#Grief And Redemption

[fogaminghub]

🌿✨ Dive into Chapter 4 of Visions of Mana: Back with a Vengeance!  

Join Val as he confronts his past and climbs the majestic Jaque Tree to reclaim Hinna’s corestone. This journey is more than just a climb – it’s a path to redemption!

[drizzledrawings]

Lonesome cowboy

[abovesn4kes]

I’m undone already.

[arthursfuckinghat]

Thinking about how it feels like the world of RDR2 ended when Arthur died, how things would never be the same again, how bittersweet it is meeting the people you once were in a gang with, how much it hurts to play as a shadow of someone you lost. That's when most people stop playing.

But the world didn't end, the world carried on. The people you knew moved on, new people you meet spoke fondly of your brother. The world kept turning and showing you that Arthur may be gone, but his memory is all around you.

His name is etched on a memorial hall donation plaque, the beasts he hunted were hung proud on a veteran's wall, the widow he taught to hunt is now thriving, the strangers he helped on the side of the road talk about the man that saved them, and so much more, but most of all - his hat sits proudly on your head and his journal lays heavy in your satchel.

This part of the game has taught me a lot, but it has taught me to move on most of all.

[lieu-rey]

Artha Elizabeth Marston, born 1901. Nicknamed Beth, she was conceived by accident at a time when no children should be born. Her first 6 years of life were defined by instability and constant trouble that her father could not help but find.

At 10 years old, Beth is wild and short-tempered. It's a rarity to see her with shoes, clean clothes, and neat hair all at once. Loves to run, jump, and climb everything in her vicinity; "You must have bones of iron because it's a damn miracle you haven't broken one," her mother says.

Talkative and eager to learn, she's drawn to horses, but isn't good at riding; in spite of that, she's up for the challenge. Unlike her brother Jack, she hopes to run Beecher's Hope one day in their father's stead.

life at the ranch is good for three years...

but then comes the dreaded ending of rdr1. now, what is the marston siblings' plan?

[arch-aeology]

dig, gravedigger, dig

Yes there are six different watermarks on this piece. I am tired of my art being reuploaded without credit lmao.

[vaquerobuckaroo]

Grief

[dulcemapis]

Now I don't know about you but when Dutch said during the Blood Feuds mission, "Who steals a God damn boy?" Arthur damn well thought, People could do worse to a boy. Men, somehow worse than him, would take away a boy's life for lesser reasons than stealing moonshine and horses.

Evil men would take away a little boy's life for ten dollars. Isaac had been learning to read at that time; he could have been a doctor, or a lawyer, or an author. Arthur had been teaching him to fish then. Maybe he had been hoping to teach him to hunt, too, or just fire a gun so he could take care of Eliza while he was away.

He could have been so much more than just a little boy, and he died because his only sin was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

[thekingofspin]

I have a love hate relationship with dutch van der linde

because one minute I'll be screaming at my tv and plotting all the violent ways I'm going to kill him

but the next minute I'm listening to von dutch by charli xcx, watching thirst edits and reading soft vandermatthews fics

it's scary how I want to kill him and kiss him at the same time

[i-am-trans-gwender]

Never watched My Little Pony but I found out something fucked up while I was on TV Tropes.

There's an episode where Luna has so much guilt for being a villain that she creates a magical force to mentally punish herself every night. In her own words "to make sure I never forgave myself for how much Equestria suffered because of me."

I have several thoughts

I thought MLP was lighthearted fluff. The fuck is this depressing shit?

I think the writers need therapy.

I feel called out.

I've heard some weird stuff about the fandom and Equestria Girls so it's a nice change of pace to find out the actual show is fucked up as well.

If you gave me a million guesses of what happened in MLP this would not be one of them.

[misthiosss]

Mr. Morgan

[daisydood]

rdr2s plot is just

Rootin tootin cowboy having fun robbing hunting horses woohoo

the guilt and deterioration of man. The end

[shannonsketches]

something something foils moving in opposite directions Goku's always happy to seek and fight stronger opponents because he spent most of his life being the strongest guy in the room and Vegeta wants to be the strongest/is always exhausted to find stronger opponents because he spent most of his life having to navigate his survival around the whims of the strongest guy in the universe room and so Goku has a foundation of safety and stability and so spends his time craving challenge and adventure and Vegeta has a foundation of challenge and adventure and spends his time craving safety and stability and the overlaid section of their venn diagram is that the only way they know how acquire and maintain those things is through battle

[arthursfuckinghat]

There needs to be a scientific study done on how Rockstar Games' Arthur Morgan is able to provoke the most earth shattering emotions I didn't even know I had in me

[bluewithpurplepolkadots]

Honestly I think Azula wasn’t redeemed on show because of time available within the story among other things. I find that to be a perfectly valid writing decision to make: and hell sometimes sympathetic or understandable characters simply aren’t redeemed. That’s true even in real life.

But there’s people who say she wasn’t and couldn’t ever be because she almost killed Aang and anyone who writes redemption fics for her should be ~ashamed~ and why on earth would Aang ever be friends with her and and…

Bro.

Buddy.

Even if we pretend S1 Zuko was somehow that stupid to think Aang would be having tea parties with his dad: S3 Zuko sent an assassin after Aang. He also directly tried to kill him. He just used another person to do it. Hell: this guy he hired was also someone who didn’t care who else he killed. Imagine if someone else got it in the neck too.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if the guy had idk, succeeded in killing Aang as he set out to do: or killed Sokka or anyone else in the team. Zuko would NOT make it out alive if Katara got her hands on him. I mean granted: he probably wouldn’t have had Aang died in Ba Sing Se either because of Azula: but still.

Water whipped so hard he topples over the edge and collapses on the pointed rocks in the cavern below.

Honestly would fit in a short dark au given how linked Aang and Zuko are narratively.

Aang has saved Zuko’s life twice before hand: but he’s not around for the third and it’s simply Zuko’s own fault that Aang isn’t there to save him again. If he’d lived maybe Aang would have caught him. If he’d lived maybe Katara wouldn’t have felt so full of overwhelming rage and pain as to push Zuko over the edge. Yin and Yang circling each other eternally even in death.

[thewhumpcaretaker]

⚜ 𝓑𝓮𝔂𝓸𝓷𝓭 𝓙𝓾𝓭𝓰𝓮𝓶𝓮𝓷𝓽 - 𝒞𝒽𝒶𝓅𝓉𝑒𝓇 𝒳𝒱: 𝒜 𝒱𝑜𝓌 𝓉𝑜 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝐿𝒾𝑜𝓃 ⚜

*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ ✧.*★ Thank you again to @evren-sadwrn for the beta read!

TW: crying, self-loathing, discussion of grief, narcissistic collapse, smut (oral)

Summary: John does his best to console Vincent, who has been shattered by grief and remorse.

Bellwood Mall’s sleeping quarters occupied a Bed Bath and Beyond, where divider walls had been set up to create individual hotel rooms. The overhead lights were switched off in favor of bedside lamps, creating a space of blue-grey darkness above them where the strangely oblong light fixtures and metal rafters of a department store crisscrossed each other. There was even a long-deflated balloon, trapped in the joint between two rafters, its limp body telling the story of some disappointed child who had let it go.

Vincent was similarly deflated. It had been less frightening when he was wailing in the middle of the food court, John decided. Now, he slumped forward on the end of a twin bed - one of two in their room, though John had left the second one entirely to Dog and come to sit beside Vincent. He was exhausted by his fit, staring into space with dead eyes. He bore little resemblance to the poised, collected, arrogant man who had once held unmitigated power over all the forces of the High Table.

For a while, there was no sound except the occasional sniffle. John wasn’t very good at these things, he realized. He had no idea what to say. Maybe there was just nothing to be said. Nothing had been able to reach him, after Helen’s death. He wondered if Vincent loved Chidi at that depth. Or at all. “Did you feel the same for him?”

Without looking over, Vincent shook his head. “No. He was right. I never even considered him that way. Or – “ He let out an exhale of frustration. “I don’t know. He was important to me. But I never - I took him for granted…” He was getting worked up again. “I – I killed him…” John pulled him into his arms. He didn’t hug back, just hung limp against John’s chest, his head draped over his shoulder. It was heartbreaking to see him like this.

“You didn’t kill him. The High Table did.”

Vincent extracted himself and laid back onto the bed, covering his face again. “But I treated him like a thing! I used him! Until he died…”

John wasn’t quite sure what to say to that. It was, if Chidi’s letter was any indication, true. And to lie to him would only undermine his trust.

“There are people who wouldn’t even know that’s wrong. At least you do.”

There was a long silence full of slow, heavy breathing before Vincent admitted, “I didn’t at the time. I’m not a good person, John. I try so hard to be what the world wants from me…but it always comes out wrong.”

“…You’ve done bad things. But - ”

“I’m still doing bad things, because it’s a part of me. Some corruption in my soul.”

There was pure despair in his voice. To think that Vincent thought this way of himself was unbearable. John laid next to him and wrapped around his waist, cuddling him, trying to console the inconsolable. He could still feel Vincent’s chest shuddering. He was too broken down to resist an offer of comfort, and rolled over onto his side to curl up against John, who was still searching for words. “You’re not corrupted. You’re hurt, and lashing out.”

Vincent laughed humorlessly into the crook of John’s neck. “God, that’s so pathetic. I’m so pathetic.”

“I don’t think you’re pathetic,” he said calmly. “I think you’re really brave.”

“…You’re being so kind to me, and I was thoughtless to you all day. I am, all the time.”

“Are you sorry?”

“Yes! Yes I’m sorry.”

“Well then I forgive you.”

For a second, the Marquis seemed completely overwhelmed. He took John’s face in trembling hands and kissed him forcefully, before pulling back to search his eyes. “Why would you do that? Why are you so sweet to me?” He shook his head and bowed it against John’s, pressing their foreheads together.

“I just…I just want to. What’s the point of making you suffer more? I forgive you.”

“You say it like it’s so simple. An apology is real only if the one who is apologizing plans to change. And I can’t. You don’t understand how hard this is for me. I’ve never – “ He had to stop to choke down sobs again, and only continued when he had composed himself. “I’ve never had a real friend, John, not since I was a child. I was popular. But I never connected with any of them, I just toyed with them. I can’t treat people well, I don’t know how. I can’t care about people.”

“You just saved Dog.”

“…Only because you told me to. I wasn’t thinking of his safety. I was thinking that you’d kill me if I let him die. And…maybe that I’d miss him. But I wasn’t thinking about him at all.”

“That’s okay. I don’t care why you did it. You still did.” He stroked soothingly down Vincent’s back. “You know what Iosef told me, when I met him at that gas station? He said he loved dogs. And then he – ” John went quiet with anger for a moment. “It doesn’t matter whether you feel warm and fuzzy inside. You have a choice about what you do.”

“What if I don’t have a choice? What if I’m completely out of control and I can’t do it?”

His voice shook with desperation in that dangerous way that made John want to crush the sadness out of his body with sheer physical affection. John got over the top of him again, on hands and knees staring down directly into those swimming pupils, which widened in surprise. Words tumbled out of him, low and fast and coming from some primal core of his being. “Then I’ll treat you as a wild animal that doesn’t have reason right now. My pet lion. I won’t judge you or punish you. I will just stop you from hurting people…or yourself. I will control you, by force if necessary, and take care of you. And I will try so very hard not to hurt you in the process, because at a time like that, you’re completely innocent.” He realized his heart was racing and their eyes were locked together. There was something burning between them, a mutual intoxication at that prospect. He wondered if he’d said too much, if that would be insulting.

Vincent swallowed, staring up at him with devastating awe. “That sounds…safe,” he said, in a small voice. “I think…I think I want that, Mr. Wick.” Not the resentful “Wick” that he often spoke in defiance. Not the tender “John” that had risen up in familiarity. Mr. Wick, whom he trusted to control him in every way, to be his moral compass and his failsafe. Mr. Wick, who was staring straight into the tear-stained, puffy-eyed face of the responsibility to which he had just sworn himself. An intense rush of fondness went through him at being so trusted, at holding Vincent’s very wellbeing in his hands, and he caressed his cheek, brushing away tears.

“I want that too.” He realized Vincent wasn’t the only one who was shaking, and fought for control over his desires.

“You’ll really…you’ll take care of me? When I’m at my absolute most petty and cruel, beyond all help?” His voice was too high, too sugary, brain-broken. He was stroking absently along the front of John’s button down in a way that sent thrills to his core. Stripped of all defenses, Vincent had become boneless and needy. John wondered if anyone else had ever seen him this way, and if so, how they had treated him. As he cupped Vincent’s face, John’s thumb rested tenderly against his lower lip. It occurred to him how soft he really was, underneath everything.

“Yeah. Isn’t that what I’ve been doing?”

He nodded, placated, subdued…and nuzzled into John’s hand. Fuck. His chest shuddered with rampant affection.

He had to communicate one more message, before allowing lust to overcome him entirely. “But listen to me, Vincent. As much as I want that, I want something else more. I want to love you like a man, not an animal. Someone I can trust with freedom. I believe that the man in you is alive. Okay? You can get better.”

Only one part of that had registered with Vincent. “You want to love me?”

John’s heart nearly stopped as he realized what he’d said. It could not be reciprocated, but…to hell with it. Might as well learn from Chidi, and not wait until it was too late. “…Yeah.”

Even John, in his near-pathological humility, couldn’t misinterpret the way Vincent beamed and let out a little gasp of giddy disbelief. A radiant happiness shone out of that dimpled smile, and he dragged John down against him by the collar, demanding his lips, demanding that the heat between their legs press together. When they finally broke, he was still clinging to the front of John’s shirt. “I want to love you too,” he whispered. “I don’t know if I can but I want to.”

The pang of disappointment was swallowed by gratitude. “What you feel towards me…I accept it. It doesn’t matter what it is. I’m lucky.”

“Good. I…I need you. Kiss me again, please.” He was flushed and disheveled and perfect, and angling his lips upward in desperate anticipation. So John pushed his tongue between Vincent’s teeth, tasting blood and salt, until his back arched, wringing a whimper from him as it affected his chest.

“Don’t move.”

“Mmmm…” he whined in some mixture of misery and pleasure, and went limp. His fingers were still wandering listlessly over the blanket so John lifted his hands one by one and kissed each wrist, just above the end of the gauze. He let them fall back to the blanket and moved on to his chest, hiking up his T-shirt over the bandages to kiss just below them, on the arch of his ribcage, moving slowly and deliberately.

Then he went lower. Sliding his waistband down an inch, he kissed the protrusion of each hip bone at the front of his pelvis, and then the sensitive hollows where his hips dove into the base of his cock, already visibly throbbing in deep pink. He gripped the sides of his hips like handles and guided them into a rolling motion, showing him how he could move them in isolation from his abdomen. Vincent pushed against him, moving too far, but John pressed him down into the bed, refusing to let him thrust. He sucked in a breath and didn’t let it out again.

“Breathe, моя любовь [my love].”

Obediently, Vincent forced his chest to rise and fall, and John rewarded him by sliding his pants down far enough to let him stand erect. It was really gorgeous, so flushed with color. His own cock was screaming for relief at the sight of it. He unbuttoned hastily and for a moment, he let Vincent watch him stroke himself to the image of the beautiful, helpless, demonic angel laid out before him, vulnerable and tearful and completely trusting of him. His skin shone even in its tortured pallor, interrupted by slivers of red along his arms and by the purple flowers blooming at his bruised jaw. “You’re beautiful, Vincent. You’re so beautiful.”

Rosiness flooded through those pallid cheeks and he made some little flustered noise of appreciation. “I…I’m…merci.”

“And…” he reluctantly let go of himself to slide his hands down Vincent’s sides and onto his rod, where he took hold of it, “you’re good. You’re so good. You deserve happiness. You shouldn’t have to be trapped in your head all alone. You deserve for someone to take care of you. Someone to help you.”

His moan shuddered its way into a sob and he covered his mouth with one hand to stifle it.

“You’re allowed to cry. You’re safe. The only thing I will do is make you feel good.” And he closed his arms around Vincent’s thighs, sliding his hands underneath him to make him feel held from every side as he planted a kiss on the swollen head of his cock. It twitched in response.

“John –  Putain, s'il te plaît… [fuck, please…]“ he gasped, squirming for more.

John chuckled lightly. “Okay.” And he took him into his mouth, deep. God, he was silky soft, and so responsive. His thighs flexed hard whenever John’s tongue rubbed along a favorite spot. John worked relentlessly and systematically until he found the rhythm that drew the most flexing out of him. Vincent was rolling his hips as he’d been shown, fucking his head softly and slowly. Whenever he got too aggressive, John’s arms tightened around him, pinning him helplessly to the bed. He wondered momentarily whether anyone in the adjacent rooms could hear Vincent’s shuddering moans of ecstasy and decided he didn’t care.

Before finishing him off, he surfaced to see his head thrown back. To admire him, and to give him fuel for the final stretch. “Я тебя люблю.”  he said slowly, this time teaching him. “I love you. Безоговорочно. Unconditionally.”

“I don’t…I don’t deserve you.” He was crying uncontrollably.

“Я тебя люблю,” he repeated firmly, and cradled his hips in his arms again, enveloping him in warmth right to the base until he was breathless. His face was a mess but he refused to break rhythm for anything. In this little time, he had already learned how to bring this newfound treasure of a body to unrelenting pleasure and he did not hesitate. The growing scent of Vincent’s aromatic, animalistic musk drove his own arousal to maddening urgency with every breath. Lust sent him into a daze. Vincent’s breath hitched again and this time he could not restore it. John was growling into the flesh, struggling not to use teeth, as he carried his angel over the edge at last and swallowed every last precious drop of that salty-sweet proof of Vincent’s orgasm.

He crawled back up to his side and embraced him again, not allowing them to lose contact for even a moment. “Я тебя… тебя люблю [I love…love you]” Vincent mumbled clumsily into his neck, covered in sweat, stumbling over the words, and then kissed him. “I’m sorry…if I’m bad at it.”

Impossible. A miracle. He laughed and realized his own eyes were wet. “You’re pretty good at it right now.”

Impossible peace.

Peace all through his body, peace singing something operatic inside his ribcage, something Vincent would like. Peace he thought he would never feel again. No…not exactly like that. Peace more bittersweet, peace somehow crafted out of a white hot inferno, peace made of longing, a longing for continuance, for this moment to never end. For tomorrow to never come to test this fragile bond and steal Vincent’s life away. He pulled Vincent on top of him and held him as if he might never hold him again.

“How do I be better, John? At loving you,” said his perfect, impish angel, some minutes later, as their hearts slowed down together. His face was buried in his chest. “I really do want to try.”

“Umm…” he struggled with the afterglow clouding his brain. This was important. “Tell me when you’re hurt.”

Vincent snorted. “That doesn’t make things better for you.”

“It does. For both of us. Because then…I can help before you get mad. I can figure out what I did and apologize or…just help however you need. I promise I won’t be upset if you tell me.”

“Even if it’s something petty?”

“It’s not petty if it’s upsetting you. Maybe irrational, but…there’s always something behind it and we’ll figure it out together.”

Vincent sighed. “Like when you mentioned Helen earlier.” He cleared his throat, struggling profoundly. John waited. “I was. Um. I was jealous.” John could feel his heart racing. He had gone totally tense with anxiety, waiting for a response.

“That makes sense. I didn’t think about that. You should know that you mean very much to me, even after this short time. I…I have struggled with moving on, but it’s what she would want. She even said so. And what I have with you is something…completely unique. I have never felt this way before.” That was true.

“Well that…wasn’t so bad.”

“See. You can do it.” He could feel Vincent’s cheeks smiling against him.

“Will you tell me about her? You wanted to and I stupidly…”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I can handle it. Anyway, I need to do something nice for you. You’ve been so good to me, Mr. Wick.”

“Well…” How to describe Helen to someone who had never met her? “She showed me how to do…this.” He gestured between them. “How to love unconditionally. Before I met her, I was power hungry in my own way. I was a pure nihilist, just angry with the world and stepping on its throat just because I could. I wanted love. Dreamed about it all the time, ever since I was a kid. I was into fairy tales, and then fucking…Victorian novels and shit. But I was completely unworthy of that. A killing machine with no idea how to live a normal life. And then she…just appeared.”

“She was a photographer at the time, doing this project for public awareness about gangs and the mob and all that. Like, telling people’s stories anonymously, to help people understand how criminal activity starts and build empathy, that kind of thing… She saw me sitting alone in a restaurant trying to look normal and immediately knew I wasn’t. Saw right through me. So she asked me for an interview and took photos of some of my old suits for the piece.”

“You did an interview? About being an assassin?”

“Well, no. I didn’t tell her that at the time. I just told her I was involved with the mafia against my will. That I had been trafficked into the business as a child and uh…”

He had to pause to swallow the lump in his throat. There were tears flowing freely down the sides of his face but he had to at least try to keep his voice steady. “Anyway, that was the first time an innocent person was willing to listen to what I’d gone through. She didn’t judge me, she didn’t try to turn me in. Didn’t see any of it as my fault. She just wanted to help me get out. Even after she found out what I was really doing. She was…remarkable. Deeply compassionate. And she spent a lot of time just…doing things with me that I never got to do. Like go to the mall…I was going to show her so many things too, because she had a hard life of her own. Messed up shit. She deserved so much more. But she’s gone, and this yearning…to give to somebody like she gave to me…this desire that she put in me, to take care of people, it’s still here. As grief. And it just has nowhere to go…”

He realized Vincent was lifting up his hand. Nothing could have surprised him more than the soft kiss that he placed on his wrist, mimicking the way John had kissed him earlier. And then he kissed him again, right at the center of his palm.

“Don’t cry, Mr. Wick,” he said. “You can take care of me as much as you like.”

John laughed in wonder. By the time he forced himself to speak, it was ragged and deeply sincere. “I will. I promise. Do you want to tell me about Chidi?”

A long silence. “…One day.”

“Okay.” John kissed the top of his head. “Do you feel any better?”

“Oui. Merci.” He cuddled closer against John, if that was even possible.

“Bien. Fais de beaux rêves. [Good. Sweet dreams.]” He switched out the light and let Vincent sleep on his chest like a curled-up cat, sighing softly from time to time.

They had a hell of a big day tomorrow. John stared into the darkness, his hands tightly around Vincent’s back, and prayed to whatever gods may be.

Don’t take him from me. Please. Don’t take him from me.

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