “Because… I just know it. Our souls are intertwined. Don’t you feel it?”

It makes sense in your head. The way you perfectly compliment each other. The way you felt like you’d known him your whole life the second you met him. The tilt of his head and the almost mischievous spread of his lips felt like those of an old friend, and you hadn’t even known his name yet. And in that moment, too, you already knew you’d know him forever.

And yet, you weren’t two halves of a whole. You always found that expression to be reductive. To insinuate you were incomplete people without each other was incorrect – you would always be you, and Fyodor would always be Fyodor. But you made each other… better. More complete.

“Your handprint is forever burned on my soul, Fyodor,” you explain.

“I feel it,” he nods, answering your question from earlier as locks of your hair twirl between his fingers. “Like the roots of a thousand-year-old tree curl around each other and cement themselves into the earth, I feel it.” His hands leave your hair in favor of intertwining your fingers together, as if to illustrate his point.

 I fear we are stuck, you and I,” he chuckles, and you giggle along too.

“For better or for worse,” you say. “In every universe.”

“Through heaven and hell, and everything in between, above, or below. I’ll find you, my darling.”

The sun had finally dipped below the horizon now, casting your lover in a faint glow that made him seem ethereal, almost angelic. Your free hand, the one not enveloped in his, came to touch the delicate, porcelain skin of his cheek.

“You promise, Fedya? That you’ll find me?”

“I swear.”

[my-castles-crumbling]

card - @wolfstarmicrofic - word count: 309

It was the last present of the evening.

The whole friend group had all gathered around and exchanged gifts, all the while drinking Firewhiskey and swapping stories about their new jobs now that they'd all graduated.

It was one of those rare moments when everyone was there- nobody was caught up with another obligation that made their little family incomplete. Lily and Pandora were curled up on the couch, Dorcas and Marlene in an armchair. James and Regulus were sitting side-by-side on the floor whispering to each other and grinning while Barty and Evan took turns throwing wrapping paper into the fire. Peter and Mary could be heard joking in the kitchen with Alice, Frank, Gideon, and Fabian.

As Sirius smiles softly and took in all the people around him, he almost missed Remus elbowing him, passing him the small parcel. "For you," Remus murmured, smiling a bit.

"What, no card?" Sirius teased. Remus was known for writing long, heartfelt cards that could make anyone tear up.

The taller boy chuckled, looking a bit nervous for some reason, but didn't answer.

Shrugging, Sirius opened the paper to find a small box. It looked oddly like something one would put jewelry in. But Remus had already given him a beautiful necklace earlier that evening, at their apartment. "What-?" he began to ask, but broke off when he opened it.

Inside the box was a ring. Is was simple in design, with moons and stars etched on the outside, and the word 'forever' engraved inside the band.

And when he looked over to Remus for confirmation that this was what he thought it was, he realized at once that the entire room was quiet. And staring at them. And that Remus was on his knee.

"I didn't think I should put this in a card," Remus said with a teary grin.

[atelierlili]

In-Panem/Not Reaped Everlark AUs

Got asked to give some fanfic recommendations for In-Panem/Not Reaped Everlark AUs so here we are. Most of them (if not all of them) are gonna be fluffy and happy tbh because i can't take my pookies being hurt ):

Completed:

A New Path (138k words) by Endlessnightlock

The day after aging out of the Reaping, Katniss crosses paths with Peeta. She thanks him for the bread and to her surprise, a tentative friendship begins.

One of my favourites. I love the direction the author took with this story. Always made me want more!

Go Slow, Peeta (20k words) by Oakfarmer

The era of the Hunger Games has come to an end. How Everlark slowly happened anyway.

This was the one that started it all for me. Short, simple and to the point! A classic in my opinion.

Nothing Owed for a Gift (10k words) by orphaned account

Lately, Merchants have taken to flirting with unwitting Seam folk as a joke, sometimes going so far as to ask them out on a date. I've even heard of a couple instances of a Merchant asking someone from the Seam to marry them, and then laughing hysterically when the poor recipient says 'yes'. So, when Peeta Mellark approaches me after the reaping, red with nerves and pushing his lips together as if he's trying very hard not to do something like laugh, I'm immediately wary. Peeta can't possibly be asking me to marry him for real. ... right?

Urgh. Literally one of my favourite one-shots.

Inevitability (44k words) by Xerxia

What if? What if Peeta and Prim hadn't been reaped?

Definitely not the fluffiest fics in the list, but Katniss absolutely SHINES here. And Peeta stays very true to his character as well. Absolutely worth the read.

It Takes A District (55k words) by MTK4FUN

Thinking her mother is dying, Katniss Everdeen marries Peeta Mellark to keep her sister out of the Community Home.

I love this fic. I don't know what it is, but there's something about it that makes it standout on its own.

Katniss Everdeen Is Not A Stalker (241k words) by MegaAuLover

Katniss as a little problem, she can't stop looking through Peeta's window, trying to find a way to pay her boy with the bread back but as time goes on she realizes she wants more. But there is a problem the District is flooded with Peacekeepers and everyone faces danger as the Capitol tightens its reigns on the district. Can love bloom in the middle of adversity? Or will it shrivel in the face of surmounting danger?

This is the one. Easily one of the bestest AUs imo. Very long read- but I will be naming my first born after the squirrel. The Everlark relationship here is A+++.

Incomplete/Ongoing:

( I know its weird to recommend incomplete fics, some these ones are legitimately my favourite fics and think are still worth the read.)

Cavedweller (79k words) by Jennajuicebox (last update: 2021-01-25)

Her mother once told her she was brave. A word Katniss wouldn't have chosen for herself. Brave implies that you run headlong into the scary unknown. Brave implies you face the things that want you dead. It dredges up thoughts of conquering armies and swords raised over head. Katniss isn't brave. As much as she would never admit it to herself she is scared out of her wits. She is staring into a gaping chasm, waiting for it to swallow her whole.

I love AUs that explore Katniss otherside of the family so much. As always, the Everlark development here is absolutely heartwarming and delicious. 10/10

On the Threshold ( 97k words) by ghtlovesthg (last update: 2020-06-26)

Nineteen and free from the Reapings forever, Katniss finds a token on her doorstep commemorating her passage over the threshold of adulthood. Discovering the identity of the sender will start Katniss on a road that leads toward life's other milestones.

This is exactly how I envisioned Everlark would get together had it not been for the Reapings. So so so so good. There is just enough here to be satisfied that the fic is unfinished ; w;

hope you find something you like! I always have more if you want more to sink your teeth into <3 Happy readings!

@heartforeyes @the-tiny-fangirl

[bridenore]

Author rec : moonflower_rose

Moonflower_rose is one of my favorite authors. Here are a few recs, listed in alphabetical order.

Beneath the Wave by @moonflower-rose [30k]

Harry is done with a life in the spotlight. No more adventures, no more mortal peril. He wants a quiet life of food and friends, and family. He even manages to have it for a while, until suddenly there are giant rabbits that need ferrying to a mysterious island, and a handsome Draco Malfoy, and Harry’s right back in the middle of the action again, despite his best efforts.

Contretemps by @moonflower-rose​ [8k]

Draco Malfoy has been living like a model citizen. If only he could convince Potter.

Nothing But You On My Mind by @moonflower-rose [29k]

Potter has been in Australia on an internship for almost a year, and Draco cannot wait for him to get back home. They’ll finally have a chance to talk about their feelings for each other. What could possibly go wrong? Loads, as it turns out.

Nothing Gold Can Stay by @moonflower-rose [40k]

One summer evening, Harry Potter vanished in the middle of dinner with his friends. Four days later he came back. Sort of. Draco Malfoy is on the case.

Poppiholla by @moonflower-rose [12k]

Harry had accepted that he would pine silently for Malfoy forever, but one, humid summer might change that. Hoppípolla by @moonflower-rose [20k] Falling in love was as easy as jumping in puddles, and Draco Malfoy was completely drenched.

Snug by @moonflower-rose [6k]

Potter can't keep his hands off himself. Draco can't look away.

Toy Story by @moonflower-rose [40k] *Incomplete

A politician, a cursed dildo, and a minor workplace accident. All in a day’s work for one Harry Potter.

Watch The Castles Burn by @moonflower-rose [21k]

Draco Malfoy knows better than to get involved with Harry Potter. If only someone would have reminded him of that six months sooner, then maybe he wouldn’t be in quite such a large mess.

The World of Management (Or, Harry Potter and the Office Romance) by @moonflower-rose [15k]

Draco Malfoy is the heart and soul of the Department of Magical Games and Sport. The only thing standing in the way of professional bliss is his boss. And Harry Potter.

I hope you enjoy these stories as much as I did!

[writefightandflightclub]

Ride or Die (Santiago “Pope” Garcia x fem!reader): Chapter Eight (of 11 - COMPLETED SERIES)

Series summary: Together, you and Santiago have been “soldiers” then “friends” then “lovers”; but will you ever figure out what comes next, especially when Santiago can’t (or won’t) stop running? 

Genre: a LOT of angst, (some) smut, best friends to… lovers?

Warnings: see collated series warnings, here. Please note, this series is 18+. Minors / ageless blocks interacting will be blocked.

Series info: this is a COMPLETED SERIES. All chapters are written and queued. Posting schedule is here (includes series master list). 

Author’s note: Oh my goshhhhh, I hope you're ready for chapter eight??!!! We've been on such a journey with these two, and I can't wait for you to see where they go next. As always, I would be super grateful for any comments / reblogs / asks you may wish to send my way. ILY :-*

Word count: 8.6k for this part. 

Tag list info: will reblog separately tagging those on taglist. You can request to be added to taglist if you are 18+. Send me an ask, please, so I can keep track :)

In your ensuite, you shower the residue of the day away from your flushed skin, rinsing the sand and sunscreen and sweat away beneath the warm, sluicing water. You’re alone, and yet your thoughts are consumed by another. By Santiago specifically; of course. 

He had promised you something -to give you what you want, need- and you’re trembling already in anticipation of it. You feel butterflies unfurling in the pit of you at the thought of laying down with him. Of baring yourself to him. Of surrendering. Having him hold you. Not urgently or desperately this time - no. Intentionally. Deliberately. Gently. 

You unhook the shower head to rinse the soapy suds away from the contours of you and you think of him - because how can you think of anything else? Indeed, your want is so barreling that even your own hands smoothing over your skin - your breasts, your stomach, your thighs - arouse you, your own touch the precursor to the path his warm, rough fingers might travel. 

You are about to merge with him, but he already feels so much a part of you. 

You belong to Santiago. 

It’s Santiago who is indelibly written onto your body, the map of scars telling the story and you and him. The scar on your shoulder from a bullet wound, the scar on your calf from an off-road collision, the lines and marks all over you where Santiago has been there for you, taken fire for you, pressed his lethal hands to you to keep your lifeforce from ebbing away. 

There’s that, but also, there are the more invisible markers which your life with him - alongside him- has left on your skin. There’s the scrape of his stubble against your neck. The grip of his broad hands on your hips. The pulse between your legs which your body remembers. You have catalogued and cartographed the soft and harsh parts of his body - and his soul. But, you still do not have the map to his heart. He is yet to show you the way; but even so…

He is your ride or die, and your body knows it. Always has. 

Your body knows that you are about to collide with him. To be subsumed by the surge and undertow of him, and you throb for it. You expel a sugared moan into the steamy air as the jet of water provides pressure against your wanting clit, and for a moment you wonder how you can be so gone for him. You have been waiting for him to choose you;  but, in truth, for you it was never a choice. 

One of you can not hope to be read -to be understood- without the other. Your bodies are forever moving through the world as a team, as a pair, even if you leave each other’s side. You didn’t choose it so much as it just happened. A lifetime, wearing familiar dirt tracks into clear waymarked paths with every step forward. 

Still, the map has always remained incomplete. You could never quite see where this path with him ended. How far it could take you. Whether he would walk alongside you some or all of the way. 

You are grateful for him. So grateful. But you always want more. More of him. How could you not? 

Santiago has already made your life beautiful in so many ways. Can he give you something beautiful tonight, too, like he had promised? Something that feels different to those waves which break, over and over, self-defeating. Something that feels different to an ending?

You startle as there is a soft rap at the door, and Santiago’s voice bleeds through the panelled wood, sounding as warm and grainy as sun-heated sand. Like summer. Like sunlight through a clearing in dense, gnarled woods. “Are you ready, querida?”

Are you? 

Are you ready for what he has promised? Because you are suddenly all too aware that what he has offered -in not so many words- is to make love to you tonight. To give himself to you. To let you bask in him. 

Are you ready for that? To see him in more than fragments. Not only snatching the haphazard pieces of him he offers - so jagged that they cut the palm you grasped them tightly in. Are you ready to feel whole? 

Can you take his love if it doesn’t hurt? 

Your heart thuds in your neck; from the hot, billowing steam, and from him. The mere idea of him. You step carefully out of the cubicle, steam venting into the room. Your skin is hot and wet and dripping, and you feel that same way too. 

“Two minutes.” 

You towel off, your hands lightly trembling. 

You think of him, because how can you do anything else?

You think of the water, sluicing down his sturdy body as he showered off in the main bathroom. Of him getting himself ready for you. You wonder if he aches for you as you do for him. You wonder if he grew rigid beneath his hand as you were becoming liquid for him. You wonder, if his heart ever once felt like it had a choice.

You think about him waiting for you right now in the bedroom. Maybe shirtless, black-grey curls wet and tight, his golden brown skin lit with the soft orange glow of the lamp. Of him poised there in the quiet and stillness waiting to collide with you, just like the sea washing over this frayed edge of land in this endless dance - consuming, taking, giving, repeating. Working as a team. 

You wonder if he feels this flutter in him too. This movement in him. This undeniable, slow drag which has always pulled you two to one another. Always. 

And so, he asks you. Are you ready? And you do what you can to prepare yourself for this collision. So eager to merge with him, but basking in the fact that, for once, you get to take your time. That you don’t have to fear or brace, thinking about whether, when you crack the door to the bedroom, he will already be gone. 

Taking your time then, and with subtly jittering hands, discombobulated breath, you smooth sweet-smelling lotion all over your body. Of course, you think of his hands and where they might travel too when they get their chance. Of how Santiago can touch you better than you could ever touch yourself. How he knows your body, seemingly, as well as he knows his own.

And so, you think of him. You think of him and of the ocean and the rocks. Of valleys and summits. Of dense jungles and sunlit clearings. Of the frayed edges of the land and the frayed edges of yourself. Of all the places where things collide and all the places where they merge, and how those places are so often one and the same.  

So then, when you think that you are finally ready? When you have smoothed lotion into your skin and smoothed your pleasant, buzzing nerves, you step out into the bedroom.

And that is the very moment you realise. Realise that you’re not at all ready. That you could never be. How could you be? How could he fail to take your breath away, even once? 

Just look at him. 

You enter the bedroom, your silk robe draped appealingly over the contours of your body and Santiago stands, surging up from where he had perched himself so impermanently on the edge of the mattress. He’s been waiting for you and he looks; immediately. Drinking you in. His jaw falling slack. He looks like he might’ve smiled at first - or greeted you in words. But he can’t do so now. The words are swallowed, perhaps, as a gulp trails down his corded neck. Santiago looks serious, his brows weighted. He looks as though he knows how much this matters. Like he finally knows how much you matter. 

You look at him too, and you find you can’t smile either. After all, Santiago fills you with a joy so heavy that sometimes, it is hard to recognise it as such. 

You simply take him in, then. All at once. The contours and ridges of him, and the paths your hands might travel over his smooth brown skin. You see him. Your lust-ridden and love-sparked eyes dance over his wetted, grizzled curls, scrunched-up but with errant strands coiling across his forehead. You take in his bare, sculpted chest. His toned arms and his soft, inviting stomach. You drink in the way his brushed cotton joggers cling to his ample hips. To his sturdy thighs and to the clear outline of the bulge at his crotch as he swells with anticipation from the sight of you alone. 

His hands hang loose yet primed at his sides as he looks at you from beneath his thick, fanning lashes. The pace of his breathing is slightly quickened, his gilded shoulders rise and fall with greater vigour as he scoops a hand over his flecked stubble and you hear it rasp. Feel it as though his fingers were your own. As though there is no difference or distance between you at all. Not the distance between here and Colombia. Not the distance he runs from you whenever you get too close. 

Your chest tightens with the sheer familiarity of him. Because of the fact you already know how he feels and how he tastes. How the vibration of his moans in his corded throat feel against your skin. Your chest tightens, because even in the mellow light of the room he still looks sharp and sure. Formidable. But he looks like home too. You remember all the ways you already know he is tender, and you want to learn every other way too. 

You take a deep, steadying breath as you sway towards him, from one steamy room to another, Santiago’s warmth every bit as enclosing. You are grateful that the window is cracked open, cool air kissing your heating skin. The sound of the swollen waves mirroring the surge within you.

In this moment, Santiago is not a man to you at all. Rather, he is a landscape. He is your whole life laid out before you. He is everywhere you have been, and he is everywhere you may go. His lands are your topography, and you know that you will walk his paths forever hoping to find a way to his heart. Hoping that, one day, he will let you call him home, even though you’ve already been here learning him for as long as you can remember. 

He is everything. And you’re not ready. And it’s all too much. 

Finally though, Santiago looks certain. He looks ready. He looks at you as though you are the moon and he is the tide, and that within moments he will move oceans for you. That he will flood your frayed edges, smooth and overcoming and inevitable. 

He closes the distance, his warm palm slipping up to gingerly cup your face and his lips slanting to capture yours. His fingertips tugging at the bow of your robe, about to release it. 

But you? You hesitate. You turn, almost impercebtibly, but it is enough for Santiago to notice. 

You hesitate because, by now, you are so used to breaking. And you’re not sure you can do it again. 

For so long, he has viewed you in pieces, and you have started to wonder whether he was the one who broke you apart in the first place. 

Now though? His gentle, earnest eyes reading your face and your body so carefully? His hand reaching out for you in a way that promises healing? That shows his palm holds nothing jagged - nothing but love? 

To your utter surprise, your skin flushes hot with embarrassment and you blink, your lashes fluttering towards your cheek. A modest, bashful smile is primed on your mouth. An apology readying itself on your tongue. It seems silly, you think. Silly to be hesitant now, after everything. Seems silly that after all of the times you have given in when he would promise you nothing, that you would shrink back when he offers you something more. Most of all, you think, it seems silly to be hesitant with him, after all the ways and places and times he has touched you.

You don’t quite understand it, but to his credit, Santiago seems to. When he senses your apprehension, his eyes narrow a little. His brow furrows, and his mouth slants up into a gentle, reassuring smile. 

“Come here,” he says instead, before your garbled, unnecessary apology can free itself from your throat. His voice is as soft as the shushing waves and the mellow light and he takes you by the hand, his fingers twined delicately with yours. He leads you, but not forcefully. He leads you the way the sun leads the moon into the night sky as it chases its warm light - you gladly follow, his palm bleeding heat. His eyes full of sunlight. He leads you then to your bed and he peels the covers back, inviting you to lie with him through a subtle nod of his head. The way this all started the first time he undid you - except tonight, you know, is so very different. 

Santiago climbs in first, never letting go of your hand, and he pats the spot on the mattress exposed by the turned-back comforter. Your fingers tug on your robe and you finally slip out of it, exposing the contours of your body to the pooling lamplight. Santiago’s tongue traces along his lower lip as he drinks you in, watching awestruck as the fabric shimmies to floor, pooling at your feet and leaving you bare. For a moment, you even feel self-conscious as Santiago regards you; for once not frenzied and desperate, but with time to study you. You feel on display and yet he makes you feel nothing but beautiful. Makes it seem natural as you allow the caress of the smooth fabric to be replaced by the warm embrace of him. You slip in beside him, shuffling under the covers. Both of you lying on your side to face each other, but still with some distance between you. 

You breath hitches as Santiago’s arm folds over your bare middle, his lithe fingers applying smooth caresses to your skin, the pads of him dancing up the notches of your spine, tracing the line of your shoulder blade. You are happy for him to touch you. You want it. But you do not reach for him just yet. Your arms remain bunched in the space between you, your forearms guarding your chest. 

“You still want this?” he asks, voice as soft as dissolving sugar. 

You can’t bring yourself to meet his gaze, for you know it will be an irresistible, sweet, moreish thing. You can’t allow him to gaze into the depths of your own eyes just yet. After all, it is not only your body which is laid bare for him. Your feelings are too, you fear. Every single want and dream and desire and insecurity. He can read you. Knows you. 

“Yes,” you attempt to state levelly, and yet your voice cracks wide open. “I want this more than anything.” 

With a soft, perhaps relieved, exhale, Santiago shimmies forward then, closing some of the distance between your bodies. Tangles his thighs up with yours. Shifts his head so you are almost nose to nose on the pillow, dipping briefly to plant a fleeting kiss to the tip of your nose. All the while, too, his hand continues to wander over your body. Stroking you, caressing you, asking for nothing in return, and you bask in these slow, stretched, careful moments. 

“Then… what is it?” 

You finally look up at him then and, try as you might, you can’t disguise the way your eyes shimmer with emotion as you note the way concern has etched its way into his brow. For reassurance, your arms tug tighter into your chest. 

His eyes become liquid too, the earthy mirror to your own. They shine with a deep well of friendship, of care, of love. And you realise exactly “what”.

Part of you is afraid, sure. Part of you has been hurt too much to accept that you could share something truly joyful with the man. But a larger part of you is keen to relish in this waiting and restraint for other reasons.

Why, though? Why on earth would you wait? Hesitate? Well - it’s quite simple, really. Because if it doesn’t begin, it can’t ever be over. If you don’t have him like this - whole, fully - then you can never lose all of him. Losing pieces of him was hard enough, wasn’t it? And you don’t know that you could bear to lose a scrap more than that. 

Santiago’s gaze dips to your mouth and you can tell he’s eager. Good to go when and only if you should give him the green light. You want that. You do. Still, upon examining his expression more closely, something tells you that there is one more wall to fall. You’ve encountered so many of his walls already, that you’re not sure you have the strength to tear this one down. 

In the end, you are grateful that you don’t have to. That he does it for you. 

“You were wrong, you know,” Santiago’s voice sounds out, a gentle tone but full of subtle cracks. His hand slides up, gingerly capturing your cheek in his palm, holding your gaze with his. You don’t know what’s coming, but your chest tightens with some unknown thing, even as Santiago’s thumb tenderly strokes back and forth over your cheek to soothe you. Your brows knot, and you shake your head lightly, exhibiting your confusion. 

Pursing his lips, preparing himself, Santiago tugs the covers up to your shoulders, keeping you warm. “That night in Philadelphia,” he continues, a divot carving itself into his brow at first, and yet a mere moment later, his face lilts into a soft, wistful smile. “That was it. That was the night.” 

His smile widens, ever so subtly, and his eyes shine with enough adoration that you wonder if you’re meant to be here. If he can really be looking at you like that, or if you’ve momentarily stolen someone else’s life. “The night that… what?” 

“The night my dumb ass first realised that I was in love with you. And… the night I first realised you didn’t love me back.” 

You face scrunches with even deeper confusion now. 

What?! But, that couldn’t possibly… 

That night was years before you even hooked-up. Years and years and years before all of this. Before you even felt…. 

Oh. 

Oh. 

Your breath stalls in your chest then as comprehension floods you. 

He loved you first.

Your chest constricts, and your heartbeat pushes the rhythm of his name into your mouth, in lieu of any words. 

Santiago. 

Santiago. 

Santiago. 

All this time? 

He crooks his finger under your chin, his gaze level and calm - no blame in it. “You were wrong, see? You didn’t get there first, querida. I was waiting a long time for you. I guess I got scared you’d never catch me up, and so I…” His eyes swim briefly then, clouding over with something like regret. “...I started running. And I guess I just…” His shoulders hunch up towards his ears. “I didn’t know how to stop.”

Santiago. 

Santiago. 

Santiago. 

Your heart thuds his name, and you are overcome with too many emotions to name. Emotions which bend you from the inside out, mobilising you to unfurl yourself, to move towards him. But you don’t; not just yet. 

You do see it plainly now, as you look into his earnest, regretful eyes. You’d spent so long acting as though he had something to prove to you, but you already know who he is, don’t you? Know that he’d never hurt you if he could help it. You see plainly how it has hurt him to love you. That it still hurts him to love you. 

You don’t want that for him. You never wanted that. In fact, all you’ve ever wanted is for him to feel safe. To feel loved. And so, if Santiago can’t run freely into your safe hands? If he doesn’t believe he’s brave enough to do so? If your arms were closed to him for so long that he forgot what it felt to be open? If all of that is true, then you will reach for him instead.  

“Santiago.” You breathe his name, finally pushing the syllables from out of your chest. Finally squeezing errant tears from the corners of your eyes as you realise all of this time you’ve loved each other alone instead of together like you should have. As you mourn all the missed moments. As you lament all of the things which got in the way. 

That doesn’t matter now though. All of that feels inconsequential. It all feels like bullshit now that your paths have finally converged. 

And so, you do reach for him with your careful, killing hands. It is your turn to gingerly cup his cheek with your palm now, his stubble rasping beneath your hand, and his long-lashed eyes fanning closed as he leans gratefully into your touch. 

There’s so much that you want to tell him. So much that you want to say. 

That you’re here now. That you love him. That he doesn’t need to run. 

But… you don’t want to say it with words. After all, that was never the language you two shared most fluently. You want to tell him with touch. You need to. Want to tell him plainly and hear those sentiments returned in the writhing conflux of your bodies. In the moment, with your love for him spilling out of you, it seems no other way you could tell him - show him - could be enough. 

You reach out then, and with a stuttered inhale, your chest a butterfly house, you press your palm to his warm, bare chest. You feel his heartbeat thudding under your hand. Faster, Faster, Faster, as you touch him. 

You love the man. You will keep his heart safe in the roll cage of your ribs if he’ll let you. You will. You promise. You’ll be gentle with it. No more bracing. No more collisions. 

“Santiago,” you breathe as you move closer. As close as you can get, in fact, your form pressed up against his, skin to skin. “What do you want, right now?” You speak the words into the junction of his neck, his pulse point throbbing against your wanton lips. “What would make you happy in this moment?” 

You feel the deep vibration in his throat as he hums, moans, begs - dumbly - and you know intuitively that he cannot rely on words in this moment either - only on his touch. Can only tell you -show you - what he wants, craves, in the act of reaching for you, his hands finding familiar paths on your skin but walking them in a new way tonight. He reaches for you. Rolls you beneath him in a fluid motion because you yield, already a boneless, molten thing under him. 

He touches you. Caresses you. Kisses you. You return it. For a moment you are a mess of ragged breath and sweat and clashing teeth and tangled tongues. Of pads of fingers and brushed cotton and soft heaving moans. And then, his strong arms bracing him over you, Santiago pauses - amidst a breath snatched from your mouth. Pauses just to look at you there beneath him. His eyes flit all over your face, and he huffs out a disbelieving puff of air. 

”Holy shit, hermosa.”  He looks at you as though you’re the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. Perhaps you are. His molten, lust-dark eyes certainly make you believe it. 

Still, just before your greedy fingers can wind up and over, brushing over the prickle of short, buzzed hairs at the nape of his neck to drag his mouth back over yours, Santiago shifts, his kiss eluding you.  

Santiago has always had the map to your heart, and as his fingers trail so confidently down your skin, his lips working down the column of your throat, your breasts, your puffy nipples, stubble grazing you, you think that maybe, finally, he is following it home. Your bodies always were symbiotic; moving, fighting, then fucking as a team. He already knows as well as you do that your bodies, the cartography of your love, is a terrain which can be best understood by traversing it. That touch is the language you share. That you were always fluent in. This time, it is not a touch borne out of jealously or frustration or anger. It is not half-hearted or contingent. It is beautiful and joyful and giving. It is soft and attentive and God he’s never felt so good. 

You expel a breathy, silent moan - a plea really - as Santiago presses his body up against yours, his knee nudging to kick open your thighs. His hips dipped to grind his clothed erection into your heat. Your skin heats, desire curling in the pit of you and you kick away the covers, his warmth more than enough now. With a gust of air, a show of restraint - you swear he’s so desperate for you he could have dry-humped you through his clothes - Santiago manoeuvres his sweat pants off of him, and when he settles in position again he is bare and warm and hard against your slick. 

“Are you-? Do we need-?” 

“-I’m protected,” you answer as his muscled form braces over you, his strong arms boxing you in, the tip of his nose nudging yours, his thighs between your parted legs as the straining mass of his arousal glides over your folds. You wrap your legs and arms around him, holding him tightly, your nails tracing lovingly up and down the canopy of his broad shoulders. Twining into the mess of damp curls on top of his head. You feel the press of his soft stomach against yours. The heat of him everywhere. 

His lips meet yours desperately then, his mouth so needy for yours you could swear his lower lip is trembling as he opens up to shove his tongue over yours. “Baby,” he asks, wracked by need already, his brow burdened with the weight of it and his words barely intelligible. “Are you ready for me? I need you, querida.” 

“You’ve got me,” you soothe. “But I… I want you like this.” He looks surprised for a moment as gently, you guide him on to his back, rolling yourself on top of him until you’re straddling his meaty thighs. You take control away from him and for a moment, you can see he feels the loss of it. That he seems vulnerable, unsure. That while he had clearly intended to give into you, fully, that doesn’t mean it’s at all easy for him to surrender. “Just lie back and let me take care of you, okay?” 

His eyes lock on to yours, soft and uncertain, and it occurs to you again that you’ve never taken him like this. That he has always tacitly taken control. That he has always focussed on your pleasure as paramount. His words, whispered against your skin, into the shell of your ear - that’s it, princesa, right there, huh? - still echo in the depths of you. And now, you want to focus on him. Tonight, things are different. 

You feel desire twist in the pit of you as you look at him all spread out beneath you like this. Evidently needy for you, his cock rock hard and nestled against his stomach. You want to keep him on the edge for hours. Want to hear gruff moans unspooling from deep in his chest. Want to see his fingers rake through the sheets and his jaw tipping to the sky as he writhes his curls back into the pillow, eyes rolling to oblivion. 

You want to kiss him, everywhere. Want to smooth your hands over his brown skin until he melts into the mattress. You want to cover him with your body until he feels safe. 

You want him to feel safe. 

As you examine his form, already near boneless on top of the mattress but reaching for you - reaching with his fingers, with a jut of his chin to raise his pretty mouth, with a buck of his hips to chase your friction -  you settle for a compromise. A balance of your urges to demolish and exalt him. 

For a moment then, you even entertain the idea that you can exhibit restraint enough for foreplay. To tease him. To drag this out. Indeed, Santiago whimpers, an uncharacteristic sound from a man too stubborn to ever admit defeat, and with the sound, your stomach lurches with want. He grows entirely needy as you suckle at his neck, leaving purple love bites in your wake.

You shuffle your hips down his sturdy thighs so that you can fold to slide your tongue over his pecs, circling his pebbled nipple, beginning to trail your warm, wet mouth down his abdomen in a way that makes his glistening cock -wet with your juices- twitch on air. 

“Please. Goddamn,” he begs already, his thighs shaking beneath you, and you don’t need to be told twice. You want the thick, needy, ruddy length of him inside of you as badly as he appears to want that too.

You’ve waited long enough for this. To hold him so completely and to love him with your whole body. 

And so, you shift up until your slick arousal settles over the hot, straining mass of him. It’s slippy - you’re so wet already, and the contact earns a deep, guttural noise from him. 

Then, as you settle in position, automatically - more than automatically, like it’s preordained - Santiago’s hands settle at your hips the moment you are on top of him. They rest in that familiar place he loves to hold, fingers splaying, pads digging into your supple flesh. He grips you in his broad, lethal hands. 

Hands that were trained to kill but made to hold you tenderly; just like this, you think. 

He holds you, and ever so suddenly everything falls into place. As though you were lost all of this time and you have finally found where you were supposed to be. Like someone just handed you a map and assured you you can never lose your way again - not now that you’ve found him. Not as long as you hold on and don’t let go. 

You look down at him, your whole world beneath you and Christ, he’s usually beautiful - luminescent even - but you’ve never seen him look quite like this before. He looks… undone. Unguarded. Needy. Dishevelled. Vulnerable. His lust-blown eyes are blackened with desire yet shining too with adoration. His lids are heavy. Screwing shut as you glide yourself along his shaft. Gusts of breath coming from the circle of his soft, plush lips. That stubbled jaw raising, tipping up as his crown of lustrous curls beds down into the pillow. Light and shadow pooling and dancing and swimming in the contours of him - his sharp nose and heavy brows and sculpted chest. All that and more; but the true beauty? 

The true beauty is when his eyes flutter open once more; and you clearly see the eyes of your best friend looking back at you. 

You see him all at once, rather than the parts of him he’s attempted to compartmentalise. 

Emotion and desire twist in your gut and all you want in that moment is to show him. To show him that he’s loved. 

He’s so, so loved. 

And so are you. 

You hinge at the hips, your head falling to the side of his, temple to temple, cheek to cheek, his stubble rough against you. His familiar scent, woody and citrus, fills your lungs. You feel his brow against yours is already slick with a sheen of sweat as you dip your mouth towards the shell of his ear. “Are you ready?” 

His voice is hoarse. He is levelled by his want, but his face still cracks with a smile, the muscles in his cheek shifting against yours and the rake of his stubble conveying heat all the way to your core. “Are you kidding? I know you didn’t miss this.” 

He plants his feet and bucks his needy shaft against you with greater pressure, the head of him pressing at your swollen clit, gliding over it. You moan at the unexpected zip of pleasure, blooming out from your centre to every extremity, and you feel Santiago’s dirty, satisfied chuckle vibrate through you, chest to chest. 

His chuckle quickly digresses to a moan as you return the favour just as suddenly. As you rise slightly on your thighs, until you are able to grip his aching shaft in your hand and notch him in position, your folds caressing the blunt head of him. His grip on your hips tightens as you lower yourself on to him, feeling how he spreads you open as his girth pushes past your entrance with a thick, hot glide. 

Santiago chokes as he bottoms out, and you can feel him throb and pulse in your centre as he adjusts to the sensations. 

You feel full of him. Full in every sense. 

Fuck. You didn’t know. You didn’t know it could feel like this with him. Light. Playful. Delicate. Joyful. Beautiful. 

“Fuck, hermosa,” Santiago keens as you begin to move, folding over him once again, covering him with your body, your thighs enclosing his ample hips and your forearms planted, bracing yourself against the cushioning either side of his head. 

It feels soft and syrupy as you enclose him in your wetness. Sweat beads and gathers between your bodies as you undulate and rise and fall on him, the slow, sensuous drag of you causing him to bite down into the meat of your shoulder, his breath hot as it billows into the hollow of your collarbone. 

Santiago clings to your hips for a moment, an admirable attempt to guide your motions - until it all becomes too much. Until he surrenders fully and lets you lead. His hands first fist into the sheets at his side, and then they wrap around your back, coming to rest there, his fingers intermittently dancing over your skin. For once, his embrace is not a desperate thing. He’s not attempting to pull you closer or to push you away. He simply wants you exactly where you are. Exactly like this. 

It’s tender, the way he’s touching you. The way he’s trusting you and letting you set the pace. The way he kisses a string of pearls along your skin, the wet, percussive sounds filtering down to your bones. It makes you feel some kind of way, so you try desperately to focus on the sensations his friction is stoking in your centre. In the way the glide and drag and pressure of him inside of you is causing a steady, building, eddying ball of light to hover in the core of you, getting ready to burst out and fill your whole body with sunshine. 

It has felt dark, sometimes, to love him. But right now? It feels like dawn. 

You screw your eyes shut against the dam of emotion breaking within you. Against the tears threatening to spill over. You distract yourself from feeling too much all at once, planting kisses along the length of his beautiful, sculpted jaw. By devouring his mouth the way one would savour a feast. Slowly. Intentionally. Your tongue, ever so deliberate against his. 

“Fuck,” Santiago curses, his voice trembling. “You’re dripping all over me. Jesus fucking Christ.” 

You are. You can hear it. Feel it. This pooling slick between your legs being worked out of you. Coating him. Making everything smooth and fluid and easy, after so long with such friction between you. 

You ride him like this, communing with grunts and moans. Communing with his body, which you read so well. So automatically. You know what each shift and expression passing over his face means. You understand the tightening of his thighs beneath you. You can read his breath, his touch, his sounds, his movements, and you relish in the ways that you know him. All the ways you know how to make him feel good. 

You kiss a bead of sweat from his temple, the salt flooding your tongue as you rise up on him, lifting your body away from his to let the cool air soothe your heat-pricked skin. Relishing the look and feel of him beneath you. Relishing the way he drinks the sight of you in too with a slack-jaw, watching the way your hips work over him. The way your breasts bounce and sway lightly with the motion. You shift your angle slightly, until a long, gritted exhale unspools from Santiago’s plush mouth, his pretty eyes fluttering shut and his grip on your hips unwavering but weakening. 

“That’s it. Right there? Just like that?” 

“Uh. Uh huh,” he replies through gritted teeth, his expression looking pained as he tries to work through it. “Holy shit, baby.” 

You beam a devilish smile down at him until his eyes spark with mischief, and your core clenches on his dick as you watch him swipe the pad of his thumb over his pink, supple tongue, liberally gathering spit. He reaches for you, rubbing the pad of him gently against your clit. 

“Good?” 

Good? Yeah. Good enough to make your toes curl and your legs weaken beneath you. Good enough that you can scarcely continue your ministrations, your body sagging forward again, slumped almost boneless over him. 

“Tired?” Santiago asks you, and you stubbornly answer no despite the burn and tremble in your spent thighs. He sees right through it. “Let me flip you over?”

Reluctantly you concede and he rolls you, carefully, staying inside of you and never breaking contact. Settling your back against the mattress and his sweat-sheened body over you like a canopy. Like safety. 

He kisses you - deeply. 

He thrusts himself inside of you, the noises between your bodies obscenely wet by now, his grunts and groans percussive as he continues to stoke that white hot ball of light in your middle. 

He has never rocked you like this. So tenderly. So reverently. Slow and sure. Not racing towards any ending. He makes love to you as though he’s not afraid of any kind of ending at all. Like this perfect moment can just stretch on forever. Like he can always be buried inside you. 

You, though? You are still afraid of that ending. 

It feels good. God. It feels impossibly good to be held by him like this; but it’s bittersweet. Bittersweet enough that you still have to screw your eyes shut against the flood of emotion you are continuing to hold back behind that dam. 

Santiago’s lips graze your cheek, a softly planted, lingering kiss. “Hermosa,” he encourages. “Look at me.” 

“I can’t,” you admit, and you feel a sting of prickled heat beneath your eyelids. You feel vulnerable, exposed, in a way you’re not used to either. You feel like you want to run, but you know now. That never did very much good. 

“Look at me,” he insists, his voice soft and smooth, no sand left in his throat. So you do. You trust him. You follow him. Walk with him, like you’ve been on the same road all along, each without a map. 

You don’t know what you expect to see when you open your eyes, but all you do see is his gaze fall softly on yours, even as he fills you. You see him as a friend and a lover. You see him as everywhere you’ve been and everywhere you’re going. He’s a landscape, and his whole being is expansive and opened up to you. 

He fucks into you, his pace consistent and steady, and he plants intermittent kisses over your cheeks, scattering them into your hairline, your neck, the corner of your mouth. That ball of light inside you tightens, shrinking down, and you know it’s getting ready to burst. To radiate out into every extremity. 

You feel like you’re heavy and weightless at the same time. Like you’ve sunk so far into the mattress that you’re inches below it. Like you’re floating up to the ceiling. “It f-feels too g-good,” you stutter, your voice mere breath.

It does - feel too good. Not just the sensations, but him. The familiarity and safety of him feels too perfect to risk never having this again. 

Your eyes roll back into your head as Santiago keeps hitting that spot deep inside of you over and over, pleasure sparking and sizzling, white hot. “It’s okay, querida. I got you. Just keep looking at me. I got you.” 

You wrap him up like the gift he is, your legs folding around him, the tender soles of your feet settling on to his plush ass cheeks. Your arms winding around his middle, tightening, drawing him to you. Drawing him so close to you that you can’t look at him anymore, his head buried into the junction of your shoulder, his curls tickling your cheek. You draw him close enough that there is no space between your writhing bodies. So close that you don’t know where he ends and you begin, a mess of breath and sweat and limbs like twined dense jungle.

I love you.

I love you is what you want to say. I love you too is what you want to hear back from him - but your mouth makes the shape of some different words instead. “I don’t want to lose you.” 

It’s a broken, laid-bare plea. It’s what all this comes down to, isn’t it? You can’t fathom losing him. Can’t fathom being without him. 

“Cariño,” Santiago speaks against your neck, his lips sliding hot and wet down the column of your throat. “I’m never lost when I’m touching you.” 

It’s not what you wanted to say. It’s not what you wanted to hear. But you realise, in that moment, as Santiago moves his mouth to meld desperately with yours. As a lone tear sluices over the bridge of his strong nose. You realise that the words each of you spoke mean the same damn thing anyway. 

His tongue shoves unceremoniously over yours then, Santiago coming undone now, ragged and frayed like an edge of land as you wash over him, flooding him with liquid. He opens you up, everywhere. The cave of your mouth, your weeping cunt, your heart breaking open like dawn. 

You moan and he punches your name from his lungs as his hips stutter into you. His thrusts become sloppy but he keeps consistent pace long enough to tip your pleasure over the brink. For you to come undone, a star bursting from your middle, light pulsing out to every extremity and sending jittering aftershocks through your body. You clamp down on him, hold him close to you as you ride it out, your head buried in the crook of his shoulder, his creamy load pumping into you, deep and urgent, and his disbelieving, wracked moans sounding in the shell of your ear. 

You convulse on him, squeezing every last drop from him, your legs quivering. 

You cling to him. Cling to him for dear life as your pleasure swells and breaks and ebbs and flows. 

In turn, Santiago comes down with a shudder, his chest rising and falling in ragged breaths above you. Eventually, he slips out of you, wordlessly, his eyes shining still with unwaning, transparent adoration. He kisses you, everywhere. Puts his hands on you. He laves his tongue over you in gratitude. He kisses every crook and peak and contour and valley of you. He kisses your scars, his mouth curved with a smile the whole while. He applies love across the cartography of you, of your life together. He presses his lethal hands to you and he kills you; softly. Gathers you up to him. 

It is then, in this moment of impossible tenderness, that your tears find their release. 

It floods you. All the times you’ve almost lost him. All the times you should have been holding each other close instead of pushing each other away. All the times you should have been cherishing this beautiful, fragile thing between you instead of fearing it. 

You let the tears eke out; but then Santiago kisses them away too, concern shimmying in his molten eyes. 

In this moment, you feel that he’s loving you how he’s always wanted to love you. Showing you what he’s always wanted to show you. 

And then, something else slips out of you. “I love you.” Your voice is small. Afraid. Even now. 

But this time, Santiago does not hesitate. “I love you too.” 

A few more tears fall. You would like to believe they are happy tears, but you still somehow feel that they are bittersweet. 

Wordlessly, Santiago shifts you, gently, bundling you up against his warm, sturdy chest. 

You listen to his heartbeat thudding in the shell of your ear, noticing it gradually slow. 

You let him trace idle shapes into your skin. 

Let him hold you close, until he stills. Until his breathing is so soporific that you wonder if he has succumbed to sleep. 

“You still awake?” You venture. 

“Yeah.”

“We made a mess.” 

“I know. But it’s okay. I put you in the wet patch.” 

The laugh that escapes you is unexpected. Shifts some of the heaviness in your chest. You bat him playfully in the pec, tweaking his nipple for good measure. “You’re a bastard, Garcia.” 

You think his throaty, reciprocal laughter is the most beautiful sound you’ve ever heard. “I’m kidding! I’m kidding!” 

You shift back just a little, enough to look up at his face. His teasing grin slips effortlessly into something far softer and more earnest when he’s looking at you. 

“Come here,” he proposes softly, guiding you up. Leading you back into the shower. You follow him. You follow him though he never would seem to follow you anywhere. 

Still, you push all that away, in favour of the here and now. With him looking at you like that, what else is there? 

And so, you let yourself enjoy it. You enjoy it as he playfully tweaks your nipple in return and you giggle. As he wraps his arms around you from behind and your fingertip draws a tentative heart in the steamed-up mirror. As he leads you into the cubicle with him, beneath the spray of warm water. 

As you step beneath the stream with him, his fingers twined with yours, you realise that he’s taking you all over again. Making you his, but not by fucking - no. This time, he’s taking you with his soft eyes. With the way his soaped hands move with reverence over your slick body, reluctantly washing the traces of him away from your skin. With the way his mouth moves languidly against yours - and he tastes of soap but you don’t care. He’s taking you. Piece by piece. Taking you until there’s nothing left. Until your heart has migrated little by little, bit by bit, into the roll cage of his chest. Gently, this time - as though for once he might even keep it safe. 

You dry off together, and you settle back on to the bed. 

Already, you can feel Santiago packing this away. 

Putting his heart back inside his chest like a folded map.  

You drag his lips to yours and you kiss him. You’re not sure if you’re trying to kiss him to death or kiss him to life; but you know that you have to kiss him with everything you’ve got regardless.

You know that you have to beg him, without words. With touch. The language you two have always shared, your bodies moving symbiotically through this world, as a team - no matter the distance between you. One of you incapable of being read without the other. 

You know that you have to beg him. 

Stay. 

Stay. 

Stay. 

Stay; ‘til the sun comes up. 

Stay; forever. 

For every new day. 

He could never run towards you, he insists. Not yet. So, instead, you reach for him, your arms wide open. You soften your lethal hands. You relax that killing grip. You make him feel safe. Feel loved. It’s all you’ve ever wanted, if only he would let you try. 

“Turn over,” you whisper, with a soft curl of your lips, and he does so. He lets you wrap him in your arms, chest to his back, and he hums - a low, resonant sound - as you plant a lingering kiss to the back of his neck. You stay like that, until the both of you fall asleep. 

It turned out to be a beautiful night. The most beautiful night of your life, in fact, with the person you love most in all the world. You held him all night. Kept him safe and warm. 

But, when you wake up, you feel only cold air at your back. Cold sheets under your palm as you reach for him. 

Maybe he did stay, at least until the sun came up. But now, he is gone. 

In truth though, you’re not even upset. At least, maybe… you’re not even surprised. 

He’d promised you something that didn’t feel like an ending. He’d given you that, but in many ways it had still felt like a goodbye. 

At least this time, you had said the kind of goodbye you would have wished for. Not an angry, bitter thing. At least this time, you did all you could to let him know how you feel, in all the ways you know how. 

You sit up on the edge of the bed, and you tug in a long slow breath, releasing it into the quiet solitude of the room. 

Is it true that there are some people who you can only ever love in fragments? 

You don’t know, honestly. For now, you only know that you feel broken into pieces too. 

It always hurts when you say goodbye to him, doesn’t it? 

At least this time, it was a more beautiful thing; just like he’d promised, right? 

And, as you stand and move to begin your day, you remind yourself that he hadn’t promised you any more than that. 

[spookykoolkat]

╰•★★ ᴊᴏʟɪᴇ'ꜱ ᴍᴀɪɴ ᴍᴀꜱᴛᴇʀʟɪꜱᴛ ★★•╯

hello and welcome to my main masterlist that compiles all of my written work EVER!

⇢ first i'd like to introduce myself!

i'd prefer if people would call me jolie, it doesn't matter!

i'm nineteen years old :p goth metalhead :3

and i ONLY write for fat, plus sized people, ii write stories that i would read myself, as a plus sized woman, and i hope everyone enjoys it! if not, i'm sorry that it does not cater to thinner people but i need my plus size representation 🖤

AND AS ALWAYS, its FREE FREE PALESTINE!

⇢ now to get into my written work <3

MINORS DO NOT INTERACT! - all of my writing is STRICTLY 18+ ONLY! anyone under 18 and without an age in your bio will be blocked! you are responsible for the content you consume!

all of these written works will or are consisted of dark themes, adult content, adult themes, violence, romance, SMUT, and varying emotions/tones. all written work done by me is not allowed to be shared, published or claimed as their own!

⁂ - smut, 18+ only, mature themes

⁑ - angst, intimacy, light smut

🎃 - kinktober [INCOMPLETE]

joel miller fics will not be continued at the moment.

OKAY finally, here are my stories written by MEEE :p

╰┈➤ ❝ 𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐭𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫 '𝟐𝟑 ❞

kinktober masterlist

╰┈➤ ❝ 𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐞 𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧 ❞

you're just so sweet ⁂

✰ coming back into town for your mother's birthday wasn't difficult. it was figuring out how to be around their long time friend, eddie, without feeling that familiar throb between your legs.

you're just so sweet | 2 ⁂

✰ of course he wouldn't speak to you. he was a much older man, and you were just a naïve little girl who pushed her luck. didn't you listen to every song about daddy issues ever?

always mine, forever ⁂

✰ having your friend group spend the night at your place to watch movies was supposed to be fun! so why was your heart racing at the thought of eddie being merely feet away while you slept in your bed?

your brother's rocker friend ⁂ request

✰ dustin was always a little shit, but he was YOUR little shit. along with your nerdy brother, came along his not so nerdy, older friends. one in particular that drooled over everything you did.

the cabin in the woods ⁂ request

✰ robin's new friend caught some attention from her friends, but eddie couldn't find it in himself to make a move on you. of course robin's hot friend had to be lesbian. or so he thought.

toxic ⁂ 🎃

✰ to your dismay, you and eddie could never find the sense to leave each other alone.

taped ⁂ 🎃

✰ eddie needed a way to keep you with him forever, what's a better way than to document it on camera?

looking for a good time? ⁂ 🎃

✰ eddie was always up for trying new things. he just didn't think someone who he couldn't even see would make him feel the way he did.

trick or treat ⁂ 🎃

sorry about your boyfriend ⁂ 🎃

lucifer, my love ⁂ 🎃

╰┈➤ blurbs

after work *

tattoo shop *

more coming soon

╰┈➤ ❝ 𝐣𝐨𝐞𝐥 𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫 ❞

the red - series masterlist

updates halted indefinitely

「 chapter one 「 chapter two 「 chapter three 「 chapter four*

「 chapter five* 「 chapter six* 「 chapter seven* 「 chapter eight*

「 chapter nine 「 chapter ten

[verosikastrikerstellaexcuser]

Prior Anon again.

Viv admitted that she didn't have any real plan for HB and that she changed Stolas' character in one of those Live Q & A panels.

The whole not having a plan for HB was in I believe 2 tweets, where she didn't know how long she planned for HB to go on and that she only had some rough outlines.

Put that all together and with how Stolas really seems so different compared to S1 to S2, among other things....yeah it's all just winging it.

There was nothing ever to suggest in S1 it was arranged, in fact as the song implies it really wasn't. The only thing people latch onto in that it was 'arranged' is when Stolas is trying to explain to Via the situation.

....But this is not realizing that these were all incomplete statements and even if they were? That doesn't nessecarily mean it was an arranged marriage, because you know....parents can fall out of love, parents can later on realize that they never really loved eachother etc.

Which you know, fits with what S1 was seeming to hint at in dialogue and song within EP 2?

Or they just assume because they are Royals so they MUST be arranged marriage...which again isn't an argument.

Just because they are Royals, doesn't mean it has to be arranged. Was it a thing? Yeah it was, but we aren't in this show, in this setting....given any reason that it's a thing. Them being Royalty isn't enough evidence. It was usually due to land, money or what have you, status and so forth. A mutual benefit of sorts between Families.

....But Stolas already has everything, he has the house, he has the servants, he has the power both figuratively and literally, he has the money. Nothing in S1(other than....her phone) is Stella's, she doesn't have claim to anything or have anything property wise. Stella doesn't even have any innate powers from what we see, if anything S1 comes across as making Stella not giving anything of value to him.

In fact given the implication of Stolas being extremely old in S1, this means he's an immortal which we know is still true, he's still an immortal. He has all the time in forever to gain his own land, to gain his own money and status. He's not going to die from old age.

The only thing of value between them is Octavia, but she's not an indication of an Arranged Marriage in S1 either, it's just as likely that they could have had her without all that nonsense. Which again fits with...

"I used to think that I was bold. I used to think love would be fun."

and

"I want that CHEATING PRICK DEAD!"

Why call him a cheating prick Stella? You weren't hurt by anything right? Why'd you use these specific words Stella, hrmm? You don't like him right, why does this whole thing piss you off if you like to torment him?

Why did Bryce say "She has a lot of pain inside of her" (Insta Reel with him and co-star, but unfortunately deleted)

Why did Georgina like a tweet saying she was heartbroken and doesn't think clearly?

Baffling really, when S2 tells us the complete opposite of...all this stuff.

They don't lean into the Arranged Marriage thing until S2 rolls around, which thus starts making S1 look a little weird as a whole as the episodes go on.

S1 at least from where I'm sitting, was written in such a way that...many fan theories cropped up and honestly that's where I feel things took a wrong turn.

I feel as if Viv, took a lot of the more popular fan theories and just made them Canon, so writing wouldn't have to be such a chore. So she's using fans to basically write things for her show, that she can't be bothered to actually write out other avenues to the story. She'll just pick something that is popular or something she likes and that's that.

So then fans could say "AH HA! SEE WHAT DID I TELL YOU!"

Or

"IT WAS SO OBVIOUS!"

So their headcanons/fan theories can be fine, but others can't if they don't conform to what many others are saying?

Now I'm not saying writers can't take things from fans and made stuff Canon, but doing so constantly? Or writing in such a way, where you could then just 'farm' for ideas later on?

It just seems then like there isn't real creativity there. Especially when taking such ideas in the first place, but then it kinda ruins what story was already being told.

Anyway this is getting very long winded, so apologies.

No genuinely I appreciate the long windedness, I really do, because these are all valid points.

"That doesn't necessarily mean it was an arranged marriage, because you know....parents can fall out of love, parents can later on realize that they never really loved each other etc. Which you know, fits with what S1 was seeming to hint at in dialogue and song within EP 2?" You're right. This is one of those retcons where I took them at their word but you're right - the arranged marriage is a retcon. And that makes sense, because I always thought the way it operated was just bizarre. Why do royal Goetia women have 0 power/property rights and are things to be shoved into arranged marriages to make heirs when the rest of hell's society does not seem to work that way at all? It seems to mostly just be about power as in physical abilities, combined with wealth. There are plenty of female overlords and Beel's female, and the sins have massive power, being above overlords and goetias. When they revealed that the house was all Stolas' and that Stella owns nothing it always felt just extremely bizzare given the rest of the show and its women? It seems to operate mostly like an Earth society in 2024, aka women have rights even if misogynist attitudes are still a thing. Why would the Goetia women have less rights than all other women in hell and why are they still able to force arranged marriages on each other? I'm not saying that couldn't maybe be interesting, like the monarchy had exceptions written into law for themselves, but I would have liked to see that properly actually established. I'm so sick of this show's inconsistent lore and things not being shown properly. Stuff like the different rings each ruled by a different sin, those concepts are really fun and powerful. But they're so messily executed and no proper rules are really ever established, making it feel clunky and confusing. Lmao guess they wouldn't bother though since that would make it harder to go back on things all the time since they really do appear to be just winging it as they go and sweeping any "mistakes" that are no longer convenient under the rug.

Its ridiculous to me that they had no plan going into this show. I mean seriously, what a fucking joke? NOTHING? How can Viv say "Stolitz is the heart of this show" This shows heart is whatever is convenient that writing week and whatever fans gush over the most, don't lie. Unmake it the heart, because deciding thats what this shows about on the fly has been an absolute disaster, dear God. You are right about leaning too much into fan theories and appeasing fans etc... thats part of how we got into the Stolitz mess, because people liked it so much. But leaning into solely what FANDOM likes, given that fandom regularly ships anything and everything (which isn't bad however the point of fandom is to be creative not to make a coherent show) it leads to characters lore etc becoming muddied as dozens of people input different ideas that don't work coherently with each other and other plans you as the creator have etc. Imo creators should avoid theory content and stick to supporting fanartists, song makers etc only, and minimally too. In general I feel like staying a healthy distance away from fandom is best, especially as your show is ongoing, for a multitude of reasons tbh but that would be veering off topic.

Anyway, thanks for making me realize all this, seriously. Most other retcons I spotted, but this is one I didn't spot for being what it is.

[pen-and-umbra]

Compilation spoilers below.

As the party delves deeper into the Temple of the Ancients, a vision of Sephiroth delivers a cryptic speech:

(“My fragmented mother, these errant worlds… All shall be one again.”)

“My fragmented mother” is a very deliberate choice of words. While the OG story touched on Jenova's fragmentation while dealing with the subject of Reunion, the plotbeats focused on Sephiroth and his failed copies rather than the creature itself. As the story unfolds, Cloud kills or severely injures Sephiroth during the Nibelheim mission, leading him to utilize clones and Jenova's remains after emerging at the Northern Crater in order to repair his maimed body. The same Ultimania Omega relayed that developers once thought about a scene where Sephiroth was revealed to have a Jenovaesque lower half. (The concept was eventually scrapped, but it would have added an even more grotesque element to Sephiroth's already terrifying being.)

(“It shall encompass worlds unbound by fate and histories unwritten. <...> My dominion shall reach into infinity”)

However, the Remake implies that the Reunion serves a different purpose. Or, more accurately, Sephiroth refers to a distinct event—the merging of worlds—as Reunion. According to Sephiroth's cryptic message, this is yet another foray into “godhood”. Not too unlike Ultimecia’s time compression, Sephiroth allegedly plans to join all the timelines into one to achieve “infinity/forever”. And yet, what does it have to do with “his fragmented mother”?

(“All made whole.”)

What if the true purpose of Remake's Reunion is not about “infinity” per se but about the “whole” part?

From the perspective of the OG, we are led to believe that the gathering of failed copies is the result of Sephiroth's will. However, Cetra's hologram delivers an interesting warning as the party traverses through the Temple of Ancients.

(“Heed well to our warning of that which is to come…<...> The reunion. When our adversary's scattered malignancy shall converge to plague the Planet once more.”)

The Cetra allegedly referred to Jenova's own inherent ability to reassemble its pieces (“Reunion”), whether conscious or unconscious. Unless the message was purely prophetic in nature, the statement presupposes that Jenova's body was already dispersed during the era of the Cetra, predating ShinRA's R&D department's experiments with alien cell injections. The Temple of Ancients narrates a gripping tale of Cetra's battle against the calamity-from-the-skies, with significant casualties suggesting a lasting conflict rather than a singular encounter.

Thus, it is possible that Jenova sustained injuries and lost some of its biologics before Cetra managed to seal it. Alternatively, fearing Jenova's reunification, the Cetran people may have “scattered” the creature in some way in order to hamper its resurrection. Whatever the case, at the end of the day, Jenova at the Nibelheim reactor appears incomplete or misshapen, missing a wing, and apparently suspended midway between morphing into a humanoid.

If the message is interpreted as a prophecy about the future, it demonstrates Cetran's extraordinary augury ability. However, assuming their knowledge of the future is precise, they never mention a different agent (Sephiroth), instead referring to their “celestial adversary” as the enemy who will plague the planet once more.

Anyway, spool forward, and in the age of ShinRA, the likes of Hollander and Hojo kept experimenting with Jenova's organic material, further disseminating alien cells. Several of its hosts have died. That includes both humans (Angeal or Gillian, for example) and monstrosities infused with J-cells that our party encounters (both organic and mechanical). While it is hard to estimate how many test subjects died during the course of the Jenova/SOLDIER Project, we can suppose that quite a number. It is currently unclear what happens to Jenova cells after the host dies; several instances appear to be convoluted (Angeal's mother allegedly dies alongside alien material, but Lucrecia claims that Jenova cells keep her alive). Let's assume that J-cells usually die with the host. As a result, an uncertain amount of organic material is missing from Jenova's body and will not make it to Reunion.

When combined with the Ancients' reference to “scattered” essence, Sephiroth's words about his fragmented mother make a lot more sense in the context of worlds merging. What if the primary aim of unchaining timelines was to acquire unattainable fragments of Jenova from hosts that are deceased within the primary timeline? Destiny's Crossroads, as a singularity of some kind, appears to be linked to all points in time and space. As a result of destroying Harbinger, our party is likely to have had an impact on PAST events (Zack's Last Stand). As a consequence, Zack lived. What if Jenovaroth's true goal is to alter branching timelines so that as many J-cell hosts as possible survive to converge at Northern Crater? Bringing scattered Jenova fragments across time and space to resurrect the entire entity and restore its power? The consequences of such a plan could indeed be disastrous.

Examining the issue from this perspective raises the question of who is truly in control and what kind of being will emerge after Reunion has run its course. It also raises the question of whether there are other ancient “deposits” of Jenova's organic material left from the Cetran War, if the warning in the Temple of Ancients was NOT a prophecy about ShinRA era.

👋 @pen-and-umbra

[reunionatdawn]

The beauty of Axel's original character arc

"I thought a lot about that. Should I leave him as he was or should I bring him back again? However, when I considered the people that Lea wants to bring back, his existence plays a big role. I think Lea has successively become a key character." (Tetsuya Nomura)

Nomura said that he debated whether to bring Axel back to life, or to leave him as he was. The fact that he wasn't sure meant that his KH2 character arc must have felt complete somehow. So, I'd like to take a look back at Axel's original storyline in KH2 and why I liked it so much. I thought his death worked very well as a beautiful and satisfying (albeit more bittersweet) ending to his story. In many ways, I found it to be much more poignant than his storyline in KH3.

“Is that how to treat a best friend on coming back from completing a long mission!” “I don’t recall becoming your best friend.” (Another Report: Roxas—Somewhere in Time)

Roxas was closer to Axel than any of the other Organization members. But he obviously yearned to have best friends his own age. That is why he was best friends with Hayner in his dream world, even though he didn't know them in real life. And he didn't even remember Axel. In other words, Roxas and Axel were not really best friends. In the short story that was included with the Japanese version of KH2FM+, Axel was the one who was insistent on using that label.

Hayner: Well, I doubt we can be together forever. But isn't that what growing up's all about? What's important isn't how often we see each other, but how often we think about each other. Right?

The whole concept behind Nobodies was that they had no hearts, but they still had their memories from the time when they did. So, the writers undoubtedly had some idea of what each member's backstory was like. In the original KH2, the writers chose not to explicitly tell us anything about Axel's past. But based on his behavior, we would be able to ascertain that he probably had a best friend when he was still a human. However, he was already a grown up. His summer vacation must've ended a long time ago. He could no longer be with his best friend, and he needed Roxas to fill that void.

Roxas: Organization XIII… they're a bad group. Naminé: Bad or good, I don't know. They're a group of incomplete people who wish to be whole. To that end, they're desperately searching for something.

One of the biggest themes in KH2 is that of duality. In Hinduism, the universe is said to be made up of two complementary opposite forces called Shiva and Shakti. Shiva is the masculine force and is known as the destroyer or transformer. He is associated with chaos, darkness, and the element of fire, which symbolizes purification. Shakti represents light, order, and the feminine nurturing aspects of the universe, giving birth to new life. She is associated the element of wind, which symbolizes life energy and creation.

Axel's moniker is "おどる火の風". It translates to "Wind of the Dancing Fire" or "Dancing Fire's Wind". This is my theory of what the deeper meaning was. One of the most famous depictions of Shiva is that of him dancing in a ring of fire. This version of him is known as known as Nataraja. The rhythmic movements of the dance are said to cause storms and destruction. And there's a backstory to the dance.

In Hindu mythology, Sati immolated herself out of intense devotion to her husband Shiva when her father insulted him. When Shiva learned of Sati's death, he was overcome with grief, sorrow, and uncontrollable rage. Shiva carried Sati's lifeless body on his shoulders and began to perform the cosmic dance of destruction.

In KH1, the reports mentioned how Ansem amplified "storms" in the subjects of his experiments on the darkness of the heart. The kanji used (嵐) can refer to a literal storm or it can also be used metaphorically to describe an intense emotional state. I suspect that the original idea in KH2 was that Axel's best friend was killed during an experiment. And this event caused Axel's heart fall to darkness, turning him into a Nobody. It's probably the reason why Axel was so delighted to assassinate Vexen by setting him on fire.

Axel: Let's meet again in the next life. Roxas: Yeah. I'll be waiting. Axel: Silly. Just because you have a next life…

The imagery of Shiva dancing within a circle of flames represents the eternal cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Shiva performs the dance and destroys the universe, but this destruction is eventually followed by rebirth. His lover Sati was reborn as the goddess Parvati and reunited with Shiva as his other half. Their combined form represents unity in duality and cosmic balance. In KH2, Axel did not think he was going to be reborn. And that was the basis of his storyline.

Naminé: We may not have homes. But there is someplace I want to go… And someone I want to see… Axel: Same here.

Nobodies had a strong thematic association with death and the afterlife. In KH2, Naminé was the ghost girl living in the haunted mansion. In KH3, she was an incorporeal star in the Final World, the metaphysical place where people go when they have strong attachments and cannot pass on to the other side.

A Nobody was the spirit that went on even as its body faded from existence. They were very similar to the Unsent from FFX, which was another game written by Kazushige Nojima. Axel was created because his human-self had strong sentiments. He desperately wanted to be with his best friend forever. And this unfulfilled dream, ironically, kept his body and soul tethered to the realm of light.

Kairi: Maybe…waiting isn't good enough. Axel: My thoughts exactly! If you have a dream, don't wait. Act. One of life's little rules. Got it memorized?

When Axel asked Kairi if she wanted to "see" Sora, he was referring to her meeting him in the afterlife because he was planning to kill them both. A similar form of wordplay was also used in the Japanese dialogue. His intentions were made apparent by his outstretched hand. He wanted Sora to become a Heartless again. So, he probably planned to accomplish that the same way he became a Heartless.

(Japanese Translation) Axel: We're quite similar, aren't we? Both of us want to meet our important friends. Don't you think we're like comrades?

In the KH universe, when a person dies, their heart returns to the light of Kingdom Hearts. Since Axel didn't think he had a heart, he thought there would be nothing left of him to live on after his empty vessel was destroyed. Even if he wanted to die and be reborn to meet his best friend, he couldn't. He was driven by intense loneliness.

Some Kingdom Hearts fans think there's something romantic between Axel and Roxas and that Disney stopped that from being made explicit. Is that true? Have there been things Disney have stopped you from doing? Nomura: In terms of the relationship between Axel and Roxas, we never intended anything like this and this is actually the first time I ever heard of it! We don't want to openly negate how the fans have come to enjoy the characters, but it was not something the creative team intended. Axel and Roxas are the best of friends and that's their primary relationship. 

Axel's intense yearning to see Roxas once more made fans question his orientation even back in 2005. Akuroku was quite a popular ship back in the day and many players saw romantic subtext on Axel's part. I do agree that Axel is easily read as queer. But the creative team was not trying to imply that he was in love with Roxas. I think it was his human best friend that he was really in love with, and Roxas just reminded Axel of him. When he was with Roxas, he felt like he was with his best friend. And that's why he wanted to die by his side.

(Japanese Translation) Axel: When I was with him, it felt like I had a heart too. That kind of feeling... I feel it with you too... The same...

When Axel said, "the same", he was referring to how Sora reminded him of Roxas. But I believe that we were invited to read between the lines and wonder if he was also referring to a human best friend that had already passed on. Ultimately, Axel's original KH2 arc was not about being together with Roxas forever. Roxas merged with his other half and became whole. He would live on within Sora.

In some Hindu traditions, "Sati" also refers to the act of a widow willingly participating in a self-immolation ritual on her deceased husband's funeral pyre. It was seen as an expression of devotion and loyalty and also an act of peerless piety which was said to purge her of all her sins. The widow would achieve spiritual liberation (moksha) not only for herself but also for her deceased husband. This meant that both would be freed from the cycle of death and rebirth (samsara). The widow was thought to be reunited with her husband in the afterlife, enjoying an eternal spiritual existence with him.

To help Sora reunite with Kairi, Axel self-immolated. After he died, Nojima probably envisioned that he would meet his dead best friend again, who was waiting for him on the other side. He had attained moksha, which represents the final goal of human existence in Hinduism, where the soul is liberated from the cycle of samsara. And that's probably why Nomura wasn't sure whether it was better to bring him back to life or to just leave him as he was.

"I never thought he would grow as much as he has. We originally planned to have him exit upon being defeated by Roxas during the opening of KHII, but all the staff, myself included, were strongly inclined to have him keep playing an active role after that. It's possible he will have things to do in the future, too. I tried to put that into his 'see you' line in KH2 FM+." (Tetsuya Nomura)

When KH2 was written, the writers probably had not envisioned a preexisting relationship between Saïx and Axel. But after its success, they decided to expand on the Organization's backstories, and came up with that idea. Isa was based on the original concept that was implied in KH2. Axel did have a human best friend, and that loss had a profound influence on his relationship with Roxas.

If Axel's human best friend was supposed to be literally dead in KH2, then him only being Norted is a major retcon, yes. But it was a retcon that would allow for the eventual reunion of Axel with his best friend in the physical life. Like the Phoenix rising from the ashes, he could resurrect him from the dead. And that was the underlying idea of making Lea a Keyblade wielder in the first place.

Lea and Isa's backstory is one of the missing links of the KH series. By all means, it should have been depicted many years ago, in the defunct Birth by Sleep Volume II. This is a shame because it left their relationship extremely underdeveloped, and their reunion was largely glossed over in KH3 as a result. Because of this, I thought Axel's storyline in KH3 fell flat, and I thought that his ending in KH2 was more impactful. But I may change my mind if we finally get to see more of Axel's long overdue backstory in Missing Link.

[duendepika]

MHA Chapter 423 Commentary

I want to start by saying that I love the series. I really do. That's exactly why this chapter is so damn heartbreaking. What drew me to this series were the themes of saving everyone, of atonement and understanding and compassion. All of that was abruptly thrown away this chapter. I can’t take anything else in the story to heart because it’s lost its heart.

Only some of this can be explained by the terrible pacing of the chapter, as the content should have been in 5+ chapters. What it comes down to is the way the deaths of Shigaraki and AFO were handled by both the protagonist and the author. It’s not that they died, as I expected both to and take no issue with that. It’s how their deaths were written. AFO’s in particular leads to the crux of the problem: when the main villain dies alone and unloved, it calls into question the story’s message and themes.

Under a cut because this is long, but I'll start with Shigaraki before moving onto AFO and the general themes.

I’ll discuss Shigaraki first, as this one is less of a problem (though still very much of one) for the story as a whole. Shigaraki's death scene was far too short and remarkably callous, and he will remain forever incomplete even if "revived". We have seen very little, if any, introspection on his part during this entire war. We didn't see him grapple with learning AFO controlled even his birth. We didn't see him interact with his grandmother. We never saw him learn anything from Deku. We never saw him confront AFO. We never saw him come to terms with anything. Right up until he died in 419, then formally died in 423, he held the same rage. Realizing "wow, I was an angry kid after all" only to follow it up with bragging about being destructive to the very end is not character development. His death was not heroic, as he was more or less “killed” by AFO earlier and he only rallied for one hit. He didn’t sacrifice himself in any way, and it’s hard to consider his final punchdown on AFO particularly heroic under the circumstances.

Deku's final conversation with him was fairly cold, especially considering how he's spoken of him up until now. Saying to the very end that he'll never forgive him and mysteriously failing to say he wanted to save him was very damaging to both characters. Not once does Deku mention his goal of trying to save him. It's as if his goals suddenly changed when they no longer became possible to attain, as if he'll magically be shielded from any failure (a common theme with all heroes except for Hawks and Ochako, though the latter may well be negated if Toga lives). Some recognition of the goals we've been told about for the last 300+ chapters would have been nice, even if Deku just made a casual apology for not being able to "save" him. He seems almost dismissive of Shigaraki in the end despite repeating tirelessly throughout the story that he will do everything in his power to save him.

I also see a lot of assumptions that Tenko will simply return. If this happens, which is always possible, it would be the most outrageous asspull in the series. His body is completely gone. Unless he regained his original quirk and it's "Resurrection", it's not going to be believable in any sense (and a suspension of disbelief is necessary for fiction; we all know it’s a superhero story, but that doesn’t mean the author can do absolutely anything and we have to accept it). That, too, would be absurd because if AFO had that quirk all along he would have used it here. An argument can be made that he used it 6 years ago, but this is also questionable because a] he only used it once, b] given the Oboro/Kurogiri situation, it seems that Garaki can actually raise the dead. I don't know what Tenko returning would even do. We saw his dying words, and they were unrepentant, and Deku's final interaction with him was cold and detached (unlike, for ex. Shoto and Toya which was only hostile on one side, and Ochako and Toga which was openly affectionate). Coming back isn't going to undo any of that.

AFO dying with no character resolution whatsoever was an even bigger issue in terms of the greater narrative. As with Shigaraki, his death is not the issue; it was clearly going to happen. It’s the how. He died begging for his brother to love and look at him. His brother died condemning him. AFO died as he was born - unloved - despite having a very "human" awakening only a few chapters prior. This was made clear but how he changed how he told his brother he loved him. He shifted from the more formal and very rarely used “aishiteru” to the very personal “daisuke” because, after chasing him for a century only to lose him, he finally understood that what he felt for his brother was love.

He was vulnerable in a way he never had been before, but Hrksh opted to throw him away instead of bringing closure to his character. Consider how his original body died in 410, screaming about how he feels hatred. This time he died begging for love. It was futile either way. Yoichi, the only person he ever loved (albeit in a demented way), rejected him. All the other vestiges manifested faces, but Yoichi denied his brother this last chance to see him. AFO's last panicked meltdown clearly indicates that he simply can not conceptualize love in a normal way, which makes him more pitiable and, ironically, human, than it does make him evil.

The argument can definitely be made that this was a "fitting" end for him, and on some level I can appreciate that, but whether it’s satisfying is irrelevant. This ending does not fit the story of MHA, which carries certain themes. All other significant villain characters were granted some level of compassion, an attempt to understand them, by both the author and the characters. AFO was granted none of this. The main villain in a series about helping and saving others lived and died unloved by all. He might have been "born evil" depending on how one interprets chapter 407, but hrksh made it clear that he never had a chance in life. His backstory is objectively the most tragic and miserable of all, and he was the one character denied any compassion in the end. If the worst of the worst dies alone and unloved, then how can we say the story is truly about saving others, even those who don’t conventionally “deserve” it?

Furthermore, Deku's offhand comment about him being a lonely man comes across more as an insult and a mockery than any attempt to understand him. He "gave" AFO the chance to speak to Yoichi one last time, but it was a farce to distract him so he'd be easier to kill. There was no compassion there, only calculated manipulation. Granted, it's possible this comes down to pacing and what should have been 1-2 chapters was crammed into 1 page, but with no actual exploration of AFO's character on Deku's part, we have to take it at face value. Realistically, Deku should have sought to understand AFO hundreds of chapters ago anyway, if he really cared about saving everyone. In retrospect, not even considering the possibility of trying to figure out the why and how of AFO is a major failure on the part of the heroes. This goes back to how the author has set AFO up to take the fall for everyone without considering how it will compromise the central theme of the story.

Even as recently as chapter 416, Hawks remembers how important it is that we see everyone as united and understand one another. Strangely, nobody bothered to try and understand the main villain.

Ultimately, if the narrative is pinning all anguish and suffering in the world onto a single character, the origins of that character must be understood by the heroes to ensure someone like him isn't created again. By only bothering to understand and save those AFO supposedly created (even though he only created Shiggy), the heroes are healing symptoms and not the disease. There is no internal consistency within the story. He died largely a mystery. We will never know his true goals, as the closest we got was Aoyama's description, which AFO even said was not quite accurate. We also never learned his true motivation, as his reaction to Yoichi dying again indicates it’s not that simple. Which again, means it will just happen again because no characters made any effort to understand. It's like hrksh went for generic, mindless evil but screwed up with his relationship with his brother, ultimately turning him human. His goals and motives can be guessed, but given that this is a shounen, in-depth analysis should not be required to understand the final villain's goal.

This is made even more infuriating when you consider that AFO’s worldview is based on comic books. Shouldn’t this be something hrksh would want to explore, given the entire series is based on comic books? Without ever telling us the truth about his motivation, we lose the chance for the meta-analysis we were promised, one which had notable fan appeal regardless of character interest. AFO's abrupt ending also means we will never get any further explanation of quirks, the singularity theory, or their origin. AFO as the originator held all the mysteries there. Sure, maybe we'll get a monologue from the doctor later, but that's unlikely. And sure, you can argue that those things "aren't important", but they are. Many dropped plot points genuinely don't matter anymore, but these do given their significance throughout the series.  Essentially, all worldbuilding went out the window with AFO.

In the end, there is no sense of anything changing after this war. The chapter byline suggests that now with AFO dead, everything will be perfect, which is of course probably what we'll be told. The "cycle of suffering" has miraculously ended, because apparently all of it originated with AFO despite him having absolutely nothing to do with the creation of most villains.

The reality is that nothing in Deku's final battle addressed the failures of society and what can be done going forward to minimize people becoming villains. He completely ignored any attempt to understand the supposed root of all evil (AFO), suggesting he doesn’t actually care about fixing any deep-rooted societal issues and instead only cares about Shigaraki specifically. And even then, Deku did very little for him. When he entered the vestige world, he shielded Tenko from his father and tried to physically stop him from killing his family. That's it. Immediate, reactive, physical behavior. No reflection, no analysis, no acknowledgement of the deeper issues at hand (yes, it's a battle, but that never stopped hrksh from including that kind of thing before), no recognition of what Tenko went through in their final conversation. In this sense, Ochako and Endeavor have done a far better job at being heroes than Deku, which is a serious issue from a narrative perspective.

Rezzing Tenko might give us some flashbacks of neglected aspects of his character, granted with lost emotional momentum, but the bigger issue is how Deku handled his death. The same can be said for AFO, though unless Yoichi also returns, that's totally pointless. Giving Deku a second chance to redo everything with Shigaraki and/or AFO can't change the fact that the first time around, he failed to connect. He didn't know he'd get a second chance. Therefore we have to assume he was "doing his best" in 423, and that “best” was mediocre and contradictory to his character.

At the end of the day, we ended up with what should have been 5-8 chapters crammed into one, at the most critical moment of the series. Because of this, major plotlines and characters were thrown out the window and with them, the central themes of the entire series. I think there are ways it can be partially fixed to the point where the chapter is no longer a story-breaker, but given how this was handled, I don’t expect those paths to be taken. The only way to really salvage this is to have the chapter retracted, which of course won't happen.

[ryin-silverfish]

LMK Fanfic: The Serpent and the Deluge

AO3 Mirror

LMK S5 spoilers ahead. Proceed with caution.

Kinda a companion piece to my "Chaos doesn't work that way" post.

Featuring: the Nine-Headed Demon telling a story, and lots of Chinese mythos references.

We met again, Harbinger.

Now hold on, and hold your punches. We are in a dream, the realm souls wander to in their slumber. You can't touch me here, nor can I touch you; though I apologize for intruding without permission, it doesn't really matter when this visit is my last.

Why am I here? To tell you a story about a cave. 

Oh come on, no need to look all bored before I even begin. I know you've heard it once, but I promise, this one is better than the last. The Cave and the Sun: Expanded Edition, if you would.

Yes, I'm very obsessed with the sound of my own voice. You would too if you were stuck in the Palace of Darkness for centuries, accompanied only by the cries of hungry ghosts and my nine late colleagues, droning on and on about crimes and punishments.

Please, Harbinger, just let me have my one last indulgence before leaving it all behind, once and for all.

Where was I? Ah, the cave.

Officially, it is not a cave, but the Terrace of Gonggong. But if you were born in the empty void beneath, amidst the pooling blood and endlessly collapsing earth, you'd never know. 

Whose blood, I heard you ask? The blood of Xiangliu, loyal minister of Gonggong, shed by Yu the Great, from which my kind spawn and return to upon the end of a single life, so that we may be born anew. Rocks weren't the only thing you can spontaneously pop out of in the age of the ancients, it turns out.

One day, a little bird and a little snake crawled out of the pool, like countless others before them, and didn't get eaten by their malformed siblings on the way out. Up and up, they climbed, until they were scooped up by the scaled claws of the elders, nine heads fully grown, and told of their destiny: nothing.

Yes, you heard that right. Nothing. 

That was all their kind were, and would be, sealed beneath the Five Altars, misbegotten ilks of the Floodbringer, whose blood and flesh were marked forever by the deeds of the Breaker of the Sky Pillar.

“So venture not into the light above,” they warned, even as their ramshackle nests sank deeper and deeper into the putrid swamp. “Our essences are cursed, stained by the transgressions of our forefathers. You will bring them nothing but misery and destruction, and be boiled down to nothing in return.”

And it was easy for the little bird to almost believe them, as she tore into the flesh of their malformed siblings, spawns of Xiangliu who had come back incomplete, in bits and pieces, driven only by hunger until they dissolved into the pool of blood once more. 

But, as always, the best way to get someone to do something is warning them against it, and the little snake is a born contrarian.

...

He heard the call while hanging upside down on a stalactite, tasting the copper-scented air with his forked tongue, trying to catch a whiff of the wind that slipped through the cracks.

They all did. Yet, unlike the ones above ground, it was a call some were still capable of refusing, dampened by the seals and reduced to a fraction of its strength.

Come to me, it said, and only the spawns with the weakest and strongest will listened.

"What are you doing, Ah Jiu?" The little bird yelled, hovering above the many-limbed tide of malformed spawns, stepping all over each other as they made their way up the steep cliffs. "Come back here, right this instant!"

The little snake did not listen. Could not listen. As he unfurled his own wings and followed the tide, the call had become a song, loud and mesmerizing, drowning out all the other sounds inside and outside of him, till only a single word remained: Come.

So, like any frustrated, overprotective sibling, the little bird took off after him. 

...

They emerged out of a sea of blood, covered in the viscera of their malformed siblings, who had slammed themselves against the protective spells of the seals, over and over and over, until a brief opening was created.

They looked into the light together, and it burned. Horribly. It's a miracle that they weren't blinded forever.

The little snake, who saw more with his tongue than his actual eyes, was the first to regain his senses. Whereas the world inside the cave was like a spiderweb, thin threads stretching across a metal-scented void, the world outside was a tapestry of smells and sounds and vibrations, stretching endlessly towards the horizon.

He took so long adoring this tapestry, he didn't even notice the little bird flying off. As fierce and practical-minded as she was, when she heard the call in all of its wondrous, terrible glory, she darted after it like a huntress pursuing her prey, an arrow cutting through the air.

If she was alive in this day and age, she'd be the sort of tourist who headed straight for the destinations, took photos of the biggest, most iconic landmarks, then spent the rest of the day sleeping on the bus.

The little snake, however, preferred to stroll his way there leisurely. Enjoy the scenery, even as the tour guide was screaming his name into the speaker, telling him to hurry up, for heaven's sake.

Why am I so familiar with such...modern stuff? My my, do you know how many tourists managed to die in the dumbest manner ever, and how many of them ended up in front of the Tenth Court?

Impersonating a king of the Underworld meant I got a share of the workload too, and I'll admit, after all the extra paperwork and inane cases the others had thrown in my way, it made killing them just a tiny bit cathartic.

Back to the little snake. When he arrived, the entirety of demonkind had gathered beneath a towering mountain peak. From its top, the call echoed on and on.

Amidst beasts and beings of all shapes and sizes, he could barely spot the little bird, her dark, iridescent feathers standing in stark contrast with the white fur of the nine-tailed fox beside her.

He was only allowed a single glance, before the call became a deafening choir, and a verdant banner, made of jade-like scales, was raised up into the air, by a stunningly beautiful woman with the lower body of a snake.

A goddess, she called herself. And she had summoned them here to topple a dynasty.

...

You have already met Nüwa, Harbinger. You know very well what she's like. 

Whatever you think of her now, I have a warning for you: do not ever see her as your mother, or your kin. Or anything other than a goddess.

We are her kin. Everything born naturally from Heaven and Earth, out of the Qi flow of Yin and Yang, whether they call themselves gods or demons——are of the same substance. 

And look how she treated us. Watch that banner, the Spirit Calling Banner, work its magic, calling us to kneel before her regardless of our will. Would you ever make such a thing and keep it in storage, just in case you need to raise it against your friends and family?

You, whom she molded from stone and clay, are not her children either. Not even the children of a terrible parent.

The best analogy I can come up with is a figurine collector and her collections. If my brief peeks into the living realm hold true, some collectors love their dolls more than anything. Would probably save their collection instead of all the other valuables, when a fire broke out in their house.

But figurines can't think or feel. They won't have a problem with being locked eternally in a glass case and having it be their entire world. They don't bleed when used in a wargame. Nor will they worship their collector as a goddess, or write a love poem to her.

If Nüwa was ever human, I'd sympathize with her disgust a lot more, when Zhou the Tyrant expressed his desire to take her as a concubine. 

Well, she isn't, and neither am I. 

She sent my sister and her new friends to tempt King Zhou and topple his dynasty, promising to release our kind from the Terrace in return, then executed them for doing exactly that. All because they had harmed too many of her precious figurines in the process. Honestly, what was she expecting?

This, I can never forgive.

I, however, am not poor Azure. I don't fancy myself a champion for demonkind, and my dear sister had made her choices, however unwise they were.

I have waited all these years, endured more setbacks than you can count, done my fair share of manipulation and sacrifices, for a goal greater than petty revenge.

I wish to shatter the cage that traps us all. Unravel the cruel threads of Fate and Destiny.

...

What do you know of Chaos, Harbinger?

It's scary. And bad. Hmm, I expected to hear that, yet I'm still disappointed. How very human——and divine, to impose morality and wishful thinking and arbitrary orders onto the unfathomable, the natural!

Allow me to show you a glimpse of the truth. The same truth the little snake gazed upon when he returned to the cave, and made his efforts in vain, to save those who did not wish to be saved.

This is Chaos.

The primordial cosmic sea, the warm deluge of nothing and everything. The potential for Life. 

"One begets Two, Two begets Three, Three begets everything." Chaos separates into Yin and Yang, and through the copulation of the two, Heaven and Earth and Life come into existence.

The spontaneous spawning of beings from Qi flows, from the mighty gods and fantastic beasts of old to your garden-variety yaoguai, as primordial matter divides itself——that will be impossible without Chaos.

To put it in simpler terms: remember the blood of Xiangliu? From the pool we came, and it's the pool we'd ultimately return to. 

"After everything you've said and done, I'm even less convinced that it's a good thing."

Oh, that is not an argument. Merely a statement of facts. At the end of the Great Cycle, when the process of division runs out of momentum at last, everything will return to Chaos and be reborn once more. 

An end that will not come in the next few eons, yet one Nüwa desires to "protect" this world from, nonetheless.

Confused? Need some time to process what you've just heard? No worries. Let me tell you another story in the meantime. 

Or, as I like to call it, the fable of the failed cosmetic surgery.

...

The god of the South Sea is Shu, the god of the North Sea is Hu, and the Lord of the Center is Hundun. 

The three encountered each other inside the domain of Hundun, and Hundun welcomed them warmly as guests.

To repay his kindness, Shu and Hu thought up an idea: "All humans have seven orifices through which they look and listen, eat and breathe. Yet Hundun doesn't have any. Let us bore some for him, so he can sense the world."

Everyday they bore one orifice, and on the seventh day, Hundun died.

...

"...What was the point of this story?" 

Who knows! Maybe it doesn't have one. Maybe the old human who wrote it was poking fun at the incessant need to find a point in everything, like he always did.

But my point, Harbinger, is this: death, destruction, all the scary stuff you are thinking of——these are not the essence of Chaos, merely the results of its division. You cannot have Life without its opposite, Yang without Yin; for every push, there must be a pull.

Thus, by dividing this world from Chaos, Nüwa has ensured its doom. 

Much like water, if you build a dam and only dams to defend against a flood, the silts and mud gradually build up at the bottom, and it's only a matter of time before the river overflows into an even more catastrophic deluge. 

By creating the Pillar of Heaven, what would have been nothing but a storm of Qi currents, a surge of spontaneous births and deaths in the ancient ages, became a disastrous flood that periodically threatened to engulf the artificial bubble once and for all.

It is her prison as much as ours. And when its walls fell at last, it would have taken every single prisoner with it, in the same way the Terrace of Gonggong has taken mine.

...

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, so the saying goes.

Unfortunately, the little snake is quickly disabused of such notions. In the decades he was away, the cave had grown even colder, darker, more dismal than ever. Fewer of his kin stood in the swamp, as more and more youths came back malformed, wrong, incomplete, the Chaos in their blood fizzling out with each passing and birth. 

Yet still they clung to the familiar, the corrosive certainty, the willful ignorance. 

“You have taken the brightest of us with you, allowing her to burn up in the light, and still you dare whisper your poison into the ears of the younglings? Still you wish to lure them to such a cruel fate?” 

Monster. Unforgivable.

Words turned into sharp retorts turned into accusations turned into screams, then, at last, pleadings, as his kin tied him to the heaviest stone they could find, then pushed it off a cliff, into the abyss where all the blood flowed to and gathered.

He sank and sank, further and further away from the nonexistent light of their warm bodies, for what seemed like an eternity.

Then he opened his eyes and saw.

...

He saw everything he had been, every time he had crawled out and returned to the pool. Basked in the remembrances of those he once called kin, clinging to him like dews on metal as he shook them aside, and gazed deeper into the blood-red void.

He saw the nine-headed serpent, hissing, sinking into and lunging out of the earth below as if it was made of water. Before it was a man with a face like weathered cliffs and an ape-like gait, who calmly held up his golden staff, standing tall against the poisonous tides the serpent unleashed with each of its breaths.

He saw the faceless vermillion beast, the winged tiger, the beast with human face and boar tusks, the horned monster gnawing on its own flesh, raging in vain as the glowing chains dragged them down, into the void between the stars.

He saw the red-headed giant, his snake tail lashing out wildly against the circle of fire that was shrinking around him, fueled by the burning man with the body of a beast.

With one last desperate roar, the giant leaped out of the flames, plunging his head right into the golden pillar that stood between Heaven and Earth.

A crack formed. He looked into it, and he saw, he saw, he saw it all——

Come back to us, the shades of the pool cried out behind him. Come back and forget everything. Close your eyes and begin anew. Come back, it's safe and warm in here.

Never, he said.

Then he reached into the depth of himself. Felt the little droplet of warm chaos, cracking, pulsating, dividing——and set it aflame.

...

He slithered through the blood, like a flame burning across a trail of oil. Past the long-submerged caverns where generations of spawns once carved their tales into the stone, past his writhing, malformed siblings, through the cracks in the collapsed entrance where a little snake and a little bird once chased after the echoes of a call.

The seals did not even activate, as he burned his way out of long-dried bloodstains, and emerged into the chamber of the Five Altars.

Meticulously, he shattered them, one by one. With each altar that crumbled, the earth beneath shook, and the cracks in the ceiling and walls widened.

He could sense the ripple in the blood, feel his fellow spawns dissolving back into the pool. It was quickly becoming a vortex in the lightless depth, as the essence of Chaos ate through the bedrocks, the thick Yin energy of the Underworld, the very fabric of space, returning to the great beyond where true peace lay.

A peace that would be forever out of his reach. Or so he thought, as the Terrace came down around him.

...

"Wow, you are even more of a monster than I thought."

Ah, I see what you are doing here. Such childish provocation will no longer work on me, now that I'm in the process of discarding my own childish indignance, my body sinking deeper and deeper into the primordial sea as we speak.

But still: if trying to save people without their consent makes me a monster, then yes. I am a monster, and so are you, Harbinger.

Please. You think you have found a true third solution, a long-term one? No, had Nüwa even explained it properly, what your sacrifice was supposed to accomplish?

Of course she didn't. So allow me. 

The so-called Great Cycle she spoke of is nothing like the real deal. It is as artificial as the division between this world and Chaos. 

Had I not awakened you prematurely, you'd have emerged into a cold, desolate, broken realm where all life had withered, yet was not allowed to be broken down and returned to its origins.

You'd have walked like a lamb to the slaughter, led by the last few ghostly fools of the Underworld, to burn yourself up inside the Pillar and reset the world. Moving it back in time to the very beginning, where life still flourished.

This is your true destiny. This is what she thinks of as a mercy, creating a sacrificial effigy who has no attachments, nothing to miss. Having never been properly alive, surely death will be as light as a feather to the poor thing!

"Then why did you still want me to sacrifice myself?" Have I ever told you that, child? Your decision was your own, whether I liked it or not. Had you said "No!" to my face and walked away to face the end with dignity, I'd have defended that decision too, and I did.

Either way, I'll have my exit. Whether swept up in the flood and returned to Chaos in bits and pieces, or...to a point where I'd no longer remember. When I'm still capable of making different choices.

Now, your solution is unexpected, not gonna lie, but still one that upholds the division. Instead of using five powerful support beams to hold up the broken pillar, you've made the entirety of humanity into its anchor, tying them irrevocably to the fate of the world.

If I were a true monster, the easiest way to render your effort naught would be killing off large swaths of them in one go, before they had time to fully adapt to their new reality.

As wonderful as it is, this new barrier you've created is more of a net instead of a brick wall, full of holes, and an emissary such as me can easily slip through.

This emissary, however, is not the one you should be looking out for. It's the exiles, and they are coming.

But I've lingered and rambled long enough, haven't I? Guess it's time to leave my doubts behind, too, along with whatever sentimentality for this world that remains.

It's a pleasure talking to you, child. I'd say "Don't miss me too much", except I know you won't. Literally. You won't remember this dream, even if you want to.

And when we meet again——if we ever meet again——I will be me no longer, nor trapped in this maelstrom of divisions. 

I will have merged back into the One, and I sincerely hope you will too, one day.